Dell Precision 7670 & Dell Precision 7770 owner's thread

[MyPC8MyBrain]

8 hours ago, ATAN said:

Yooooooooo it worked

keep at it you will eventually get there,
to bridge the remaining gap you see atm you will need to further dial your system services etc.
repasting and undervolting will not get you there alone, my system after im done tweaking it idles with 45-50 process which is ideal conditions for my environment (beside the fact that im a control freak who lived in the days when PC actually meant Personal Computer not todays PC (Public Computer) nonsense we have now),

[MyPC8MyBrain]

anyone knows where to find a Higher TDP vbios for the Dell RTX 3080 Ti 16 GB Mobile? 
(Device ID: 10DE 2420 0B2A1028)

i think the 7670 3080 has a lower TDP (125w) than the 7770 3080,
(to check GPU's power limit in Nvidia Control Panel click System Information in the bottom left)

anyone here with the 7770 and 3080 Ti 16gb can share their vbios please?
(open gpu-z where it reads "BIOS Version" to the right there's an arrow, click and select save to file) 

[ATAN]

16 hours ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

keep at it you will eventually get there,
to bridge the remaining gap you see atm you will need to further dial your system services etc.
repasting and undervolting will not get you there alone, my system after im done tweaking it idles with 45-50 process which is ideal conditions for my environment (beside the fact that im a control freak who lived in the days when PC actually meant Personal Computer not todays PC (Public Computer) nonsense we have now),

Still playing around without e cores, for whatever reason now nothing past -125mv/-75mv seems to want to stable cbr23 cold (havent done too much testing on it). But Limiting the wattage down does allow ok levels of performance ie 14k at sub throttle temps, I would much rather have 16k stable cool or 17k hot. Forcing it to thermal throttle didnt drop performance too much overall mid 13ks.

 

I may still end up sending it back. At these levels any 6000 8 core is slightly slower but most likely better cooled as well as more efficient overall plus the igpu nearly negates the need for a dgpu when im not docked. It just seems like no one else has a amd laptop with 2 or more m.2 4.0 with one accessible via an access port.

 

It also seems like every gaming 12900hx/12950hx gaming laptop that has more than one m.2 gen 4 slot does not have an access port for convient m.2 egpu madness.

 

On an even more insane note, that gpu connector is looking mad tastey, if i had a little more engineering prowess, time and money i'd try to make a x8 external pcie slot for even better egpu fun sorta like that old macbook adapter for nvme and egpu stuff. That is after I make a more robust cooling solution for squeezing a cooler 90w-120w out of into the cpu.

 

More research is required. If this takes long enough i'll scrap the move to a laptop entirely for now and just grab a 5800x3d or something.

 

Please do let us me know what device you end up switching to next.

 

EDIT: Man im about to call a lenovo rep tomorrow and ask about the p16.

If that goes bust too (temp wise but i've read some things I cant verify, ie vapchamber/liqmetal and if undervolting can be enabled) then I quit and Ill send back the worse of the two. I think i'll be satisfied with a machine that can sustain atleast 85w, if not then amd is really the only feasable choice as I dont like extremely loud laptop fans, audible is fine but the 7770 is close to the edge of my limits, plus its slow to react.

[ATAN]

Is Performance really better than cool? Fan behavior is a good bit better on cool and I dont notice any other than throttling easier if im on performance.

[TwistedAndy]

  

On 10/20/2022 at 10:10 PM, ATAN said:

Scores started regressing so I figured it was sleep time. I have played with blocking the sides of the fans to force the one fan on the inside to push air only through the heatsink and the outside fan to only push air through over the m.2/ram/heatsink along with some additional foam to stop airflow from passing over the heatpipes on the topside a little more. I do need to recheck clearances again for that stuff but it did alow me to boost 100-150mhz higher for 80% of a cb run. Gunna unblock the outside fan though, I'd like to hear less violent airflow and make full use of the extra two inches of heatpipe again. May take pics if I find it's actually effective and not just time in-between tests related flukes.

 

The main idea of the DOO approach is the ability to put a larger fan in a smaller case while keeping it efficient. If you block the one side, the flow through the other one will not increase significantly. There's no enough space in casing for that.

 

2 hours ago, ATAN said:

Still playing around without e cores, for whatever reason now nothing past -125mv/-75mv seems to want to stable cbr23 cold (havent done too much testing on it). But Limiting the wattage down does allow ok levels of performance ie 14k at sub throttle temps, I would much rather have 16k stable cool or 17k hot. Forcing it to thermal throttle didnt drop performance too much overall mid 13ks.

 

Frankly, I don't see any good reason to disable E-cores. They work pretty well and offer nearly the same performance as Skylake cores.

 

In terms of undervolting, from my experience with two 12900HK chips, the main limiting factor is the System Agent. It becomes very unstable with more than 80 mV undervolt.

 

In terms of efficiency, 12900HK and 12950HX shows the best efficiency between 45 and 75W (from ~14500 and ~17500 CB R23 with UV). AMD Ryzen 6900HX/6800H work great on lower wattages (35-45W or ~12500 .. 13500 CB R23). You can push them higher (up to 100W) and get slightly better results (~14500).

 

3 hours ago, ATAN said:

It also seems like every gaming 12900hx/12950hx gaming laptop that has more than one m.2 gen 4 slot does not have an access port for convient m.2 egpu madness.

 

On an even more insane note, that gpu connector is looking mad tastey, if i had a little more engineering prowess, time and money i'd try to make a x8 external pcie slot for even better egpu fun sorta like that old macbook adapter for nvme and egpu stuff. That is after I make a more robust cooling solution for squeezing a cooler 90w-120w out of into the cpu.

 

There are some devices from Asus with separate port for discrete GPU, but they are not so popular for obvious reasons.

 

If customers need ultimate performance and upgradeability, they will go with regular PC instead of an expensive laptop and an eGPU.

 

If customers need portability and performance, they will go with powerful laptop with discrete GPU. Yes, it is slower than some desktop GPUs, but the difference is not that big.

[Aaron44126]

4 hours ago, ATAN said:

Is Performance really better than cool? Fan behavior is a good bit better on cool and I dont notice any other than throttling easier if im on performance.

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.

[MyPC8MyBrain]

13 hours ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

anyone knows where to find a Higher TDP vbios for the Dell RTX 3080 Ti 16 GB Mobile? 
(Device ID: 10DE 2420 0B2A1028)

i think the 7670 3080 has a lower TDP (125w) than the 7770 3080,
(to check GPU's power limit in Nvidia Control Panel click System Information in the bottom left)

anyone here with the 7770 and 3080 Ti 16gb can share their vbios please?
(open gpu-z where it reads "BIOS Version" to the right there's an arrow, click and select save to file) 

bump...
anyone can confirm the above and share their vbios off the 7770 for further testing?

 

i have managed to get the 7670 cpu to around 15.6k on 3DMARK (no undervolt yet),
for some reason (which i believe i found) gpu performance will not budge much from 9.6k,
which keeps 3DMARK overall score low for gpu side and the system as a whole, two days ago my cpu also wouldn't budge above 9k score which been moved to 14k score now, but the gpu is dragging its feet atm and the only way to unleash the full potential is to remove the 125w TDP restriction which about 40w of performance are withheld atm to fully unleash the 7x70 platform,

[Aaron44126]

2 hours ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

anyone can confirm the above and share their vbios off the 7770 for testing?

 

GPU-Z 2.50 won't let me dump it.  It says "BIOS reading not supported on this device".

[MyPC8MyBrain]

48 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

GPU-Z 2.50 won't let me dump it

Thank you Aaron,

you're absolutely right i forgot it did the same to me here,
i ended up using NVIDIA NVFlash tool to dump my vbios (will be used to reflash vbios too),
dump command is simple from current dir run > nvflash64 --save Dell7770.rom
(to re-flash it should be > nvflash64 --protectoff Dell7770.rom)

did you check your current GPU TDP in nvidia control panel? (system info bottom left corner)

 

these are fairly rare nvidia chips (10DE:2420) only shared with a handful of high end systems atm,
Lenovo and MSI have these in their workstations with unrestricted 3080 Ti 16gb vbios with 155w top limit and 165W boost, i was unable to locate these anywhere atm, 

[Aaron44126]

17 minutes ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

did you check your current GPU TDP in nvidia control panel? (system info bottom left corner)

 

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

[MyPC8MyBrain]

YaY  \  o  /
Thank you Aaron ❤️ 
good call on the graphics switch in bios,
i turned it off as it boosts a good amount of cpu performance (almost 16k on 3DMARK),
i will switch it back on for the flash phase (i think in low bios regardless it will still switch but better safe than sorry), i have already dumped my vbios,

before i re-flash can you confirm our DTP are different in nvidia control panel? (i have 125w limit atm)

[Aaron44126]

Yeah, as stated above, NVIDIA control panel shows 150W TDP.

 

5 minutes ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

(i think in low bios regardless it will still switch but better safe than sorry)

 

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...)

[MyPC8MyBrain]

1 minute ago, Aaron44126 said:

NVIDIA control panel shows 150W TDP.

holly molly 😮, i know it! 
(was so excited i missed your TDP reading)

[MyPC8MyBrain]

bummer 😞 

[Easa]

On 10/20/2022 at 11:13 PM, ATAN said:

Okay I have seen this one before but I passed because it was hp and I've had issues with their designs and build quality over the years, I didn't realize it has near full feature parity between the 7770. It's a bit more expensive than what I paid for the dell and only a little more than the Lenovo.

 

Edit: After looking up the SSD placement, this has to be THE LEAST egpu friendly setup I've seen yet. Which puts me in between a rock and a hard place.

 

Have you seen any data on the g9s cooling ability? If it is good enough it's still better for my use cases back cover needing to be removed or not.

 

Also why 3 years specifically, warranty stuff?

 

As I have said earlier, laptop repair is part of my living, so I know many of them inside out. I can tell you with great confidence that HP (remember we are talking about business or workstation class laptops, not Pavilion or other consumer toys), on average, have actually the best PCB designs out there. Solid CPU and battery related circuitry, basically everything is repairable, no epoxy-underlined BGA nonsense like Lenovo or Apple does, you can find manuals or schematics for every board, no problem getting spare parts. Very good QC. 

 

They have their downsides - prices of both system and spare parts / accessories are noticeably higher than Dell, customer support is worse (but I have no experience with their NBD support). Also, you wont get benefits of a fanbase that Dell does have (and the many pro users willing to share info / tweaks).

 

I actually started a thread here regarding the Fury G9, but shipping of those systems on a larger scale is delayed until mid december, so we will have to wait for feedback. I am hunting high and low for any info. You will find everything there, but talking about the cooling, it seems to be better, it has Vapor chamber for systems with A3000 and upper GPUs. 

 

 

Regarding the MSI, well, because the support for MSI products is simply a nightmare, both in-warranty and out-of-warranty / aftermarket. Their service is horrible, incompetent, wothless, almost unqualified. When the warranty ends, spare parts are either extremely expensive (the better case) or unavailable (which is pretty often) - anything from fans, hinges, keyboards, you name it. Hard time finding manuals or schematics for board repair. Anything made of plastics on their laptops will broke off, its just a matter of time. 

 

Lenovo is a bit better (parts are available, better build quality than MSI, schematics can be found) but many important parts are glued to the motherboard with epoxy adhesive (the whole BGA) so the chances of repair are slim, should any large fault arise during your ownership. 

 

I know that you probably wont think of this as an issue, the laptops are consumables these days, but if you are like me and tend to use one system for 6-10 years, it is important to know where to look for. I am typing this on a ZBook 15 G1 (2014 Haswell) which one and only fault during its lifetime was a worn out keyboard (I wrote ALOT on it).

 

 

 

[Aaron44126]

19 minutes ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

bummer 😞 

 

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.

[MyPC8MyBrain]

23 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

There is a command-line flag to override

you referring to? --protectoff
(i tried with the powertech mismatched version, im getting no gpu found with that)

[MyPC8MyBrain]

i was informed in private by a kind member that his same 7670 vbios is reading 157w for TDP limit,
the lucky duck 😮 

[Aaron44126]

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

[MyPC8MyBrain]

15 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

Did some looking

Thank you 🙏
i tried that switch with no luck,

[Aaron44126]

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/

[MyPC8MyBrain]

2 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

I don’t know if there is a patched version that works with Ampere cards

tested with that revision too, no go 😞
that version is not recognizing my gpu at all,

[Aaron44126]

45 minutes ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

tested with that revision too, no go

 

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

 

[MyPC8MyBrain]

28 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

Check:

i tested that as well,
they all give the same error "ERROR: No NVIDIA display adapters found."
the latest build with -6 switch also fails after prompting an overwrite,
no idea what is missing for the tool to proceed,

im hoping the private member who contacted me will share his vbios,

[ATAN]

10 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

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.

Great news for me as I have no dgpu and even if that affects my m.2 GPU I believe there was a cstate toggle for dgpus in the bios which might help me.