Aaron44126

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

See @win32asmguy posts on page 5, there is a photo with the pad heights labeled.

My information must be old. I will have to check this out. Agreed. Everyone should make this tweak, it is clearly one of the easiest ways to get a boost to CPU performance. I was pretty shocked when I saw the number pop out. I'm going to make a post with detailed step-by-step and link it somewhere near the top of this thread for easier visibility. And it's not like this is doing anything "risky" — as I understand it, it is just putting the "default" value for Alder Lake in there which Dell has set incorrectly in error. Next, I will be trying ThrottleStop to raise the PL1 limit and see what happens... Yes, air comes in from the bottom and goes out both the "back" and "front" sides of the fan, so it actually circulates through the chassis. (I'm not sure how much good this actually does, I think it is more to keep the chassis surface temperature down than to cool off the CPU/GPU. But at least it gives some airflow over the main SSD slot?) Also, despite the hinge sort of in the way, the left fan actually shoves air out of the back of the system as well. In addition to @MyPC8MyBrain's recent posts, look at @win32asmguy's posts on page 5 of this thread. People are still discovering things. At some point we will have more of a comprehensive list of things to try with a sort of feel for benefit vs. difficulty for each.

Well, this is fun. Cinebench multi-core 10 minutes: Stock configuration at system launch -- 15029 After repasting -- 15488 (minor improvement, but it also shifted from thermal throttling to power throttling) I just got around to applying @win32asmguy's IA AC/DC loadline "fix" and the score shot up to 18285. And that was with Windows 11 trying to install updates in the background (didn't realize until later but didn't bother to re-run). Single run was 19323. This is without undervolting, without raising power limits, without even touching ThrottleStop, without repadding, and without replacing the heatsink with the "better" Sunon version (all things I am still considering, just need to find the time to deal with them). @win32asmguy posted the EFI commands on page 5. https://notebooktalk.net/topic/632-dell-precision-7670-dell-precision-7770-owners-thread/?do=findComment&comment=12993 I was put off by the loooong directions in the undervolting guide, but looking at it today I realized that I could basically skip to the part about setting up the EFI USB boot drive since the whole business above that with "discovering" the commands was unnecessary. I took a photo, first two lines are reading the existing variables and last two lines are running the commands to change them.

Yeah, since Dell/Intel have limited undervolting capability because of potential security issues, this is what you have to resort to.

You can undervolt using the established technique ... if you disable the E cores (which will result in lower multi-threaded performance). I don't think ThrottleStop has been updated to properly support hybrid architecture undervolting yet. You can also use the same technique to improve performance by just fixing the IA AC/DC loadline value. I used isopropyl alcohol (been doing that for years) and I had no trouble getting the old paste off.

Yeah that is silly, there is no reason Ubuntu and 3080 can’t get along. Dell probably just doesn’t want to support it.

No go ..... It still hangs at the same spot. 😕

He says DC dimming for panel backlight output, and I was wondering if that maybe doesn't apply to the OLED panel (since it doesn't really have a backlight).

Yes, the heatsink is a different (smaller) part in the 7670. And also it is pretty normal for the CPU temperature to ramp up very quickly up if you push it up to (nearly) 5 GHz. The fans in this system are pretty slow to react to a change in the CPU load, it might take them almost a minute to crank up to full speed.

Thank you, I will give this a try later ..... but this is the sort of thing that I would expect Ubuntu to automatically configure. (Granted, Ubuntu 22.10 is still beta for another few weeks, and it's also not unusual for non-LTS releases to come out a bit shaky.) Ubuntu doesn't load the proprietary NVIDIA driver by default but there is an option during the install to add it (which I did). So, it would not have been loaded in the "live CD" environment. I did not have this issue with Ubuntu 22.04 (kernel 5.15) but I see from your links that this popped up in maybe 5.18. It also seems like kernel 5.15 is too old for Alder Lake iGPU graphics support, so I think it was just loading a generic VGA driver. I don't see boot messages blaming the graphics driver like some of these logs posted show. It seems to be blaming dell_smm_hwmon, if anything. I was wondering if there is some breaking change with that module in the newer kernel version, and I thought about trying to blacklist it, but that's also not a module that I'm wanting to run without either. I'm actually pretty familiar with that one, as I spent a lot of time digging around that code when working on my own (Windows-based) fan control solutions. You may recall the time I had you helping me dump "tokens" from the BIOS trying to figure out undervolting, and we stumbled across the fan sensor values. The code for that dump was partly derived from the Dell SMBIOS code in the Linux kernel. If I do end up switching to Linux, I'll want to set up similar tooling to what I have now in Windows on the Linux side, and I'll be relying on making calls to the appropriate kernel modules... [Edit] Actually, after refreshing myself on this stuff a bit... Maybe I can blacklist dell_smm_hwmon. I think that one is obsolete with newer Dell systems (Tiger Lake and up), unless something has changed in there recently, and I really just need Dell's libsmbios for my stuff.

That may be the case, but it doesn’t immediately follow that the same brand of heatsink/fan is in use or causing the same issue. Need more data!

That's about normal for stock 7770, assuming you got the original heatsink (with Delta fans), unfortunately. It thermal throttles very quickly. ———————————————————————— Installed Ubuntu 22.10 with kernel 5.19. Well, tried to. The live CD environment booted fine, but after the first reboot, I got exactly the same error I did when trying to slap that kernel on 22.04. (Maybe I didn't do anything wrong after all... It's just a bug.) This text appears with timestamps to the left: spi-nor spi0.0: BFPT parsing failed. Please consider using SPI_NOR_SKIP_SFDP when declaring the flash dell_smm_hwmon: unable to get SMM Dell signature (...Then it just hangs there.)

I don't think that it can be assumed that the particulars between the Sunon/Delta versions that we are seeing with Precision 7770 will also apply to Precision 7670.

Yeah, I saw some articles on that, seems like in some cases it was actually able to cause damage to the display panel. Anyway, I don't think that was what happened to me here. It got stuck at the black screen with terminal text at bootup, showing an error (don't remember what), and it wouldn't advance to the login screen. I think it is totally because I tried to wedge a new kernel on and I don't know what I'm doing 🙂 I might install Ubuntu 22.10 (with kernel 5.19) instead temporarily, just to see if the Intel GPU driver seems good (with decent 3D performance + 120Hz available), but I would rather be on a LTS release for any real attempt to use it.

E cores are always listed last. First 16 are P cores and last 8 are E cores.

I remember @jeamn posting at NBR about attaching a GeForce 1070 MXM card to a Windows VM running on Linux on, what, Precision M6800? Seems like it could be doable in a laptop. I broke my Linux install by trying to install the 5.19 kernel from Ubuntu 22.10. It won't boot anymore. I'm sure that I could get it to revert to the 5.15 kernel, but... I think that I'm going to let it sit until 22.04.2 is out (February-ish). Not really interested in pushing forward with it if the Intel GPU driver isn't even present.

Linux install quick feedback. Installed Ubuntu 22.04.1 with minimal hassle. Had to do manual partition option to get around it wanting me to disable BitLocker... Even so, it automatically set up Grub with an entry to boot Windows. So, now I have triple boot, Windows 10 / Windows 11 / Ubuntu Linux. Installing Ubuntu with UEFI + Secure Boot enabled is a bit weird. You have to set up a password and then enter it again at boot time so that it can sign some binary packages. This is needed for third-party drivers like the NVIDIA driver. This is not explained very well and I had to look up what to do when I got to the blue MOK screen. Even so, I had to jump through some hoops after the install to get it to load the proprietary NVIDIA driver. I installed a few pieces of software from third-party PPA's and they seem to work fine. It boots fast. I clicked to reboot for updates and looked away for what I felt like was 10 seconds and it was already sitting at the login screen again. USB mouse attached. Cursor movement seems too slow, even with the cursor speed slider in settings set all of the way to the right. (Looks like there are some terminal-y things that I can do to try to improve this.) With graphics switching enabled (Intel GPU driving the display), it won't let me pick 120Hz, it is limited to 60Hz. Hmmm? I wonder if the stock kernel has an appropriate Intel graphics driver included. (I haven't tried with graphics switching disabled.) Windows made me re-enter the BitLocker recovery key the first time I booted it after the Linux install... That seems to have been a one-time thing. I was worried that it wouldn't like Grub being loaded before the Windows boot loader and that would make it ask for the key every time. I have a laundry list of things that will need to be addressed & investigated before I can consider running Linux as a daily driver. I am interested in taking a stab at it though, since I am continually frustrated by the direction that Microsoft is taking with Windows. I might post about it over in the Linux section here. I'm not that worried about games — that used to be a sticking point with Linux, but in the days of Wine + Steam Proton + Lutris + etc., it looks like almost everything will work fine with a bit of tweaking. It's mostly "all of the rest of the computing stuff" that I am worried about. I do have Windows software that I rely on which has no Linux equivalent, so I expect that I'll be keeping a Windows VM around and on pretty much all of the time, even if I do pull off a switch to Linux. Anyway... I plan to continue running Windows 10 LTSC for now but also pop over to Linux from time to time to try and whittle my list down. [Edit] Looks like Ubuntu 22.04 ships with kernel 5.15. For Alder Lake graphics, need (at least) 5.16. And, 5.18 for proper Alder Lake scheduling. I don’t want to finagle with an unofficial kernel build, so I guess I am waiting for 22.04.2….

I'm surprised if it let you start the install without a driver. Download & extract the Intel Rapid Storage driver from the Precision 7X70 support site. Inside (a few levels down) you will find a folder called "f6vmdflpy-x64". Copy it to a flash drive. In the Windows installer, when you get the part asking what drive you want to install on, click the "Load driver" button and point it to that folder on your flash drive. .......Then try running the install and it "should" work?