Nigh on Noon

I was given a Latitude 5420 that appears to be completely dead. No LED, no fan, nothing. I tried disconnecting the battery and CMOS, and holding down the power button for a minute. That didn't work. I tried reseating the one ram stick, and putting it in the other slot - didn't work. I took out the motherboard and I couldn't see any obvious damage. I'm just about ready to give up, but I wanted to ask here to see if anyone has any last ideas.

Just wanted to check in and say I no longer have my GS66, I sold it last year. No problems came up with it, but to be honest, I was worried about the build quality in the long run. In particular, I feared the hinges would eventually loosen up. If I ever get something to replace it, I'm thinking I'd like to get a used Precision 7560 and swap the display for a QHD 240Hz panel. So, a machine with basically the same specs as my GS66, but hopefully as sturdy as my 7710.

Unfortunately, I've had to go back to default timings. Despite passing memtest, I eventually experienced some graphical glitches. Specifically, there were some small black boxes that would show up on screen. One time, when the glitches appeared, during a game, the laptop actually hard shut down. So I reset ram timings, and the glitches stopped occurring. Then one day I re entered the tweaked timings, and within two days the exact same graphical glitch was back. So, that's why I'm pretty sure the issue was ram related. (If anyone has a better explanation of what happened, I'm all ears.) Does there exist some set of timings that wouldn't cause glitches like this? Probably, but they would be so close to default timings that I'm not sure they'd be worth finding.

Well that's unfortunate. That puts it off my radar for now. Like Aaron said, even the smaller XPS 15 has sodimms.

Whoa, the 5680 looks nice. A compact chassis, but still has two so-dimms and a card reader. But the screen options are disappointing - only 60hz and you have to choose either 1920x1200 or 3840x2400. I feel like 2560x1600 120Hz+ should replace FHD/WUXGA as the bare minimum sort of display these days. (Same criticism applies to the 7680.)

It seems they are currently listing the RTX 3000 as having 12GB, so either they got the name or the VRAM amount wrong. Hopefully the RTX 3500 is what that option actually represents.

You know, I was thinking, given that its only 160-bit and 70W, it should easily translate to a laptop form factor. Can you imagine 20GB in a laptop? That would be sexy.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/design-visualization/rtx-4000-sff/ The new desktop card is very interesting! 20GB across a 160-bit bus (a first I believe), half-height, dual slot, and no external power required - only 70W. I wonder where it will land compared to the Ampere A4000. Here is a pdf with the new mobile parts: https://nvdam.widen.net/s/dmdqnnwcmk/proviz-mobile-linecard-update-2653183 Pretty much what was expected. I bet the "3500 Ada" is what the 4070 Ti mobile will end up being. I wish the 4070 mobile had those specs to begin with.

Nice, what laptop is that? Your Windows 7 skin fooled me there for a second. "Wait, how are you running... oh, its a skin, ha."

Sure, here is a timespy run:

I've achieved some modest timing improvements. Note Gear Mode is now 1. The following settings have passed a Memtest86, so long as I keep the memory voltage at 1.25V. There is probably room for slightly better timings, but given that memtest takes ~11 hours, I'm happy with this configuration for now.

Does anyone have the 3466 ram in their 7560 or 7760? I'm wondering what latencies those kits run at. Thanks.

https://videocardz.com/newz/nvidia-announces-geforce-rtx-40-laptop-gpu-series-rtx-4090-with-9728-cudas-and-16gb-gddr6-memory My first thoughts: I would have preferred the 4070 to have more like 10GB of VRAM instead of 8GB... 70 class has been stuck on that for ages now. The 4080 having 12GB and the 4060 having 8GB are welcome upgrades. There are some crazy TDP ranges now! The 4080 can go down to 60W, the 4070 to 35W. I wonder how they'll segment the VRAM on the "Quadro" mobile lineup. I eagerly await reviews, and specific laptop announcements...

I'm assuming we'll see a bunch of laptops announced after the Nvidia presentation today, now that both next gen CPUs and GPUs are official. AFAIK it would be unprecedented for Dell to announce something like the Precision 7000 series at CES, though. Presumably Dell would need to wait for Nvidia to announce professional mobile Lovelace for that to happen, but I think they'll just announce Geforce mobile today...

I started playing Paladins about a week ago, and surprisingly, I rather enjoy it. In many ways it feels like a weird, cheap version of Overwatch, but the gameplay has been quite fun. The graphics are kind of a throwback, but likewise it's easy to achieve super high frame rates. Who knows how long I'll stay interested, but at least for now it's a neat (and free) alternative to Overwatch.