Aaron44126

Not sure when they started offering this but Dell has (expensive) CAMM modules available to order standalone from their web site. 16GB - https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-camm-memory-upgrade-16gb-4800mhz/apd/370-ahfq/memory 32GB - https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-camm-memory-upgrade-32gb-4800mhz/apd/370-ahft/memory 64GB - (not there for some reason) 128GB - https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-camm-memory-upgrade-128gb-3600mhz/apd/370-ahfr/memory

Precision 7X80 support pages are live. (Launch is imminent. @SuperCompute is probably right about "by April 1". It could be as soon as tomorrow. Dell likes Tuesday/Thursday system launches.) https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/product-support/product/precision-16-7680-laptop/overview https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/product-support/product/precision-17-7780-laptop/overview Also, Precision 3480, 3580, and 3581 support pages went live. No 5000 series. A little bit surprised at the abruptness of this launch because in the last few years, Dell has been pre-announcing these with press material a few weeks in advance. I guess with just the CPU/GPU spec bump and no other changes, there isn't that much to hype up ...?

I was testing some cross-device "awareness" this morning and this is pretty slick. For example, if I get a message and then "read" it in Beeper, the unread mark properly goes away on my phone and watch. Same if I go the other way, the unread alert dot thing goes away in Beeper if I "dismiss" a message on my watch. It also seems to know if I'm actively engaged in a conversation from Beeper and it will avoid alerting from my watch on every reply. Very similar behavior to how it works if I'm just using the real Mac iMessage client.

https://blog.beeper.com/p/state-of-the-app-spring-2023 Here they are saying they hope to clear out the waitlist in the next three months. (We'll see....) There seems to be a lot of effort going into this and I have no idea how these guys are making any money, if they aren't charging for the app...

They have a full desktop version. https://www.beeper.com/download The weirdest thing about it is you have to link Google Contacts to get contacts working, so that means I have to do some double contacts work (between Apple and Google) to have contact names (rather than phone numbers) show up right in Beeper. They are saying they will support Apple contacts on Windows later this year.

Beeper is now free as well (check their blog, there’s an article about it). They will put certain features behind a paywall for a “pro version” at some point. I’ve been using the app only for a day or so, and while it is “rough around the edges” in some ways, it has been stable and it is the best “iMessage-on-Windows” experience I have had to date, easily. I’ve also sent some questions in through their built-in support chat and they’ve been very responsive and friendly. [Edit] Blog link - https://blog.beeper.com/p/beeper-is-now-free

Nice. Poked through a bit. No surprises. Chassis is the same as 7770. Heatsink/cooler is the same as 7770. dGPU card looks to be laid out the same — I didn't have time just yet look extra close but if the screw positions and such are the same then upgrading a 7770 with a 7780 GPU might be possible.

Two here. Canon PIXMA MX512 — A multifunction inkjet/copier/scanner, I use it mostly for scanning photos and documents. I'm big on digitizing and then shredding paper documents, and I have an ongoing family photo archive project in progress. Occasionally I use it for color photo prints which it does a pretty decent job at. Bought in June 2012. Samsung ML-1210. A plain, black & white laser printer. I was gifted this in 2009 by a Mac-using colleague because this printer wouldn't work with Mac OS X anymore, I think after the transition to Intel CPUs (Samsung never released a proper driver). It still works fine with Windows (though you have to use a different printer model's driver in order to have a "signed" driver, which has been required since maybe Windows 8). ...I do need to do some work on this one, it has recently started sometimes picking up more than one sheet from the paper tray, I think it needs the rollers cleaned or something. The Canon is attached to the network via Ethernet. The Samsung is USB only (err, it also has a parallel port) so I have it attached to an AirPort Extreme which is able to serve it up as a raw TCP socket printer. I'm happy to continue using these as long as they still work. If I ever have to get a new printer, I won't get anything with "ink DRM" which may limit my options, it seems.....

At GTC today, NVIDIA formally announced the new mobile workstation GPU lineup. Here it is. https://nvdam.widen.net/s/dmdqnnwcmk/proviz-mobile-linecard-update-2653183 Ridiculous mouthful names aside, it should be noted that A1000 is an Ampere GPU and not Ada, and also GeForce RTX 4090 should be the same specs as the RTX 5000 Ada GPU (minus ECC memory + professional-locked features). [Edit] Also noting that the 4000 ADA GPU has only 12 GB of vRAM, a step down from last generation's A4500. [Edit 2] A1000 6GB has different specs than A1000 4GB. More CUDA cores, but narrower memory bus.

The images that I posted are out of the Dell support manual for those systems. I'm thinking that one is from a Precision 7670 "thin chassis" dGPU, which probably has the fans scooted over a bit to the right so the dGPU has less space. From your photo, it does appear that the larger "performance chassis" dGPUs are the same size between the two systems, and the heatsink screw receptors seem to be in the same places as well. The dGPU footprint between Precision 7670 and 7770 is not the same. It is similar, but you will see that the 7770 dGPU cards are a bit larger with more/bigger VRMs, and heatsink mounting screws are not in the same place. [Edit] Actually, the Precision 7680 only has one set of dimensions listed. Have they done away with the "thin chassis"?

Precision 7670 GPU upgrade potential? First, it has to fit. Here we have a 7670 dGPU on the left and a 7680 dGPU on the right. The 7680 dGPU is physically wider (left-to-right in the picture above), check the extra space to the left of the DGFF connectors. I'm not sure if all Precision 7670 cards are the same size as the one pictured here, or if there is extra space to the left of the dGPU to allow a wider card to be installed ...? [Edit] The screw holes for the heatsink attachment are in different positions, but that may be expected in "thin" chassis vs. "performance" chassis dGPUs. In any case, it's feasible that you could take both a Precision 7680 dGPU and heatsink and install them in a Precision 7670 — Precision 7X30 could be upgraded that way using Precision 7X40 parts. [Edit 2] It appears that this is a comparison between a thin chassis dGPU (left) and a performance chassis dGPU (right), so no good.

Precision 7680/7780 documentation page is live at the Dell Education site. https://education.dellemc.com/content/emc/en-us/prm/home/product-details.html?id=cninv000000000663221 There's a page for the 7680 service manual, but not the 7780 as of now. This page tends to be kind of slow and flaky compared to the regular Dell support site, at least for me. You might have to wait a bit for the service manual to actually load. There are views of the chassis in the service manual. Best I can tell, the Precision 7670 and 7680 chassis are identical. Here's the Precision 7680 cooler (dGPU version). It's a little different than the 7670 cooler but they have not gone crazy and added a giant vapor chamber or anything. [Edit] Like last year, no ECC CAMM modules. ECC configuration caps out at 64 GB. dGPUs listed are: A1000, A2000 Ada, A3500 Ada, A4000 Ada, A5000 Ada, and GeForce RTX 4090. Windows 10 support is still on the list. Ethernet is still "only" gigabit.

Another one... I had totally forgotten about this, but I just got an invite to sign up for Beeper. (I put myself on the waitlist when the service was first announced, maybe a couple of years ago?) I was interested in this app not only for iMessage-on-Windows support, but because I really like the idea of having one app that can handle multiple chat networks. I used to use Trillian with AIM, ICQ, MSN/Windows Live, Yahoo!, Google, Skype, and Facebook IM accounts. Trillian is now useless as a multi-network client because all of the networks that I listed there have either shut down, or changed how they work to the point that Trillian can't interface with them anymore. Trillian doesn't seem to be interested in reviving any of this functionality for the networks that still exist or new networks (WhatsApp, Discord, Telegram, etc.)... Their business model has shifted more to running their own private IM services for businesses. Anyway. Beeper supports modern networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Discord, Google Chat, and ... iMessage. Since iMessage requires either a real Apple iOS/iPadOS device or working macOS instance (which doesn't necessarily have to be running on a real Mac), their iMessage support comes in two flavors; cloud, or self-hosted. Cloud is easiest to set up. They provide the service by actually hooking up your Apple account to a real macOS instance that they host and using that to pass the messages through. There's a page on how it works including some notes on how they handle security. Self-hosted is an option if that makes you nervous; the self-hosted option requires you to install their iMessage gateway software on your own Mac. Unlike the Bluetooth phone tether solution, using a Mac gateway allows access to a richer experience (send & receive photos/files, group messaging, etc.). Anyway. I downloaded the app, successfully hooked it up to an Apple/iMessage account, and I'll be seeing how it goes... I'm not going to hook up any other networks until I see if this is even usable for iMessage, which is the one that I use the most. [Edit] Looks like you can self-host the whole thing if you want too.

Popping in for "fact check" DLSS 1 has to be trained per-game but DLSS 2 and up use a generic model. NVIDIA has confirmed that Turing (2000 series) will also get this AI video scaling function, within the next few months.

BIOS update 1.10.0. https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=C9NWC Note, if Dell included an Intel CPU microcode update, undervolting may be non-functional. - Fixed the issue where the system cannot detect the Dell DA310 USB-C Multiport adapter after updating the BIOS. This issue occurs after connecting the adapter to the system. - Fixed the issue where an error message is displayed when you connect the 45 W and 65 W adapters to the system. - Fixed the issue where the system charges beyond the Custom Charge Stop set in the Battery Configuration in the BIOS setup. - Fixed the issue where an error message is displayed when you connect the 45 W and 65 W adapters to the system. - Fixed the issue where an application does not close when you press the Alt+F4 hotkey. - Fixed the issue where the system cannot turn on after entering storage mode and plugging in the 130 W adapter. - Fixed the issue where the system stops responding when the system boots to the operating system. - Fixed the issue where the system reboots repeatedly when USB bootable devices with longer product name and serial number are connected to the system. - Fixed the issue where system cannot connect to the BIOSConnect server with all the supported WLAN cards. - Fixed the issue where the system cannot detect the SmartCard in the Preboot Execution Environment (PXE).

I have no experience with that particular model, but I think it should work fine if you want to use it as a laptop. Most Dell laptops support Linux just fine "out of the box", with the only troublesome thing being less common components like a fingerprint reader. Thus, I'm not sure how the touchscreen would behave on Linux — you'll have to try it and see, or if you don't care to use it, just ignore it.

I also had a problem with the 9418 version and I am still running the previous one, 9363. I have not installed any of these new driver versions just yet, I am in "change freeze" while waiting for my replacement heatsink assembly. I do install the Intel Management Engine drivers. I have seen recommendations to disable the Intel Dynamic Tuning service but I have not done this myself.

It appears so, or at least it is/was a configurable option. Dell has a fingerprint reader driver posted. https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=v30y0&oscode=wt64a&productcode=xps-17-9710-laptop This support page specifically shows "power button with fingerprint reader" on the image of the system. https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-us/xps-17-9710-laptop/xps-17-9710-setup-and-specifications/top?guid=guid-5fe1b857-0eef-49c4-94a8-285f27e7e23c&lang=en-us The general "rule" for these newer Dell laptops is, if you see the "power symbol" on the power button, it is not a fingerprint reader. If the power button is just an unmarked all black key, then it is a fingerprint reader.

On laptops at least, subsystem ID is defined by your motherboard and not by the GPU card. It will actually change if you move the GPU to a different laptop. This is why INF mods are often needed for “unsupported” NVIDIA GPU upgrades — the subsystem ID of the card in your laptop doesn’t match any entries in the INF file for that card. A Dell MXM card inserted into your HP laptop will get the same subsystem ID as the card you’re using right now. I don’t remember exactly what I had to do to get nvflash to flash the card in that case, it’s been 8-9 years ago. I do know the dGPU was showing an error in Device Manager and wouldn’t start. If the laptop didn’t have hybrid graphics then I wouldn’t have been able to boot and see anything. I suggest Linux just because I think it’s less likely you’ll have a crash while flashing under Linux. I’ve personally had nvflash cause a BSOD on Windows at least twice. You can most likely take the vBIOS from a HP MXM M2200 card and then flash it on the Dell card and have it work fine. I know some users have done this sort of cross-flashing with success. …The card might even work without touching the vBIOS. I’m more familiar with the Dell laptop side, where users have used cards with i.e. Clevo vBIOS and no trouble.

nvflash will always flash the entire vBIOS. Indeed, if something goes wrong with the flash process then you could be in trouble. I had a Quadro K5000M die with a BSOD during a flash once and it became unusable. I found someone on Reddit who provided nvflash commands to re-attempt the flash and get things back in working order, and it worked. I now generally recommend always flashing from Linux if you are comfortable with that, and having hybrid graphics turned on so that you can boot up even after a bad flash (if your laptop supports it). You can also use a hardware flasher to flash a new vBIOS even if the card is "bricked" by attaching directly to the vBIOS chip, and those aren't that expensive.

I think it's normal to not have manual brightness control if you are using a "generic" graphics driver and not the "real" one, which would be the case if you boot into WinPE. You'd have to rely on the BIOS to set the brightness properly before WinPE boots, and if that is not possible, well then... 😕 (I'm only really familiar with Dell and they always have BIOS options to set the default brightness, both for AC power and battery power.) I also use Macrium Reflect. I only ever boot to WinPE to do a clone or restore (pretty uncommon). For doing a backup, you can do it right in Windows without booting separately to WinPE. Macrium Reflect uses Volume Shadow Copy to make a "snapshot" of your disk when the image process starts, so you can even continue working while the backup image is building without worry that it will do some kind of inconsistent backup. I have mine set on a schedule to run at night, backing up to a network drive.

I did the Windows 10 install myself. Very little Dell software installed. I do still have the stock OEM Windows 11 install available to boot from. Thermal/fan issues seem to be present in both, making me think a hardware issue rather than a software one.

That one was pretty clear-cut (IMO). I "caught" the NVIDIA audio driver gobbling CPU time on the "System" process and causing stutters in videos/games. The problem went away immediately when I disabled it. That's why I went to stub it out. (It is useless to me, I don't have any situation where the NVIDIA audio driver would actually be needed.) I will of course keep in mind that there may be another (deeper?) issue. Overall, I wish this system was a bit more solid, feels like I am always fighting with something. 😕

Man, you really don’t like that stub. It’s literally doing nothing, by design, except from prevent the NVIDIA HD audio driver from being loaded — as if the driver wasn’t even installed (except I don’t have a Device Manager error). In this case, the first crash was February 27, a few days before I implemented the stub. Of my hypothesis about the bad card is wrong, we’ll find out. In any case, I have been looking and see numerous cases reported of a bad card causing BSOD or other system issues. It doesn’t always result in “clean” read/write errors.

Yeah, I follow a similar procedure turning each screw just a little bit until they all bottom out. ————————————————— Had something else weird happen. I've been having some more unexplained crashes in recent days. Just this morning, the system went and just locked up. After forcing a reboot, the Dell BIOS really wanted to run a hardware diagnostics, even though I have the SupportAssist recovery options turned off in BIOS setup. So I dug in today and saw that the last thing showing up in Event Viewer before the crash is a PCIe device error: I checked out that device name PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_7ABA, and it turns out that it corresponds to the PCIe slot hosting the SD card reader. I've been running with an SD card inserted in order to facilitate moving files between different installed OS's (Windows 10, Windows 11, Linux) — and actually I rarely boot into one of the others so I don't use this often, but I've just left the SD card inserted so that I don't have to go looking for it in the case that I need it. I need something like this since I use BitLocker and I have it purposefully set up such that the OS's can't see each other's partitions. (I guess I could just make a tiny unencrypted shared partition.) The SD card in question is just 8GB and it's probably like 15 years old, so maybe it is flaking out? Can a misbehaving SD card take down the whole system .....? (Quick edit — Looking at some online stories, looks like the answer regarding whether a bad SD card can cause system crashes is "definitely yes". It would probably be less likely if the SD card reader was attached via USB and not direct PCIe.) Anyway, I just pulled the card out and I will run without and see if that takes care of the problem.