Precision 7530 & Precision 7730 owner's thread

In terms of relative performance vs GTX cards, you can look at this or this.

 

I switched to a headset which is connected in the audio port and that works flawlessly in the dock. Might remove another connection in your setup.

Hoping for a new driver as well...

 

I wish I could use the audio output, but these are USB-only speakers, no input other than the big blocky USB type B. I tried wearing headphones, but I work on a treadmill desk, and as it turns out the tread on the treadmill produces a non-trivial amount of static electricity, which conducts beautifully to my all-metal keyboard. So that's out, too.

Waiting for the drivers!

 

I hope they fix it but I think it might have to be a firmware (not driver) fix. Looks like this problem was introduced by a system firmware update on earlier systems and could be resolved by rolling back the firmware. Naturally, that is not an option for newer systems that appear to have shipped with the bug in the initial firmware.

https://www.dell.com/community/Laptops-General/TB16-USB-issue/td-p/5154111

 

Oh, man...

Why are there so many issues cropping up for others just after I bought the system?

Should I retract my buy, and get myself an MSI WS63 8SL instead?

It's not much more than my current config, but comes with 4× as much RAM, twice as much storage and a better Quadro...

 

What are you going to be doing with it, and how much do you like responsive support?

Dell definitely has some quality issues right now, but I have never had Dell bail on me when it comes to getting things working. Once this dock issue is resolved, the only issues are the webcam and speakers, which frankly are terrible, but they are so minor compared to everything Dell got right with this one.

Here is a quick rundown of my current thoughts on the 7730. First, the pros:

• It is incredibly fast. Literally twice as fast as a ridiculously powerful workstation I built myself a few years ago. It's not easy to double performance of a computer, especially given that the workstation is about 2 cubic feet and 15 lbs, versus a relatively thin and light laptop. This is one of the very few i9 laptops that actually can cool the processor. Same with the video card (got the P4200). It is absolutely latest-gen, meaning I will get a lot of use out of it.
• It is an absolute breeze to upgrade anything and everything inside the chassis. And not only can you do it, Dell provides step by step instructions on how to do it.
• Expandability is ridiculous. Four RAM slots up to 128GB (I have 48GB installed now) of PC3200 memory. Four m.2 pci-e slots, easily accessible, and with thermal strips built in to each one, for a total of 8TB right now, and 16TB once Samsung releases there 4TB drives later this year/early next year.
• Huge battery. 2Whr shy of the max you bring on a commercial flight. Lasts for over 4 hours, which is crazy for something this powerful.
• Awesome keyboard. It has just the right amount of travel and feedback for me, and I type over 60wpm. It has PageUp/PageDown keys right above the arrow keys, a major win for when I am coding or editing documents. It even has a dedicated calc key to bring up the calculator. How did they fit all of this in there?
• Screen is great. I got a perfect screen on the first go. No bleeding or dead pixels anywhere. Plenty bright for indoor work. I live in Texas, so you really don't want to bring your laptop out this time of year unless you really like the whine of fans.
• Ports galore. Even without a docking station, I can plug everything in sight into this. Two thunderbolt ports, three USB, SD card reader, LAN, miniDP and HDMI ports, plus audio out.
• Uses a standard 230w plug, which goes in the back. The bigger MSI's with this kind of power (i9 or SLI) use two 230w proprietary adapters, which is crazy talk. The power brick is still large, but nothing like they used to be. Probably half the thickness of the last power brick I used for a workstation PC (HP Z-Book).

And now some of the cons:

• Fingerprint reader works *most* of the time.
• Dock works great for video, LAN and audio out, but nothing else at the moment. USB is hosed, which is mostly what you would want a dock for.
• Webcam is in the right position (the TOP of the screen), but the video quality (NOT resolution) is pretty bad unless you are in very good light. Truth is that Mac is one of the few laptop manufacturers that uses a decent webcam.
• Audio is straight out of my 80's TANDY. Dell assumes you will use headphones or external speakers, obviously. Fine for a conf call if the environment isn't too noisy, but you'll probably opt for headphones.
• Way too many buttons on the trackpad for me. I would drop the bottom three buttons and add more space for the trackpad. Also, I would use a trackpad with force touch, so that you can just press down to get the equivalent of press-and-hold for the left button. Or give me a configuration option that swaps out this 6-button trackpad for one really big force-touch trackpad. That way everybody is happy.

If you look at the pros and cons, you will notice that the cons are all little stuff, and the pros are HUGE. So on balance, it's a killer workstation. Could it be better? Yup. But once the docking issue is resolved (they will fix it eventually), and I get a replacement fingerprint reader, the only real issue is the trackpad, which I am learning to deal with. Just takes time and patience.

Hope that helps.

 

While I did already package up and label both of my systems for return, I do agree with JohnnyMags on this being probably the best well rounded workstation out there right now. Quality control issues aside, these machines offer the bleeding edge of portable tech. From my countless weeks of research, most of the other manufacturers make you compromise too much in comparison with Dell's offerings. I'll be ordering another replacement tomorrow, my third and hopefully final attempt.

 

I'm a CS major, so yes, definitely lots of coding, parallel working and all that. The MSI I linked was a fair bit lighter and had more specs for the money so I considered that. But again and again, everyone mentions the stellar after-purchase support we get with Dell's business machines. So I'm really unsure what to choose. The primary three factors for choosing my 7530 was the warranty, the DGFF and the four RAM slots. The fimware also doesn't appear to have options for overclocking RAM, so it appears I'll have to do it manually using Thaiphoon Burner or something.

 

If you are working on code, I recommend staying away from overclocking. Nothing worse than wondering if your code doesn't work because you put an & instead of an && or if the memory is just sliiiiightly too juiced. The truth is that these machines are overkill for most CS work, other than machine learning (for which they are awesome). I use WebStorm for JS front-end code, which is like having six UN simultaneous translators argue over what you really meant when you initialized a variable as '', and it barely uses 20% of the CPU and memory when I have production builds going on. If you are doing c++ with the -j option, I imagine it would scream.

But if you like to have your entire ecosystem - backend and frontend, databases and design tools, all running on a laptop, then this is definitely for you. I'm not a gamer (at all), but I imagine it is pretty damn good at those too. Hell, I might have to get a game just to try it out. Recommendations? The last PC game I played was Doom. On a 486 laptop. In 1994. It ran Windows 3.1 IIRC...

 

The P5200 has more VRAM and more cores, but is severly power limited. As a result, the P4200 actually seems to perform as good, based on the benchmarks in this thread. These benchmarks may not match your applications though.

As a reference to GTX cards; my P4200 has consistently put a Fire Strike graphics score between 16000 and 16400. Benchmark results on notebookcheck show:
GTX1070 (laptop): Min 15718, average 17236, max 19059
GTX1070 Max-Q: Min 14146, average 14910, max 16165

I think it's safe to assume it performs halfway between an average GTX1070 and an average GTX1070 Max-Q.