Aaron44126

This is normal since we have different systems. There is a command-line flag to override it and flash anyway, "overridesub" or something like that.

Yeah, as stated above, NVIDIA control panel shows 150W TDP. Nope, if graphics switching is disabled then the iGPU is disabled, even in BIOS. If there was trouble with the dGPU starting up, you'd have to reset the BIOS to enable the iGPU again. (That was easier back when the coin-cell battery was readily accessible...)

NVIDIA control panel shows TDP of 150W, but in practice it doesn't seem to go above 130W. I dumped the vBIOS with nvflash. I recommend that if you are going to flash a new one: Back up your original vBIOS in case you need to roll back to it. (@Ionising_Radiation tried this trick on Precision 7560 to improve GPU performance but ended up having to roll back because it was causing issues, I do not recall exactly what.) Have graphics switching enabled (easier to recover in case of trouble). Use Linux to do the flash if you are comfortable with it. You can do it from a "live USB" environment. (Less chance of trouble. I've had multiple occurrences of BSOD in the middle of a flash on Windows. Can be tedious to recover from if it is interrupted.) [Edit] Here is @Ionising_Radiation's post after the flash. https://notebooktalk.net/topic/24-precision-7560-precision-7760-owners-thread/?do=findComment&comment=12168 7770-3080Ti.zip

GPU-Z 2.50 won't let me dump it. It says "BIOS reading not supported on this device".

I dunno? I do not have any Lenovo systems to mess with. My requirements are 17" + four NVMe SSD slots ... There are very few options for this generation.

If you use an "advanced" custom scaling setting, you lose the ability to set a different scaling level for each display connected. It becomes one scaling level for all displays for the duration of your Windows session. Also, applications that properly support high-DPI may have assets for the stock scaling levels but not for any custom level, so some things like toolbar icons / etc. may have a funny blur filter applied if you are using a custom scaling level. I'd suggest that you try the stock ones first, I think you'll be able to find one that is satisfactory (even if it is a little bit different than you're "used to").

For CPU loads it might be about the same or slightly better on “cool”. Throw in the GPU, though, and performance is gimped on “cool”. It won’t let the dGPU go to P0 power state.

It depends on the app. Most current versions of mainstream apps work great at different scaling ratios. I have some business apps that don't behave properly. (Java apps are frequent offenders.) If an app is not behaving properly, you can go to compatibility settings on the EXE, advanced / override scaling behavior, and set it to "System" scaling. That will make it run as if it was at 100% scaling and Windows will do bitmap scaling to blow it up to the size that it needs to be for your high-DPI display. So, it will be the right size but it might look a little bit blurry as it has been scaled up. I haven't run into any misbehaving apps that can't be "fixed" in this manner.

I was able to get 11K in TimeSpy (without any tuning) on the Precision 7770. This might be a case in the difference in power limits / cooling potential between the two systems... And also between these systems and systems designed more for gaming. I have not tried again since repasting and doing the loadline fix. I don't think that it would improve much, this is a more GPU-driven test and the GPU power limit would be the main performance-limiting factor, since it doesn't come anywhere near thermal throttling territory. (Undervolting the GPU may help nudge performance up.)

The IA AC/DC loadline fix: setup_var CpuSetup 0x132 0xAA # set IA AC LoadLine LSB to 170 (1.7mOhms) setup_var CpuSetup 0x133 0x0 # set IA AC LoadLine MSB to 0 To get to the prompt to enter these commands, visit this tutorial and hop down to step 5. I had never done this before, but I was done in less than ten minutes. https://brendangreenley.com/undervolting-2020-dell-laptops-like-the-vostro-7500-and-more-tips-to-improve-thermals-battery-life-and-speed/#cpu-undervolt You'll have to do something similar to enable undervolting anyway. (@MyPC8MyBrain posted the specific commands somewhere in here...) Regarding the fans, I was more asking if you can hear any noise at all when they power on. (My Precision 7560 fans are completely silent when turning on and at low RPM. I really like that. My Delta fans make an obvious sound when they power on.) Most people are reporting that they make some power on noise. ...Really, I just need to actually call Dell and get my own replacement heatsink. Haven't made the time.

Do the IA AC/DC loadline fix if you haven't yet (that added almost 20% my Cinebench score). Can you hear any noise when your new fans power on (i.e. when first turning on the laptop)?

Optimus leverages the Intel GPU when the NVIDIA GPU is not needed, to save you power. If you don't care about battery life, you can disable it. (Do not worry about the Windows 7 only text. That's there because Windows 7 was the newest OS when this system launched, and Optimus doesn't work with Windows XP, which was also supported on this system. It works with later OS's.)

They tend to use the same chassis for (at least) two iterations so I think it will be 2024 before we see that refreshed. (They'll likely change up the naming scheme too, because the 3000/5000/7000 lines are running out of numbers...) It's possible that the cooler/heatsink could see some tweaks, though. Again... Just my speculation.

Possibly they could arrive as early as May, but the cadence is getting pretty predictable. Right now, this new stuff is only available in desktops, and that will be the way that it is through the holiday season. CES 2023 will have both NVIDIA and Intel teasing their new products in laptops. Maybe we will see GeForce "4070" / "4080" in laptops and some Raptor Lake H systems in February/March. Raptor Lake HX will be held back until late April / early May. And Precision "7X80" will launch some weeks after the Raptor Lake HX reveal, not right along with it. ...Obviously, this is just speculation on my part, but I laid out a similar timeline for Precision 7X70 a year ago and it more or less came to pass. Of course, marketing people do their own thing; back then I didn't know about the Alder Lake branding shakeup and the splitting up of the "H" and "HX" lines... What I am referring to as "Alder Lake H" in that post turned out to be "Alder Lake HX", and "GeForce 3000 SUPER" just turned out to be "GeForce 3000 Ti" laptop GPUs. Also not anticipated was whatever manufacturing issues caused Dell to delay these systems from May all the way until July. (Dell even stated on their Precision deep-dive event that they had intended to launch these in May.) I think it's almost time to spin up a Precision 7X80 pre-release thread. 🙂

Waiting for new stuff to trickle down is always a bit sad. We won't see Lovelace or Raptor Lake in the Precision 7000 line until June/July 2023. I thought about waiting one more year for Lovelace, but I was just tired of waiting for "the next thing" which is always right around the corner. (I already pushed back my system purchase a year to get Alder Lake.) I'll also be surprised if it gets anywhere near 2× performance improvement on the mobile side. It seems that on the desktop side, that has been achieved in part by jacking up the power requirements. DLSS 3 is really interesting, though, and can effectively (nearly?) double the framerate in games that support it. I might try my hand at a GPU upgrade in the future, if it is feasible. Precision 7X80 will likely use the same chassis, so its GPU cards might fit in to 7X70. Now that I know how to change the laptop's subsystem ID, it should be possible to drop in a newer GPU without having to worry about NVIDIA INF mods (and thus tripping certain DRM/anti-cheat software).

Oh, if you have the "Cool" thermal profile set... Try with "Ultra performance" instead. I wonder if Dell is further limiting the NVIDIA GPU power level like they are with the "Quiet" profile. You could check with NVIDIA Inspector and just looking at the P-State. P8 is the lowest performance and P0 is the highest. In the "Quiet" profile it will not go to a higher performance state than P3 and that is definitely noticeable in games.

No, this a well-known thing. The virtualization support blocks access from the OS to some low-level registers that ThrottleStop needs to be able to manipulate for certain functions. (I thought that it was just having Hyper-V enabled in Windows, but maybe it is having virtualization enabled in the BIOS at all.) I've found that 4K gaming in newer titles probably isn't going to work out, except with maybe a good DLSS implementation to push it over the edge. I've been having decent results with 1440p (...and I can't really tell the difference). I published some 3DMark numbers on the second post in this thread. Not surprised if a Turing desktop card can beat it. It basically boils down to the "low" power limit for this GPU compared to the power limits that you see in desktops (especially if it has to "share" with the CPU). I’m also going to try undervolting the GPU, which I don’t expect to be transformative but will help a little bit.

Yeah, this is what has been putting me off from working with it. I think that you can do "some" things but undervolting specifically is locked out. Someone told me that you can disable virtualization, find the right voltages, and then set them with appropriate setup_var variables and it'll work even if virtualization is enabled. I haven't taken the time to figure that out yet. Also, it's not really virtualization turned on in the BIOS that messes you up here. It's just having Hyper-V enabled in Windows. (Or, that's my understanding. Also something I haven't taken the time to poke with.) If you don't need Hyper-V, then turn it off and you might be in a better spot. I'm a VMware guy, myself... but now I need to keep Hyper-V on for WSL.

I think that's dated advice from when SSDs were smaller and TBWs were less. Hibernate away.

Studio drivers added today (links in OP).

This has been normal since forever for Dell systems. The BIOS defaults to RAID on — presumably so that boot configurations that depend on RAID won't get broken if the BIOS settings are reset for whatever reason. If you don't need RAID, switching to AHCI/NVMe makes things a little simpler. You don't have to worry about loading the Intel RST driver before you can see drives while installing Windows, for example. Linux appears to tolerate RAID on just fine with individual drives, though it doesn't support the actual RAID arrays. Note that if you switch between RAID on or not and you use Windows, you must take some steps to make Windows happy or you will get a boot failure.

Audio driver update 6.0.9394.1. https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=44RR8 - Fixed the issue where there is no sound from the Dell Slim Soundbar SB521A when the system is in Battery mode. On the subject of the audio driver, I fought with that a bit over the past few days in both Precision 7560 and 7770. You need Dell Optimizer installed in order for certain audio functions to work, like being able to specify if you plugged in headphones or a headset to the 3.5mm jack (required to activate the microphone input on that jack). Also, without Optimizer installed, you can get "pop" sounds when sounds like alerts start or stop. It's like the sound chip "sleeps" while its not doing anything and then pops while it is changing power states. (This has been an issue with the Precision line since M4800/M6800, when they switched to using the Realtek sound chip.) This doesn't happen with Optimizer installed. I have found that Dell Optimizer activates certain "enhancements" for conference calling type apps (MS Teams, Webex, Zoom, etc.). I don't like them, it makes people's voices sound echo-y and weird. You can disable the enhancements in the Optimizer app, but then everything in my work conference app (Webex) is super quiet compared to other sounds on the system, so there is still some kind of filter in place even with everything audio-related in Dell Optimizer turned off. That in turn can be fixed by going to the "Sound control panel" in Windows and just disabling "audio enhancements" for the output sound device. Everything will then sound "normal" and at the appropriate volume level. However, I'm using another third-party audio filter to apply a simple -20dB filter to my headphones output. The default headphones output sound is way too loud. I have to run with the Windows volume set to "4" or "6", which means granular control of the volume level using the keyboard is not possible. (Windows changes it in increments of "2", so there are only a few settings to choose from in a reasonable volume range, often I have to decide between "a little too quiet" and "a little too loud".) With the -20dB filter in place I can run with the volume more like in the 40-60 range and I can more easily settle on a volume level that is "just right". This filter needs "audio enhancements" enabled to work. So, I need "audio enhancements" enabled, but I can't find any setting in Dell Optimizer that makes conference apps sound "normal". I ended up removing Dell Optimizer and replacing it with an older MaxxAudio application. It performs the same function as Optimizer for purposes of audio support (headset+microphone support / no audio pops / control over audio enhancements / etc.) but you can actually fully disable all of the enhancements if you like, and conference apps will sound unfiltered. To disable enhancements, just open the app, hit each of the three main sections, and turn the toggle switch at the top off. You'll have to repeat this for each output device that you use (system speakers, headphones, USB audio output, ...). URL for the MaxxAudio app is: https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/waves-maxxaudio-pro-for-dell-2019/9PJPPGG8TGVG?hl=en-us&gl=us

To get to the prompt to enter these commands, visit this tutorial and hop down to step 5. https://brendangreenley.com/undervolting-2020-dell-laptops-like-the-vostro-7500-and-more-tips-to-improve-thermals-battery-life-and-speed/#cpu-undervolt

No, I've had it for almost three months. It is under warranty so I can have parts replaced if needed. I will run with graphics switching enabled for now and listen out for more reports...