Xeon laptop with ECC memory

[meatling]

Lenovo announced on August 10 the release of "mobile workstation" laptops with up to 64 GB ECC memory, optional RAID1 and self-calibrating 4K monitor.

Quite the dream machine for photoshop users! AFAIC the ECC memory alone is very welcome news, I've waited years for such a product. At last!

 

[Aurelius]

Lenovo announced on August 10 the release of "mobile workstation" laptops with up to 64 GB ECC memory, optional RAID1 and self-calibrating 4K monitor.

Quite the dream machine for photoshop users! AFAIC the ECC memory alone is very welcome news, I've waited years for such a product. At last!

It looks good, I'm just wondering about how useful these chips will be outside of specialized tasks. A lot of folks like to think that Xeons are Intel's ultimate chips, but they may not actually confer much of a benefit outside of some creative and data-intensive apps. With that said, if you live in certain visual editors or database platforms... this could be your ticket.

 

[Kirika]

My question is does this mean 6, 8, 10, 12+ core Xeon laptops will be coming?

Xeons may not be good for gaming but the extra cores are definitely welcome for video editing.

 

[Deinos]

My question is does this mean 6, 8, 10, 12+ core Xeon laptops will be coming?

Xeons may not be good for gaming but the extra cores are definitely welcome for video editing.

I would be shocked if the mobile xeons went beyond quad. Fingers crossed though!

 

[meatling]

A lot of folks like to think that Xeons are Intel's ultimate chips

Why, it's true ... for some values of "ultimate"

Seriously, I couldn't care less about the CPU's brand name, as long as it supports ECC RAM. Therefore, I would have liked a Core i7-3612QE in a laptop just as well, only nobody ever offered such a thing AFAIK.

One nice thing about Xeons though (in my minority opinion) is that they're not overclockable, so there's less of a risk to buy them used.

 

[pxc]

The Lenovo P70 looks pretty good. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2960...inkpad-p50-and-p70-graphics-workstations.html

4 DIMM slots, 17" 4K display, built in automatic color calibration, Quadro GPU, Xeon E3-1500M v5 CPU and lots of internal expansion... starting at $1999. It's not a gaming system, but it looks like a great 7.5lb DTR.

Hopefully not much die space is wasted on an iGPU for those mobile Xeons.

 

[mi7chy]

Lots of DRAM is nice but kind of useless with only 2- or even 4-core for mobile virtualization test platform. Thinkpad P50 is still tempting though.

 

[CEpeep]

Hopefully not much die space is wasted on an iGPU for those mobile Xeons.

The high-end SKUs might have GT4e. If we can get 8 CPU cores and Iris Pro graphics in 15.4" at a reasonable weight, we've found our new developer laptops.

 

[pxc]

I don't think you'll see a GT4e + 8c CPU Skylake based mobile Xeon. Uniprocessor Xeons with Crystalwell have been limited to 4c models.

There is a 45W 8c/16t Broadwell based Xeon D 15xx (no iGPU), so it's a possibility that there could theoretically be an 8c Skylake mobile Xeon eventually, especially if it doesn't include an iGPU.

 

[lutjens]

These chips will be nothing special, and will probably nothing more than mobile Skylake chips with enabled ECC and vPro. They'll probably receive preferential binning for lowest leakage, but I'm guessing that's about it.

 

[0ptional]

These chips will be nothing special, and will probably nothing more than mobile Skylake chips with enabled ECC and vPro. They'll probably receive preferential binning for lowest leakage, but I'm guessing that's about it.

That sounds fine with me? I'd consider that special enough anyway.

 

[pxc]

The mobile Xeons could also come with VT-d and TXT.

 

[Meaker]

The mobile Xeons could also come with VT-d and TXT.

The older extreme editions did that.

They were actually the ultimate chip that intel offered in the consumer space from a feature stand point. It just lacked ECC support.

 

[pxc]

Other than memory expandability (4 vs 2 SODIMMs) and ECC support, the E3-1535M v5 doesn't look much different than the i7-6920HQ.

 

[pxc]

The i7-6920HQ should support 32GB with a pair of 16GB DDR3L SODIMMs, which might be the limit with only 2 memory slots. Who knows if it actually will support 64GB when higher density memory becomes available. The official ark pages should be available next week for these Skylake H processors.

 

[lutjens]

One nice thing about Xeons though (in my minority opinion) is that they're not overclockable, so there's less of a risk to buy them used.

Out of all the Xeons out there, how many are overclocked, even back in the day when they were BCLK overclockable? The risk in buying a used Xeon is very low anywhere, as probably somewhere in the neighbourhood of 0.01% of them were overclocked even back in Nehalem's day.

Xeons have proven themselves to be the best that Intel makes and it's incredibly sad that more of them aren't unlocked. Intel's top HCC Xeons would be both absolutely incredible enthusiast chips as well as the server chips they are designed to be (and would sell like hotcakes) if only they were unlocked.

 

[meatling]

It seems that lenovo decided to make the battery non-replaceable Seems like I won't buy a P70 after all, then

It is really beyond me how Apple managed to infect a whole industry with utterly moronic design decisions

 

[mi7chy]

It's not easily accessible or not replaceable? If you have to use a screw driver it's still replaceable.

 

[pxc]

Yeah, as long as it's not glued down like Apple does, swapping out a defective battery should be easy. The negative is still that you can't carry around a spare battery to swap for extended battery life.

 

[meatling]

It's not easily accessible or not replaceable? If you have to use a screw driver it's still replaceable.

At this time, I don't know more than what you can read in the article I linked. But:

The negative is still that you can't carry around a spare battery to swap for extended battery life.

So, a screwdriver is not the solution to everything.

Also, usually I run my laptop via mains/PSU, which is said to be poison for the battery of you don't remove it beforehand (due to inevitable, miniscule charge/uncharge cycles). If this is true, then it's really a downside if you can't take it out.

 

[pxc]

Also, usually I run my laptop via mains/PSU, which is said to be poison for the battery of you don't remove it beforehand (due to inevitable, miniscule charge/uncharge cycles). If this is true, then it's really a downside if you can't take it out.

It's not. I've run different laptops off AC power with the battery left in almost exclusively for 12, 15 or more months I had each. Degradation was minimal (capacity diminished around 3%-5%), with all batteries having near full wear level percentages when I got rid of each.

That's going back to the early 2000s and multiple manufacturers, so I don't think the battery problems some people have encountered are universal ones.

 

[meatling]

Some news: (1), the specs for the mobile Xeons are on Intel's website, and indeed it appears to be a souped-up consumer CPU with 4 cores max and 2 memory channels.

(2), techradar's claim about the battery being non-replaceable might be untrue.

The latter would be very good news IMHO. To me, the P70 suddenly has become attractive again.

 

[Henri108]

Also, usually I run my laptop via mains/PSU, which is said to be poison for the battery of you don't remove it beforehand (due to inevitable, miniscule charge/uncharge cycles). If this is true, then it's really a downside if you can't take it out.

It's true, but most laptops automatically bypass the battery when it's full. My Dell's all do that. If they don't to it by standard, you can change it in the settings.

 

[pxc]

Some news: (1), the specs for the mobile Xeons are on Intel's website, and indeed it appears to be a souped-up consumer CPU with 4 cores max and 2 memory channels.

That announced 25W 4c/8t 2/2.8GHz turbo L version... if it weren't 1P, that's getting close to 8c/16t under 50W for mobile CPUs.

 

[tangoseal]

Besides ECC a Xeon aint shit but a name. Honestly tell me it isn't... oh and VT-d is there meh

 

[commissioneranthony]

It would sure be nice if dell responded with competition to the P70.
still waiting on precision m4900....since may
screw this, im building a desktop

 

[meatling]

It would sure be nice if dell responded with competition to the P70.

Why not buying the Lenovo P70 right there?: Do you know of any reasons to avoid, specifically, that company?

screw this, im building a desktop

It's most certainly the easiest way to get exactly what you want. Except if you want a portable computer