If you like to get granular about how you define laptops, then Dell has something interesting to show you today: a VR-ready mobile workstation.
That’s the Dell Precision 7720, announced at the company’s CES press conference in Las Vegas this week. The show held little news for VR fans overall, but the Precision is worth mentioning. Included inside the 3.42kg machine are Intel i7 and Xeon processors, but it also comes with a lot of options. It boasts a 17″ display that’s available either in 1600×900, 1080p or 4K, for example.
Normally with a VR-ready machine we’d tell you that one of NVIDIA’s latest GTX GPUs was inside, but that’s not the case here. The 7720 uses either AMD’s Radeon Pro WX 4130 or WX 7100, or NVIDIA’s Quadro line including the P3000, P4000, or P5000. The P6000, which NVIDIA announced last year, doesn’t seem to be included. There’s also the option of up to 64GB DDR4 memory and 32GB DDR4 SuperSpeed memory.
Workstations are designed to let users utilize demanding professional applications and aren’t really gaming optimized. Considering how quickly VR is becoming a part of productivity apps and being integrated into engines like Unity, for example, there may be a valid purpose to utilize workstations that support headsets like the Vive and Rift.
The company’s new PC, the Precision 5720, is also VR-ready. Both should be going on sale today.
I got to sample Jaguar’s recent I-PACE Concept VR experience running on the 7720 and, while it’s not the best test of the kit’s power, the experience ran without a hitch. The device had been running the demo pretty much non-stop for the past few hours and didn’t seem too hot.
Sadly, Dell didn’t talk about its VR headset being developed with Microsoft this morning, which we’re eager to find out more about. Lenovo already revealed its solution earlier this week.
