Precision 7740/ 7540 specs / release date

Is there any information about an upcoming 7740 ? specs or release date?

 

The Precision refresh cycle follows the Intel CPU refresh cycle. Intel has committed to having 10th-gen CPUs in laptops on the market by the end of the year. 10th-gen is their 10nm "Ice Lake" architecture. (It is looking to me like they are skipping 9th gen for laptops; it's really just a minor iteration on 8th-gen Coffee Lake anyway.) With the step down to 10nm, they should be able to push power usage down and clock speeds up a bit. Also, they've made decent improvements to the integrated graphics.

Once 10th-gen systems launch, we will have to wait about 2-3 months for the full set of CPUs to become available (i5 through Xeon) and then Dell will launch the refreshed Precisions. I am speculating February/March next year, maybe we'll get a tease at CES in January. (This would be the same schedule that the Precision 7520/7720 followed in 2017.)

Specs, as usual it will look a lot like the current generation with refreshed CPUs, chipsets, and GPUs. On the GPU side we will likely see a mobile version of the Quadro RTX line (RTX might only be included in the 3000-level Quadros and up, with 1000 and 2000-level Quadros either getting refreshed Pascal cards or Turing cards without RTX like the GeForce 1660). Best case, I believe, the mobile Quadro RTX 5000 (which will be quite expensive) will perform in line with a GeForce 2070. There is no indication that there will be any major surprises/changes, like DDR5 or 8-core CPUs.

HP and Lenovo follow the same cycle for their mobile workstations; all three of them will launch their new line of products at around the same time.

 

I'm not sure that's correct; there was a fairly-highly-publicized leak of information on the 9th-gen "H" processors less than two weeks ago. It looks likely that they're about to be announcing a 9th Gen H-series based on the same Coffee Lake core as the desktop 9th gen.

Since it's a leak, and not an announcement, this could turn out to be hot air, and even if released, Dell could well skip that generation for their higher-end business systems (as they did with the at very-late Broadwell/5th generation H-series processors.) The fact that these were not announced at CES (when the last couple of generations have been) is certainly suggestive that we're not getting an upgrade this year.

The gap between the early releases (desktop and U-series mobile processors) and the later ones (notably for our interest, H-series mobile processors) has mostly been getting longer between generations.
They've only had H-series processors at the same time as the U series twice since they adopted that branding, with the 4th and 7th generation (for the 4th/Haswell, it was not yet clear that the U-series would become the "mainstream" release, and for the 7th, it was a very mild refresh of the 6th.*) and if the 10th-generation U-series mobile comes first (as usual since 2014) around the end of the year or the very beginning of next year (which would fit their pattern for every generation since 2015, having had no major 2014 release) then we're likely to see something more like the 5-8 month delays to general availability compared to mainstream processors that we saw with the 5th generation, 6th and 8th.

Especially likely if these are the first 8-core mobile processors. There's a little more room to be optimistic if the 9th gen does come out, and it's actually 8-core as rumored (given the leaked cache sizes, I'm inclined to suspect they will, but since it's a leak and not an announcement this could either be wrong or simply a cache size bump on top of 6 cores:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13969/intel-details-new-9th-gen-cpus-for-notebooks-9980hk-9300h for example

(* and actually, there was one very early 7th generation processor in 2016.)

 

I somehow missed this chatter about the 9th gen H CPU leak. If Intel puts out the full set (Xeons included) then maybe Dell will refresh the Precision line shortly afterwards. 15 months is the usual cycle for the Precision line which would put new systems launching in late 3Q, which would certainly be achievable if Intel starts rolling out 9th-gen mobile CPUs before too long. 15 months isn't a hard rule — skipping 5th gen as you mentioned, there was a full two-year gap between the launch of the Precision M4800/M6800 (2013 - 4th gen) and 7510/7710 (2015 - 6th gen). This seemed to be due to Intel having a lot of trouble getting 5th gen out the door on the schedule that they were shooting for; by the time they were actually getting the CPUs out, 6th gen was just about ready to go.

Question is then how that will fit with 10th gen, which Intel has already committed pretty hard to getting out in mobile form before the end of the year. I figured that this timing was perfect for the CES show-off of the 10th-gen Precision and a launch toward the end of first quarter 2020. There won't be two launches that close together, so I imagine that either 9th gen will be skipped or 10th gen will be available in mobile workstations a good deal later than 1Q-2020.

 

Are there any upgrades to the desktop precisions that are about to come out this year?

 

It looks like 9th-gen mobile CPUs have dropped today.

https://www.neowin.net/news/intel-a...-including-an-8-core-5ghz-core-i9-for-laptops

Notebook manufacturers are already starting to offer support. The first one that I saw was Asus. I'm sure a few more manufacturers will join the party, probably even today.

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsex...neup-of-new-and-refreshed-rog-gaming-laptops/

There is normally a lag time of a few weeks before we start hearing about next-gen Precisions. For example, last year, Intel announced 8th-gen mobile CPUs in early April (April 4?) and information from Dell regarding the Precision 7530/7730 dropped on April 24. (They were not available to purchase until early June.) Sometimes the gap is a bit longer. Anyway, perhaps by mid-May we will hear something about Precision 7540/7740. I have news alerts set up and will post back here as soon as anything pops up.

[Edit]
If I'm understanding right, the i9 CPU is eight-core, the first 8-core mobile CPU. The i7 CPUs are six-core and do not have hyperthreading like the 9th-gen desktop i7's. A step backwards for those chips?

 

I believe the 10nm CPU launches this year are only for U series chips (like the Broadwell launch for 14nm... low power mobile CPU only).

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...9850h-processor-12m-cache-up-to-4-60-ghz.html

HT enabled.


Now I have no clue that the HF version is:
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...750hf-processor-12m-cache-up-to-4-50-ghz.html

EDIT: I just noted the HF is missing the Processor Graphics section. Are we really seeing a mobile CPU launch without an IGP? I suppose there is some small part of the workstation segment which may find a use for it, though I know nearly nothing about workstation laptops.

 

OK, good, i7's with six cores have hyperthreading. The article I was reading was incorrect in that regard. Since they have both 9750H and 9750HF, I doubt that Dell will offer the HF CPUs in the Precision systems. Not sure where we'll see those, maybe gaming systems that are set up not to use the IGP anyway?

 

The IGP is also used for the TB3 port (or a USB 3.1 with display support I guess) even though it's not used for the main video outputs (e.g. like on my Alienware 17 R4).

I guess there's a bandwidth limitation with Intel IGP's which makes them unusable with high resolution and higher refresh rates (e.g. 4K screen with 144Hz) among other usecases (G-Sync, 10-bit color..).

Not sure if these HF's would be cheaper then or what? As I presume the silicon is the same? Unless there's really enough predicted demand to make it worthwhile to have a separate design without the IGP?

 

Regarding 10nm, I've been trying to read up on the road maps and my understanding is now that Intel is going to launch *yet another* 14nm refresh, "Comet Lake" maybe, later this year. For desktops. The schedule would be roughly the same as the last two years with 8th gen and 9th gen Coffee Lake. The 10nm Ice Lake CPUs launching for mobile systems will be 15W low-power only. A full set of 10nm desktop CPUs would be at least a year away from now, and the full set of mobile chips is farther out than that.

So basically, best guess,
Precision 7540/7740 = Intel 9th gen / "Coffee Lake refresh" / 14nm / Summer 2019
Precision 7550/7750 = Intel 10th gen (?) / "Comet Lake" / 14nm / Sometime 2020
Precision 7560/7760 = Intel 11th gen (?) / Not sure if it would be "Ice Lake" or "Tiger Lake" by that point / 10nm / Sometime 2021