Dell Precision 5550 vs 7550 Performance Warning

[@GaborGubicza]

And these analytical comparisons and reviews are exactly why I watch your channel. You're far better than other reviewers who just read the datasheet in their own show off way.

[@BsianTech]

Thanks very much for the kind words Gabor Gubicza, I found that a lot of the channels I watch didn't get the practical information I was after (non spec sheet or benchmarks) as well so decided to help the community since I might have the capacity to.

[@GaborGubicza]

@@BsianTech great job! Do you have a Patreon/PayPal? If I manage to buy the 7750 I'd like to give you a donation for your assistance in my laptop selection process.

[@BsianTech]

Gabor Gubicza, unfortuntely I don't run a Patreon, never understood the platform but I have many friends who use it but they are models and is able to draw those audience. I'm on the other side of the camera usually till this channel. I do have a paypal account for my photography side but being so busy work wise and getting these videos out I will have to look into maybe setting something up in the future for donations for this channel. Really thank you for the thought of the offer.

[@josefduller2098]

Great videos! I’m wondering if Dell ever gave any feedback on why this was happening? Was it possibly driver related?

[@ChadDodds]

Thanks for this review and comparison. Very helpful and well done!

[@FenderStrat19711]

Super helpful review with very in-depth analysis!!! Thanks for posting!!!!

[@BsianTech]

@@FenderStrat19711 pleasure wow great to see this video still useful after these years.

[@kriskantu]

Thanks for the insight, BsianDad!

[@BsianTech]

Welcome Kris :)

[@Adarsh_IITM_Res]

I am planning to buy precision 5550 for handling the softwares like:- Inventor & Solidworks with the following config. RAM - 32GB PROCESSOR - i7 - 8cores 10th Gen GPU - Quadro T2000 - 4GB STORAGE - 1TB SSD I am a bit biased towards the portability of 5550. My question is if the performance of precision 5550 is so poor due to thermal throttling then should I prefer 7550?

[@BsianTech]

Hi Adarsh K Tiwari, from one of my subscribers, they mention Solidworks does run the CPU and GPU quite intensive at the same time and so issue describe in this video would directly relate to you. So there be a bit of thermal throttling for the 5550. As much as I like the 5550 also for it's portability I would advise the 7550 for the large performance gain. I will be releasing a video very soon comparing the 5550 vs 7550 on features and function.

[@Adarsh_IITM_Res]

BsianDad thanks waiting for your video, by the way nice work

[@ovDarkness]

Basically yes. Do yourself a favor, take 7550.

[@HoosierHorn]

I’m curious, since you mentioned it; under what circumstances would someone be running data calculations for longer than 15 min? Video editors, I understand, but data? Most of those intense operations can be performed in the cloud vs. locally, but I may not have a firm understanding. Thanks!

[@tarveezashraf4753]

As an architect we use multiple softwares simultaneously, someone of the softwares use data sets,like grasshopper for continued period of time in order to simulate and provide required results, we might be running such simulations for hours together and whatever our softwares do is process data provided to formulate and provide and necessary output. I am sure there are many other professionals who might need to do it for prolonged period of time.

[@BsianTech]

Welcome to my videos Reid Flood, there are many applications where cloud computing isn’t a solution or even available plus network doesn’t have the bandwidth to handle the data transfers. I personally encounter many of these situations. To give you example scientific and medical specialised instruments collection and analysis which you will find very commonly precision workstations, both laptop and desktop versions. I have one analysis software which looks at strands of protein a single task run takes about 6 days to complete and all system resources are brought to its knees. Another example is machine learning. Video editing is actually not as that intensive in comparison. Sorry not being mean just to give an insight where these expensive computers would actually normally be used (FYI the cost software and equipments that run on workstations can shock most people, the computer is actually nearly the cheapest part in some cases)

[@HoosierHorn]

BsianDad no offense taken, at all! Thank you for the explanation. I work with large-ish datasets, but my computations would be very short with this hardware. I’m certainly not running any complex simulations, so I had no experience. I appreciate you taking the time to explain. Great video, too!

[@HoosierHorn]

Tarveez Ashraf thank you for the explanation!

[@BsianTech]

No problems at all Reid Flood, there is a lot of interesting applications these high end computers get used for that usually isn't covered by a lot of tech channels since most usually do it in a gaming format. Benchmarks are great but sometimes it doesn't tell the guts of story that is useful. Also thanks @Tarveez Ashraf for giving another great real world example, your comments in the videos are so valuable to the community with your experience =).

[@Powershoot10]

Wow, interesting performance. Do you know if the 5750 with better internals, will perform better than 5550 or closer to 7550?

[@muhammadkhan8606]

I’m curious as well

[@BsianTech]

Unfortunately I am not sure, it’s not a model that I normally get and it is new. I have been asking people who has the new XPS 17 to try get insight but no reply yet. Most people who uses the XPS 17 been for gaming or editing videos. My suspicions is the design for XPS17 shares the XPS15 just bigger area so my thoughts are will be similar to the video but might take a little longer to reach that throttling point, my guess 40-45min Mark and if a 5750 is spec with RTX3000 well that will hit throttling substantially quicker. Sorry it’s all speculation from my end.

[@robsimmons6910]

Love your reviews, you cover exactly what I want to know without 25 minutes of fluff. I plan to purchase four 7550's today. My Dell quote says they have the i7-10850H processor. (Same as the 5550 in your review.) Do you think there is any chance the processor is what is causing the thermal issues?

[@BsianTech]

Thanks for joining my live stream Rob, really warms my heart I am able to help people decide on an informed decision for their needs. Hopefully you will like the 7550 as much as I did, the performance on the 7550 really is fantastic. As for the 5550 having only the i7 in there and it's thermal throttled I like to hear from the Dell thermal engineer what was the expected condition and results for the 5550 in their tests.

[@fohemmer7296]

Very nice review indeed, I think that you are one of the few reviewers that really nails the point with each machine. I'm a young engineer looking for a mobile workstation and Dell seems the perfect candidate up to now, but here comes the big question. Which one? On the internet I found a 7740 with good specs (i7-RTX3000) at a very good price, but looking at your dedicated video it seems to have a bit of throttling. During your review the cpu at 100% ran at 3.6 GHz against the steady 4.3 of this newer generation. Should I be worried of this? I mean, in your last year stress test did you saw any more throttling (were you using ultra performance mode?), and in any case, is the older generation cpu i7 a valuable choice? I'm not a tech expert, so I don't want to buy a very expensive machine running a quadro 3000 just to have a bottleneck on the cpu making it worthless. What do you think about it? Thank you in advance and have a good day :)

[@BsianTech]

Thank you very much Luca Casini reading your very nice comment. For your question regarding about Precision 7740 vs 7750, I have been asked this a number of times. So the 7740 I had in my video was with the i9 and that is known to produce a lot of heat, the i7 performs very similar since it doesn't get as hassled by the cooling as much. So if you looking for an 7740 go with the i7 version if you are on a budget. As for 7750 vs 7740 yes you get a lot better performance from the 10th Gen Intel Core and it really all comes down to price how much cheaper the 7740 is compared to the 7750. I going to give a little advice from being older. The speed difference will help with working and exporting fairly a bit and it all comes down to as you get older you learn you spend money to save time as this is the most valuable commodity we try our best to buy back. If you can afford it do the upgrade to 7750 but say it's saving of US$500+ very good to put that money into somewhere else like hard drive or RAM. Also to let you know I would normally put the benchmarks it is on ultra performance mode with the power adapter connected. As for measuring the temps and noise level I now normally keep this in optimized mode (default mode) until the 100% load I will usually perform two results, optimized mode and ultra performance mode. For the 7740 that was under ultra performance mode for your information.

[@Alex_FR_IT]

Hey hi and thanks for that great video! Should you still have both systems: could you run the same exact benchmarks while having thunderbolt devices connected? I've noticed in my precision 5530 that using thunderbolt adds an important stack of heat making thermal throttling even a bigger problem: would be curious to see how they compare. Thx!

[@BsianTech]

Hi Alessandro, sorry both machines have been returned back to Dell. I have the XPS 15 9500 which is practically the same as the Precision 5550 besides the GPU. I can tell you with the XPS 15 9500 it has same stacking issue as well we sacrifice looks for performance.

[@Alex_FR_IT]

thanks @@BsianTech! Yep, my focus is on TB3: most of the times I run my 5530 docked and throttling is even more evident: I was curious to see if the 5550 has become better on that side, if the 7550 suffer from the same problem (may not throttle in your test but may start throttling if/when using TB3), etc. my 5530 will be replaced with a 5550 in august but I can ask a second machine and I'm aiming at a 7550. Could be 7750 if 7550 throttles with TB3 active.

[@BsianTech]

@@Alex_FR_IT I doubt the Precision 7550 will have throttling issues with TB3 connected the thermal solution in it is far far superior to the Precision 5550. The thermals of the 7550 is very similar to the 7750.

[@박도라에몽-w8y]

hello! i was comparing the DELL PRECISION M7750 and DELL PRECISION M5550. thank you so much for your comparing both of the Precision model for DELL. i am a freelancer of Design and Photograph, but recently i have a chance for the getting education for programming. as i know M7750 and M5550 is for the designer and photograph, but would 7750 and 5550 is ok with programming or coding stuff? sorry for this heavy question.

[@kymbolino]

Great video. I’ve been wondering how much better the thermal management was in the 7 series. I’m looking for a desktop replacement. Thank you.

[@BsianTech]

Very welcome Kym, it was also one thing that was on my mind too how much performance is effected between the 5 and 7 series as well.

[@Carlos-mr4po]

keep making videos bro!!! I know you'll make it one day : )

[@BsianTech]

Thank you very much for the wishes, one day till then any useful information I hope it benefits people.

[@ethanlethander565]

I need a computer capable of running applications such as Rhino 3D, grasshopper, the Adobe suite of applications (mostly photoshop and illustrator), and Vray for high resolution renders. In the future, I may need to use other applications such as Maya and Revit. After seeing this, I'm starting to lean more towards the 7550 over the 5550, but what do you think?

[@BsianTech]

Hi Ethan, if you don't mind the extra weight I do advise look into the 7550, its much more of a solid performing computer and the software you look to be running, for sure you will benefit from the stability of the 7550 over the 5550.

[@QBiks]

2:01 : In the 5550 I clearly see that the CPU clock speed is slow, but according to the temperature readings, both the temperature of the CPU and the GPU are around 56 degrees celsius - way below their maximal temperature. If so, why does it lower the clock speed so much? Are there any other components that are overheating that may become a performance bottleneck? Can it be a driver problem?

[@BsianTech]

Hi Yinon, I am not sure why the clock speed went so slow, even the utilization of both CPU and GPU went down as well like the computer couldn't cope and nothing in the stress test was changed during the run and from my guess from the results is the computer had to cool itself, I have to say the Burnitin software sensor isn't reliable I have updated to the latest version to be able for it to detect the Comet Lake chipset sensor. I'm not really into overclocking business computers since in most instances stability is the most important factor and really most business computers will run at stock or with the manufacture's supplied application. I have reached out to Dell and hoping they will get back to me.

[@meganl8015]

Do you know if this would occur with 3D modeling and rendering? or is that not as difficult as computing? Thank you, your videos are so helpful!

[@BsianTech]

Megan L, from my basic knowledge regarding 3D modeling in softwares like 3Ds Max, Maya most of the rendering is done by the cpu and the GPU assist in the shading, effects and textures. Usually working in real-time for the display of the model while working the issue in the video I demonstrate won’t be a big issue since it’s burst speed or short rendering instructions but when it comes to the final render or export this will impact the rendering times. I hope someone who is an expert in this field can confirm or correct me if I am wrong.

[@tarveezashraf4753]

@@BsianTech you're right. 3d modelling is mostly handled by the raw cpu processing power but the GPU helps to display the model much better and with better shading, but we're in the world of real time rendering with softwares like vray making use of GPU and CPU. So a good GPU can greatly dicrease your final renders and help you aid with real time rendering. The problem with 5000 series is the chasis is too thin even if the thermals are good, the GPU is capped to certain wattage for different GPU options in order to help aid better thermals. The chasis of 7000 series has good thermals and better cpu and GPU performance. As you said, 7000 series are much more stable and as designers we need stability so that our models don't crash while working on it or while importing a high poly model. That's our worst nightmare

[@BsianTech]

Thanks @Tarveez Ashraf for the better correct detailed explanation. To help the community I will ask a question on behalf in regards to your expertise, is ECC RAM much purchased in your industry and is it that much valued or most time just get away with non-ECC RAM for the Xeon configurations of computers?

[@tarveezashraf4753]

@@BsianTech for our industry I personally don't think we need ecc ram, we don't really do such precision works. There is always room for error in our field as our softwares are forgiving. Non ecc Ram should as well or maybe evn better as long as ram has good read and write speed. We do need minimum of 16 gb for our profession. Softwares like AutoCAD, rhino,3ds vray lumion, specially photoshop is used alternatively at the same time. Not to forget the tabs on chrome for research Hence we need more ram than ecc Ram's. Hope that answers your question . I am no expert. I am just an architect who is interested in tech and done alot of research before investing on a new computer and you have been instrumental in that. For that thank you.

[@tarveezashraf4753]

@@BsianTech xeon is used by high end firms who do the complex visualisation. Small firms like ours and professionals get by with I7 and i9 series

[@royheim]

Great comparison. 7550 looks like a petormance winner. Although 5550 looks so modern and futuristic. I was thinking which one will serve me better for large data set analysis in spss or stata. In any case it would never be for 30 mins straight. Maybe for 5-10 mins max. Can you please do a quick physical comparison (size, ports and display) before comparing the performance?

[@BsianTech]

Thanks Sumit, yes SPSS, STATA, SAS, Nvivo, etc even with large datasets run the CPU extremely hard past the 15mins mark for analysis. If running R or Matlab, maybe a little different story as I seen those run a little more intense. Either way RAM is more your friend over higher CPU clock speed IMO. I will try do physical comparison as well after I finish the 7550 and 7750 review videos.

[@faridkadir]

To compare precision 3520 and 5550, which one is better in terms of performance? I look for a suitable workstation for GIS work.

[@BsianTech]

Hi Mohd Farid Abdul Kadir, hands down Precision 5550 is better performance than the 3520. If you looking for workstation for GIS the 5550 will be good as you will take a nice advantage of the 16:10 display for mapping but really your most important upgrade is the RAM, minimum 16GB, recommended 32GB and of course 64GB is better all depending on how large your datasets are. Processor wise do what you can afford GIS runs fine even on i5 but of course i7 would be better.

[@US.workingmom]

which one is better in the end??

[@BsianTech]

Hi Yeo-Eun Kim, it all depends on your needs and applications you run. If you do a lot of travelling around or want a better display and thinness and willing to sacrifice performance then go with the 5550, if you want performance and range of ports then the 7550. Again this is not taking in consideration of the applications you are running. What applications do you run?

[@bragemogstad7124]

Important performance update for those owning either of these two with the Dell class 35 2230 m.2 SSD. I've tested and found you can performance wise gain a lot by using a class 4 2280 1TB or larger Samsung or WD m.2 ssd as boot+os disk. The read & write speed will be considerably faster. The class 40 2280 m.2 ssd benchmarked, by crystaldisk, up to 3 times faster read/write than the original class 35 2230 m.2 dell ssd. My disk was a bit stressed on capacity as well, thus, for me, the actual gain was bigger. I can't believe Dell shipped these premium laptops with such crappy class 35 2230 ssd m.2 boot/os disks. The impact on read/write CPU intensive work as debugging c#.net with ms visual studio & ms Edge was huge.

[@KB-wb9ym]

Hey mate, thanks heaps for such info-packed laptop reviews. I was just about to place an order for DELL Precision 5550 Intel Xeon 64 GM RAM ECC but holding back my temptation after watching your review of 5550! I'm a Data Analyst & Data Scientist. I definitely want to get 15" Laptops only. I'm considering Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 - Intel Xeon 64 GB RAM ECC, any thoughts! Can you please do a comparison review of Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 - Intel Xeon vs DELL Precision 5550 Intel Xeon? Your time is greatly appreciated. Thanks a million.

[@BsianTech]

Thanks Chandra Shekhar Bhoga for the feedback and glad my videos have been helpful. You have given two good choices. Here is my thoughts and will let you decide from my experience and thoughts between Precision 5550 and Lenovo P1 gen3. Lenovo P1 Gen 3 to me has better keyboard, speakers port selection and thermals where as Dell Precision 5550 has better display, thinnest, trackpad and looks. For me I use the laptop 90% connected to a docking station/port so for me thermals and performance would be more important so I would be looking more towards the P1 gen3.

[@KB-wb9ym]

@@BsianTech Thanks mate. I'm gonna stick with P1 Gen 3 for the same reasons you mentioned which are quite important to me too. In the last couple of days, I read somewhere that Lenovo might discontinue P1, which has puzzled me again..! Any thoughts on that? Thanks, Chandra

[@BsianTech]

@@KB-wb9ym My thoughts are it will be replaced by completely new model

[@asinegaasinega]

I love your channel. I really do. I think you're the best reviewer of laptops for people that actually do heavy heavy computationally intensive work on their laptops. What you described is exactly what I have encountered. I have the older 5520 and the thermals are just horrible. I run linux and have a Xeon and the temps always are around 70C with light work. When I start doing computationally intensive stuff, it has gotten as high as 96C (to the point it shut down the computer). I have had to atcually turn off turbo just so that the processor doesn't melt. The 5520 is horrible with temp management. I even put the computer upside down (i use monitors most of the time I use it) and it doesn't matter. So, i guess, in a very long winded way, i am saying i am not surprised at all by the results you showed. I wonder if the space afforded internally for components in the 7550 is what creates such a difference. Anyway, thank you for your work.

[@BsianTech]

@Asinega Asinegad sorry for the slow reply, thanks for your support and I come across this precision 55xx through the years and the last few models including the latest version 5560 has serious thermal issues for intensive computing workloads. The extra thickness therefore extra space is really the major difference that makes the 75xx able to sustain performance. Guessing laws of physics just can't break to redefine it yet.

[@asinegaasinega]

@@BsianTech I know, no worries. You mentioned it. A few months after writing my comment, I went ahead and opened the case and reapplied new thermal compound onto the processor and GPU (it was horrible when I saw the smeared paste all over the place from the overheating). It made a big difference( at least the processor doesn't hit 99C) but it still gets up as high as 92C when doing heavy computing. I still think what you said holds true though: lack of space for dissipating heat is a big factor in overheating.

[@bhavyamparashar]

URGENT! Sir, Precision 5750 also comes with RTX 3000 like Precision 7550. Which one shall I go for? Precision 5750 with RTX 3000 or Precision 7550 with RTX 3000? I would be running software like Revit, 3ds Max, SketchUp, Lumion, etc. Kindly advice. I want good performance, but also a smaller form factor if possible. Performance is my priority, though. Thanks.

[@BsianTech]

Ah just saw your comment here after answering you on my IG, and for others to read, 7550 easily for performance even over the 5750.

[@bhavyamparashar]

@@BsianTech Thank you so much for the reply!

[@santoshk6372]

Is by default all the cores in CPU is unlocked ? Or we have to do manually in bias ?

[@BsianTech]

When I received both units all the cores was unlocked already in BIOS for us.

[@bhavyamparashar]

Is Quadro T2000 GPU powerful enough to produce renders? Shall I go for Quadro T2000? Or a gaming laptop with GeForce RTX 2070?

[@rhh121]

RTX 2070 = Quadro RTX 4000 T2000 = GTX1050TI

[@TMT98]

So the throttling only starts after like 15 minutes? And before that you get the full performance? I am thinking of buying one, thanks to your reviews xD

[@BsianTech]

The throttling happens more earlier in the 5550 usually about 5 min mark but not as severe just barely hitting clock base speed I recall when I did my testing, once it hits about 15 mins is when it's starts to really struggle.

[@rhh121]

If you stress the laptop with heavy tasks, Don't go with thin device the 5550 have thermal problems with any heavy tasks

[@marianvallus]

Thanks !!

[@turboed1337]

I would love to know what dell has done internally about the thermal throttling. A decent heat sink would have done the job but this is just stupid to see this mobile chip runa t 1.5 ghz after throttling. Do you have the permission to check it's internal. Like there are some great thermal paste out there which could handle the load. Maybe an aftermarket thermal paste or pad could do the job

[@BsianTech]

I’m hoping to have a chat with Dell regards to the finding.

[@bumkyukim9950]

Hey, can you uploade the video about dissembly of precision 5550?

[@BsianTech]

Hi Bumkyu Kim, check my In-depth review I placed it there kzbin.info/www/bejne/pJapdXxvmKqWbbc

[@tbagahoe]

Love your reviews... Keep it up you have a very natural lovely and spontaneous energy about you. Also very helpful with all of the in depth information you provide.

[@BsianTech]

Thank you very much TBAGAHOE, it does mean a lot for me for the lovely comment and support really does give me more inspiration to continue in the late nights to make these videos =).

[@stanislavtihohod]

The thick one with the screen of the thin one would be a perfect laptop for me.

[@BsianTech]

Performance on the 7550 is really good on it stanislavtihohod.

[@alanrajan6142]

Dell precision 5550 is good for gaming..?

[@BsianTech]

Hi Mystic king, you could use it for gaming the Precision 5550 but I would be better off steering you to the XPS 15 9500 if you mainly looking for gaming as the Geforce GPU in them are more suitable for gaming than the Quadro GPU in the Precision 5550 as well as saving you a bit of money too.

[@indigoinkognito9878]

LiKE !

[@thomasluggiero3413]

thermal throttling on a Dell, no surprise there