Precision 7740/ 7540 specs / release date

My 7540, ordered Sunday night, has shipped yesterday morning. Still on its way to the UPS facility in China.

 

Thanks Aaron44126, djdigitalhi for the input. To recap, I'm looking to upgrade from a M6800 to the 7740, and was wondering the best RAM.

FWIW, on the current Dell M6800, i7-4940MX, 24GB DDR3-1600 RAM, Nvidia K3100M, SSD = Crucial 1TB SATA M550, time to open Solidworks CAD files:
(1) A 153 MB assembly with messy surface laser scans = 2:59 to open (yep, three minutes). Memory used 2.1GB, momentary CPU 90%, mostly CPU = 13%
(2) Different assembly drawing = 1:04 to open, memory = 1.8GB, momentary CPU = 26%, mostly CPU = 13%
(3) A 1.7GB Photoshop file takes 1:07 to open and 13.5GB RAM

New candidate computer = Precision 7740, i9-9980HK, Nvidia RTX4000, SSD = Samsung 2TB 970 EVO Plus, with two possible choices for RAM:

(a) 64GB (4x16) SODIMM-3200, Crucial $280
(b) 128GB (4x32 SODIMM-2666, Samsung $552 (might postpone getting half of that)

The above suggests that raw speed matters most? And for that matter, what brands are most trouble-free?

Assuming that moving from SATA to PCIe for the SSD will be a leap forward. Most CAD functions are single-threaded. Opening the files takes the longest, but for complicated assemblies, manipulation slows things to a crawl! At least I charge by the hour. My other processes are normal usage; Roon music server, Outlook, Chrome, etc..

 

The MHz part of RAM speed only tells half of the story. You have to also look at the CAS latency (CL) which is the number of clock cycles that it takes for the module to turn around a request. For CL, lower is better, so you want to find modules with the lowest CL rating at a given speed. Usually you will see CL values increase as speed increases so its sort of a wash in the end.

To directly compare modules of different speeds you need to use CL ÷ MHz (lower is better). For example, 3200 MHz modules with CL 23 would be about as fast as 2666 modules with CL 19. Unfortunately Dell doesn't tell you what CL the modules they ship will have but you can generally expect it to be on the high side of what is available. Sites like Amazon and Newegg will have the value listed. Newegg even allows you to filter by it in search results.

In the end the speed and CL are only going to make a difference for specific benchmarks; the difference is small enough that it is unlikely that you will notice anything different in regular use.

It doesn't look like your usage warrants more than 64GB of memory. Unless, maybe, you regularly open several of those large Photoshop files? Start with 64GB and see if you ever come close to hitting the limit. With all NVMe drives there isn't really much benefit to buying more than you will use. (Windows will use extra memory as a disk cache but that matters less the faster your drives are.)

For memory vendors I have had fine success with Kingston, Crucial, Samsung, and G.Skill. Just look at available modules and see which ones have good reviews.

 

@reburns
It's really difficult to say how faster the new system will be compared to your 6800, but let's do some maths:

a good SATA ssd marks ~100k iops r/w (that are the only values that truly matters, not just the pure sequential r/w speed)
the 970 evo plus 2tb marks ~600k iops r/w, so about 5-6 time faster than your m550.

The 9980k should be roughly 3 to 4x faster than your 4940mx (compared, ie in cinebench R20)
Same thing for the RTX compared to the k3100m, 4-5x faster than the k3100m.

So it's probable that the 7740 will be 3-4x faster than the 6800 all around (only in the current hw-limited software, obviously).

Anyway, the ST scenario would be the less performance boosted since the 4940mx is already a good cpu in ST. Maybe the IPC gain + the higher cpu frequency would bring a 35-50% increase over your current 6800 (not bad, anyway).

Just a thing regarding the ram choice: it's not only the nominal speed that matter, are also the timings (a lot over system responsiveness!).

I choose the hyperx 2666mhz because they match intel spec for the 9980hk but with the strictness timings (cl 15) possible.
If you want to go over the spec (that fall anyway in an 'overclock' area), check also the timings. Personally I would choose the g.skill 3000Mhz that are on a very good cl16 timing despite all the other faster models (but that have poor timings):

http://www.gskill.com/specification/2/197/1540867381/F4-3000C16D-32GRS-Specification

EDIT: Aaron already goes on the same point for ram timings

 

1) How bright is the screen? It doesn't say here I think - what/where might you search to find out?

https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/sho...rationid=46817958-a957-4e9d-b653-ad1aaf0b9a90

2) How bright does the 7740 4k screen feel to you? Do you think you could watch movies on a bus by the window and there still would be enough brightness to view it clearly?

3) Does the laptop feel too heavy/uncomfortable on your lap?

4) What do you feel are the most negative things about the 7740?

Thanks!

 

I owned the M6800: great, reliable computer. In most of my day-to-day apps, which includes 1-2GB Photoshop images, the increase in speed doesn't really seem noticeable most of the time between the M6800 and a 2018 Intel hexacore mobile chip imo. So much for progress.

 

I daresay this has little to do with raw CPU speed, because things like snappiness, and day-to-day use depends on a lot of things like disk I/O, memory latency, background applications, single-core speed, and a whole other host of factors.

There are certainly noticeable speedups in certain niche applications: take CPU ray-traced rendering, like Cinema4D, or a CPU H.265 transcode. The more recent -Lake CPUs are certainly faster than their Haswell and -Bridge antecedents—not just due to the increase in core count.

 

Thanks! Yes, I got you. I don't do video editing and, of course, the new computer can play games that were impossible to play on the older laptop but in day-to-day tasks it sort of feels the same.

 

I love you peeps!

My main reason for seeking a new computer is that my M6800 has been fuddy; otherwise I’d leave the $$ in the bank. I was experiencing Windoze Explorer crashes this spring, so opted for a clean Win7 OS re-install. Then that could not regain service pack updates, so bought a Win7.1 disk to get service pack 1 on the initial install. When I did that the OS install failed a dozen times before completing (I tried a different hard drive to no avail). Finally it is up to normal. With each OS reinstall I blow a day+ of time. What I ought to find is an IT-geek to clean up the home office…. With NAS’s, big photo printer, music server, etc..

I’m still on Win7 because (1) I avoid changes and (2) my old license of Abaqus FEA was not supported past Win7 (might run on Win10, might not… I’m many years and big bucks behind on annual software maintenance, need but rarely use the program… it’s complicated and I’m not proficient). But perhaps the M6800 would survive longer on Win10.

Most CAD work is necessarily single-threaded. With respect to CPU benchmarks, this R15 shows @Eclipse2016 E2176M a 19% single-core improvement over my M6800’s i7-4940Mx, and the i9-9980HK a 28% improvement over mine.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/9980HK-vs-E-2176M-vs-4940MX_11341_9904_4995.247596.0.html

Reckon that 64GB is sufficient given the 21% speed loss going to 128GB, plus there's NVMe paging. One worry is that my cameras are now 24MB and the next ones will likely be beyond 50MB; just how the trend goes. Question @Hopper82: since the 9980HK specs 2666MHz RAM then what is done in BIOS to force faster and does that really work? Doing the CL/MHz shows the 16/3000 GSkill/Corsair to be a mere 5.5% faster than the 15/2666 HyperX… did you stick with 2666 to avoid some troubles? I took a scan to better understand:

https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3333-memory-timings-defined-cas-latency-trcd-trp-tras

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...980hk-processor-16m-cache-up-to-5-00-ghz.html

For SSD, the juggle is always size vs. speed to keep more files local versus NAS. I reckon go with the Dell 512GB “Class 50” for OS & program install and Samsung 2TB 970 Evo Plus for data. Will we see 4TB NVMe anytime soon??? If not, then I’d probably go with two of those 2TB SSDs.

 

Samsung 980 series is due maybe towards the end of the year. In addition to 980 Pro and 980 EVO, they should be launching 980 QVO, and rumor is there will be a 4 TB version of that drive.