Precision 7710 Owner's Thread

Off topic relating to 7710 but I'd like to share my backup recovery plan if anyone cares:

I use acronis for imaging my laptop OS and DATA drives to external HDDs that I store in a safe.
I use clonezilla for imaging my linux servers to HDDs I store in safe
I use Dropbox Business to sync our data drives to cloud (with exception of my VMs which are on D but not under dropbox)
I use SVN Subversion repositories (mirrored nightly) on two linux servers (all of our work stuff). Local SVN working copies on laptops are under Dropbox and sync cloud realtime.
I use https encryption to access my SVN repositories via TortoiseSVN regardless where I travel.
The guest VMs which require access to my SVN working copies use shares to access them from the host (so I am not often backing up VMs but once a month since data is on host rather than VM). Other VMs whicch are completely standalone are backed up weekly depending but mostly depends on activity/changes made to them (less often backups if they are not used for awhile).

In summary,

SVN repository contains nearly all of my work files (data, binaries, source code, documentation etc) on server is mirrored nightly to 2nd off-site linux SVN repository via https and svnsync (similar to rsync but is SVN tool). SVN Working copies on laptops sync realtime to dropbox cloud. Latop OSs and SVN Working copies backed up monthly via Acronis to external HDDs. Linux servers hosting SVN repositories backed up via Clonezilla to external HDDs monthly.

With the SVN repository mirrors, if my data is lost/corrupted on my laptop I pull relevant revision from primary SVN. If the primary SVN server repository fails I switch on mirror from secondary to become primary and rebuild the corrupted old primary. If SVN repositories fail I can recover from Dropbox cloud revisions. Depending on degree of failures I can rebuild SVN repository from mirrored SVN or from Dropbox or in worse case I have monthly backups on rotated HDDs safe I can rebuild SVN and from there rebuild my working copies on laptop.

It is a mix-mash but works okay for our small business of just a few developers

Other non business misc things like Plex movies and tv shows or such media i use scheduled rsync incremental scripts on cygwin (on 7710 Windows laptop) and Linux servers to hotswap bays on shares in another Linux server.

 

So Dell is offering me a 7710 to replace my ailing m6700. Yay!

But they only want to give me 16GB memory, i.e. what the 6700 originally shipped with. I'm lobbying them to give me 32GB (what I upgraded my 6700 to just after buying it), arguing that I cannot move my memory upgrade to the new system because it's a different memory standard. But so far, no luck...

Does anyone know... If they send me 2x8GB can I add 2x16GB and wind up with a 48GB system total? Or is mixing DRAM module sizes not allowed?

Also, has anyone verified that this machine can really run a 960PRO M.2 SSD at full rated speed? The Crucial M.2 drives are less than HALF the cost of 960PRO's, but are only rated at 510MB/s. I'm willing to spring for 960PRO's if the 7710 can really run them at full speed, but it would suck to pay so much extra for that and then learn the 7710 only goes 575Mb/sec max due to whatever internal bus limitation, etc. Anybody with 960PRO's got a Crystal Diskmark result to share?

Oh yeah, I have the ePort Plus dock, and used it extensively with my m6700. Dell is NOT so far offering me this "Docking Spacer" accessory I've seen mentioned earlier in this thread as part of the exchange. Am I correct to assume that I need it, whatever it is?

One last question - does anyone know, is there any precedent in these warranty exchange deals for the customer to pay to upgrade the system configuration to something better? For example, I'd love a faster CPU, full 64GB of memory, etc. They are understandably offering me the entry-level 7710 configuration because it's equivalent to what my m6700 had in terms of CPU speed, etc. But seems to me like if they're happy to sell the guy BUYING a 7710 a bunch of upgrades, they ought to be equally happy to sell me as a guy getting one on warranty-exchange the same upgrades. Is this possible?

Thanks in advance!
Erik

 

AFAIK you cannot pay to upgrade a replacement machine. Also the dock spacers aesthetic and not necessary.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Confirming --- The dock spacer is not needed, it just makes it easier to physically position the machine on the dock (since they moved the connector to the *very* back of the system).

I seriously doubt that you will be able to get them to give you more RAM than you originally purchased with your system. That's what is covered under the warranty, after all. And from past experience, I can tell you that they will not be flexible with regards to changing the specs of what they offer, unless you can make a legitimate point that is somehow worse than the system that you originally got. You will not be able to pay for upgrades, either; however, what you get should be equal to or better than the M6700 that you are having replaced, and it is free, so, can't complain much

You'll have to bite the bullet and purchase the additional RAM yourself. (You can sell off your old RAM to offset the cost.) You can mix and match sizes, as long as the timings are the same (speed and CAS latency rating), and you install them in pairs.

 

Thanks, Aaron and Alex.

Agreed - hard to complain too much considering I'm getting a free upgrade to a new system. But it's still frustrating that Dell won't allow me to pay extra to get what I actually need. I proposed to them to give me 32gb of memory and in exchange downgrade the HDD to the smallest/cheapest option, but it seems they don't think that way. Sounds like the right move is buy 32GB and add it to their 16 for 48 total. That's a 50% upgrade from the 32gb I had on my m6700.

What about the M.2's? Can anyone verify that the 7710 is capable of driving 960PRO's at full speed? As noted earlier, the slower M.2s on the market cost less than half what the 960PRO's cost, so they only make sense if the machine can exploit their full speed...

Thanks,
Erik

 

Follow-on M.2 question...

I notice the price of 2 x 1TB 960PRO vs. 1 x 2TB 960PRO is almost identical. My inclination is to get 2x1TB for the new machine, then RAID0 them together for ultimate performance. But I wonder (going back to the previous question) - can the 7710 or any other machine really run those drives in RAID0 at twice the rated performance of one of them, which is already beyond belief? Getting 2 x 1TB Crucial MX300 M.2's would dramatically reduce the cost and should still produce 1000Mb/s+ performance...

I'm used to a 3-SSD configuration: 1 SSD as a dedicated boot drive, another to contain my VMware virtual machines, and finally a third to hold my data files.But so far as I can tell if I just put those in 3 partitions on a single 2TB RAID0 (i.e. 2x1TB M.2's), the performance shoud be equal or better than what I'm used to on 3 independent SATA3 SSD's. Am I missing anything?

Thanks,
Erik

 

I'm curious as to what people think of the Alienware 17 R4? I've been looking at alternatives to the M7710 and it seems like the Alienware can be purchased for cheaper while having similar (if not better) performance. The only "pro" for the M7710 I can see is that you are able to configure it with 64GB RAM (4 slots) vs 32GB (2 slots) on the Alienware. I will mainly be using Premiere Pro / After Effects so the Quadro cards aren't anything special for me and the 1070 / 1080 offered in the Alienware seem to perform better.

 

It does have a few benefits as you mentioned. I'll throw out some negatives that I have observed.

The Precision machines are supported by Dell with software and firmware updates for years. The consumer-grade machines, including the Alienware, are largely ignored once the next model is released in the line. As an example, the M6700, released in 2012, has received two firmware updates this year, and Dell also continues to publish reasonably current GPU drivers. As a comparison, the Alienware 17 R1, which was released in 2013, received its last firmware update in 2014 and last NVIDIA driver update (from Dell) in 2015. Now, this may not be a big deal, as the machine still works fine and you can get driver updates for most components from further upstream (i.e. NVIDIA directly), but if you care about support from Dell, you need to purchase one of their business-grade machines.

It's more difficult to get an Alienware customized exactly how you want, depending on what you want I guess. When they first started including GeForce 10-series GPUs, for some reason you could get a machine with a GeForce 1060 or 1070 and a 4K screen, but the 1080 could only be customized with up to a 1440p screen. I was confused so I even asked the sales folks and they confirmed this limitation. It looks like it has since been addressed, but in any case, you can see that there are much fewer build options for the Alienware.

No ePort dock and no fingerprint reader would be annoyances for me. There's no option for a Xeon CPU or ECC memory. And then there's the actual appearance of the machine... Alienware has gotten better lately but clearly wasn't designed for the business market, the Precision is a more professional-looking machine (and I think that you could argue that it has a better build quality but I haven't actually had a chance to check out any of the most recent Alienwares).

In the end, you have to weigh the pros and cons and decide what's best for you, and if the Alienware suits your needs, go for it. To me, it looks like most of the differences put the Precision ahead, the only real benefits to picking the Alienware are that it is a bit cheaper and that you can get a faster GPU (albeit not a Quadro). Also, I think that the latest model Alienware has three M.2 SSD slots (vs. two in the 7710/7720), but one of them is a strange size so you might have trouble finding a drive to put there...

 

Much to my surprise and delight, Dell has agreed to upgrade my replacement system to a 32GB memory configuration in exchange for me agreeing to downsize the HDD I'm going to throw away from 500GB to 250GB. Yay!

Just one hitch - I also gave up "Waves Max Audio" in the configuration change. Frankly, I'm not even certain what that is, and it doesn't appear to be an option on the configuration page for buying a new 7710. Can anyone advise what exactly it is and whether it's a big deal to give it up in order to get the 32GB upgrade?

Thanks,
Erik

 

It's some entirely software based audio enhancement package which supposedly offers better sound, but I would personally never use it and just stick to the tools provided by Windows and the audio driver. I think you'll be fine without it.