Precision 7750/7550 release date?

According to this site, ECC is supported. I get a feeling ECC is an intrinsic feature of the Zen memory controller and the chipsets, as a whole. Hence, it'd be extra effort for AMD to leave out, rather than add in.

As for Intel vPro, the AMD equivalent is the Ryzen Pro, and we should see these in another couple of months.

The thing about AMD's CPUs is that they will run at 40-50 W, and will (for the moment) sit in notebooks with thermal subsystems designed for 60-90 W CPUs, which would make notebook overclocking a legit thing again. An AMD Renoir CPU running at 70 W or so would demolish the Intel competition.

 

I think Dell will at first make a full AMD XPS laptop along with a full AMD Precision 5550 where nearly everything is soldered but that's it, I don't think we will see 7750/7550 with AMD cpu this generation.

 

Good question put earlier about Optimus though - hopefully there is an AMD equivalent, otherwise dGPU would actually demolish battery life, and ultimately the Renoir does not look that drastically ahead in benchmarks, on NBC at least.

Also bear in mind that all current Intel CPUs UV way below Intel's TDP spec, e.g. my "45/90W" 8750H. Runs at max speed with around 60W power draw.

 

I think we would more likely see DGFF AMD W5500M - W5700M cards in the 7750 / 7550. Maybe if we are lucky Intel will at least drop the price on the 8c/16t chip so it isn't such a price gouge of an upgrade from the 6c/12t part. Also the new AMD chips are likely to have teething issues that would make them less than ideal for a work laptop. This tends to hold true with most new tech. If they do make a business laptop with the 4800H in the next month my guess is it would be a Latitude or Vostro.

 

I think @win32asmguy and @TheQuentincc are more on the ball with their predictions. To be very honest, I was drawing pie in the sky with my wish for a Precision 7000 series notebook with the AMD CPUs this year.

However, I think it's fair to say that 2021 may hold some nice surprises for us, by which time AMD should've ironed out most teething issues with the Renoir APUs. The 7530/7730 form factor would also be rather long in the tooth by then—here's hoping for narrower bezels and a wider-gamut, brighter, more responsive display.

 

I suggest that requests for changes such as "thinner bezels" should implicitly include performance requirements, otherwise Dell is prone to using these as a justification for producing underperforming, overheating cut down "thin and light" laptops, lately marred by previously unheard of architectural horrors such as soldered RAM.

 

I am surprised you would want thinner bezels. I think Dell's current hinge forward design paired with thin bezels prevent the screen from being used 180 degrees.

I agree with the wide gamut though. If the 7750 came with a 100% aRGB IPS 1080p high refresh rate panel I would certainly want it. I am sick of only UHD panels being wide gamut. There are still major scaling issues even with the latest Windows 10 that prevent apps from working well. Very few business apps use the new Windows API's that actually work well with the new scaling system. The UHD panel (B173ZAN01.0) also looks AWEFUL when running at FHD. They should have put some kind of built in scaler chip that can do a perfect 50% downscale instead of the crappy fuzzy picture it currently look like. I think if you have it set to dedicated graphics mode you can use Nvidia DSR to get around this but on optimus its just aweful.

 

Why would narrow bezels affect the ability of the display to be pushed all the way down? To be really honest, what I'd like most is a 16:10 display.

I think the newest Intel driver and the NVIDIA driver both have implemented integer scaling, precisely of the sort that you'd like. Have you considered checking it out?

I doubt the Precision 7000 notebooks will ever be subject to these. Even in 2019, the notebooks were released with 4 DIMM slots, 3 NVMe slots, and overall easy upgradeability and repairability. One can replace every single component in one's notebook.

Like I have mentioned, these workstations are used regularly in the field and mandate relatively straightforward internal access for repairs and retrofits. The same situation applies to the HP ZBook 15/17 G5/6, and the ThinkPad P50/70-series.

 

That's what everyone thought about the super-modular, powerful and extendable Alienware laptops not long ago!

Nevermind the transition to BGA and soldered GPUs, let me illustrate how the rapid rot of Dell's 15 inch flagship performance laptops looked like in practice:

Alienware 15 R2 (2015):
2x NVME
1xSATA
2x SODIMM
99WHr Battery

Alienware m15 R1 (late 2018)
2x NVME
0x SATA (or s... 60Whr battery)
2x SODIMM
86Whr battery

Alienware m15 R2 (late 2019):
2x NVME
0x SATA period
0x SODIMM
76Whr
Soldered WiFi as a "bonus"

One of the main "feature" Dell tried to rave about during the last caricature of a laptop release was "thinner bezels" which weren't actually materially thinner for the most part.

@Papusan

My main issues with the Precision line are:
* Subpar performance (and poor performance to price)
* Lack of Alienware GA eGPU port

I love the 4 SODIMMs, and the modular GPU technology has unrealised potential, but I don't run live aircraft control software on my laptops, so I don't need ECC memory (and I've had zero reliability issues with either of my Alienware laptops). Moreover, I don't see a substantial benefit of running consumer spec level Xeons in single CPU systems.

 

We are of course free to make statements of belief regarding the similarity of the NBR population and Dell customer base. The problem is that these are completely unverifiable.

We can, however, observe that a good proportion of NBR users are sophisticated, and tend to express informed opinions. It follows that these should reasonably be taken into account by vendors.

Moreover, a smaller proportion of users are actually stronger online influences such as reviewers. Unscrupulous vendors may of course try to deal with this class of users separately by sponsoring reviews (hello PCW), but they can't get them all.