Precision 7680 & Precision 7780 Owner's Thread

[win32asmguy]

• Announced / Released: March 23, 2023
• 13th gen Raptor Lake HX CPUs
• NVIDIA Ada Lovelace GPUs, up to RTX 5000 Ada mobile
  • GeForce RTX 4080 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

[win32asmguy]

<Reserved for my review>

[vooze]

We received 3 x 7680 at work. Everything seems fine, we almost bought the same config as we did for the 7670 (full HD screen, i9, 32GB CAMM, RTX 2000 Ada (to get slim model), 2 x 1 TB)

Has anyone noticed (it was this way for the 7670 as well) that after using hibernate (not sleep) when waking it will get much much hotter? You can't see it from temperatures - but you can clearly feel it and battery dies after max 1½ hour during idle.  - I have resorted to using S0 sleep, but I would like to have hibernate as an option as well.

 

 

[iieeann]

Fastest ECC sodimm is 4800Mhz at the moment.  If one day in the future the ECC is achieving 5600Mhz, will that work with the machine?

[iieeann]

Just received my unit today.  Putting it edge by edge with 7720, the reduction in size is quite obvious.  Yet to power on.

 

[CRom11]

Having mine arriving on Monday,  would anyone know if you can put 8tb hdd in it? I've opted for 1x 2tb hdd, the dell 4tb are ridiculously expensive 

[Aaron44126]

1 hour ago, CRom11 said:

Having mine arriving on Monday,  would anyone know if you can put 8tb hdd in it? I've opted for 1x 2tb hdd, the dell 4tb are ridiculously expensive 

 

3×8TB in my Precision 7770 with no issues.  I think it should work fine in Precision 7780.

 

Well.  I had trouble with them with RAID mode on (in BIOS setup).  I recommend that you run the system in NVMe mode if your drives are "above spec" and use Storage Spaces or some other software solution if you want to combine drives into an array.

[iieeann]

Hmm... i have a 2-year old XPS 9310 laptop, boot into windows 11 login real fast in 2-3sec after shutdown.  Hibernate disabled.

On 7780, without 3rd party app installed, it spins around 10s to boot into windows 11 login.  My old 7720 took even longer than that and i thought that is because of old machine, but this new laptop is also the same.  Is that the way a workstation needs to behave?

[iieeann]

7780 only has single LED, no more individual hdd and power LED.  There is no way to know if the machine is still running or properly connected to power with lid closed. The LED just lit up for a few seconds after powering up, then it turns off and i never see it lit again until shutdown.  Not sure what is the purpose of that LED. Really poor design.

[iieeann]

14 hours ago, CRom11 said:

Having mine arriving on Monday,  would anyone know if you can put 8tb hdd in it? I've opted for 1x 2tb hdd, the dell 4tb are ridiculously expensive 

Shouldn't be a problem with 8TB.  My old 7720 is using 4TB without single issue.  I use AHCI anyway i always hate intel RST and i do not configure ssd into raid.

If you are buying SSD from Dell, even though it is a Samsung, u can't use AHCI and install Samsung NVMe driver on it.  Dell purposely did so. 

There are things that cannot be done easily under RST i.e. using bootable usb to do something unless the driver is injected in the usb.

[win32asmguy]

26 minutes ago, iieeann said:

7780 only has single LED, no more individual hdd and power LED.  There is no way to know if the machine is still running or properly connected to power with lid closed. The LED just lit up for a few seconds after powering up, then it turns off and i never see it lit again until shutdown.  Not sure what is the purpose of that LED. Really poor design.

 

Yeah it has only had a single LED for a few generations now just showing battery charge status and diagnostic codes if there is a boot issue.

 

Out of curiousity are you able to run a Timespy benchmark on the RTX 5000 Ada mobile chip? Curious where it ends up compared to the RTX 4000 Ada which gets about 16,600 in Timespy Graphics drawing up to 140W. I have heard the larger die is easier to cool so it may be better suited to the cooling solution.

[vooze]

2 hours ago, iieeann said:

If you are buying SSD from Dell, even though it is a Samsung, u can't use AHCI and install Samsung NVMe driver on it.  Dell purposely did so. 

There are things that cannot be done easily under RST i.e. using bootable usb to do something unless the driver is injected in the usb.

 

Samsung is not supporting "Samsung NVMe driver" on newer drives anyway (I believe, Samsung stopped with 970) so not really an issue?

And I agree, I don't see the point in "raid" / RST. AHCI is much simpler.

[Aaron44126]

10 hours ago, iieeann said:

7780 only has single LED, no more individual hdd and power LED.  There is no way to know if the machine is still running or properly connected to power with lid closed. The LED just lit up for a few seconds after powering up, then it turns off and i never see it lit again until shutdown.  Not sure what is the purpose of that LED. Really poor design.

 

It's the battery status light so you will generally only see it light up if the battery is charging.  You can tell if the system is powered on from the LED light around the power button, but like you say, if the lid is shut then there's no indication.  At least that power button LED is an improvement.  Precision 7560 (that I am typing on now) has no power LED indicator at all.

 

9 hours ago, win32asmguy said:

I have heard the larger die is easier to cool so it may be better suited to the cooling solution.

 

Is there an issue with the RTX 4000 Ada getting too hot?  I think even that chip is already large enough that there should be no issue keeping it cool at the power level that it would run at in a laptop.  (I'll be pretty shocked if RTX 5000 Ada gets more than 5% better performance, if the workload is not vRAM-constrained.  That's been about the performance difference expectation between the 4000-level and 5000-level GPUs for the past five or six Precision generations now.)

[iieeann]

14 hours ago, win32asmguy said:

Out of curiousity are you able to run a Timespy benchmark on the RTX 5000 Ada mobile chip? Curious where it ends up compared to the RTX 4000 Ada which gets about 16,600 in Timespy Graphics drawing up to 140W. I have heard the larger die is easier to cool so it may be better suited to the cooling solution.

 

I ran Timespy and graphic score is 15,800.  That is with default driver and external monitor of only 1440p.  Not yet try to run on laptop alone.

CPU temp at 100C during cpu test.  GPU temp max 73C

[win32asmguy]

18 minutes ago, iieeann said:

I ran Timespy and graphic score is 15,800.  That is with default driver and external monitor of only 1440p.  Not yet try to run on laptop alone.

 

Thanks! So it sounds like these high end GPUs are probably thermally limited by the cooling system. Mine did get consistently better after a repaste (probably if anything because the CPU wasn't throttling as bad at reasonable combined load limits). Does yours also report "145W Maximum Graphics Power" in Nvidia Control Panel System Information?

 

5 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

Is there an issue with the RTX 4000 Ada getting too hot?  I think even that chip is already large enough that there should be no issue keeping it cool at the power level that it would run at in a laptop.  (I'll be pretty shocked if RTX 5000 Ada gets more than 5% better performance, if the workload is not vRAM-constrained.  That's been about the performance difference expectation between the 4000-level and 5000-level GPUs for the past five or six Precision generations now.)

 

Yes, on a flat surface it was reaching the 87C GPU throttling limit with ~140W GPU and ~30W CPU combined load. However if I put the system on a laptop stand it does drop down to high 70's. The die size for AD103 is decently larger than AD104 so I thought maybe the same wattage over a larger surface area would be more efficient.

[zhongze12345]

I know this is a bit off topic, but I'm posting here since it's urgent.

 

My 7760 is refusing to turn on. When I press the power button, the keyboard backlight and battery status indicator turn on for about 0.5 seconds and then turn back off again. There is no error code or repeated flashing. I have tried draining the residual power from the motherboard (removing the battery and holding the power button for 30 seconds), but it was to no avail.

 

What else should I try before I contact support?

 

And would this be big enough of an issue to negotiate a replacement to the 7780? I have 5 years of ProSupport+, so I'm well within the warranty window.

 

Some more info:

-the battery indicator doesn't stay on when plugged in

-I haven't done any BIOS updates in over a year and haven't done any Windows updates in over a month (disabled automatic updates), so it's almost certainly not caused by updates

Edited April 29, 2023 by zhongze12345
Extra info

[Aaron44126]

2 hours ago, zhongze12345 said:

I know this is a bit off topic, but I'm posting here since it's urgent.

 

You can try resetting the NVRAM.  Hold the power button down for 30 seconds.  If successful, the front LED will blink a few times, and then you can try powering on the system again; all BIOS settings will be reset.

 

Other than that, the best thing is to call ProSupport.  They are open 24/7.  They might have some ideas to kick it into working.  Otherwise, they will most likely dispatch a replacement motherboard if they have one available, or if not then you are looking at a system replacement, in which case getting a 7770 or 7780 is likely because I don't think that they have 7760 with Core i9 available to build anymore.  (But that also means you're looking at a few weeks for them to build and ship the replacement system.)

 

[Edit]

They might dispatch a replacement motherboard and only after some time will you get a notice saying that the part is delayed.  This would probably be Monday morning when they actually start looking for the part to ship out.  You might not get an alert about this, but it will show on the dispatch status page.  If this happens, call them back right away and ask for a system replacement.  I have a feeling that if there is a motherboard parts delay, it might be longer than whatever their original projection is (if you even ever get one).

[zhongze12345]

On 4/28/2023 at 8:20 PM, Aaron44126 said:

They might dispatch a replacement motherboard and only after some time will you get a notice saying that the part is delayed.  This would probably be Monday morning when they actually start looking for the part to ship out.  You might not get an alert about this, but it will show on the dispatch status page.  If this happens, call them back right away and ask for a system replacement.  I have a feeling that if there is a motherboard parts delay, it might be longer than whatever their original projection is (if you even ever get one).

 

No dice with resetting NVRAM 😔

 

I will try to haggle for a replacement system since I want peace of mind in case there is anything else faulty with my system. Hopefully I can get a 7780 as the GPU seems to be a significant upgrade. Needing to use the i7-1265U in my Latitude 9430 2-in-1 as my only main laptop is painful 🥲

 

Edit: They said that they can only provide a replacement unit if there are 3 service requests within the same month. I got a replacement motherboard ordered and I managed to get it as a parts only order so that I can install it myself. I'm not sure how the Windows license will work since a new motherboard counts as a new device which I don't think will activate with the OEM key.

[Aaron44126]

59 minutes ago, zhongze12345 said:

I'm not sure how the Windows license will work since a new motherboard counts as a new device which I don't think will activate with the OEM key.

 

The key is "burned" into the BIOS these days, it should activate automatically or you can pull the key out with ProduKey; since version 1.70 it can read the key out of the BIOS and will display it in the list.  (That tool might generate an antivirus false positive.)

[iieeann]

On 4/29/2023 at 2:27 AM, win32asmguy said:

Thanks! So it sounds like these high end GPUs are probably thermally limited by the cooling system. Mine did get consistently better after a repaste (probably if anything because the CPU wasn't throttling as bad at reasonable combined load limits). Does yours also report "145W Maximum Graphics Power" in Nvidia Control Panel System Information?

Yes i have the 145W power too.  Just done benchmark on laptop alone, Timespy (custome 4k) GPU score is only 8617.  Timespy Extreme GPU score is even lower at 8200.

[Aaron44126]

20 minutes ago, iieeann said:

Yes i have the 145W power too.  Just done benchmark on laptop alone, Timespy (custome 4k) GPU score is only 8617.  Timespy Extreme GPU score is even lower at 8200.

 

Can you do a default settings/1080p run just so we can have a sort of apples-to-apples comparison against @win32asmguy's RTX 4000 Ada GPU result?

 

[Edit]

You mentioned an external monitor run above.  Were you using a Dell "dual USB-C" dock for power when you ran this?  I know there can be a performance difference because of the difference in power (210W vs 240W, docked vs undocked).

[iieeann]

23 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

 

Can you do a default settings/1080p run just so we can have a sort of apples-to-apples comparison against @win32asmguy's RTX 4000 Ada GPU result?

 

[Edit]

You mentioned an external monitor run above.  Were you using a Dell "dual USB-C" dock for power when you ran this?  I know there can be a performance difference because of the difference in power (210W vs 240W, docked vs undocked).

I am using WD19TB3 240W.  For laptop alone, i tried Timespy custom 1080p the GPU score is 23516.  Timespy default (1440p) is 15600~15900.

I am not sure if @win32asmguy is running 3dmark at default setting or custom 1080p.  The benchmark default setting is 1440p regardless of max lcd resolution. 3dmark can run 4k test on 720p monitor.

[Aaron44126]

OK, I didn't realize that the default is 1440p instead of 1080p, but I believe what @win32asmguy did was a default run (so, 1440p).

 

When you ran this test, were you running power through the dock?  WD19TB3 does have 240W brick, but it can't deliver a full 240W to the system.  You might have slightly better results if you have a 240W brick connected to the system directly.

 

If you did have a 240W brick attached to the system directly, then it is interesting that your 1440p result is slightly lower than @win32asmguy's.  You might also get slightly faster result if you switch the system to "Ultra performance" mode (thermal mode set in the Dell Power Manager or Dell Optimizer app).

[win32asmguy]

Yeah my Timespy results are running default settings. You may want to monitor temps on yours to see if it reaches 87C on the GPU which will trigger short throttles which can lower the score.

 

https://www.3dmark.com/spy/38088494

[Reshen]

@iieeann How does the thermals on the system look at idle or minimal load? Have they improved the cooling solution so the keyboard doesn't get too hot to work with?