Aaron44126

...I don't see what I posted in the quote above as a negative for the cooling system performance; if anything, it's working well enough under light load for the fans to shut off entirely from time to time. (I'm just complaining about the noise that the fans make when they power on...) I also see what you're saying about the "bending marks near the curve", but the guy who posted the Chinese review has the same thing in his system; it may well be just the way it was designed (for better or for worse). I do understand that there's a potential cooling/thermal snafu here and I'm definitely willing to take steps to improve the situation, but I'm not going to do a "stab in the dark"... I'll still wait and see what other users' systems come back looking like. For now, even if performance is not necessarily "optimal", it's still the fastest PC that I've ever personally used, so I'm fine to wait for more information to be available before deciding on a course of action.

See owner's thread.

Eh, I don't mind repasting but liquid metal is a bit out of my comfort zone. I know that it can be used in laptops but I've heard some bad stories, and since I have no experience with applying that at all, not something that I really want to take a chance with. I'll mention that running the GPU at 130W (without that much of a CPU load) doesn't seem like an issue for me. I haven't gotten to thermal throttling stage with the GPU. I'll try to run it a little harder and see how it behaves sometime today. I don't know why it doesn't boost up to 150W, but I wasn't really expecting it to spend much time at that power level; last year's Precision 7760's seemed to behave similarly with a 115W GPU TDP and 140W boost power level which was rarely/never invoked. ———— I've noticed the fans cycling on and off periodically while on a light "office work" load and that's annoying (because of the fan ramp-up sound it makes when the fans come back on). The M6700 did the same thing and I wrote this fan management software mostly just to avoid that. (M6700 was also very reactive with the fans if the CPU load spiked up a little; 7770 doesn't have that problem, it is pretty slow to react.) There doesn't seem to be any option for fan control options for the Precision 7X60/7X70 at this time. For now, I am going to stop running with turbo boost disabled (something I previously did when I didn't need high CPU power, to keep fan speeds low), and see if that will keep the fans from powering off so often. With background jobs moved to the E cores, it seems like the system is happy to continue to operate at a very low fan speed in this configuration. With turbo boost off I was seeing it hang out around 1000 RPM (and there are no speeds below 1000 RPM really, it just shuts the fans off). With turbo boost on it is hanging out more around 1200-1300 RPM, which is still too quiet to hear. (Yes, yes, I did have turbo boost enabled when running Cinebench.)

I did follow up with the support team on the criteria for panel replacement and got basically an apology for what was relayed over to me on the phone when I first put the request in. They will replace panels with one or more bright subpixels. There is a "possible backlog" on the LCD panel replacement that I need, seems like they can't completely figure out the details or ETA during the weekend. (Makes sense, though... given that there still seems to be supply issues around just getting these things out. I can wait.)

Actually, that is exactly what I expected. Performance between 4000 and 5000-level GPU has been basically the same in the Precision line since Quadro P4200/P5200 in the Precision 7730 in 2018. No reason to spend extra on the 5000-level card unless you need the extra vRAM (...actually that's not even a reason anymore since they both have 16GB this time around). This is basically because both cards have the same power limit and they have no issue hitting it. 5000-level gets a teeny efficiency bonus from spreading out the load more and operating more cores at a lower clock speed, but in practice this is less than a 5% performance gain (for a $1000+ upgrade). This time around, A5500/3080Ti have a slightly higher power limit than A4500, at 150W vs. 140W. However, I suspect that we will see all of these GPUs spend most of their time at 130W without entering boost power states (not sure why this is exactly) so it is the exact same issue as past generations. (In my system, I observed a maximum GPU power draw of 130W during 3DMark runs despite the NVIDIA control panel "system information" thing showing 150W as the max). (Side note — I wonder if the 3080Ti power limit can be bumped up by cross-flashing the vBIOS from a different laptop model? There should be plenty to choose from. Even Dell ones from the Alienware lineup.) Which reminds me... I neglected to comment on the GPU prices in my reply above. RTX 3080 Ti costs about $200 more than A4500 and $800 less than A5500 (USD). I saw that the ZBook has 4× NVMe, however, I rather suspect that a HP workstation will cost more for less performance (and other compromises like those you mention and no 17" option)... and, to my knowledge, they are not shipping systems yet. I am considering a repaste to see if that helps. I have no compunction against doing it; I did it many times with my M6700 whenever I needed to remove the heatsink. I was hoping not to disturb the factory paste job so soon, since Dell is supposedly using a better compound at the factory now. I'd still like to wait and see what other 7770 users experience first. However, when I have the tech come and replace my display panel, there's a chance that he will want to disturb the heatsink (I don't think it should be necessary to remove the heatsink to replace the display panel, but @Ionising_Radiation recently mentioned that a tech did so with his Precision 7560). I will make sure to have some quality paste on hand in case he does and I will just do the repaste right then.

First off, note that the smaller system this time around is Precision 7670 and not 7570 (reflecting its 16" display). I've never been one to recommend upgrading just one generation. ...Seems like we're trying to sort out what's up with the thermals, it's a bit early to know if it is really an improvement. RTX 3080 Ti is not available through the web site but you can get it through a sales rep. (This was also the case for RTX 3080 in the 7X60 systems.) (I did add some specs to the top of the post as you suggested.) Thanks for the feedback. I will say, from my perspective, I've never been one worry that much about eeking out every last bit of performance from a system; I just need it to work for what I need it to do. So, I'm not anywhere near a point where I am "dissatisfied" with the 7770 and it is not in danger of being returned (as long as the display issue gets sorted). It is of course leaps and bounds better than my M6700, and even if these Cinebench scores are "low", they top what can be achieved on the prior-gen 11th gen Precision 7760 by a fair margin (as I understand it, 12500-ish before getting into tweaks). My "requirements" for a new laptop are basically thus: Alder Lake HX (for hybrid architecture) + high-end NVIDIA dGPU 128GB RAM Four NVMe slots 17-inch display panel strongly preferred ...There are remarkably few systems out there that hit all of these marks; I'm only aware of two, this one and MSI GT77. I'd prefer to stay with Dell, I have a long history with them and I know what to expect in terms of support (...and GT77's keyboard layout is even worse than 7770's). Four NVMe slots in particular seems to be hard to come by in the current generation models. If there are other systems out there that run Alder Lake HX better but don't hit my other bullet points, then I'm not interested in them... I'll happily trade a bit of performance for the extra storage capacity. That said, I certainly don't want to be leaving performance on the table and if there is something "wrong" here then I would want to address it. So, what I want to do now is basically wait until some more users have 7770's and we can see if they experience the same thing as me. If not, I'll take steps to get mine fixed. If so, then we're looking at something more systemic and maybe an issue with the thermal design. (...I'll also take a look at benchmark results from other Alder Lake HX models, which some of you guys are probably more aware of than me, just to see if maybe we aren't setting expectations a bit too high.)

3DMark links should work now.

This is what things look like a few minutes into a multi-thread Cinebench run. I'll let you guys help with interpretation, but... CPU (P cores) went up to almost 4.9 GHz but then settled down at around 2.6 GHz. Similar story with E cores, just lower frequencies. Temperatures in the low 90's for most cores, seems like there is a little bit of thermal headroom (but a few cores are up around 100 °C). ...Is "CPU package power" what I want to be looking at for the CPU's power use? It never went much above 75W. (Fans were running full tilt even if it took about a minute for them to get there.)

Thanks for that link. I actually wrote back to the guy who I spoke with earlier and pointed this out. I'll keep this on hand in case they give me grief about a second replacement (if the replacement comes in and still has an issue). Regarding the fan, it is a bit disappointing that this is a "regression" in fan behavior from Precision 7X60, but in reality I doubt it will be much of a problem in practice; the fans likely won't often turn all of the way off unless you are limiting the CPU speed. In any case, I don't know if it could be fixed in firmware but I'm sure that @Dell-Mano_G will stop by eventually and take note of the feedback. [Edit] I submitted a support ticket.

Yes. I’ll do another run later and see what CPU temps and power draw looks like…

Cinebench: Single core (optimized) – 1776 Single core (performance) – 1800 Multi core (optimized) – 14823 Multi core (performance) – 15029 (Also added to first impressions post above, with screen shots.)

[Edit] Update: Display panel was replaced August 23, no more stuck pixels. Sat down to take a photo of the display defect... and found two more. The one that I saw originally is in the middle and I found two more off to the right. (center) (right side) The brighter spot here looks like it might actually be panel damage and not just stuck pixels. Just got off the phone with ProSupport; they did want me to send over photos, but in the end they agreed to replace the panel but warned that it is "barely outside" of the acceptable manufacturing defect criteria and they might not replace it a second time. (...In which case, as much as it pains me, if the second panel had issues and they refused to replace it, I'd probably have to return the entire system, reorder, and wait for the replacement. I'm not going to take visible display issues in a machine this expensive.) Panel replacement should occur on Tuesday as long as the part shipment and tech availability goes as planned. [Edit] Just got notice of a part delay. Probably won't be swapped out Tuesday. [Edit 2] @Conan11 pointed out below that Dell's Premium Panel Guarantee guarantees zero bright subpixels in Precision Mobile Workstation systems with 900p or better resolution. (This doesn't square with what the rep told me on the phone but I will certainly point it out later if I need to...)

Sorry, didn't realize this but I see now if I check from a different browser. The results are not marked "hidden" when I log in from my account, but maybe 3DMark doesn't want to make them public because it can't recognize the 7770's GPU yet? (It says "unknown/generic GPU" on these results.) Anyone know if there is some button I need to click to make these public? I'll just include the results files here, you can open them right in 3DMark. https://1drv.ms/u/s!AsIwJHFk4EFdqMcIYBj-2OPxTSBXNg Here it is compared to the old PA-9E 240W, which was used in M6600-7720, and I think might still be included with docks that have 240W PSU. The one from @yslalan‘s photo above was included with 7730-7760. They "should" have a local inventory of parts so they can dispatch one to my location and then a tech can just swap out the display panel on-site. I realized that ProSupport Plus is available 24/7 so I will be calling them today, no need to wait until Monday. (But the soonest I think that they'll be able to swap out the display is Tuesday.)

Pretty sure it will be happy to activate multiple parallel instances on the same hardware with the same product key, as long as you install the same Windows "edition". (Windows 10 and Windows 11 can be activated with the same product key.) I believe you can install Windows in VMs on the same hardware using the same product key as well without license grief. ...In my case here, Windows 11 Pro was provided by Dell with the system, but the Windows 10 install is Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC and I brought that license along myself.

My system specs Core i9-12950HX 128GB DDR5-3600 CAMM module GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 16GB 4K 120Hz display panel Impressions Positive Good build quality, as expected, the system is very solid. The display is a tremendous upgrade from the M6700. 120Hz makes some regular desktop stuff noticeably more slick/smooth. The colors pop a lot more as well (though I wouldn't say color is any better than the 4K panel in the 7560). It's brighter as well. I always kept my M6700 panel at max brightness, but with this one I can be happy at about 80% brightness. Variable refresh rate support from the 4K 120Hz panel is an unexpected plus. Coming from the Precision M6700, performance is very much improved as one would expect; things that my M6700 struggled with "just work" on the 7770. (I know there were a few other members in the pre-release thread looking to upgrade from older systems.) I like having a mix of USB-C and USB-A on both sides of the system. Zero stability issues so far. Everything just works. 8TB NVMe drives appear to work fine despite not being "supported" by Dell. They have redesigned the NVMe slot that goes under the "SSD door" compared to the Precision 7560. (Even though I do not actually have an SSD door, I am referring to the one in the middle of the system.) I was able to swap out the drive without having to mess with that plastic caddy/holder thing. Meh ...That keyboard layout... Dedicated Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys should be a basic requirement for a pro laptop. 😕 Also bummed that replacing the keyboard now requires pretty much a complete system disassembly. I hope that it lasts well... Fan behavior is similar to the 7560, but there is an unfortunate change. I can't hear when my 7560 fans switch from "off" to "on" (low speed). When the 7770 fans kick on, they rev up to a high level before quickly settling back down to silent. It's very quick, less than a second, but you can definitely hear it. When I have a light workload going (turbo boost disabled) the fans hang out around 1000-1400 RPM, pretty much inaudible. The Ethernet jack is very tight, unlike the similar "jaw"-type connector on the Precision 7560, I had some difficulty unplugging a cable here a few times and have learned that you have to sort of lift the cable "up" as you try to take it out. (Maybe it will loosen up with use. That's often the case with the Precision ports.) Also, the bottom cover is much more difficult to remove than it is for me on the Precision 7560. On the 7560, I can pry from the SmartCard slot with just my hands, but with the 7770, I have to use a flathead screwdriver to carefully pry around the system (also starting from the SmartCard slot) and release some of the plastic clips before I can pull the whole panel off. (Really miss the M6700's two-screws-and-slide-off bottom cover.) I left the system on with the lid shut for a while yesterday. When I opened it back up, the screen would not go to high brightness. It was stuck at around 40% and pressing the "brightness up" button on the keyboard would not make it go higher. I was able to "drag" the slider higher in Windows but the screen was still dim. After having the system open for a while, it was happy to go back to max brightness. I wonder if the panel maybe got too hot? The system does get quite warm even when under low load. More experimentation needed. I did go and disable the "automatically adjust brightness" option in the Intel graphics control panel. Also... The entire touchpad physically "clicks" when you press down on it (sort of like older MacBook touchpads before they switched to haptics). By default, "clicking" in the lower right corner of the touchpad performs a right-click. As much as I like having the speakers above the keyboard / under the display (M6700, 7560)... the speaker grill up there does tend to accumulate dust and debris which is difficult to clean out, and that's not an issue when the speakers are located in the very front of the system like they are here. I noticed the battery light turn on while I was running the Final Fantasy XV benchmark which is a bit more CPU-intensive than 3DMark. I think there may be circumstances where the system will draw from battery power if both the CPU and GPU are under load. I do really like Alder Lake. It's the reason I held out for the 7770; I've been ready to upgrade from the M6700 for a couple of years now. I've been working with Process Lasso to make sure that background processes are stuck on the E cores, which seems like it should help with power use / noise / heat, and also leaving the P cores idle and fully available for "real work". Pretty good success. (I have a fair amount of background stuff that lightly uses the CPU; built in Windows services, game clients like Steam/Epic/GOG, Discord, file sync clients like OneDrive and iCloud, Adobe's random background crap, .....) Benchmarks These were run with stock settings on the Windows 11 image included on the system. (No tricks like undervolting, CPU power limit adjustments, etc.). Optimus enabled. 3DMark Fire Strike "Optimized" power profile – 17414 – https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/77960522? "Performance" power profile – 18526 – https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/77960816? 3DMark Time Spy "Optimized" power profile – 10851 – https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/77960850? "Performance" power profile – 11064 – https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/77960871? The NVIDIA control panel shows that the max power for the GPU is 150W, but according to HWiNFO64, the max power draw was 130W while running the 3DMark tests. GPU-Z shows that the GPU is connected via PCIe4 ×8, not ×16. Cinebench: Single core (optimized) – 1776 Single core (performance) – 1800 Multi core (optimized) – 14823 Multi core (performance) – 15029 Screen shots, in order, right here: Photos I feel like there are already enough photos of the system itself, so for now I just have these, but let me know if there is anything that you are interested to see up close. Bottom cover open, all NVMe slots populated (with heatsinks off), 128GB CAMM card present. No issue fitting a "double-sided" NVMe drive into any of the slots. Left side Ethernet and power jacks. I was a bit concerned about having these on the left and not the back. I do have a "right angle" adapter for the power jack that points the cord backwards which I use at my desk. Here on my couch folding table, I find that the cords bend around under the table well enough that I don't need to do any more trickery. I actually do like that these ports are right next to each other. I'm working on an in-depth review which will be posted separately in the future. Though for now, happy to do Q&A while others are still waiting for their systems to come in. (I have a few outstanding questions already that I will try to hit this weekend.) [Edit] Did just notice a small cluster of stuck pixels on the display, so I guess I'll be calling to have it swapped out next week. Similar things happened with the last two personal laptops that I purchased, just my luck...

Announced: April 19, 2022 Release date (RTO): July 7, 2022 12th gen Alder Lake CPUs NVIDIA Ampere refresh GPUs, up to RTX A5500 GeForce RTX 3080 Ti option also available (through sales rep only in most territories) Up to 128 GB DDR5 non-ECC memory (via CAMM module), or 64 GB DDR5 ECC or non-ECC (via SODIMM) All NVMe slots support PCIe4 Full driver support for Windows 10 & Windows 11 Spec sheet: Precision 7670 • Precision 7770 Driver RSS feeds: Precision 7670 • Precision 7770 Pre-release thread (NBT) Pre-release thread (NBR) ———————————————————————— Opportunities for CPU performance improvement Here, I am collecting some information from the first several pages of this thread to hopefully make it easier to find in one spot. NOTE — BIOS update version 1.8.0 has corrected these values. A manual fix for IA AC/DC loadline is not needed anymore; just update the BIOS. (You still may want to unlock undervolting, though...) If you received a Precision 7770 with the heatsink that contains Delta fans, have Dell replace the heatsink and hopefully you get the one with Sunon fans, which performs better. (Unfortunately, you must remove the heatsink to check and see which fans you have.) See this post by @MyPC8MyBrain for suggestions for reinstalling the heatsink. The original Delta fan heatsink will thermal throttle out of the box. Repasting can eliminate the thermal throttle, so that you can use ThrottleStop to raise PL2 and increase performance of the CPU. Perhaps the biggest CPU performance gain that can be had is by fixing the IA AC/DC loadline values, which are set incorrectly on this system. Visit this guide and look at steps 5-7 for directions on how to get to an environment where you can edit some EFI variables. These commands will correct the IA AC/DC loadline values (thanks @win32asmguy). I got a ≈20% boost in the 10-minute Cinebench score from fixing these... 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 And these commands will enable overclocking/undervolting, if you wish to mess with that: setup_var CpuSetup 0x10E 0x0 # Overclocking Unlock setup_var CpuSetup 0x43 0x0 # CFG Unlock Additional tuning with ThrottleStop (undervolting, etc.) can further improve performance. @MyPC8MyBrain has some settings in this post. ———————————————————————— Opportunities for GPU performance improvement The GPU power level can be increased by following these steps. This process has been confirmed to work with MSI Afterburner 4.6.5 beta 2, NVIDIA graphics driver 527.56, and Dell's 1.8.0 BIOS. It may work with other (newer) versions as well. Download a GeForce GPU driver from NVIDIA. (Visit this page and select GeForce 3080 Ti laptop GPU, and download a current driver. You can install a GeForce driver even if you have a pro RTX GPU.) A GeForce driver is required; the Enterprise drivers will not allow you to change the GPU's power limit. In Device Manager, disable "NVIDIA Platform Controllers and Framework" under "Software devices". Alternatively, you can visit "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\nvpcf" in the registry and set "Start" to 4. This will effectively disable the NVIDIA Platform Controllers and Framework driver but not have it appear disabled in Device Manager. Reboot to apply the change. Install MSI Afterburner. In MSI Afterburner, locate the setting for the power limit. It may have a nonsense value. Drag the slider down to 1% and then up to max, and apply the changes. The NVIDIA GPU should now be able to operate at a higher power level. Thanks to @win32asmguy for figuring this out!

Not yet. I will run a few benchmarks and kick off the "owner's thread" with some photos, numbers, and first impressions this evening.

The 120Hz display panel appears to support variable refresh rate! Going to have to mess with this, too... I wondered if it might be the same panel as the recent Alienware 17 (AMD) systems that support VRR on a 4K/120Hz panel. @Dell-Mano_G mentioned that he thought they were using the same panel in the 7770. (I don't think it supports G-SYNC, so you have to use it through the Intel GPU + Optimus as described here. I'll try later and see if I can enable G-SYNC or not.)

It's not Thunderbolt, but I just noticed this. Flash drive is plugged into left-side USB-A port. Samsung SSD is plugged into left-side USB-C port (which is also a Thunderbolt port). The ports are right next to each other, but attached to different USB controllers. I also have a drive labeled "Sabrent SCSI Disk Device", visible above, which is plugged into the right-side USB-C port and it attaches to the same USB controller as the left-side USB-A port.

I do have a TB18DC dock lying around that I could try. Should be able to tell whether it is through the PCH or not by where the ASMedia USB controller shows up in the topology. [Edit] Just confirmed that the GPU is just connected at PCIe4 ×8 (just like Precision 7X60).

I ran CrystalDiskMark on the RAID0 array. These are all PCIe4 drives. Haven't confirmed the drive architecture/layout in the 7770 yet but I believe that these are all behind the PCH. The speed goes a little higher than what you would expect from a single PCIe4 drive in some circumstances (first write speed listed here) but not anywhere near 2× PCIe4 bandwidth. Currently copying my old data over to the array but that's coming in from USB-attached SATA drives so I'm not really expecting that to be "fast".

Samsung 980 Pro if capacity 2TB or less is good with you. (Samsung 970 EVO Plus, if you want to save some money and don't need PCIe4 speed.) There is some discussion on the last few pages of this thread about options for high capacity drives (4TB and 8TB). I went with Samsung 980 Pro 2TB for my system/Windows drive, and Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus for data drives because it is the only TLC/PCIe4 8TB drive available right now. ———— 7770 is working fine so far. I am still in the setup stage. I have installed the NVMe drives that I bought for it, migrated my old Win10 install over and gotten all of the drivers situated, and now I am working on migrating stuff from my data drives (probably about five hours for that data transfer once I kick it off). Still haven't had time to actually "check it out" other than that.

Also seems happy to throw them in one big RAID array.

Here are all of the parts related to 3080 Ti.