Aaron44126

https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/11/23517090/elon-musk-twitter-ceo-replacement Looks like Twitter has a new CEO, and "she" will start in about six weeks, but we don't know who "she" is. Musk is staying on, "overseeing product, software & sysops", so I wonder how much will really change...

Fully understandable. I've thought about this too. I'd probably keep a spare (low-end) motherboard around in case I need to swap that around. I'm not sure what else could break that would be a total emergency. And I'm not looking to switch as soon as Framework 16 comes out. I'll be watching them for a while to see how generational upgrades are going, while I ride out my time on the 7770. But yeah, being in the U.S. is probably best-case in terms of getting parts quickly from them. (Though, my experience with Dell warranty parts replacement hasn't been great lately. I waited almost a month to have my Precision 7770 display replaced, and about three weeks for the heatsink/cooler. I'm no longer considering "next business day" to be a thing that I can count on.) I really do wish someone else would put out a high-performance laptop-first power-efficient CPU. Intel's mobile CPUs are basically repackaged desktop dies with the power limits dialed down a little bit.

New Sabrent drive (warranty replacement) installed, added to RAID0 array, and it is working. ...I noticed pretty quickly that this one makes a sort of electrical buzz noise if I do several GB's of writes in a very short time. I've never heard an SSD make a noise that before, it is definitely noticeable. The other two drives of the same model that I have are silent. I don't do bulk writes all that much so I will just live with it for now. (I will ask the warranty guys about that but I doubt that they will want to spring for another replacement, if it is "working"...) I tested lots of bulk reads and it doesn't make any noise for that. [Edit] One day later, not able to reproduce the buzzing sound from the drive when doing bulk writes. Maybe it just needed some burn-in time ...?

I'm in much the same boat. (...Says the guy who has recently thrown in the towel with Windows and is currently spending way too much time "tinkering" with Linux.) Talking more about the hardware/thermal tuning side. For instance, I haven't messed with undervolting, I don't really have the appetite to figure that out given that it looks like it is on the way out (for business-focused systems). I did repaste my 7770 when it was new, but since I had the cooler replaced last month I've just been using factory paste. It is "good enough" and I'd rather just spend time using the system than fine-tuning that. I'm already annoyed that I have to spend time running tests to figure out where to set the CPU power limit to avoid this GPU throttling behavior. So... I'm also probably done with Dell. There are a lot of things I like about the Precision 7770, but it has been sort of a hassle to get consistent gaming performance out of it (less because of thermals and more because of power management getting in its own way, as we are seeing here), and also it is also definitely a step down from older Precision laptops in terms of how easy it is to swap out components, should that be needed. For example, the keyboard is no longer able to be swapped out without removing it from the bottom (requires a full disassembly), and the display panel is held in its enclosure by adhesive, not screws, making replacement of that an exercise in tedium to get it aligned just right. They also "broke" manual fan control. Well, that's for personal systems anyway. At work, we are a Dell shop, so I'll be continuing my line of Precision laptops for work probably forever. I've looked at HP ZBook and I'm not really sold there. They seem to gimp the GPU power even more than Dell does. I also really care about fan behavior. They have a "never turn off the fans" BIOS option, awesome, but it turns out that it runs the fan a a consistent 2000+ RPM which is too noisy for an idle workload. The price is consistently high, and because less people have them, there is less of an aftermarket parts market. I'm paying close attention to Framework Laptop 16 and really am interested to see the full specs reveal on that. I really like the idea of being able to have a long-term system that can be upgraded piecemeal, like you can do in a desktop. (Shouldn't all computers be that way?) Since I got the 7770 less than a year ago, it will be some years yet before I'm ready to switch again. Hopefully by then Framework has a satisfactory option. I really just want to see a high-DPI 120Hz display, a reasonably high-end NVIDIA GPU, and "not a downgrade" in terms of RAM or storage from what I have now. (Bonus if they release an 18" version.)

Any luck? I thought about this some more. If it really is a CPU/GPU power contention thing, I was wondering if it makes more sense to just lower the CPU power limit (PL1/PL2) rather than specifically downclocking each of the cores. The BIOS or whatever is setting this off probably cares more about the power use than the clock speed. I'm thinking something like... Run a combined CPU/GPU load (3DMark loop + Prime 95?) and observe that the GPU power level and performance fluctuates. ...Dial down PL1/PL2 and repeat tests until it stops happening. (Maybe just lowering PL2 would be OK. It would only be necessary to do this if you plan to put the GPU to use.) I'm going to be doing this on my system soon. I have found similar behavior with more intensive titles that I have been testing on Linux, and it definitely explains some odd behavior that I saw when trying to run games in the full 4K on Windows. GPU performance is inconsistent and it is often dropping into lower power levels. For instance, if I just run the benchmark in "Shadow of the Tomb Raider" with high resolution and graphics settings, I can see the GPU going from smooth to stuttering and back every few seconds. I can see the GPU "PowerMizer" state drop down when it goes to stutter mode. It happens more readily on the "ultra performance" thermal mode, but using the "optimized"/"balanced" mode doesn't fully stop it from happening. It doesn't happen at all if I disable turbo boost; GPU performance is consistent in that case, but I should be possible to have the CPU run at a good bit higher than the base speed and still be OK. Should be able to adjust PL1/PL2 with Throttlestop on Windows or powercap on Linux ...? I'm not thinking that taking steps to turn off "NVIDIA Dynamic Boost" will fully fix the problem. It doesn't look like that is even working on Ubuntu, the "nvidia-powerd" dynamic boost service is not engaged (even though the files to support it are present). I'm thinking the Dell EC/BIOS is at the root of this right now. ...Just too much high-wattage stuff going on in a system that is not properly set up to handle it? And really, the wattage isn't even that high. 😕

Pretty sure Pascal is the first generation where NVIDIA enforces digital signature verification on the vBIOS. So, you can't just dump the vBIOS, "adjust values", and flash it back on. (Well, you can, but the GPU will reject it and won't operate.) You can however cross-flash a different official vBIOS that comes from another P4000 card if it has more desirable behavior than yours. Maybe someone has found a way around this by now but that was the situation when I was messing with a P5000 back in around 2019.

Yeah I saw this exact page, and its "helpful" but I'm not sure if it might cause other issues. For instance, the TLP configuration seems to turn the WiFi on or off when the Ethernet cable is connected or disconnected. Great. What happens if I have Ethernet connected, power the system off, unplug the cable, and then power it back on? Or vice versa? Will I end up with both connected, or neither connected? Will have to do some testing to make sure funny state cases are covered with appropriate behavior.

I just noticed that Ethernet priority is -100 and Wi-Fi priority is 0. Maybe flipping those around would fix it? I thought maybe it was a Linux "lower priority is better" thing but it looks like that is not the case. (That's just the autoconnect priority so it might not even matter for traffic.)

It's become increasingly clear that going back to Windows would be just an exercise in never-ending frustration, so... Linux may have its own frustrations, but I'm working through things bit by bit, and the only way to go is forward. I'll ask this, maybe this is something you guys have experience with. Is there a good way to get it to disconnect from Wi-Fi if there is an Ethernet connection? (Windows does this automatically.) Network performance between my Windows VM and my network scanner (talking about like a document/photo scanner) is poop if Wi-Fi is connected. The VM only sees one network adapter, and traffic doesn't seem to always prioritize the Ethernet connection. I can script a solution to this as well, just wondering if there was an easy way to do it.

I'm not sure if that will really help you. The system might not draw more than 180W of power even if you hook up a 240W. I just thought that it might be something to try. I'm right now more interested in what happens if you try to disable Dynamic Boost... It might stop the system from trying to steal power from the GPU if there is CPU load pressure.

You can disable Dynamic Boost in the NVIDIA control panel... but not for Ampere and later GPUs? Though, maybe a procedure like this would be helpful. [Edit] Now I am also very interested in disabling or bypassing Dynamic Boost on Linux because I wonder if this might be explaining a few odd things I have been seeing with more intense GPU loads. There is documentation on it. nvidia-settings -q DynamicBoostSupport indicates that dynamic boost is supported, but I do not see a nvidia-powerd service/process running. (Using NVIDIA 525 proprietary drivers from the Ubuntu repos.)

You're on a desktop right? I think that the power management behavior is going to be different. I always see the GPU spending most time in P0. But, the laptop GPUs have a way lower max power level. I had another thought. If we're on the right track, this seems to be a case of a "not ideal" (putting it nicely) implementation of power sharing between the CPU and GPU. Dell's older systems would just power-starve the CPU if the GPU was under load, rather than the other way around, and I think that would be the preferred behavior for gaming (and most other high-GPU loads). Anyway. Do you see the "NVIDIA Platform Controllers and Frameworks" device in Device Manager? I think it is under "Software devices". That driver is at least partly responsible for handling NVIDIA Dynamic Boost (shifting power allocation between the CPU and GPU). I wonder if the system behaves any differently if you just disable it.

Yeah, on desktops or pro GPUs the scale might be wider than the ones I enumerated above. Those are what I have observed on laptops and there is a big drop-off between P2 and P3 (at least on Ampere GPUs in the Precision). You can force a certain power state with NVIDIA Inspector but I don't think that will help here. I tried messing with it before; if Dell wants you in a low power state, it's going to put you in a low power state regardless of what you try to force. And now thinking about it, I have experienced "oscillations" before where a combined CPU/GPU load would force the GPU to throttle on and off periodically. I think the best solution is along the lines of what @Etern4l suggested up above. Do what you need to do to lower the CPU power draw to the point where the system stops throttling the dGPU. You might have to be more aggressive with it. As another test, you could run a high-GPU low-CPU load for a while and confirm that this issue doesn't occur. I'd suggest 3DMark Fire Strike, just run a single GPU test in a loop, windowed. It should put the GPU up to 100% utilization and not even stop for loading between loops. (Then maybe add a separate CPU load and see if the GPU starts power throttling.) [Edit] One more thing. Do you have a 180W or 240W adapter attached to your system? Do you have access to a 240W to test with, if you are using 180W? I don't know if it will matter, but at least on Precision 7670, Dell is shipping 240W with systems with a high-power dGPU.

P3 is not a good state to be in when gaming, that’s what Dell limits you to if you are on the “cool” or “quiet” profiles and it has a huge effect on gaming performance. I bet if you select one of those profiles, you will see it doing the same "slow performance" that you are seeing now, but like, all the time. You want to be in P2 or better. I think the Dell BIOS/EC is the culprit here but I’m not sure what else to suggest. Actually, P0 is the best performance and P8 is the worst as reported here. Not all numbers in the scale are used, it goes P0 (P1?) P2 P3 P5 P8. P8 is the low-power “idle” state. I have seen the 0…4 scale as well where 4 is the highest, but this is not what NVIDIA-SMI reports. My system spends most of its time in 4 with occasional drops to 3 when the NVIDIA GPU is busy. (I’ve been doing a lot of measuring on Linux.)

No, Precision 7550/7560 cards will not fit in Precision 7530/7540. In addition, RTX 4000 and RTX 5000 cards require a heatsink replacement in order to work in Precision 7530/7540 because they have a different component layout and screw positions compared to the other GPU cards. RTX 3000 should be a drop-in replacement if you already have an NVIDIA card in there. (You will have to do INF mod to get the NVIDIA driver to load though.)

Here are some links for old Windows ISOs. https://isofiles.bd581e55.workers.dev/ https://tb.rg-adguard.net/public.php Windows 11 21H1 (build 22000) is only supported until October 2023, unless you have Enterprise/Education edition, then you get an extra year.

nvidia-smi will show you the current power state, and I know you can also see it on the screen in NVIDIA Inspector. Yes. You can also set it in the BIOS setup, and I wrote a command-line tool that can switch it quickly without having to wait for Dell Power Manager to fire up that I can dig up if it turns out that it would be handy. I think @MyPC8MyBrain figured out how to change it from PowerShell as well.

Now I'm sort of curious if you did your own clean Windows 11 install, if it would behave more like Dell's Windows 11 install or your clean Windows 10 install. I agree, the performance difference is crazy.

I also updated my post above with an idea. But if you want to downclock the CPU as @Etern4l suggests, if your game is more GPU-heavy than CPU-heavy then you can just toggle Turbo Boost off and I have a post with a number of "easy" ways to achieve that linked in my sig.

GPU-Z is reporting "power" as the performance cap reason, it would seem that the BIOS or something else in the system is not allowing the GPU to draw more power. Has it been doing this "forever" or is it a new issue ...? [Edit] What do you have the "thermal mode" set to? I have been noticing on my 7770 that the GPU sometimes gets temporarily throttled if there is a heavy or even moderate CPU load going on and the system is set to the "high performance" mode. (This issue seems to be more pronounced under Linux for some reason, but now looking back I think it must have been happening sometimes on Windows too.) The default "balanced"/"optimized" mode seems better about this. Basically I guess I would suggest, if you are using "high performance" mode then try the "balanced" mode, or vice versa, and see if the behavior is better. If you are using any other mode then I would expect GPU throttling for sure. [Edit 2] Oh, if you are experiencing this issue, maybe just switching thermal modes would be enough to kick it back to normal behavior, so maybe try that too. If that does help, it would probably be possible to script a fix to just watch the dGPU power state and give it a kick if there is high GPU utilization but a low power state. I'm assuming it is dropping down to P5 or maybe even P8 when this happens ...?

VBS is an interesting one to look at; they are probably turning it on by default on new Windows 11 systems coming out of Dell but it would not be turned on by default on a new Windows 10 install. It's in Windows Security, "Device security" (on the left), then "Core isolation details". Turn off "memory integrity" and then you will have to reboot. Microsoft even recommends disabling it for top performance.

For those into gaming, here's a cool thing that I just found out about and plan to mess with soon... Gamescope. I always wanted something like this for Windows. It basically creates a whole separate Wayland session to run a game in and then routes it to a window on your desktop (which can be running either X or Wayland). Looking at the Github readme, it appears that they've done a lot of work and thinking on making sure that compositing process is as smooth and efficient as possible. (I've seen a few cases of benchmarks where running a game in Gamescope even makes it slightly faster than running it native.) Aside from making it "impossible" for apps running in your main desktop to mess with your game and vice/versa, it allows you to do things like blow up games running at a lower resolution to full screen without actually changing your desktop resolution, run games that really want to run in 16:9 on a non-16:9 screen without changing your desktop resolution, force a framerate limit without changing your monitor refresh rate, and force full screen games to run in a window if you so choose. There are even options you can set for how scaling should work (i.e. you can use AMD FSR as the upscaler for old games). There are also keyboard shortcuts to change between windowed/full-screen and turn integer scaling on and off on the fly. Does it actually work well on a laptop with Optimus in play? It does say it supports Intel GPUs which should be all that matters, I would think. A quick test looks promising, I didn't have to do anything specific to get a game running inside of Gamescope rendering on the NVIDIA GPU.

Indeed, third-party KMS servers are not a legit way to obtain a license. You do not need to worry about it if you have Windows 10 Home, Pro, Enterprise or Education editions. There is no practical difference in licensing from Windows 10 to Windows 11 and the same product key or OEM license will work for both. (I believe this is true in all territories.) If you upgrade in-place, you will not be asked for a product key and your system will remain activated. This may not be true for less common Windows editions.

Oh yes, I tested that one as well on the 7770 and it was also measurably bad for dGPU performance. (It "sounds" like a good idea, I don't know if they didn't implement it properly or what.)

Check BIOS settings and see if you have Intel "Turbo Boost 3.0" turned on. They added it in a BIOS update at some point and some people here are saying that it defaulted to on, which I would argue is inappropriate. That "feature" causes havoc with max power on the dGPU if I turn it on in my Precision 7770. (I haven't done testing with it on the 7560, but I don't have a beefy dGPU in that system.)