Aaron44126

BIOS update 1.16.0. https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=Y2V4K - Firmware updates to address security vulnerabilities including (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures - CVE) such as CVE-2022-34400, CVE-2022-21198, CVE-2022-26845, CVE-2022-29893, CVE-2022-27497, CVE-2022-33159, CVE-2022-26047, CVE-2021-23223, CVE-2021-37409, CVE-2021-44545, CVE-2022-21212, CVE-2022-21197, CVE-2022-21160, CVE-2022-21139, CVE-2022-21172, CVE-2022-21240, and CVE-2022-32482. I just installed 1.15.2 a couple of days ago...

Man, I have to use ≥300 nits (indoors) or the image just seems really dim to me. I do mostly work with "dark mode" applications though. (I do think that 500 nits is too high, I have to turn the brightness down from max on these newer panels. On the flipside, I think it's crazy that they are selling a 250 nits panel in one of these.) I typically work with turbo boost disabled during "productivity" periods specifically to keep fan noise under control. But I unlock it for gaming, and for that I just put on ANC headphones and the fan noise becomes irrelevant. Nice to be able to have it both ways.

I didn't mention in my post above... "blacks" in the 17.3" 4K panel are definitely "meh". It's not too at all when you are doing "computing" (web browsing, office-type work, coding, etc.) but I think it is pretty noticeable if you get into photos/videos/games. I did complain about it some pages back but I have gotten used to it and "fixed" the backlight bleed so I am good with the panel now. But, if you do creative/graphics stuff then I think it would be hard to suggest anything other than the IPS panel (unless maybe you mostly work with the laptop docked). I'm not into the creative/art space, and myself, I'd also rather have a non-glossy panel that is not covered by glass, I don't really like the glare or reflection. (I was on a system with a glossy panel from like 2008-2012 and I always wished I didn't have it.) So I do not regret choosing the 17" IPS over the 16" OLED. I guess, at least the choice is there so you can weigh it in when deciding which model to get, rather than being forced down one path or the other.

Had a weird thing happen. I was playing a game and performance suddenly went to crap. I Alt+Tabbed out, opened Task Manager, and went to the Performance tab (took like 3-4 minutes) and found the CPU capped at 0.39 GHz. ...I unplugged the AC adapter cable and plugged it back in and everything started working fine again. (So much for "improved stability of the AC adapter". To note — I'm using an old PA-9E 240W adapter, not the one that shipped with the system.) ———————————————————— 1. I view the 16" option sort of like a 15.6" display (from Precision 75X0 systems) that has been made slightly taller because of the 16:10 ratio, so they can call it 16". I personally like the larger display of at 17" plus the extra NVMe drive slot and higher power limits thanks to modestly better thermals. 2. I do not see the thermal throttling as a major issue. Stock Precision 7770 performs better than stock Precision 7760, and I guess that's what you would hope for. It doesn't cause an issue with what I actually use the system for. That said, if there is better performance within reach that doesn't take that much work to achieve, I will certainly go for it. And it is a bit disappointing that Dell shipped the system in this state when there are some easy fixes to nudge performance up. (Looking at IA AC/DC loadline values, again, something like a 20% gain in CPU performance just by tweaking that — at least that's what happened for me — and you don't even have to open the case.) 3. I feel like we don't have enough information on 7670 vs. 7770 to determine if one is more issue-prone than the other. The thermal setup & potential improvements seem to be similar between the two.

It’s a good idea. I purposefully keep “data” on a whole separate drive and also avoid using the Windows default “documents”, “pictures”, “music” and etc. folders (though some programs throw things in there without asking and I don’t fight them too hard). I think 256GB for Windows+programs is adequate unless you’re going to install a lot of heavy programs. It should give breathing room for extra space needed during Windows upgrades. There are free tools to resize partitions, so you aren’t necessarily stuck with your initial setup. I usually use GParted which is included with many Linux “Live USB” environments that you can boot.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-restores-mining-performance-on-geforce-rtx-30-lhr-gpus Seems that, since no one can mine Ethereum on GPUs anymore, NVIDIA went ahead and removed the mining limiter.

You can configure RAID arrays both from the Intel Rapid Storage application (in Windows) and from the BIOS (press F12 at boot and pick the vaguely named option like "System configuration" to get to it). You cannot add your Windows boot drive (that comes preinstalled in the 7770) to a RAID array without wiping it as well. If you want your C drive to be part of the RAID array, then after you set up the array, you will have to install a new copy of Windows or restore a full system image backup. If you are not comfortable with the steps to set it up, I would recommend that you forego RAID and just install your second 1 TB drive as a separate data drive. AFAIK, any M.2 NVMe drive will work in any Precision 7000 system, as long as it fits (2280 size, or with an appropriate extender adapter, and no bulky heatsink attached).

BIOS update 1.6.3. - Improved the stability of the AC adapter when connected to the system. (Not sure what that even means, and didn't they have the same note last time? Could it be the AC/DC loadline thing?) https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=V5H4C Also, Intel graphics driver update; the new one is WDDM 3.1 for Windows 11 22H2. https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=DXXV0 [Edit] Updated both, no issue. It won't let me install the Thunderbolt driver update from a few days ago, though. It errors out during install and I end up with the old one. [Edit 2] Got the new Thunderbolt driver to install by uninstalling the old one first (rather than trying to upgrade it in-place, which repeatedly failed).

If you add it to a RAID array, the drive will effectively be wiped.

I think there was an option for no door *if* you got the SmartCard slot (or fingerprint reader), but that option seems to be gone now.

I don't think it's just the fans, that just seems to be a differentiating factor between two different versions of the heatsink. I suspect there are other differences (stock paste/thermal pads must be different as well or @win32asmguy's results wouldn't make sense). There may or may not be two different versions of the iGPU heatsink as well. In any case, Dell will be able to ship out a replacement but probably won't be able to "promise" you which version you will get. The different versions of the heatsink have the same part number and are "supposed" to be interchangeable. Not the first time Dell has done this. An example I can think of is Precision M6800 NVIDIA GPU heatsink... There are two versions and one of them is very much the desired one for modders who want to upgrade the GPU, but it's also rather difficult to find (especially since you can't search it out just by part number). Can you hear an obvious ramp-up sound when the fans first turn on from an off state? (One annoyance I have with this system and I'm wondering if it's just the fans that I have. My Precision 7560 doesn't make any audible sound at all when the fans go from off to low power.) [Edit] Looking at @keks2k's photos just above. There is something mounted in the dGPU spot and it's connected to the motherboard in two spots. I wonder what that card is for? It made sense in prior systems that there had to be a pass-through card of sorts for the rear mDP and HDMI ports, but in this system all of the display output ports are right on the motherboard...

If you have the version of the heatsink with Delta fans, which most (all?) of us seem to be getting from the factory ... See if you can get Dell to send a replacement heatsink and hopefully you get the other version (Sunon fans). @win32asmguy reports that it works much better even with the stock thermal compound on it (but still far from perfect). I've been meaning to do this myself, hopefully I can finally set aside some time to call them tomorrow... [Edit] Actually. You have an iGPU system! It might have a totally different heatsink than what we have seen so far.

(Not quite sure where to put this topic.) Just saw this article which has NVIDIA "promising" non-trivial performance increases in various DirectX 12 games in their new 522.xx drivers. I wonder if there is any merit to it? Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: up to 25 percent (1080p) Battlefield 2042: up to 7 percent (1080p) Borderlands 3: Up to 8 percent (1080p) Call of Duty: Vanguard: up to 12 percent (4K) Control: up to 6 percent (4K) Cyberpunk 2077: up to 20 percent (1080p) F1 22: up to 17 percent (4K) Far Cry 6: up to 5 percent (1440p) Forza Horizon 5: up to 8 percent (1080P) Horizon Zero Dawn: Complete Edition: up to 8 percent (4k) Red Dead Redemption 2: up to 7 percent (1080p) Shadow of the Tomb Raider: up to 5 percent (1080p) Tom Clancy’s The Division 2: up to 5 percent (1080p) Watch Dogs: Legion: up to 9 percent (1440p) https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/12/23400430/nvidia-directx-12-performance-improvements-cyberpunk-2077-assassins-creed-valhalla https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/geforce-rtx-4090-game-ready-driver/ Driver links (DCH) Notebook (GeForce / game ready) Notebook (Studio) Desktop (GeForce / game ready) Desktop (Studio) Enterprise (Quadro / RTX) notebook + desktop

Not sure which Alienware system you are referring to specifically. None of these tools work with systems 11th gen (Tiger Lake / Rocket Lake) and later. I thought that Dell had released their own fan control tooling for newer Alienware systems, as part of Alienware Control Center? (I haven't ever tried it myself.)

Eh. I'd be pretty interested if you are able to change one of these values and produce a change in fan behavior. But, I don't think that changing these values is going to do anything. (I'd love to be proved wrong.) My understanding after reading around (+ work I have done on Dell fan control in the past) is that these values are stock "simple" ACPI fan control implementation. Dell is not using this ACPI implementation (which relies on some level of OS support), they're doing their own thing with the embedded controller (which works entirely independently of the OS). I think the key to controlling it, if there is any, will be figuring out how to send commands to the embedded controller via the SMBIOS WMI interface to change its behavior. I thought I might point you to another place where there is a pile of BIOS values that can be changed programmatically. https://github.com/dell/libsmbios/blob/master/doc/token_list.csv This is a list of "tokens" that can be used to change BIOS settings in the system via the SMBIOS WMI interface. Many of these settings are also changeable from the BIOS setup menu itself, but not all of them. Many of them don't apply to all systems. I have previously written a simple console application that can read and write any of these values from Windows. On Precision 7X60/7X70, you can do "live" things like manipulate the keyboard backlight (02EA/02EB/02EC/02F6). Anyway, there are fan control settings in there as well. (00BD, 00BE, 02FD, 02FE, 0332-0335, etc.) I was able to successfully manipulate the system fans using these settings on Precision 7510 and Precision 7530, but starting with last year's Precision 7X60 systems, this level of control does not work anymore. Those tokens do appear to be present in the newer systems' BIOS, they just don't actually don't actually control anything anymore. The "token value" in the leftmost column is only 16 bits, so you can just enumerate all possible values and discover that there are "tokens" in the systems that are not documented in this CSV from Dell. (That's how I found the current fan speed sensor values... they are actually readable using tokens from near the end of the 16-bit field space. And that's why Dell Fan Management is the only application that can read the fan speeds on these systems in realtime, even if it can't control anything right now.) Furthermore... This token list isn't the end of what you can do via the SMBIOS WMI interface. I'm also using WMI commands to change the "thermal mode" (optimized / cool / quiet / ultra performance, as mentioned above). I reverse engineered that from Dell Power Manager and the commands that need to be issued don't use these tokens at all. Anyway, all this to show that there are multiple / completely separate variable stores and the controls for the system fans (if there are any) remain yet to be found. I think the way to root it out is to probably disassemble the BIOS code that does the onboard system diagnostics and figuring out what commands they are running during the fan test. I don't really have the skills for that, but if anyone ever figures it out, I believe that I'll be able to set up tooling to have manual fan control work on both Windows and Linux.

Yes, I used a registry trick to disable it and re-enable the old power settings. (You can actually get the power settings back without disabling Modern Standby as well. There's a link in my sig to an article on "Turbo boost toggle" and it is described in there.) I make use of some of those power options. I have two Windows power profiles -- one for "quiet" and one for "performance" -- and I use Process Lasso to automatically switch between them depending on what applications I have open.

There are some things like EUROCOM Sky X7W? https://eurocom.com/ec/configure(2,334,0)SkyX7W Two 2.5" SATA bays + two M.2 + Coffee Lake 9th gen CPUs. (Not really cheap, though... You can lower the default GPU and CPU options to shave some off of the price.)

I feel like I tried this on Precision 7560 when I noticed that the fan control mechanism is different and was not able to get anything from the EC. I just fired it up on the Precision 7770, and when I hit the "EC" button, it just locked up the entire system 😕 I do think the EC is the key to the puzzle here, however, Dell's EC seems to be more sophisticated than most so it's probably a bit more complex than simple memory overwrites that you can do with other manufacturers' ECs. Fan control with prior systems involved sending reverse-engineered commands to the EC to get it to either return data (i.e. fan speeds) or change behaviors. The commands were actually reverse-engineered from an old DOS-based Dell BIOS update tool or diagnostics tool or something like that, and they worked for a long time.

Unfortunately, the BIOS interface for interacting with the system fans does not allow for setting them to a speed that specifically. (I would love it if that were the case...) You can only choose between off / medium / high. The automatic control is more granular. The whole reason I did this "consistency mode" implementation was to be able to "lock" the speed at a lower speed than "medium"... but that will only work if you can get the system to set the fans there with its automatic control first, so that they can be locked.

Yeah, 25325 is in reference to a fan speed sensor if anything (there is a "CPU temp" reference right above, and its in a section that is all about sensors and alerts). 26443 is a text string.

No, you can only pick one of them to use for each trip point. There are only four trip points (passive, active 0, active 1, critical). The "table" is like a drop-down list of options. The values mean nothing other than "here is the value you plug here if you want this temperature to be the trip point". I don't think the fan control in this laptop is implemented with IME so again I think these values are meaningless in the end (for our purposes).

Well. Not a whole lot to look at, there are only seven references to "fan" in the file. Line 25325 — I believe this is referring to a fan sensor so it is not interesting. Lines 25366, 25373, 25379 — Appear to be toggles to enable/disable each of "FAN1", "FAN2", and "FAN3" devices (...probably lifted from desktop BIOS where there could be more fans) Line 26443 — Just a text string which contains the word "fan" The others are settings for "active trip points" 0 and 1, which @MyPC8MyBrain quoted above. They are in the bit from line 25186 through 25328, labeled "Platform Thermal Configuration", which seems to be an interesting part. There are four tables interesting tables labeled "Critical trip point", "Active trip point 0", "Active trip point 1", and "Passive trip point", which have temperatures paired with increasing values. 0xB20DD One Of: Active Trip Point 0, VarStoreInfo (VarOffset/VarName): 0x698, VarStore: 0x1, QuestionId: 0xE84, Size: 1, Min: 0xF, Max 0x7F, Step: 0x0 {05 91 4B 12 4C 12 84 0E 01 00 98 06 10 10 0F 7F 00} 0xB20EE One Of Option: Disabled, Value (8 bit): 0x7F {09 07 04 00 00 00 7F} 0xB20F5 One Of Option: 15 C, Value (8 bit): 0xF {09 07 51 12 00 00 0F} 0xB20FC One Of Option: 23 C, Value (8 bit): 0x17 {09 07 52 12 00 00 17} 0xB2103 One Of Option: 31 C, Value (8 bit): 0x1F {09 07 53 12 00 00 1F} 0xB210A One Of Option: 39 C, Value (8 bit): 0x27 {09 07 54 12 00 00 27} 0xB2111 One Of Option: 47 C, Value (8 bit): 0x2F {09 07 55 12 00 00 2F} 0xB2118 One Of Option: 55 C, Value (8 bit): 0x37 {09 07 56 12 00 00 37} 0xB211F One Of Option: 63 C, Value (8 bit): 0x3F {09 07 57 12 00 00 3F} 0xB2126 One Of Option: 71 C, Value (8 bit): 0x47 (default) {09 07 58 12 30 00 47} 0xB212D One Of Option: 79 C, Value (8 bit): 0x4F {09 07 59 12 00 00 4F} 0xB2134 One Of Option: 87 C, Value (8 bit): 0x57 {09 07 5A 12 00 00 57} 0xB213B One Of Option: 95 C, Value (8 bit): 0x5F {09 07 5B 12 00 00 5F} 0xB2142 One Of Option: 103 C, Value (8 bit): 0x67 {09 07 5D 12 00 00 67} 0xB2149 One Of Option: 111 C, Value (8 bit): 0x6F {09 07 5E 12 00 00 6F} 0xB2150 One Of Option: 119 C (POR), Value (8 bit): 0x77 {09 07 5F 12 00 00 77} 0xB2157 End One Of {29 02} I thought that these might be fan curves, but they are not. It's just a list of options. I Googled around and ran across things like this documentation which clarified things for me a bit. You can select one of these options to use as the value for the various trip points mentioned above. When the system hits one of these trip points then it will set the fan speed to the value configured for that trip point. I.e., when the temperature rises above "Active Trip Point 0", set the fan speed to "Active Trip Point 0 Fan Speed". (This is standard Intel Management Engine stuff and the Dell EC/BIOS is likely completely ignoring it anyway, since it seems that Dell's fan control is a good bit more sophisticated than that.) I didn't see anything else in the dump that looked interesting with regards to fan control, so, dead end ...?

There is definitely a significant change in how Dell systems handle fan control starting with 2021 systems (Tiger Lake). The system-driven control is much more granular than before (adjusting speeds tens of RPM at a time on a curve, rather than hundreds of RPM at a time with just a few discrete values it will ever use) ... and, the established EC interface that allowed for manual control and the less documented "SMBIOS token" control mechanism for manual control have both been removed. They may well have moved the "tables" that define the behaviors to these UEFI NVRAM variables. I'm going to spend some time digging around @MyPC8MyBrain's dump and see if I can make heads or tails of anything.

I don't think Windows active/passive cooling power profile policy has any impact on the thermal/fan behavior in these systems. You can however change Dell's "thermal mode" between Optimized/Cool/Quiet/Ultra Performance, it can be set both from the BIOS and the Dell Power Manager app in Windows, or there are options to change it programmatically / by script (both on Windows and Linux). "Optimized" is the default behavior and the others each prioritize one of low surface temperature, low noise, or high performance (at the expense of the other two). I'd also love a setting to keep the fans at a minimum value, or just to lower the threshold at which they reduce speeds or power off. It looks like there are fan table values that could be mucked with.

Looks like they are gearing up to launch the first new "general" graphics benchmark since Time Spy in 2016. Speed Way will release on Wednesday (October 12, 2022). It's a $4.99 DLC upgrade if you purchased 3DMark on Steam (before October 12). Starting October 12, Speed Way will be included when you buy 3DMark (but they are also hiking the price by $5). https://aws.futuremark.com/news/3dmark-speed-way-launches-on-october-12