Aaron44126

You just want to have them send the "same part" you already have... So far, I think that everyone who has tried has ended up receiving the Sunon part. They should be able to figure out the part number (they shouldn't even be allowed to send you a part that isn't already in your system), but if they can't, you can find it yourself. Go to dell.com/support, put in your service tag number, and then click "View product specs" on the next page and it will take you to the full parts list. Look under the GPU section for one labeled "ASSY,HTSNK".

I am curious about this, it seems pretty odd. I am wondering if maybe just an early/testing vBIOS was included on their card by mistake. Did this user give the version number for the vBIOS in their system that was reporting 157W TDP? It should be visible on the very same screen in NVIDIA control panel where you can see the card's max TDP. NVIDIA is good about never reusing the same version number and kicking out a new one for each vBIOS variation that they produce. (Just another thing that could maybe be used to quickly tell which vBIOS you have, or maybe even tease out which one is "newer" than the other.)

If anything it will improve performance at the cost of higher power use / lower battery life. It prevents the CPU from dropping to lower power states in certain conditions. ...Though I did some testing on my Precision 7530 which had this issue and I found the impact to both performance and battery life to be pretty negligible.

Classic Precision issue. Try going to BIOS setup and disabling C-states. It should be under the "performance" section. I just noticed that there is a setting there about C-states and discrete graphics. I wonder if that "feature" is involved with the dGPU "stuttering" issue that I described above... I will experiment with it. Unfortunately, Dell doesn't have separate part numbers for variations of the same heatsink assembly. (You'll get different part numbers for i.e. dGPU present or no dGPU present, but not for which type of fans are in there.) Did you get a 7670 with Delta fans?

I got to thinking. Did you notice what the NVIDIA GPU's power state was when it was doing this thermal throttle? Did it bump to P0 down to something lower like P3? I wonder if forcing it to stay in P0 with NVIDIA Inspector would change the behavior...

I noticed some regular stuttering behavior in multiple games using the dGPU. Like, there would be a noticeable blip of perhaps a quarter second with the graphics “frozen”, and it would occur every few seconds. It was not consistent and rebooting would fix it for a while. I couldn’t blame it on DPC latency and there was not a corresponding audio blip. I think that I have “solved” it by disabling the “hardware GPU scheduling” option in Windows advanced graphics settings. (A search through Reddit shows many people complaining about this option causing odd behavior.) But, that was just a few days ago that I toggled that and it hasn’t been long enough for me to be sure that it is fixed. I was planning to mention it here after being more certain about it. I am on Windows 10 21H1. (22H2 seems to have no real changes from 22H1.) I’m using the Intel drivers from Dell but recently moved to the Studio drivers from NVIDIA. (I experienced the stutter with both Dell and Studio drivers.) I have not experienced the black Chrome tabs issue that you mention… but I primarily use Firefox ESR. I do have NVIDIA control panel set to use the integrated GPU for all apps by default and I manually whitelist apps for the dGPU, so there is no reason why the browser would be invoking the dGPU.

7770 + 3080Ti does have switchable graphics. I’ve been using it. I have found the system to be unreliable with switchable graphics off. The system works but sometimes will not “wake up” after having the display power to off. Once, I had a garbled display while trying to get to BIOS to turn graphics switching back on and I had to use an external display to do that. (So, it does not seem to be a Windows/driver problem.) No such issues with graphics switching on. I’m generally fine with this configuration so I haven’t decided what I’m going to do just yet, but it will probably be an eventual warranty claim. I sort of want to see if other systems show this issue (I hate doing warranty parts replacements only to end up with the same problem). I have been gaming on the system, so I can say that the 3080Ti otherwise works fine. I did record a couple of videos of the garbled BIOS boot graphics.

Cinebench runs at low priority by default so anything else running on your system (including background services) can chip CPU time away from it. If you bump it up to "Above normal" priority then background services should become less of a concern.

This thread is starting to get pretty long. I've updated the OP with some suggestions for performance improvements and links to key posts to try to make this information easier to find. Any suggestions, let me know...

Check:https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLaptops/comments/np5vrp/comment/h05i740/

Ok, so it got past subsystem ID, but not board ID. Looks like nvflash is pickier about this than it used to be. I don’t know if there is a patched version that works with Ampere cards… https://www.techpowerup.com/download/nvidia-nvflash-with-board-id-mismatch-disabled/

Did some looking. Just put “-6” in the flash command.

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.)