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Reshaping Workflows with Dell Pro Precision and NVIDIA RTX PRO GPUs
Dell Pro Precision 7 T1: Redefining Entry Workstations
00:19:42
Matt Garcia joins Logan Lawler to unveil the Dell Pro Precision 7T1: a mini tower built for powerful, affordable, and scalable workstations.
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Foreign. Welcome to Reshaping Workflows with Dell Pro Precision and Nvidia, where innovation meets real world impact in high performance computing.
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Welcome back to another exciting episode of Reshaping Workflows with Dell Pro Precision and Nvidia RTX Pro GPUs. I'm your host, Logan Lawler. So you've probably been wondering if you've been listening to the podcast. It's been around for about a year now, maybe a little under like 11 months. And if you've noticed, there's been a slight change in the title. It was Dell Pro Max. And now if you've been paying attention, hanging on every participle of what I say, you'll know it's now Dell Pro Precision. So we went through a branding change at CES and what was formerly known as Dell Precision was then known as Dell Pro Max is now known as Dell Pro Precision. Clear as mud, but same great product but we're bringing the Precision name back. So today we're here to talk about the very first Dell Pro Precision product launch in history. And I have no one better to talk to you about it is the product manager himself, Matt Garcia. Matt, how's it going buddy?
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Hey, going well, how are you?
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I'm. Dude, I'm doing great man. You know, you know how I do it. Tell me a little bit about you. I know you've been on the show before. We've talked about the T2, but we're going to be talking about the brand new launch, Dell Pro Precision 7T2. But tell them a little bit about like, tell about the products you manage, et cetera and what you do.
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So I am a product manager on the now Dell Pro Precision team kind of COVID really just a smattering of products. I've got the precision 7T1 that we're going to be talking about today. I've got a bigger Xeon based tower that's going to launch in late March that I'm managing and then we've also got a 1U rack workstation that I'm managing right now that's going to launch in 2H26. So kind of busy with just a.
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B
Variety of products you are and not to mention the, the, the compact and the small form factors that you manage. But we won't get into those. But before we, we hop in and I know this is not, this is across the entire fixed portfolio, but a couple of things to call out so that I think will help people understand a little bit. So the official, before we get into the product people, what they'll start seeing on Dell.com and you know, when they talk to their sales rep, they're going to see, you know, used to be Dell Pro Max, it is now Dell Pro Precision. So workstation class product. But you're going to see a number in the tower, right? You're going to see a number seven or nine and then you're going to see like T1 or T2 or other numbers. Right. Can you briefly describe kind of what the 7 and 9 indicate and then what the, the T1 and T2 kind of indicate?
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So across the board really at Dell with the new branding, we're bringing back series numbers where you'll either have a series 3, 5, 7 or 9. And the higher the number you get, the higher the performance essentially or the more. Not just performance, but you might also scale up in terms of other features, get some nicer features. So with precision, the new Pro Precision, you're going to have series 5, 7 and 9 on the mobile side and then on the fixed side you'll only have series 7 and 9. So with proprecision starting at 5 or starting at 7 on the tower side, you're really indicating that you're already a step up in performance. We don't have a three series anymore and that's by design. And then on the towers we don't have a five series anymore. You start at seven and then you go up to nine. One other thing just on the tower side. So Series seven, Series nine, the difference there is the sevens are going to be typically like an Intel Core Ultra type CPU really, you know, concentrated at single threaded performance. And then the series nine are going to be your bigger multicore processors, your Xeons from Intel or your Threadripper Pros from AMD where you're really, you know, you're getting really high core counts.
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B
That makes sense. So think about, yeah, easiest way to think about it is, you know, and when you're looking broadly across Dell, right, this is not just a Dell Pro precision comment, you know, 3, 5, 7, 9. Well, within precision mobiles, I think I got this right because mobiles always mess me up. 5, 7, 9. But then, but towers fixed, fixed, precision, del per 7 and 9. So you're already at the top of the stack, right? So you're already, you're going from beefy to like super hunk. Like you're, you're already, you're already, you're already there. So we launched. Well, I can't say we launched because I had nothing to do with It. But Matt was responsibility for launching the newest product in the Dell Pro Precision fixed portfolio, which is the T1. So what I'm going to do real quick is go ahead and share my screen here and what we'll do is for those that are watching the video, you know, on the Dell YouTube account, then we will, you'll be able to see what we're sharing. If not, what we'll do on the podcast is we'll be able to link this up and I'll find a way to like link the slide so you can kind of look at it. But Matt will do an excellent job narrating what we're looking at. But we have never had a T1 before. This is kind of a brand new, I don't know if you call it like what segment or a new category that we're entering. So let's talk about first. Why, why are we entering this kind of very entry fixed workstation market when we haven't really been there before? Let's start there.
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I realize I didn't answer the second half of your previous question. This is a T1, right? We already have a Pro Max T2. The T essentially stands for tower. These are tower workstations. And the number after the T is going to indicate the relative size. So one is going to be our smallest tower, two is a little bit bigger tower and then you'll see later in the year we're going to have a T4 and a T6 where they get even bigger. So T1 is what's known as a mini tower and it's About A, it's 15 liters in size, so maybe like a foot tall and a foot deep. So maybe like a shoebox almost. In terms of relative size, what's interesting about the T1 is that this is a, this is a new category for Dell, as you've said. And what we were seeing in the market is that there is a, a lot of customers that have a need for a product of this size. They, they need some expandability but they don't necessarily need a full like 32 liter tower where you can stuff that bad boy full of storage and add in cards and things like that. So that bigger tower is going to cost more and you, you have to go up and really pay for all that extra space. But with this T1, what we're doing is really introducing a lower priced offering that still has moderate expandability. And we've really seen that this kind of classification of product has been growing over time over the last several years. Like if you look at IDC data, for example, that classifies a lot of these workstations, this segment, this mini tower, segments grown from basically nothing all the way up to like 6 or 7, maybe 8%, something like that over the last four or five years. So it's growing in importance for customers. And you know, we, we really wanted to put our hat into the ring there. So that's what the T1 is all about in terms of where it fits.
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Yeah, I mean, it makes sense, right? I mean, I think we can talk a little bit about like use cases here in a second. But I mean, I think it makes sense, right? I think as more applications are becoming, you know, more dependent on, you know, GPUs or higher CPU type performance or higher, you know, memory requirements. Right. You know, the traditional, I'm going to say desktops, but the Dell, let me get. Sure, if I get the name right, but just the Dell Pro kind of desktops. Right. Like X optiplex type were great, but now as we do that, there's kind of a need for something in the middle and kind of bridging the gap between something like the T2, which probably my favorite product that we have at Dell, and the workstation portfolio, but having something in the middle. So let's talk about a little bit of the specs, right? You said it's about half the size of the T2. Let's talk about kind of the chipset, the RAM and kind of a little bit of the expandability. If you can kind of go into, you know, what you get and then why, why we feel that's like perfect for this segment or this class of customer.
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Starting with the, you know, the chipset and the cpu, you, you're going to get an intel core Ultra Series 2 that's codename Aerolake, if you're familiar with all the intel code names. And what's interesting about this workstation is you're going to get a Q chipset rather than the W chipset. You know, a quick overview of the difference. The W chipset is a workstation, you know, purely a workstation chipset, while the Q chipset's more of a, I'll call it a normal standard desktop chipset. So the main difference between those. With the W chipset you get access to ECC memory, so error correcting memory. On the Q chipset you don't. And then with the W chipset you get, I think 24 PCIe lines directly from the chipset and on the q it's only 20 apart from that they're essentially exactly the same. The benefit of using a Q chipset in a product like this is, hey, I don't necessarily need error correcting memory. I don't necessarily need those four PCIe lines. I'm going to get a cheaper Q chipset that, that's really a better overall value for what I need as a customer in terms of CPU and chipset. We'll have the full stack of intel core Ultra Series 2, so Ultra 5, Ultra 7, Ultra 9, and those will be the 65 watt versions. We don't have the K SKUs, the 125 watt CPUs. Really as a, as a power limitation, this box isn't designed to have that much power. And for the customers that are going to be buying this, they really don't need that much power.
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Makes sense. Yeah, there's. It's kind of like driving a Ferrari in town at the speed limit. Right. Kind of. What's the point? Like providing too much power to the box. So tell us a little bit about. I mean all this sounds really great. I mean, next thing is kind of talk about from the graphics standpoint, right? I see we have, you know, the RTX Pro, which I don't believe has actually come out or not hit yet, but the Nvidia RTX Pro 4000 Blackwell and then we have, you know, a couple of consumer options as well.
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You're right. The RTX Pro 4000 is going to be kind of the, the biggest card that'll fit in this chassis. And we'll have that ready in April for ordering. So we'll have, let's see the, the Blackwell 4000, of course, and that's the, the full height version of the card which runs at 140 watts. 140 watt card. Blackwell also has that half height version of the 4000. That's a 70 watt card. And that's one of the big. While we're Talking about this 4000 card, that's one of the key differences between this class of product. That it's got a little bit more room and something like our Pro Max Slim, which is an even smaller 9 liter chassis. In that 9 liter slim, you can only fit that half height 4000 card. So by going up to this T1 form factor that's you know, 15 liters, almost twice as big as that slim, you get the capability to add that full height card and essentially double your graphics capability.
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Right, exactly. With the same exact car in a sense. Right. Like the same amount of vram. So it's basically like you're dumping twice as much gas on that fire. Which, why would you not do that?
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That's one of the real draws of a T1 for me personally and you know, below the 4000 of course we'll have the 2000 Blackwell. Also available in April we will have the A1000, the A400 and on the consumer side the RTX 5060 can fit in here as well.
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That's great. So you mentioned before we get into kind of use cases. You did mention you like the fact one of the key selling points for you is the full height RTX Pro 4000 Blackwell card. What are a couple of the other big things that you think make this product stand out?
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Number one is gonna be price point. So this, the, the T1 is going to be the lowest price point workstation that Dell will offer. So it, by focusing on things like that, that Q chipset and by keeping normal memory instead of error correcting memory, that's some of the ways that we're able to effectively lower the starting price. So for customers that, that know that they need, you know, they know they want a workstation but they might be limited on budget for whatever reason, this is going to be their product. It's going to have workstation capabilities but the best possible price. So that's number one. Two is going to be you know, of course ISV certification. So like any workstation, we're going to go out and work with a bunch of independent software vendors, certify that this product works with their software suite and we're going to check that box and essentially guarantee that you're going to have great reliable performance with that software. Third, I would say in terms of expandability, the T1's going to kind of sit right between the slim and the T2 like we've already talked about. But you'll get four PCIe slots or up to four I should say there's three that come standard and one is optional. And with those slots, you know, you've got room to go with that 4,000 card that we talked about just a moment ago. And then you've got three other slots that you can use for other add in cards for whatever your use case, whether it's, you know, you need another network card or you need more storage, whatever. So that would kind of be the, the third point that I'd focus on for T1.
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It's fascinating, right, with the, the T1 kind of being the bridge between kind of our smaller, more compact, you know, workstation products up to a more full Size product when the 32 liters and the, you know, the T2. So that kind of begs the question, right? It's a new product, obviously there's a market for this, right. We've kind of talked high end towers, you know, AI simulation engineering, lower end kind of collaborators. Right. Where do you kind of see what use cases but more importantly like which industries do you think are going to be gravitating most towards the T1?
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You're exactly right. It's going to really be for, for collaborators and that's somebody that's, you know, maybe a business stakeholder that they do a lot of what I'm going to call emails, but that, you know, general office productivity work. But they also have some workloads that have needs beyond that, things that require a little bit more power. And with this T1 specifically because of the low price point that really, you know, you get workstation capabilities at the best price, it's going to be perfect for really two big areas I can think of but public domain customers where budgets can be kind of a challenge and Eduardo, where similarly budgets can be a challenge as well, but they do have needs for, you know, higher performance for some of their use cases. So in terms of Edu, you know, maybe as an example, I'm thinking of something like a college level course and maybe graphics design, web design, maybe like an entry level architecture course where they're working with 2D CAD, something like that where they, they do have some, I'll say, entry level graphics needs where the workloads can really benefit from some of that GPU acceleration. That would be a great use case in terms of the education space. And then in terms of public domain, you know, maybe you're talking about like a, a government office that does permits for some kind of building or, or facility where they need to actually go in and look at those CAD files and make sure things are up to code. Something like that is going to be really great use case for the T1.
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I mean, I agree. I mean, I think anyone who has seen their workflow change, you know, from needing any gpu, whether it's from, you know, a compute standpoint and a graphic rendering standpoint, or the ability to run, you know, this is not an AI training box, but any sort of AI application that needs inference, right. I think this is kind of a perfect fit and it gives you the ability to run that GPU at a little bit higher power, which is really not costing you that much more. And it's allowing you to double your performance and not Going up to a 32 liter tower, you're adding 5 to 6 liters on the tower. It just kind of makes sense. And then also, you know, not that I ever want people, you know, I'd be a bad steward if I, if I didn't say this, but you know, I don't want customers over buying either. Like, if you. There might be a few people in the T1 that are like hesitant. They're like, man, this is a little bit more, you know, could think about going down, right? I think where the max is kind of what's the system wattage that you need? You know, processing wise? Like do you want to be able to like in the T2 take that 125 watt processor and go all the way up to 250, do you need that level of performance and do you need the 6000 level capability of the Blackwell? So this is great, Matt, really appreciate you taking the time. Want to leave any final thoughts or anything you want to leave like with an impression? You know, assuming someone just started watching the episode, what would you want someone to walk away remembering from this episode about the T1?
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The number one thing I would want somebody to take away from the T1 overview is that this is the. If you need a workstation at the best possible price point, the T1 is for you. It's going to have moderate expandability and really great performance. Still, it's going to be a great product for people that, that need workstation performance, but maybe not that top end workstation performance makes total sense.
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Well, Matt, once again really appreciate you taking the time. It's always a pleasure whether I get to see you out in real life or seeing you virtual on the webinars. So until next time or until the next product you launch, which will probably be pretty shortly. Appreciate you having us on. I appreciate you coming on the podcast and with that, think about the T1. Go to Dell.com, dell Pro Precision 7T1. Check it out. It's got a great product. I know it's going to do extremely well. So with that, this is reshaping workflows with Dell Pro Precision and Nvidia RTX Pro GPUs. Until the next one, we'll see you around.
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