Aaron44126

I agree with @serpro69... There are a lot of people complaining about the Precision 7770 thermals, and the system had a rocky launch, at least among the techy-sorts of people who come to visit a forum like this and expect peak performance from such a system. (Not to mention the manufacturing issues that led to many delayed orders.) But, when the Precision 7770 launched you can bet that they were already a just few months away from finalizing many components of the Precision 7780, so even if they are paying attention to this feedback, they're not going to have time to make any big changes to address it. (Case in point — leaked chassis parts for Precision 7770, spotted in March, had September/October 2021 build dates stamped on them. Precision 7770 didn't launch until July 2022.) Also, Precision 7780 is likely to share a chassis with the Precision 7770 — though, the heatsink/cooler could be tweaked for the better. Dell's system design-to-launch process lasts about two years, so the 2024 Precision systems (Meteor Lake?) might be early enough in the process to take some of this feedback into account. It remains to be seen how much they care about our complaints — if they can sell them in bulk to big businesses regardless of whether or not people like us think that the performance is up to par. And also as @serpro69 alluded, Precision 7770 has essentially no competition in its class, so what are you gonna do? (But, I know that there is some Dell observation of the Precision 7X70 threads on this forum going on.....)

Excellent point. I was thinking about this more after making my previous post. I like the idea of waiting for a Windows client/LTSC release that has parity with a proper Windows Server release before upgrading, because that is one that they will for sure pay extra attention to. Microsoft tends to do that with their LTSC releases, but they didn't do it with LTSC 2021 — but, LTSC 2021 is essentially based on an (at the time) 18-month old Windows 10 release, version 2004, old enough to be pretty solid. And I also remembered that I wanted to reply to your post above but forgot about it after going off track in my last post... When I tried Open Shell on Windows 11, it "sort of" worked, but the way they stick the button onto the taskbar... It doesn't fully cover up the "native" Start button so it's possible to click that one by accident. That was about a year ago, though, it might have been fixed by now. That said, Open Shell doesn't seem to have a tremendous amount of dev interest behind it for making serious improvements. For example, I asked them about a situation where you change the Windows DPI scaling ratio during a session. Open Shell doesn't handle this properly, so you will end up with buttons and menus that are way too large or way too small depending on which way you go. I did get a response but they didn't seem to be interested in addressing this. I've been happily using Start11 for a while now. You have to pay a few bucks, but it works really well and has a lot of options. I've posted a few bug reports on their forum and as long as they can reproduce them internally, they've always addressed them for the next release. As for Windows Subsystem for Android, I played with that for the first time about a month ago. Definitely interesting. I didn't have any trouble with it "working", but the officially available selection of apps was pretty limited. (I know that there are also ways to sideload apps... including the full Google Play store. Didn't try that.) I was pleased that app discovery works really well, installed apps just show up in the Start Menu and they can be pinned to the taskbar without hassle. It does have a notable startup delay... When you start an Android app, if you didn't have any others running, it has to basically boot up Android which takes several seconds. The other issues I have are more to do with just what it is like to shove a touch-focused app onto a traditional PC. Keyboard and mouse interactions are kind of wonky in some apps. You're used to using arrow keys or PgUp/PgDn or the mouse scroll wheel to scroll, for example, but that might not work as you expect (or at all). I'm sure at least some app developers will take note that they have a new potential Windows audience and update their apps to work more smoothly inside of WSA.

I ran Ethernet all throughout my house a couple of years ago, so all bedrooms and common areas have at least one active Ethernet jack in the wall, connected to a pair of switches running down in the basement with my "server" and AT&T gigabit fiber hookup. But, it's just running 1 Gbps. I did CAT6 so I "should" be able to go faster (all of the runs are less than 100 feet), but I don't have any switches or even endpoints that support a higher speed...

UPDATE — Systems are available to order as of March 23, 2023. Here is what we are looking at for the next-gen Precision systems. CPU — Intel 13th-gen "Raptor Lake" HX (i9-13950HX, i7-13850HX, i5-13600HX) Intel 7 process (10nm) — Same as Alder Lake 55W base TDP 8P+16E configuration at the top Modest improvement over Alder Lake, though the extra E cores could give a performance boost of perhaps around 20% in multi-threaded workloads GPU — NVIDIA "Ada Lovelace" mobile workstation GPUs The top card is "NVIDIA RTX 5000 Ada Generation Laptop GPU" (what a mouthful) TSMC 4N process (5nm) The GPUs on offer are A1000 6GB, 2000 Ada, 3500 Ada, 4000 Ada, and 5000 Ada. GeForce RTX 4090 is also available — depending on your region, you might have to go through a sales rep to order a system with the GeForce GPU as the option will not be available from the web site. DDR5 support, up to 128GB, CAMM 128GB option requires a CAMM module ECC options require SODIMM modules (64GB max) PCIe4 support for both dGPU and NVMe drives PCIe5 support is possible; Raptor Lake does have some PCIe5 lanes available, but it may not be implemented as Ada Lovelace uses only PCIe4 and the market for PCIe5 NVMe SSDs isn't quite there yet. Same chassis and cooling setup as Precision 7670/7770. Available to order as of March 23, 2023. Full Raptor Lake Precision lineup: Precision 3480 Precision 3580 Precision 3581 Precision 5480 — Available May 18 Precision 5680 — Available May 18 Precision 7680 Precision 7780

Like @Light said, the new ones are a little bit less wide than prior generations (7740 and older), but not by a whole lot. It holds a standard 17.3" 16:9 panel; the bezel on the left and right side is pretty narrow but unlike the modern XPS 17, there is still a think bezel on the top with the camera and a very thick bezel on the bottom with the "Dell" logo. I just recommend that you pay attention to the chassis options that you want (SSD door or no? fingerprint reader or no?). Unlike 7670 where some options are forced on you, 7770 seems to allow just about any combination that you'd want, other than WWAN+4K not being an option. My experience ordering through a sales rep (both personal and work purchases) is that they don't tend to pay close attention to this point so you'll want to check the quote and make sure that its exactly what you asked for.

I have both 7560 and 7770 that I use every day. I personally prefer the 17" size. (The office provided me with the 15" system.) Nice big screen, better cooling potential, more storage. I don't use it "portable" that much though. (I do carry it around from room to room, but I don't sit with it on my lap or anything.) For size comparison, you can look at some photos and look specifically at the keyboard to get a feel for the size difference. The two systems have exactly the same keyboard but the 7560/7670 have barely any room between the left and right side of the keyboard and the edge of the system, while the 7770 has about a full inch on each side.

So, I spent a few days on Windows 11 (see above) and what really stood out to me was... it really wasn't much different than Windows 10 in terms of actually using it. Granted: I use Directory Opus in place of File Explorer. I use Start11 in place of the default Start Menu. Start11 can also put seconds on the taskbar clock (requires at least Windows 11 22H2, doesn't work with 21H2). There was an issue with this when I tried it, but one thing that I like about about StarDock is that they fix things promptly. I immediately got this app launching at startup to remove rounded corners. ...So, really the only thing immediately noticeable during regular use (other than the stability issues that forced my rollback) was that the taskbar looked a little bit different. I'm still sticking with Windows 10 (LTSC), but the reasoning is more ideological than technical. I like the promise that they will support it but that they won't change stuff. You don't get that with Windows 11. I have the system working how I like, and I don't want it to be messed with... I'm of the opinion that it should be me and not Microsoft who decides when an OS feature upgrade is going to be applied. I'll take monthly security/stability patches but additional features shouldn't be lumped in with those (especially since at least half of them are things that I'll just want to figure out how to disable). Also, there's just a never-ending stream of bugs that I keep seeing for the new 22H2 version. Task Manager not allowing "safely remove hardware", NVIDIA GPU performance issues ...(oh, and more of them), AMD CPU performance issues, broken Windows Hello, and so on and so on. Maybe it's that I no longer have a tolerance or time for having to deal with this sort of stuff and I'd just as soon let things settle down for a bit before I upgrade. Maybe it's that Microsoft's level of QC for new Windows releases has taken a nosedive since Windows 10's release. (Maybe both.) I'll sit it out for a while yet. If I do ever switch back to mainstream Windows, I think that I will run it a year behind for maximum stability / least disruption. I.e., when Windows 11 version 23H2 comes out in fall 2023, maybe I will try again upgrading to 22H2 and see how that goes; the major bugs should all be long sorted out by then, and they won't be dropping new features on it anymore. Then when 24H2 comes out, I can upgrade to 23H2. Etc.

I haven't looked closely at how Task Manager handles Alder Lake (P + E cores running at separate speeds). Does it just report the P cores speed? Or does it average them all? That could drag down what you'd expect to see since the E cores will always be running slower. (HWiNFO will report all of the core speeds individually.)

The fans pull air from the bottom and push it out the back. You can improve it somewhat by enlarging the holes in the bottom vent. https://www.nbrchive.net/forum.notebookreview.com/threads/precision-m4800-cpu-upgrade-tdp-concerns.826646/page-5.html

I understand this. For the longest time I was annoyed by having to keep stuff in sync between even two systems. I would often just RDP to my "server" and run stuff from there. Now that my laptop has enough storage for "everything", I just use it fully as my primary and keep stuff backed up onto my "server" with a robocopy script that runs at night. I think that trying to use Active Directory + roaming profiles would work for some things but it would introduce a whole new pile of problems. (Login/logout sync delay. Issues with file conflicts, i.e. if you used your browser profile from two systems without logging out of one of them first. Applications would still not "sync" unless they were installed to your profile. Etc.) You could look at SCCM / Endpoint Manager to keep applications installed and up to date on all domain systems. We use that at work, but I'm not in charge of managing it, so I don't really know how it works.

Eh? I routinely run with turbo disabled. I've been doing it for years on many different systems. It keeps the system cool and quiet but performance is totally acceptable for light browsing / office work / videos / etc.. (I have a guide about quick toggling linked from my sig.) With today's 16-core CPUs you can even get a pretty decent computational lift with a multi-threaded load. I generally only flip turbo on for video encoding or gaming. But yeah. Under any type of load, today's laptop CPUs will hit 100 ºC, that's just the new normal.

This turned out to be a bust. Something goes wrong with the voltage when you use NVIDIA Inspector to force a certain clock speed. Even just trying to run at 600 MHz, it was getting way too hot and throttling down. Voltage controls through NVIDIA Inspector seem to be locked out on this GPU. I leave it to automatic control, it can maintain 1700+ MHz without a temperature issue. (I left a 3DMark Time Spy test running in a loop while testing this and GPU-Z consistently reported 100% GPU load.) In the end, I solved my stuttering issues somewhat (in my current game anyway) by putting a FPS cap on the game rather than letting it run "unlimited" and letting VRR do its thing... Maybe the GPU is just happier that way. Aside from my trials above... Cooling the dGPU is way easier than cooling the CPU, since its load is spread essentially throughout the entire die rather than just the hotspots where the cores are (and the GA103S die is rather large). I have no trouble pushing it to 130W "full load", clock speed up in the 1700-1800 MHz range, with the temperature chilling in the low 80's ºC. Not sure why it won't go up to 150W but that is not unexpected (Precision 7760 was similar, reporting 140W TDP and operating mostly with a 115W cap) so it's nothing that I'm going to lose sleep over. Games work fine as well (albeit I've generally stepped down to 1440p instead of 4K, where DLSS is not in play). —— I might be complaining here and there but the system is actually working fine for me and I am rather satisfied. I didn't really get it for "absolute top performance" (though I certainly don't mind that and I am up for tinkering with it here and there to edge that up where I can). I got it as a sort of daily driver "everything machine" with plans to use it for a long time, and the huge storage and RAM capacity is probably even more important to me than how fast it is. Only one other 17" Alder Lake system out there that could be achieved in. (It also does top Precision 7760 in benchmark scores... although some light tweaking might be needed to get there in some cases.) It's also been rock-solid stable, which is also more important than speed. And, at least for me, it is appropriately cool and quiet when it is not doing anything. I just wish that Dell was a bit more careful with their components and QA. Why does the Delta fan/heatsink thermal throttle out of the box when the Sunon one does not? Couldn't they use some higher quality thermal compound & pads? (Any one of us can spend $20 and have enough materials to "fix" at least five systems.) Push through a fix for the IA AC/DC loadline configuration issue promptly after it was discovered? I'm a little bit confused why they put such care into the design of their machines and then still end up with issues like this. I do get that they were under a crunch, sort of, to get this thing on the market. I'm not sure what was going on with the manufacturing delays throughout May and June, and if trying to be the first ones with Alder Lake HX systems out the door had any role in these issues that I mentioned.

Just throwing in my two cents (a bit late)... "RAID is not a backup" Even with two drives mirrored, you should have your data stored elsewhere in the case of failure. You can still have accidental file deletion, file system corruption, error during RAID rebuild (as you mention), laptop damaged/stolen, etc. and in each case you will be toast even if RAID1 was implemented. If you have a good backup strategy then I would also question whether RAID1 in the laptop is even needed. You could have more storage capacity if you put the drives in RAID0 or just used them separately.

Dell just posted the Precision 7X70 ISV certified NVIDIA graphics driver. https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=N1R7C The version number is 512.78, which is newer than the previously posted (non-certified) NVIDIA driver 512.36. However, it is older than the version they are offering for Precision 7X10-7X60 systems, 513.63. https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=N45J8 [Edit] The download page for the ISV driver does not list the GeForce 3080 Ti as supported, however, the GeForce is listed in the driver INF file so it "should" work just as well...

Let's see... I've done this many times and it works fine. Windows will do a hardware discovery at first boot on the new system. You will be on the hook to install needed drivers. If the disk controller driver is not present then Windows will fail to boot. With Dell systems, for best chance of success, switch the target system out of RAID mode in the BIOS setup before you make the transfer. RAID mode requires a specific disk controller driver to be installed and this is typically done with the Windows install. The disk image function built into Windows is a little picky about recovery. The target disk must be equal size or larger to the original disk. If it is one byte smaller then it will not allow you to complete the restore. I personally use Macrium Reflect to do disk image backup & restore; it's a bit more flexible, and it is free. You can create bootable USB media to use to execute the image restore. As @Etern4l said, if your Windows license came bundled with your system then it is tied to your hardware. If the target system came with a license, then you can use that, as long as it is the same edition of Windows or an edition that you can upgrade to. Use ProduKey to grab the product key from the BIOS if you need it. (ProduKey may trigger antivirus alerts but it is safe to use.) Yes, other applications that require hardware activation (MS Office, Adobe, etc.) may notice that you are on new hardware. If possible, "deactivate" these products before you switch and reactivate them afterwards. My experience has been that even if you don't deactivate them first, you'll be able to reactivate them on the new hardware without too much hassle. It may say it's going to deactivate the other version for you, or send you to a website to do something... it depends on the product and how they have it set up.

On the Dell side, it seems to be that tricks like this to enable S3 sleep and try to use it don't really work — BIOS support for it is non-existent or half-baked, since they just expect you to be using "Modern Standby" (which everybody hates). I don't know of anyone who has gotten S3 sleep working on a Tiger Lake / 11th gen system or later (again, on the Dell side). The general consensus is to just forget about "Sleep" and go straight to "Hibernate" 😕

The current Alder Lake model has two NVMe slots only. (I looked it up just a bit ago, and it makes sense as this is a limitation of Alder Lake H has a much more limited PCIe setup than Alder Lake HX.) I don't know about older models, it wouldn't surprise me if they have previously offered four slots. Heck, I used to be somewhat interested in the Alienware 17" line when they also offered four NVMe slots, but that is also gone now. Intel can sort of be thanked for this reduction in PCIe capability. Alder Lake H has a much more limited setup than Tiger Lake H did.

Lenovo has only put out 16" for this generation. Razer's is only Alder Lake H (as @1610ftw mentioned). No 128GB, no 4× NVMe – these require Alder Lake HX. (No numeric keypad!) The only other manufacturer offering a sort-of real 17" workstation is MSI, and I haven't heard great things about their business-level support. There's also how long support goes on for. Dell is still releasing BIOS and driver updates for Precision 7X10 (7 years old!). HP is a runner up since they have somehow managed to cram 4× NVMe into their 16" ZBook. (Any info on how the GPU performs in that system? HP is sort of known for gimping that too.) We can whine and complain about the Precision 7770, but as far as proper 17" workstations go, there isn't really any competition. 😕 Can't even pretend to use a 17" gaming system as a workstation since most of those are also just using Alder Lake H and are thus limited in the RAM and storage department.

Manipulating the GPU clock speed Observation: When gaming, I've been noticing some inconsistent performance. The GPU doesn't seem to react to a change in load "immediately". For example, playing a regular third-person game with a game controller where the right stick controls the camera... Everything is working fine at 60+ FPS. However, if I swing the right stick to snap the camera around quickly, that induces a motion blur effect which is more "expensive" for the GPU to process, and the game stutters for a few moments. It recovers, so if I spin the camera in circles for a while everything is smooth, but the initial stutter is obnoxious. (I've noticed this in two different games.) Hypothesis: The GPU needs to ramp the speed up to consistently handle the more expensive motion blur effect, but it takes it a good several frames to "realize" this and make the adjustment, resulting in a choppy framerate for maybe half a second. (This is just one example. I've noticed other cases where the GPU seems to be lagging briefly when the demand increases suddenly. In some situations — basically, emulators, or poorly-written games — it can lead to audio stuttering as well.) So, I'm looking for a way to set the GPU clock to a fixed (high) speed and not let it adjust up and down dynamically based on the load, to see if that fixes this problem. I don't necessarily care about the power efficiency implications in this case. NVIDIA would have you do this with the nvidia-smi command line tool. You can just do: nvidia-smi -ac <memory clock>,<base clock> ...and those clocks will be locked in unless it needs to throttle due to heat/power. Other interesting commands are: nvidia-smi -q -d SUPPORTED_CLOCKS (list out supported clock speeds) nvidia-smi -rac (reset clock speed to default/automatic) But, this method only works with pro GPUs, so if you have the GeForce then you are out of luck. (Sort of wish that I sprung for the A5500.) So, I found this ten-year-old guide that uses NVIDIA Inspector. https://www.overclock.net/threads/guide-nvidia-inspector-gtx670-680-disable-boost-fixed-clock-speed-undervolting.1267918/ (Click "Continue reading" to expand the top post, don't just skip it and scroll down to the thread.) I've already tried using this command to force the dGPU to the P0 power state, and if I do that, the clock speed is locked — but at 420 MHz, way too slow. nvidiaInspector.exe -forcepstate:0,0 The guide recommends using the P2 power state which lets you set the clock to a fixed value. (P0 has you adjust the clock speed using an offset, not a fixed value.) If I force P2, the clock speed is also locked at 420 MHz. But, if I try to adjust it as the linked guide above suggests, it just bounces right back to 420 MHz. This is the case with both the NVIDIA Inspector GUI and the command-line interface. I can't figure out how to adjust the base clock speed while the GPU is in the P2 state. (I am able to adjust the memory clock, just not the base clock.) So, back to trying P0, which allows you to change the clock using an offset and not a discrete value. The offset it allows you to pick from goes all of the way up to +1,000 MHz, though, so that's not terrible. This command successfully locks the dGPU in the P0 power state and a fixed base clock speed of 1,417 MHz. nvidiaInspector.exe -forcepstate:0,0 -setBaseClockOffset:0,0,1000 This command resets things back to normal. nvidiaInspector.exe -forcepstate:0,16 -setBaseClockOffset:0,0,0 (Trying to set the offset higher than 1,000 doesn't work. This limitation can vary by GPU and is imposed by the vBIOS.) I'd like to go a little higher than 1,417 MHz. (My 3DMark run had it staying over 1,500 MHz the whole time.) But, not the worst situation. 1,417 MHz is higher than the "advertised" boost clock of 1,395 MHz. And, if it solves my inconsistency/stuttering problem, then I might be willing to accept the trade-off. For gaming, I care more about consistency than absolute top performance. I'll play with it while gaming this evening. More experimentation to come. Just dropping this here in case any of you guys also want to try messing with the GPU clock. Let me know if you find a way to force it higher than 1,417 MHz. 🙂 Using P2 would be ideal. Maybe there is some trick required to set the speed in P2 on newer GPUs that I am not finding. Note — NVIDIA Inspector is a very useful tool, but it hasn't been updated in forever. The NVIDIA Inspector command-line interface is broken on Windows 10 because it tries to use the wrong version of .NET Framework. To fix it, just remove the "nvidiaInspector.exe.config" file. The program still works fine without this file, it will revert to a "default" version of .NET Framework.

Now, it's showing resizable BAR enabled in GPU-Z on Windows 10. I didn't even reboot since I reported that it was showing disabled last night. No idea what is going on with this thing.

Ran 3DMark Time Spy and got 11,081 — the teensiest better than my original run when I first got the system. https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/81802568? [Edit] GPU-Z is showing resizable BAR is showing "Disabled" in Windows 10 and "Enabled" in Windows 11 (where I ran that benchmark). GPU-Z shows "Yes" for everything related to resizable BAR in Windows 10, yet it is still showing Disabled. (Not going to worry any more about it. Clearly it didn't impact performance very much.)

Just noticed that NVIDIA Dynamic Boost 2.0 is showing disabled in BIOS 1.15.2. I remember taking note that it was enabled with BIOS 1.8.x. Is anyone else seeing this?

Yeah, not talking about "control" for it, just showing if it is enabled or not. Here is my Precision 7560. (Also, what the heck. Dynamic Boost 2.0 should be enabled, it was enabled in BIOS 1.8.0, and now apparently disabled again...)

Never mind, it is indeed now enabled…. I was looking at the Intel GPU there. If you click the resizable BAR bit in GPU-Z, it shows you details on why it may be disabled.

Dynamic boost 2.0 will be listed separately. I did the command and after reboot, GPU-Z still shows resizable BAR disabled.