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.

I have found memory overclocking in the BIOS. It turns out that, under the advanced tab, it is in "System Agent (SA) Configuration", NOT under "Overclocking Performance Menu" as I assumed. The first thing I tried was setting the speed to 3333Mhz, but the system seems to have tried to boot, fail, reset to default settings, then boot again. Then I tried simply lowering the CAS latency to 20, from the default of 22. The new CL shows up in HWinfo and the system seems stable so far. This user was able to get some pretty impressive timings with their Leopard 11UG, so I expect there is at least a little more headroom to tighten the timings. https://www.reddit.com/r/overclocking/comments/q5b369/beyond_impressed_with_the_i711800h_under_liquid/ Also, user hackness from this forum was able to reach 3467Mhz 19-20-19-49 on their GS65 with 8750h! (https://notebooktalk.net/topic/112-guide-how-to-take-full-control-of-the-i7-8750h-advanced-version/#comment-740 Edit: here are some before/after screenshots.

My System: i7-11800H 64GB DDR4-3200 (upgraded from 16GB out of the box) RTX 3080 16GB Laptop GPU QHD 240Hz display panel Why this laptop? I wanted a "thin and light" (I'm fine with heavy, but I appreciate compact volume) non-gamery looking laptop. I wanted it to be upgradeable (at least 2 ram slots and an SSD slot), have 10GB+ of VRAM, have a QHD 165Hz+ panel, and have a dgpu-only mode. I really would have liked a full-size SD reader, and 16:10 would have been a plus. The Blade 15 checks a lot of those boxes, in particular I have to commend Razer for actually giving it an SD reader. However, I don't love the green snake logo, and AFAIK Razer only gave you the 8GB version of the 3080, unless you got the 4k 60hz panel. (In which case, why not just go with the 3070?) MSI's own Delta 15 with the RX 6700M 10GB looked (and still looks) like a great value. Unfortunately it has no QHD option, nor a MUX switch. It also notably has no ethernet port, let alone an SD reader. What MSI really should have done is just used the GS66 chassis, but oh well... I do like Dell's Precision lineup; my 7710 is easily the most well-built and modular laptop I have ever used. The 7560, 7760, and 7770 check most of my boxes. But seeing as they are intended as professional machines, I personally can't really justify their price, especially the high-end configs. Fair enough. Lenovo's Legion laptops look like good value. However, I really don't like the "butt extending past the hinge" design, aesthetically. I really want my laptop to look as close to a monolithic black box as much as possible. HP's recent Omen 15 and 17 with Zen3/Tiger Lake and Ampere are worth a mention. Their port selection is about as good as it gets. The 15" couldn't be specced any higher than the 3070, though. I've been rather attracted to the GS66 design since it was first released with Comet Lake + Turing in 2020. My only real complaint with the physical design is the lack of SD reader. And to be honest, it doesn't look quite as monolithic/sexy as a Blade or XPS. I finally bought the config listed above when I saw it for sale. Suffice it to say, Alder Lake would have been nice. However, to get Alder Lake AND 16GB of VRAM requires the 3080 Ti, which really balloons the price. I do resent Nvidia not giving the 3070 Ti 16GB! My Thoughts so far Overall, I do like the machine. I haven't done any benchmarks yet, really. Overwatch and Black Ops Cold War run as well as I would expect. Davinci Resolve and Lightroom also run well, not surprisingly. As you can see, I've only judged the performance subjectively, so far. The trackpad is kind of awkward; it's too wide and too short. I am getting used to it, though. The keyboard is fine, nothing special. The QHD 240Hz screen is a joy in every way except for the brightness, which is lower than I would like, but it is usable indoors. I do have some old games that can easily max it out, which is fun. I do like that MSI laptops have almost desktop-like BIOSes. I've looked around a bit in there. I've read that the GS66 supports RAM overclocking, but I can't find that option where I think it should be, so that's something to research further. Opening the back panel was a bit more harrowing than I would have liked. Thanks for reading! I'm all ears for benchmark recommendations. I'd like to upload some photos sometime, too.

Hi all, I was a lurker on NBR for its last few months. It was a great source of information for Dell Precision laptops. Its been fun reading the threads about the new Alder Lake systems. On another note, is there any interest in an owners thread for the MSI GS66? I just received one. Cheers.