Aaron44126

This seems a bit flaky to me. They don't give details of the system that these tests were run on. There are anomalies like P4200 actually winning their Vulkan test. I'll admit to not digging into the tests here too much, because I already know how it's going to shake out. I've been closely following this line of systems for 15+ years and this is something that has come up for discussion and testing, over and over and over again. There was a lot of chatter about this on NotebookReview at the time of the launch of these systems. Users who had the systems in hand tried different things. P4200 and P5200 were barely different in most cases. This really started to get a lot of attention with the Pascal generation as it started to become clear around that time how NVIDIA was putting very power-constrained desktop-class chips that could "use" a lot more power into laptops, and the power limit was the limiting factor on their performance. But the same has held true with every generation since then, comparing 4000- and 5000- series GPUs from NVIDIA in mobile workstations. It makes sense, given that the architecture and the power limit are the same. Spreading out the load over more cores is going to help with efficiency, but not to the tune of >10% performance. You're welcome to check yourself if you get one in hand.

Every benchmark that I saw when these launched put the difference at <5% if there was not VRAM pressure.

GPU ... GeForce 980M or Quadro M5000M are the best options for "hassle-free" upgrades in this system. (They perform about the same.) CPU ... only you can decide if it is "worth" the upgrade, but going from 3740 to 3840 is going to be pretty negligible in terms of performance boost, I wouldn't spend a lot on it. If you can get the better cooler for cheap, that's a good upgrade to do, these CPUs will max at 100 °C and thermal throttle under load so anything you can do to help with the thermals will increase performance a little bit. Display ... From what I recall, the original RGB IPS LCD display panel has been pretty much impossible to source for years now. You could get the 120 Hz display (Samsung I think?). It was marketed as the "3D" panel, but the 3D functionality won't work with a Maxwell GPU installed. It will still work as a nice 120 Hz 1080p panel. Note that it is glossy, not matte. It doesn't need a replacement lid or the interposer board, it just needs the "3D" eDP cable. (You will probably have to do a BIOS reset to get it to work after replacing a LVDS display.)

Cards from the Precision 7740 can be used, but as is typical with this sort of cross-generation upgrade, you will need an INF mod to load the NVIDIA driver under Windows and that can mess with a small number of games that are particular about driver signatures for anti-cheat purposes. I'm not sure about the heatsink. I don't think a swap is needed but I can't confirm. Carefully check photos of the cards and make sure that screw holes and VRMs are in the same position.

Because of the power cap, performance of P4200 and P5200 will be nearly identical in this system. The only reason to upgrade would be if you can make use of the extra VRAM.

I've had it fail exactly once. Dell Precision 7560. Dell replaced the motherboard and I ran the BIOS update tool to get it up to the then-current BIOS. It appeared to complete successfully, but it never booted up again after that, it just showed a black screen forever. Dell had to replace the motherboard a second time.

The biggest offender on there by far is ACPI.sys. That value 43ms is way too high. (I care about "highest execution" more than "total execution". This is saying that there was at least one time where ACPI.sys grabbed control of your system for a full 43ms straight. A high number in "total execution" is fine — a driver can do a lot of work as long as it is returning control quickly.) ACPI is power management. Unfortunately, even having a starting point like this, it can be difficult to figure out "what to do about it". Question, though. Does your system have an NVIDIA GPU? Can you go without it for a while (assuming graphics switching is turned on)? Try disabling the NVIDIA GPU in Device Manager and see if you still run into the stuttering behavior. @MyPC8MyBrain is right, disabling RAID in BIOS can help if you don't actually need it. But I don't think that's going to be the main problem here.

Run LatencyMon. Go to the Drivers tab. Sort it by "highest execution". After you experience one of these stutters, see which one is at the top of the list. (All drivers should finish their work in less than 1ms, so ideally you wouldn't see anything over 1ms. However, anything over a low single digit milliseconds is especially bad and can lead to audio and system stutters.) Does anyone have one of these systems who is not experiencing problems with it? This sounds even worse than what I was experiencing with the Precision 7770. (Combined issues from Dell, Intel, NVIDIA, and Microsoft on that system is what forced me to rethink what ecosystem I am even using...)

Good to know that it's possible!

Maxwell GPUs don’t require any vBIOS work. Note that Tesla M6 doesn’t support direct display output and can only work through the Intel iGPU via Optimus. Also, you do have to do a little mod to the GPU heatsink to get these cards to fit.

If you can "make it fit" (and I would genuinely love to see that), then it will probably work. I have never heard of this being done, but... The physical interface is the same. I don't think there will be an issue with needing to modify the NVIDIA driver INF.

You can check pictures. It can't be done, it won't physically fit.

Use a tool like CPU-Z to check the RAM specs for the modules that you already have installed. In addition to the speed, you want to match on the CAS latency. But it should be fine to mix manufacturers.

I haven't actually used NVcleanstall myself, it wasn't around back when this was something that I was fighting with. I used a Quadro M5000M in the M6700 from probably 2017 through 2021. I can point to my notes about modifying the INF file by hand: https://www.nbrchive.net/forum.notebookreview.com/threads/precision-7530-precision-7730-owners-thread.820539/page-253.html#post-10937563

Basically mirroring @JadeRover. Unsupported GPUs will always show as "unknown" in BIOS. This is normal. You also need to do an INF mod to install the NVIDIA driver. This is also normal when you don't have a "supported" laptop model / GPU pairing (at least with NVIDIA). I used to do this by hand, but these days I believe that the tool "nvcleanstall" can do it for you.

You don't need drivers for a specific CPU. Dell doesn't offer any "CPU" drivers for the Precision M6800 (or any other system). The chipset drivers are there for other onboard components, not the CPU. Cache is managed by the CPU itself, not the OS/drivers. There's no issue running any "compatible" 4th-gen CPU in the M4800, other than the RAM slot limitation that has been mentioned recently.

OK, sorry about that, I do subscribe to The Verge so I didn't realize that they had a paywall on this article. Couple more. https://www.windowscentral.com/hardware/dell/dell-xps-returns-in-2026-after-rebrand-flop https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/01/dells-xps-revival-is-a-welcome-reprieve-from-the-ai-pc-fad/ Dell is bringing the XPS name back (in addition to the Precision name, it seems). The Pro/Premium/Plus/Max names that they introduced last year is already being phased out... though not completely ("Precision" is now "Pro Precision").

"Broadest PC portfolio ever"? I already think part of their problem is that they already have too many models for each generation. How many 14" laptop models do you need to be offering at once, really? Slim down the product line, and use that leftover engineering effort to focus on polish and attention to detail. Add more spec options to each model if you think that people need options.

Nothing says that your superlative branding scheme was a mistake ... like rolling it back? https://www.theverge.com/news/851047/dell-xps-14-16-13-laptops-brand-return-ces-2026

I have personal experience with this same thing, with a Precision M4800 and ePort Plus dock. What I recall is that it is just pretty finicky about passing through a 60 Hz 4K signal. It is possible but it doesn't always work. I think that it is just because of the "wiring" not being high quality enough to make a signal with the bandwidth required stable. The dock doesn't support a specific version of DisplayPort, at least when it comes to its "electronics". That is determined by the system. (It may support a specific version of DisplayPort just in the sense of being "rated" to pass the signal through.) Unlike "modern" docks, an ePort dock is basically a glorified adapter + extension cord. It just passes through traces from specific pins on the dock port on the bottom of the laptop to the ports on the dock. It doesn't have much inside in the way of electronics / processing the signal. (It does have a DisplayPort→DVI adapter which is used for the DVI ports.)

There are different coolers for AMD and NVIDIA (Kepler) cards in this system. I think the main difference is accounting for the die height. It would be best to get an NVIDIA GPU heatsink. (Not sure about thermal pads, sorry.) You can use a PCIe (NVMe) SSD with an adapter, if you can get it to physically fit. The BIOS won’t be able to boot from it.

If it's happening even on a Bluetooth device that is connected, that's not an analog/grounding issue. The Bluetooth audio chain is all digital until it gets to your actual external speakers/headset, which wouldn't be physically connected to the laptop. I'm glad that they dumped Realtek as the sound chip manufacturer, I never liked them, but I don't know if Cirrus is any better. In any case, I agree that this buzzing is unacceptable. Again, if the buzzing is observed even over Bluetooth audio, that points more to a software / audio stack issue. The first thing that I would check is make my way to the "legacy" Sound control panel and disable "audio enhancements" for your sound output device. Dell has been known to include a stack of audio "enhancements" with the "Dell Optimizer" package which have also always been undesirable to me.

Here are references to Pro Precision 9. https://registry.dmtf.org/products/dell-pro-precision-9-t6-pw9t6260 https://registry.dmtf.org/products/dell-pro-precision-9-t4-pw9t4260 https://registry.dmtf.org/products/dell-pro-precision-9-t2-pw9t2260

I think that's on point and there's also this shift is also going on because ... Each major architectural advancement costs way more than they used to (in R&D, and also in just what it takes to get chips using the latest fab tech). Each major architectural advancement also brings less benefit than they used to. (Gone are the days when performance doubles every couple of years. Now we get maybe a 20-30% performance bump or something in the same timespan, at best.) You have NVIDIA claiming giant generation-over-generation gains, but that's not all from the architecture, it is also from increasing the power draw to their chips and "playing with the numbers" by rolling in new "things" like DLSS / AI frame generation which don't really make for an apples-to-apples comparison. With gains costing so much more, it makes sense that there would be more incentive to hang on to the "current" generation and extract as much profit from it as possible.

Eh. I think we're also going to see at least some companies trying to reduce prices by providing you with crappier stuff. Systems with 8GB of RAM (or less?) when 16GB would be more appropriate. Squeeze onto tiny SSDs. Etc. People like us will be able to see and avoid these, but your non-tech family member who just goes to Costco to buy a cheap laptop is going to get something extra crappy.