Maybe a next generation Precision (xx70?) pre-release discussion thread?

5 days out from the next information drop.

January 4:

NVIDIA press conference —
8AM PST / 11AM EST / 4PM UTC
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/events/ces/

Intel press conference —
10AM PST / 1PM EST / 6PM UTC
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/events/intel-ces.html

Expectations —
NVIDIA is most likely announcing new desktop & mobile Ampere GeForce GPUs, including some new high-end products like RTX 3090 Ti (desktop) and RTX 3080 Ti (mobile). While these are not workstation GPUs, one would expect NVIDIA's Ampere mobile workstation GPU refresh to have a flagship GPU ("RTX A5500") similar to the new mobile RTX 3080 Ti. While the core specs have leaked already, it will be interesting to see if these were accurate, or if there are any other improvements beyond what was leaked (power efficiency gains? PCIe5?).

Intel should be revealing Alder Lake P CPUs. These are "H45" CPUs with up to 6P+8E cores and which will power moderately high-end laptops releasing possibly before the end of January. The P series CPU lineup is already pretty well known from leaks. I am hoping that we will hear some mention of the upcoming S-BGA / "H55" CPUs (up to 8P+8E), which will power the next generation of "muscle" gaming laptops and mobile workstation systems, and which we haven't heard much about with regards to release timing.

Immediately after Intel's conference, we will probably also have a slew of announcements of new laptop systems from OEMs, featuring both NVIDIA's refreshed Ampere GPUs and Intel's Alder Lake CPUs. Dell XPS 15/17 and Precision 5X70 may be among them. (Not expecting Precision 7X70 announcement just yet but I'd love to be surprised.)

 

AMD Ryzen 6000-series laptop CPUs (6nm, RDNA 2 graphics, DDR5, PCIe 4)
...Unlikely to show up in Precision, but still cool?
https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/4/2...chips-gaming-battery-life-zen-3-plus-ces-2022

NVIDIA launched 3070 Ti and 3080 Ti laptop GPUs, with some new "CPU optimizer" feature which, it appears, can put constraints on your CPU's speed and power limit when the GPU is under heavy use. These GPUs are supposedly "10 to 20 percent faster" than the non-Ti versions.
https://www.theverge.com/22865535/n...e-laptop-max-q-intel-amd-alder-lake-rembrandt

Intel announced Alder Lake H and P series Alder Lake CPUs. H series in particular was targeted towards the gaming and workstation crowd, and P series was targeted towards "thin and light" laptops.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/4/2...-ces-2022-h-series-laptops-gaming-performance

They briefly showed an XPS-style Precision system in the stream, and mentioned that it was using Intel Arc discrete graphics. Intel discrete GPUs seem to have a similar CPU/GPU power share feature as what was described for the new NVIDIA laptop GPUs.

They teased "Raptor Lake" for later in 2022.

As expected, a pile of new laptop announcements using new stuff from all three of these companies followed simultaneously.
Alienware m17 R5 Ryzen https://www.tomshardware.com/news/alienware-m17-r5-ryzen-edition-all-amd
XPS 13 Plus https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2022/01/04/ces-2022-dell-introduces-xps-13-plus/
Alienware X14 https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/4/2...4-inch-gaming-laptop-dell-display-specs-price
Dell CES 2022 press kit: https://axicom.egnyte.com/fl/8rogK9...ress Kit/December 2021 and CES 2022 Press Kit
(Not seeing any business systems)


...Waiting to look for more laptop announcements and some more detailed specs on the new NVIDIA and Intel offerings.

[Edit]
Intel CPU specs. Looks like laptops will start shipping in February.


NVIDIA GPU specs here. Top GPU has 7424 CUDA cores (+21% over RTX A5000).
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/gaming-laptops/compare/

 

The officially announced Alder Lake H CPUs seem to line up with the leaked specs of "Alder Lake P" CPUs in the table that I posted above.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...discussion-thread.836907/page-2#post-11129288

...Well other than that I'm not seeing PCIe 5 mentioned anywhere; that must have been scrapped. They top out at 6P+8E cores. 16 lanes of PCIe 4 off of the CPU (×8, ×4, ×4) and 12 lanes of PCIe 3 off of the PCH, and support for four Thunderbolt 4 connections. 96 EUs for the iGPU. 64 GB max memory according to Intel Ark.

So I doubt that these are Precision 7000-series CPUs and something else must be coming (Alder Lake "S-BGA"), though that was not teased at all today from what I can tell. While it could work I guess, if they only used 8 PCIe lanes for the dGPU, the drop down from 128GB to 64GB RAM would be a big hit...

Still, looks like it will be fine for 5000-series Precision and maybe we'll be hearing about that soon-ish.

With the complete lack of Alder Lake CPUs on the business side (Dell desktops, too) I wonder if they are waiting for Microsoft to better support Thread Director on Windows 10..?

 

No 12980HK? Boo, Intel.