Precision 7750/7550 release date?

Unfortunately not; sorry about that.

 

So I have a video commercial of the 7550/7750, and we learn a lot more:


Frame-by-frame analysis:

Back grilles are a lot larger, on both the 7550 and 7750.

On the 7550:

GPU output ports have moved towards the centre, as has the power input. Implies drastic motherboard changes, and DGFF incompatibility from 7X30/40 to 7X50. However, it might be possible to upgrade a 7550 to a 7750 GPU card. More info needed.

Neat front view, with labels of both machines:


Keyboard, assuming same layout for both machines. Also note up-firing speaker array; sound is going to be a lot better with the new 7000-series:


These two images suggest the entire chassis is becoming aluminium save the palmrest and display bezel, similar to the XPS and Precision 5000:


Exploded chassis view, likely of the 7750 (see the borders to the left and right of the keyboard on the palmrest).


Looks like the inverted layout is gone (heatsink cold-plates face up, and heatsink assembly itself is below motherboard), but keyboard/palmrest probably still need to be removed for access to two RAM slots.

Also notice the square X-bracket on the right; this is likely the DGFF we saw here. The outline matches, too: bevelled edge on one corner, weird cutouts on one edge. Looks like 7740s cannot be upgraded to 7750 GPUs, either.


And finally a closer look at the cylindrical hinge:

 

Excellent. Digging in...

It says May for the new laptops. That's exciting but I suspect we'll see them start taking orders later in May with nothing actually shipping out until June. (There is usually a 2-3 week lead time on orders when the systems first launch.)

Random thoughts...

5750 — Looks pretty cool, I've always wondered what a 17" XPS machine would be like.
16:10 is nice. I likewise wish that would come to the 7000 series (not holding my breath).
Up to Quadro RTX 3000 — basically confirmation that this generation is getting the exact same GPUs as the prior generation. (Maybe they'll refresh the lower-end ones with slightly upgraded Quadro T1200 / T2200 but I don't expect to see a refresh on the high-end.)
How many NVMe drives does it support? It says RAID is supported so "at least two".
Four Thunderbolt ports? That's like a MacBook Pro. Does it have any regular USB ports...?

7550 —
I'm more interested in 17" but I'll take what I can get for new information.
Narrow bezel is cool. New chassis for sure with the different footprint, even though it looks very similar to the 7X30/7X40 chassis.
Really want to see multiple views of this system but it looks to me like we are returning to the way things were prior to the 7X30, with only two fan exhaust "vents" on the back. (It's not yet confirmed that the one on the left is gone, though.) I wonder how much the extra two on the sides really add to the capability to remove heat. But I certainly don't see this system running cooler than the old ones. Will the 17" version also lose the side exhaust vents?
"Top-firing speakers"? Where are the speakers? I always liked that on the pre-7X10 systems that they are above the keyboard and beneath the screen. (You can't hear them as well if the system is shut, but if it is docked and you care about audio then just plug in some speakers...)


Wasn't expecting AMD support in the 7X50 systems. If they launch AMD workstations then they will have different model numbers (7X51, 7X55, something like that). It could still happen a few months later.

Regarding the HP refresh. HP and Dell are almost always launching their refresh within days of each other. So, it won't be long.

[Edit]
Just saw your post with the video after I posted this. Will be back with more observations...

 

Ok, so looking at the stuff from the video.

Speaker position indeed matches M6600-M6800 position, above the keyboard. (Much appreciated.)
Precision 7730/7740 had a regular USB port on the back side which is now gone. However, they did add a regular USB port to the left side, along with the two USB-C ports (on the 7750 only).
7750 has narrow(er) bezels on the left and right side of the screen just like the 7550.
The image where they are talking about expresscharge looks like the display bezel is covered with glass... Touchscreen version I guess.

That system "explosion" view is pretty detailed. I wonder if it is completely accurate. If it is, and they moved the heatsink to the bottom side, that's a pretty interesting change. I hope that the NVMe drive slots are still easy to access?

A detailed shot of the keyboard, nice. It's definitely been updated. Not a fan of the half-height up and down arrow keys. Ditching media keys for calculator keys seems strange to me but whatever, they've already done that with other systems. Dedicated home and end keys are gone, they are sharing with the F11 and F12 keys, ugh. That means that they can't be used easily with Fn-lock disabled, which I would definitely prefer as I also use the F1-F12 keys a lot in my daily work (software and database development). I would see about remapping them to those calculator keys. Actually I guess I don't really use keys above F9 so maybe I could just map F11 and F12 to home and end.

Agreed that it looks like the DGFF form factor must have changed so further upgrades to the 7X30/7X40 line are now blocked off. They usually keep the same chassis for two generations, so it might be possible to upgrade a 7X50 with an NVIDIA Ampere GPU once those are out in the 7X60 systems. Remains to be seen if the 15" and 17" cards are different from each other or not. They appear to have graphics output ports in the same positions. It might be the case that the 17" cards are "longer" so you could install a 15" card in a 17" system but not the reverse.


Spec-wise, seems like it will just be a minor improvement, with Comet Lake not bringing anything new other than a miniscule frequency bump and the GPU cards being (likely) the same. I'm thinking about replacing my M6700, which has served me well for coming up on eight years, with a new 17" Precision. But, I have been waiting for Intel to release 10nm mobile workstation CPUs. It could come next year with Tiger Lake (there are rumors swirling about Tiger Lake H-series CPUs being a thing), but if it looks like waiting one more generation after that will get me DDR5 support, that's probably what I'll do.
[Edit] Just noticed that there is murmuring about Tiger Lake supporting both LPDDR4 and DDR5. If Precision 7760 supports Tiger Lake (H-series), DDR5, and NVIDIA Ampere, I'll definitely be picking one up at launch.

 

Oh, man, I missed that. Definitely a regression in my books.

Otherwise it's a slightly more evolutionary upgrade over the 7530 -> 7540. As others have mentioned, true to their word, AMD Ryzen notebooks would be unlikely... right now. I'd like to see a hypothetical 7551 or something with a 4900H, or something else along those lines. I'm curious to see how the internal layout looks like; those fan casings look quite large.

 

First thing I check now, ever since they messed it up with the 7X10 systems...
Basically I already ranted about this a year ago in this post, but I was hoping that change wouldn't make it to the Precision 7000-series line. But that keyboard at least still had dedicated Page Up and Page Down keys. (Don't think I would have too much difficulty adjusting to a Fn press for those, though.)

Trying to wrap my head around it pretty good because if I do get a Precision 7760 system next year as I would like to, I would be keeping it as my primary home system for a long time, and it would probably have the same chassis and keyboard layout as this one. And if really the biggest complaint that I have is the home/end key situation which can be remedied with some key remapping, I guess things are fine.

 

So no major reason to get a 7x50 vs the current 7x40?

 

Marginal CPU speed increase. (We'll see how much this actually comes into play, given thermal/power limitations.)
Slightly smaller physical footprint.
Maybe some better options for the display panel?

We'll have to wait and see if there is anything else to differentiate this system once Dell starts talking about it, but, seems like a pretty minor upgrade to me at this point.

 

Looks like HP announced the ZBook Create/ZBook Studio which is a very small 15" performance laptop with Quadro 5000 and GeForce 2080

https://www.windowscentral.com/hp-zbook-studio-and-create-announce

 

These are releasing in August. Looks like Dell might beat them to market with the Precision 5000 and XPS machines. We'll see how it pans out... Still waiting for an actual announcement from Dell.

There's some chatter about this NVIDIA announcement.
https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/...-keynote-with-ceo-jensen-huang-set-for-may-14
("Get Amped" = Ampere reveal?)
Even if they reveal Ampere next month, it seems like the timing is too tight for it to hit this refresh round for the mobile workstations.