Precision vs Thinkpad

[Dark_Horse007]

I am in a dilemma to purchase a workstation laptop.

The choices are: Precision 3510, Thinkpad T470P, Thinkpad P51

Specwise:

Precision 3510:        I7-6700HQ 32GB 512GB SSD AMD W5130M 3Yrs WTY        Price: US$1400

ThinkPad T470p:     i7-7820HQ 8GB   500GB HDD NVIDIA NV 940M 1Yrs WTY    Price: US$1217
ThinkPad P51: Intel i7-7700HQ 8GB   500GB HDD NVIDIA M1200 1Yrs WTY        Price: US$1330

 

Any Suggestions?

 

 

[MVPernula]

Well, 32 GB RAM and an SSD has my vote even if the other CPU's are slightly better.

Precision 3510.

[skimmilk5]

In my personal experience, ThinkPads are generally built like tanks (I've spilled water and someone else spilled juice on my laptop, they're fine), and can be dropped multiple times with no ill effect. However, for the price, That Precision 3510 has some damn impressive specs.

It is worth noting that none of these are workstation-grade processors (they're all i7s and not Xeons), but depending on your workload, it may not matter that much.

[Himommies]

Why not get a Xps 15 with the Gtx 1050 and just add some Ram if neccary 

[Dark_Horse007]

1 minute ago, Himommies said:

Why not get a Xps 15 with the Gtx 1050 and just add some Ram if neccary 

 

Because of the thin chassis of XPS 15, I was afraid, if it thermal throttles.

 

4 minutes ago, kimsejin5 said:

In my personal experience, ThinkPads are generally built like tanks (I've spilled water and someone else spilled juice on my laptop, they're fine), and can be dropped multiple times with no ill effect. However, for the price, That Precision 3510 has some damn impressive specs.

It is worth noting that none of these are workstation-grade processors (they're all i7s and not Xeons), but depending on your workload, it may not matter that much.

But precision has AMD W5130M Would you recommend that?

 

BTW, I have inspiron N5010, which I bought in 2010 April. Which is still working fine (on ghetto of course). So, I am a bit biased towards Dell. Comparing T470, and Precision, precision has lot of memory, SSD and 3 yrs of warranty. Which can be worth more than 200 Dollar. What do you say?

[Himommies]

Just now, Dark_Horse007 said:

I was afraid, if it thermal throttles.

relax it's not a Razer Blade.You should be fine

[Dark_Horse007]

1 minute ago, Himommies said:

relax it's not a Razer Blade.You should be fine

Razor Blade Linus uses as his everyday drive But it is way beyond my budget  

 

I wanted one from precision series

 

[Himommies]

Just now, Dark_Horse007 said:

I wanted one from precision series

Why not the XPS 15.Honestly Pro laptops are so overpriced.If you want the max performance that would be ideal.What do you plan to do with it

[Dark_Horse007]

BTW, this much RAM is not necessary for my job. One stick with 8 Gigs will do. 32 GB is just an addon.

 

[SeraphicWings]

If you want your laptop like a tank, I'd get that Precision, those specs are pretty impressive

 

But, unless your work requires workstation grade laptops, I'd get something like an XPS 15

 

[Dark_Horse007]

Is precision not workstation grade? It is not as portable as XPS 15 I know.

[KenjiUmino]

12 minutes ago, kimsejin5 said:

In my personal experience, ThinkPads are generally built like tanks (I've spilled water and someone else spilled juice on my laptop, they're fine), and can be dropped multiple times with no ill effect. However, for the price, That Precision 3510 has some damn impressive specs.

agree on the tank-ness. one does not simply wreck a thinkpad by accident.

if you break a thinkpad, it was probably on purpose. 

 

i would go with more CPU horsepower over more ram any day tho. 

 

because i can shove in bigger drives and more ram later if i feel like it but changing a CPU in a laptop is not something you do on a friday afternoon. 

[Himommies]

2 minutes ago, Dark_Horse007 said:

Is precision not workstation grade? It is not as portable as XPS 15 I know.

Workstation Grade does not alway's mean best for the Workplace.The XPS 15 is more powerful than all of those.

What do you plan to do with it

[Dark_Horse007]

Numerical modeling. Basically Matlab related works, and some optimization.

[Dark_Horse007]

Will XPS 15 be more powerful in my case? As you can see, I want it for research purposes.

 

[genexis_x]

8 hours ago, Dark_Horse007 said:

Because of the thin chassis of XPS 15, I was afraid, if it thermal throttles.

Same goes to the laptops you've selected above

[descendency]

9 hours ago, kimsejin5 said:

In my personal experience, ThinkPads are generally built like tanks (I've spilled water and someone else spilled juice on my laptop, they're fine), and can be dropped multiple times with no ill effect. However, for the price, That Precision 3510 has some damn impressive specs.

It is worth noting that none of these are workstation-grade processors (they're all i7s and not Xeons), but depending on your workload, it may not matter that much.

Serious question: Have you bought a Thinkpad in a while? The quality has been declining. My last Thinkpad was an X201, but the Thinkpad quality came from the Txxx series (a friends' free fell 3 stories and survived fine). The newer ones are basically slightly better than crapware build quality. 

 

9 hours ago, Himommies said:

Workstation Grade does not alway's mean best for the Workplace.The XPS 15 is more powerful than all of those.

What do you plan to do with it

While I can't say the XPSs are bad laptops, the Precision laptops are built to a higher standard. This means they will cost more for equivalent 'performance' and often come with special warrantees (like in person maintenance... I can't remember if Dell offers that for their consumer laptops). If the OP needs it on a space shuttle, then they will need something more durable. If they're just going to class for 4 years - an XPS and a solid back pack will do.

[Dark_Horse007]

3 hours ago, descendency said:

If the OP needs it on a space shuttle, then they will need something more durable.

This really is funny.

 

3 hours ago, descendency said:

the Precision laptops are built to a higher standard

Thanks for the clarification. As of now, I am typing this comment on my 7 Year old, Dell Inspiron i3 laptop. Overall, I am happy with its performance. So, obviously is biased to buy dell again. I wanted something a little powerful for work. Precision 17 series are more costly and are beyond my budget, so not an option. I think I will be happy with buying Precision 13 class.

 

Thank you, everyone.

[System Error Message]

thinkpads arent the only good laptops. latitudes and precisions are good too and they are built similarly with thinkpad inheriting IBM's designs.

 

My issue with thinkpads are the hardware choices. Thunderbolt + expresscard would be nice but none have it, choice of laptop with decent battery, IO, specs just arent available with thinkpad especially for an affordable price that even alienware takes the cake on this one even though alienware is not spillproof, it is tougher with very good battery but dell does not sell alienware with IGP anymore for good battery life.

 

So choice wise is  between the precision and thinkpad with i7-8xxxhq because that i7 has 8MB of cache which is good but depends on your use case.

 

Both GPUs arent great in performance, only there because some apps work better on professional gpus.

[Dackzy]

1 hour ago, System Error Message said:

thinkpads arent the only good laptops. latitudes and precisions are good too and they are built similarly with thinkpad inheriting IBM's designs.

 

My issue with thinkpads are the hardware choices. Thunderbolt + expresscard would be nice but none have it, choice of laptop with decent battery, IO, specs just arent available with thinkpad especially for an affordable price that even alienware takes the cake on this one even though alienware is not spillproof, it is tougher with very good battery but dell does not sell alienware with IGP anymore for good battery life.

 

So choice wise is  between the precision and thinkpad with i7-8xxxhq because that i7 has 8MB of cache which is good but depends on your use case.

 

Both GPUs arent great in performance, only there because some apps work better on professional gpus.

What are you talking about? P51 has TB3, same with P50 and T470, actually quite a few thinkpads has TB3, the T470p doesn't, but that is a massive fuck up from them and I really dislike what they did there since I was originally going to get one of those, but dells version of the T470p requires you to get the version with the dGPU to get TB3 and i7 quad core models are basically a US only thing, so not a lot better, but still better. Expresscards is something you don't find on any new machines and there isn't really a good reason to have them anymore. You might be lucky that you can replace a smart card reader with a expresscard, but it is certainly not something they advertise.

 

You might also want to check up on battery life, the P51 has a battery life of 7-8 hours when surfing the web and writing documents and the T470p can do up to 10 hours when surfing the web Ofc this is not as good as their battery champ the x270 with big battery which can get you on the other side of 16 hours. The Dell 3510 is a 9-10 hour machine which is also damn good for such a machine, but it also looses to the p51 when it comes to GPU power. The Dell has what equals a m265x while the Lenovo has what equals a 960m, Huh it seems like the 940mx in the T470p is better than the w5130 or maybe the latitude 5480, which is basically the T470p with TB3.

 

So OP basically no matter what it wouldn't make sense to go with the Dell 3510, when Lenovo makes two machines that beats it in performance in either the same size category or smaller and even Dell themselves makes a machine that can beat it in size and performance.

[Jrasero]

Much prefer the XPS look of the 5520

 

BUT if this is your price point and you are going boxy, black plastic than the Thinkpad would be my jam 

The ram can be easily unpgraded

 

Like some users have stated Thinkpads are tanks and have spill resistant keyboards.  My college IBM T40 held up even after many drops and liquids such as beer being spilled on it

[System Error Message]

On 05/09/2017 at 2:08 PM, Dackzy said:

What are you talking about? P51 has TB3, same with P50 and T470, actually quite a few thinkpads has TB3, the T470p doesn't, but that is a massive fuck up from them and I really dislike what they did there since I was originally going to get one of those, but dells version of the T470p requires you to get the version with the dGPU to get TB3 and i7 quad core models are basically a US only thing, so not a lot better, but still better. Expresscards is something you don't find on any new machines and there isn't really a good reason to have them anymore. You might be lucky that you can replace a smart card reader with a expresscard, but it is certainly not something they advertise.

 

You might also want to check up on battery life, the P51 has a battery life of 7-8 hours when surfing the web and writing documents and the T470p can do up to 10 hours when surfing the web Ofc this is not as good as their battery champ the x270 with big battery which can get you on the other side of 16 hours. The Dell 3510 is a 9-10 hour machine which is also damn good for such a machine, but it also looses to the p51 when it comes to GPU power. The Dell has what equals a m265x while the Lenovo has what equals a 960m, Huh it seems like the 940mx in the T470p is better than the w5130 or maybe the latitude 5480, which is basically the T470p with TB3.

 

So OP basically no matter what it wouldn't make sense to go with the Dell 3510, when Lenovo makes two machines that beats it in performance in either the same size category or smaller and even Dell themselves makes a machine that can beat it in size and performance.

my 15 inch alienware costs less than the t51p and has 10 hours of battery life. It has 99whr battery, i7-7700hq, gtx 1070 with nvidia optimus and only cost me £1400. It has thunderbolt 3 and alienware's AGA allowing for 2 external GPUs. Now is there a thinkpad at this price with quad core i7, dedicated GPU, intel IGP, this much battery life for the price and thunderbolt 3?

 

thinkpads are good but both brands are bad when it comes to choices. However at times they may come up with something good. The point about alienware is the toughness + battery life. Thinkpad is spillproof and tough but when it comes to performance at an affordable price you simply just cant get it. I know its not supposed to be cheap like a budget performer as it incorporates toughness and spillproof but you just cant the same for the price i got for alienware.

Taking these few attributes together, performance + battery life + toughness + thunderbolt 3, alienware and dell xps have these attributes. For thinkpads the only one i see that comes close to battery life is the L520 which advertises AMD GPU but when selecting has no AMD GPU either. I know dell choices are poor but thinkpad says stuff that they dont offer when choosing.

 

expresscard may not be used much but it allows some expansion. Alienware has seperate thunderbolt 3, AGA and usb-c port though. It also charges from flat in an hour or 2 for 10 hours of battery (not available anymore)

 

Im not trying to discourage but currently choices are poor for thinkpads and dell and probably even hp, they really need to change their IO choices for the price and battery choices too. I know all the laptops need to follow specific things like being tough and spillproof but IO choices should be common across the line, not just the common ones but exrpesscard, smartcard, thunderbolt 3 should be kept across the entire thinkpad line. At the very least most thinkpads have ethernet.

 

If you really must know why i consider thunderbolt important its not just about attaching GPUs, but it allows you to use it in certain situations like 10Gb/s NIC or 40Gb/s infiniband cards as an example. Its not just the business part of presentations, smart card for authentication and being a portable presenter, system admins also require the same thing. Hence all thinkpads except the super thin portables should have option for more battery, more hardware choices, better pricing, gigabit ethernet + expresscard/smartcard + SD card reader + thunderbolt 3 across their entire line. Same with dell precision too, should have all these standard. Thunderbolt 3's 40 Gb/s is very very useful for those working in enterprises, datacenters and other places that deal with such bandwidth needs. for example massive storage, testing and so on. Even PCIe SSDs benefit from 40Gb/s networking as well and m.2 is becoming a widespread feature.