Ionising_Radiation

Many, many thanks. I don't want Windows 11 unless I explicitly choose to upgrade, and so far, nothing has really been pushing me off Windows 10.

Hahaha, that is 100% DGFF. I am getting a gut feeling Framework licensed the connector from Dell. It makes sense, Dell has been using it over several different systems, the connector is straightforward and very slim, and facilitates a very high-speed PCIe connection.

Damn. Still no 120 Hz display options for the 7680...

I experience this too. On top of that, sometimes the external output occasionally just stops working, and all the active windows I have collapse back into the internal display, and I have to reboot my monitor for things to get going again. As far as I've seen, this doesn't happen on Linux (whether X11 or Wayland), but Linux comes with its own set of issues which keep me from using it day-to-day.

This worked. I think I'll stay on 1.19 for the moment...

Upgraded too, but twice now, while gaming, the 'charging' light came on, and the GPU performance plummeted and the clocks were locked at ~600 MHz. I have been using the 'Optimised' profile in Dell Power Manager. Maybe changing to 'Ultra Performance' will help.

What a mouthful: 'NVIDIA RTX 5000 Ada Generation Laptop GPU' Versus something so much more straightforward like 'NVIDIA Quadro AD5000M' in the vein of 'NVIDIA Quadro P5000' or 'NVIDIA Quadro M5000M'. That 'RTX' branding is frankly unnecessary.

I thought I'd apply @win32asmguy's trick to the 7560 (now with an RTX 3080). The NVIDIA PCF device is not available on the 7560, but the power limits can be changed in Afterburner, for a maximum limit of 122% (so 90 W × 1.22 = 109 W). I see typical power draws of around 105–107 W now.

Conspiracy time: this is so OEMs can stuff a 4080 in a laptop that's less than 1 cm thin, lock the TDP to 60/45 W (and hence perform worse than a 4050/4060), but still advertise that they have a 4080.

Frankly, I think part of this is NVIDIA's and Intel's fault—150 W+ power limits were quite mental for a notebook (even a 'gaming'/'workstation' one) back in the Sandy/Ivy Bridge and Haswell eras. I'm not even going back that far; my old Clevo W230SS from 2014 had a 45-60 W limit on the CPU, and a 75 W limit on the GPU (and still took a 120 W power supply). Intel has (mostly) forgone efficiency and is chasing ever-higher power limits; likewise with NVIDIA. AMD is not even in the notebook scene; I haven't seen a single 5XXX/6XXX/7XXX-series notebook where I live. Lenovo sells some, but only off their Web store. I would love to see an M1/M2-esque CPU in a non-Mac. But until then, like @Aaron44126 said... We are stuck with compromising.

157 W... That's squarely in desktop territory. Intel and AMD should be chasing efficiency if they really want to compete with Apple M...

Essentially, yes. Desktop GPUs run at almost 3× the frequency, and the voltage is frequently much higher than necessary, allowing for plenty of room to undervolt, whereas notebooks already run under power and voltage constraints.

While attempting to upgrade the GPU, I was stalled by an over-tightened screw on the heatsink that has now completely stripped, and some free scratches on the heatsink as well as some bent fins (thanks, previous technician). I am going to ask Dell to assist with a heatsink replacement; hopefully the new technician has a stripped-screw extractor. Incidentally, it appears the 'new' GPU I received is actually a refurbished unit unlike my past few GPU purchases from Dell, which were new; there is some discolouration on one of the capacitors (I presume that's what the grey squares are), some left over thermal paste, and a few fingerprint marks. Hope it actually works...

Presumably, yeah. Part number FC17F.

I've gotten my hands on an RTX 3080 for S$560. Nice, time for 16 GB (again).

Can't believe my innocuous question/comment sparked off one-and-a-half pages of discussion. Honestly, I don't know who to agree with. @MyPC8MyBrain has a very good point that Dell neutered the performance of these laptops; most users here were able to improve the performance of the notebook by more than 50% with nary a mod but a repaste and some firmware/configuration tweaks. This is not a good look on Dell. The cooling solution is sub-par for the sort of hardware that the Precisions offer. There are annoying edge use cases that the notebooks don't cover—nice high-refresh-rate displays, USB-C charging (even throttling while charging at lower power ratings would be nice), weird keyboard changes (7530/7730 generation had the best keyboard layout; why Dell messed with it, I do not understand), firmware shenanigans (the dGPU does not properly pass through the display to external monitors—this is really stupid), etc. At the same time, the support for these notebooks (when you want some hardware thing replaced) is pretty phenomenal. The build quality is also decent, and most of the components (despite the manual claiming otherwise) can be user-replaced. Dell was dealt bad cards by Intel + NVIDIA with extremely power-hungry components, and it has had to make do.

I can see that you're really disappointed with the new Precisions, heh. Dell could have done so much more with maybe 500 g more mass and cooling...

Turns out the RTX 3080 for the 7560 and 7760 are available for sale on eBay. The price is very steep, especially compared to desktop RTX 3080s that have (almost) 80% more performance. I have asked them for a discount, as well as my old 'ask Dell' trick. Let's see which pans out. RTX 3080 for 200 USD, heh.

Gonna chip in with my usual wishlist (for the 7680, especially): AMD CPU options (yes; I've asked this for ages, I don't think it'll happen, but who knows) AMD GPU options (see 1.) High-refresh rate, HDR-capable 16:10 display options (60 Hz is not a good look on a performance laptop when nearly every other gaming-ish notebook and the 7770 have 120/144 Hz+ displays) 240 W USB-PD for charging the notebook. Still keep the barrel connector, but having one/two-port 240-480 W PD would be really good. Improved thermals and performance tuning from the XX70 generation

Hmm, not really. How can I monitor this P-state? I still have the 7760 VBIOS, so I can try that again.

@MyPC8MyBrain, maybe try this nvflash. Full set of commands: .\nvflash-5.670.0-Patched.exe --protectoff .\nvflash-5.670.0-Patched.exe --index=0 -6 <new_rom_file>.rom

That's a mental improvement. It is outrageous that Dell is leaving > 50% of the peak performance of the CPU on the table with poor engineering decisions.

If you're using Hybrid mode, then you'll need to have early KMS on both the Intel and NVIDIA drivers (assuming Ubuntu comes with the proprietary NVIDIA drivers by default), as well as disabling Intel Indirect Branch Tracking for the NVIDIA GPU. You'll also want to blacklist the nouveau kernel module. If you're only using the discrete NVIDIA GPU, then no need for early KMS for Intel, but all the others apply. In summary, you'll have to add these kernel parameters before selecting the OS you want to boot: Hybrid mode i915.modeset=1 nvidia nvidia_modeset nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm ibt=off nouveau.blacklist=1 NVIDIA only nvidia nvidia_modeset nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm ibt=off nouveau.blacklist=1 This should get you to the login screen.

Holy crap, that's a lot of performance left on the table...

I get a feeling this won't be answered by Dell reps—you'll have to rely on empirical results from members here. I would bet that the OLED panel almost certainly uses PWM; with the normal LCD panels, it's honestly difficult to conclude without 'palm waving'/high-speed camera testing.