Dell Precision 7670 & Dell Precision 7770 owner's thread

[MyPC8MyBrain]

it seems as if Dell is setting vbios TDP based on selected screen option (which should not be the case),
 

[ATAN]

4 hours ago, Easa said:

 

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).

 

 

 

While this will be my first laptop in about 15 years, I do upgrade my PC on a semi annual basis. Mostly GPU, drive, and cooling related stuff, and moving most of that to a egpu setup has benifited me.

 

As far as performance, I've gotten the 7770 to a point where I can live with it if I liquid metal it for cooler temps overall. Which is 75w hell, I'd really like 16000k cbr23 of 8 cores but I'm settling with all cores enabled 18k at 75w pl1 85w pl2. It's still hot and not fun when loading all cores. But again if I keep it for anywhere past two years I'd want a cooling solution that is more performant.

 

The Lenovo workstation from what I hear can hold 86w steady and pl2 109w via liqmetal and a vapchamb, which is satisfactory in my head. But it's kinda fugly and not becoming of a Thinkpad branding. Plus I'm affraid if I get a 4tb gen 4 m.2 it'll overheat.

 

The HP definitely is the best looking board overall, only complaint is that I have to tear it open. But if I can manage to buy a second backplate to mod and convince a rep to sell me a vapor chamber for a igpu only model. If not I wonder if the 6600m comes with a vapor chamber, which would make it the most attractive laptop(the only thing the 7770 has over it is that access hatch).

[MyPC8MyBrain]

@ATAN have you not been following my tests?
as soon as i unleash the GPU TDP limit the 7X70 will the best workstation platform out there today,
i already exceeded the best cpu results on 3DMARK with 15.6k, top performing before was 14.5k,
i just need gpu to follow suit to take over the first position on 3DMARK,

 

it doesn't really take much to get there,
i already shown the same results can be reached with or without LM TIM and OEM pads!
the rest is just system wide service tuning and few specific bios settings (and my secret sauce),

[ATAN]

32 minutes ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

@ATAN have you not been following my tests?
as soon as i unleash the GPU TDP limit the 7X70 will the best workstation platform out there today,
i already exceeded the best cpu results on 3DMARK with 15.6k, top performing before was 14.5k,
i just need gpu to follow suit to take over the first position on 3DMARK,

 

it doesn't really take much to get there,
i already shown the same results can be reached with or without LM TIM and OEM pads!
the rest is just system wide service tuning and few specific bios settings (and my secret sauce),

I have, it's just a matter of finding my laptops fun(cl)bean(it).
 

I'm going to give another all nighter to it but my cb records are 15k w/o ecores and 18.5k with ecores I'm just a little dissapointed in the cooling ability, much more than the raw perf. I normally push my systems to their peak efficiency and limit the wattage. I'd take bigger and heavier for quieter and cooler.
 

The 7770 is growing on me.

[Aaron44126]

This thread is starting to get pretty long.  I've updated the OP with some suggestions for performance improvements and links to key posts to try to make this information easier to find.  Any suggestions, let me know...

[MyPC8MyBrain]

@ATAN
hang in there for bit longer, we are about to find out if this will shape up to be the current reigning king,
i believe it can be even with its inferior current thermal solution it can be dialed in to do almost anything one can expect from top of the line mobile workstation today as we are learning together here,

as mentioned earlier you can achieve higher CB scores by further tuning unneeded system services,
correct me if i'm wrong... you currently have in the neighborhood of 150+ process running in the background at idle, my system has only 50 process running in the background at idle (after i tune the system to my liking), 
you would be surprised how much resources are wasted and the gains you have left on the table
(see my task manager image below, the +1 is task manager itself running in foreground),

i can confirm that while cool bios preset can still produce the highest scores on CB23,
while keeping system surfaces cooler and almost completely eliminating thermal throttling,
for 3DMARK and such mixed benchmarks cool bios settings will limit dgpu output,
 

[Aaron44126]

22 minutes ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

as mentioned earlier you can achieve higher CB scores by further tuning unneeded system services

 

Cinebench runs at low priority by default so anything else running on your system (including background services) can chip CPU time away from it.  If you bump it up to "Above normal" priority then background services should become less of a concern.

[Ionising_Radiation]

@MyPC8MyBrain, maybe try this nvflash. 

Full set of commands: 

.\nvflash-5.670.0-Patched.exe --protectoff
.\nvflash-5.670.0-Patched.exe --index=0 -6 <new_rom_file>.rom

[1610ftw]

11 hours ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

@ATAN
hang in there for bit longer, we are about to find out if this will shape up to be the current reigning king,
i believe it can be even with its inferior current thermal solution it can be dialed in to do almost anything one can expect from top of the line mobile workstation today as we are learning together here,

 

You will have a better start with just about any other solution (MSI, Lenovo, HP) when it comes to the cooling hardware but the software and this great community could mean that Dell will end up as number two even in CPU performance. The MSI CreatorPro X17 / GT77 chassis can get into the higher 25K regions without even opening it so there definitely is something left on the table there and I expect it to be able to crack 26K.

 

Of course there is more to a workstation than a high Cinebench score but the Dell is rather unlikely to end up in top spot due to its inferior cooling solution even though you and others did a great job getting around that. Achieving a more than 50% increase over the benchmark as it is coming from the factory is crazy and both a testament to you and a testament to the carelessness with which Dell is throwing away performance.

 

As for service and support, different options for screens and GPUs there is no contest as Dell has all of that covered much better, really a very good overall package and what I would recommend to people who want to keep their laptops for more than three years.

[MyPC8MyBrain]

3 hours ago, Ionising_Radiation said:

maybe try

Thank you, gave it a try i get "ERROR: No NVIDIA display adapters found." 

it seems that the 3080 Ti chip 10DE-2420 in these is fairly new,
all vflash revisions i tested with fail on not recognizing the card,

the only revision that recognized the card is the recent unmoded build,
it recognizes the card but fails on deploying even with -6 and "Y" confirmation,
maybe the next build will support these newer chips,

[alittleteapot]

I've been following this thread with interest - I actually was inspired by this thread to run Cinebench R23 on my 7760.  I'm actually amazed by the sheer amount of energy everyone is dedicating to max these systems out, and it's such a huge difference in heat transfer from the 7760 to 7770.  

 

One thing that was pointed out in the Product Q & A / Review page is that the Precision 7770 with 3080 Ti dGPU is that does not have switchable graphics - does that mean it lacks Optimus support?  Or, is it just really buggy in an early BIOS version?

 

https://www.dell.com/en-au/work/shop/business-laptops-ultrabooks-and-tablets/new-precision-7770-workstation/spd/precision-17-7770-laptop/on7770wm03au_vp#ratings_section

 

Yes, I have one with the 3080 Ti (and a i9-12950HX) and DO NOT RECOMMEND. There is no option for switchable graphics with this machine. If you turn off the UHD Graphics, the laptop screen will not power. Further, you cannot undo the Bios change without being able to power the laptop screen. Being that everything flows through the UHD card, operation is laden with graphics hangs. When benchmarked with 3Dmark, scores are horrible. The only way to test it is without a secondary monitor, as the graphics hang during testing. My sons Alienware M7R4 scores better with a 3060 and 10th gen i7 (and he loves to rub it in).

 

 One, and a funny sidenote in these comments - Dell says putting the laptop on an actual lap could cause permanent damage to you, and putting the laptop on a blanket on your lap will cause permanent damage to the laptop 🙂

 

[Aaron44126]

7770 + 3080Ti does have switchable graphics. I’ve been using it. I have found the system to be unreliable with switchable graphics off. The system works but sometimes will not “wake up” after having the display power to off. Once, I had a garbled display while trying to get to BIOS to turn graphics switching back on and I had to use an external display to do that. (So, it does not seem to be a Windows/driver problem.)

 

No such issues with graphics switching on. I’m generally fine with this configuration so I haven’t decided what I’m going to do just yet, but it will probably be an eventual warranty claim. I sort of want to see if other systems show this issue (I hate doing warranty parts replacements only to end up with the same problem). I have been gaming on the system, so I can say that the 3080Ti otherwise works fine. I did record a couple of videos of the garbled BIOS boot graphics.

[MyPC8MyBrain]

On 9/20/2022 at 7:05 PM, mkolejak said:

Does anyone of you have a uhd+ 16 touch screen?

i have a 7670 with 16-inch, OLED UHD+ 3840 x 2400, 60 Hz, Anti-Glare, Touch,
100% DCIP3, 400 nits, IR Cam/Mic WLAN

Item number: 391-BGSO

[win32asmguy]

3 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

7770 + 3080Ti does have switchable graphics. I’ve been using it. I have found the system to be unreliable with switchable graphics off. The system works but sometimes will not “wake up” after having the display power to off. Once, I had a garbled display while trying to get to BIOS to turn graphics switching back on and I had to use an external display to do that. (So, it does not seem to be a Windows/driver problem.)

 

No such issues with graphics switching on. I’m generally fine with this configuration so I haven’t decided what I’m going to do just yet, but it will probably be an eventual warranty claim. I sort of want to see if other systems show this issue (I hate doing warranty parts replacements only to end up with the same problem). I have been gaming on the system, so I can say that the 3080Ti otherwise works fine. I did record a couple of videos of the garbled BIOS boot graphics.

 

Have you noticed any issues with games / apps with the 3080Ti active freezing in Hybrid graphics mode? I have also noticed that periodically I get a black screen on Chrome if a page has a video active. Using the latest posted Intel / Nvidia drivers from Dell on Windows 10. I haven't tried 22H2 yet to see if it helps but may later tonight.

[Aaron44126]

3 hours ago, win32asmguy said:

Have you noticed any issues with games / apps with the 3080Ti active freezing in Hybrid graphics mode? I have also noticed that periodically I get a black screen on Chrome if a page has a video active. Using the latest posted Intel / Nvidia drivers from Dell on Windows 10. I haven't tried 22H2 yet to see if it helps but may later tonight.

I noticed some regular stuttering behavior in multiple games using the dGPU. Like, there would be a noticeable blip of perhaps a quarter second with the graphics “frozen”, and it would occur every few seconds. It was not consistent and rebooting would fix it for a while. I couldn’t blame it on DPC latency and there was not a corresponding audio blip.

 

I think that I have “solved” it by disabling the “hardware GPU scheduling” option in Windows advanced graphics settings. (A search through Reddit shows many people complaining about this option causing odd behavior.) But, that was just a few days ago that I toggled that and it hasn’t been long enough for me to be sure that it is fixed. I was planning to mention it here after being more certain about it.

 

I am on Windows 10 21H1. (22H2 seems to have no real changes from 22H1.) I’m using the Intel drivers from Dell but recently moved to the Studio drivers from NVIDIA. (I experienced the stutter with both Dell and Studio drivers.) I have not experienced the black Chrome tabs issue that you mention… but I primarily use Firefox ESR. I do have NVIDIA control panel set to use the integrated GPU for all apps by default and I manually whitelist apps for the dGPU, so there is no reason why the browser would be invoking the dGPU.

[MyPC8MyBrain]

2 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

22H2 seems to have no real changes from 22H1

under the hood it does have changes that may or may not effect you pending one preferences,
22H2 further locks system security and adds few new native security services,
in 22H1 it is easier to turns these off, in 22H2 its more cumbersome,

[MyPC8MyBrain]

any 7670 owners with 3080 Ti out there willing to help with their vbios copy?

[Easa]

On 10/23/2022 at 3:57 AM, MyPC8MyBrain said:

as mentioned earlier you can achieve higher CB scores by further tuning unneeded system services,
correct me if i'm wrong... you currently have in the neighborhood of 150+ process running in the background at idle, my system has only 50 process running in the background at idle (after i tune the system to my liking), 
you would be surprised how much resources are wasted and the gains you have left on the table
(see my task manager image below, the +1 is task manager itself running in foreground),

 

 

Do you have some list of modifications / tweaks that you do to make the OS lighter and more suitable for professional / administrator user? I have my own tweaks but I am curious what others do. 

[operator]

5 hours ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

any 7670 owners with 3080 Ti out there willing to help with their vbios copy?

 

NVIDIA control panel shows 125W on mine.

Hitting 102W in 3DMARK.

How can another copy of the same thing you already have, help to improve?

[samatsu]

Who knows Sunon fans part number for the M7670 ? 
Thanks a lot!

[brunooo84]

has anyone noticed a very annoying issue where the mouse freezes every few seconds?

 

for example, if you open ms paint and keep drawing circles, you can clearly see this happening... if I restart it stops for a while but then it starts happening again, I just tried to disable accelerated gpu scheduling to see if it helps, but if anyone knows how to fix this it would be great!

 

[Aaron44126]

21 minutes ago, brunooo84 said:

has anyone noticed a very annoying issue where the mouse freezes every few seconds?

 

Classic Precision issue.  Try going to BIOS setup and disabling C-states.  It should be under the "performance" section.

 

I just noticed that there is a setting there about C-states and discrete graphics.  I wonder if that "feature" is involved with the dGPU "stuttering" issue that I described above...  I will experiment with it.

 

25 minutes ago, samatsu said:

Who knows Sunon fans part number for the M7670 ? 
Thanks a lot!

 

Unfortunately, Dell doesn't have separate part numbers for variations of the same heatsink assembly.  (You'll get different part numbers for i.e. dGPU present or no dGPU present, but not for which type of fans are in there.)

 

Did you get a 7670 with Delta fans?

[brunooo84]

8 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

 

Classic Precision issue.  Try going to BIOS setup and disabling C-states.  It should be under the "performance" section.

 

I just noticed that there is a setting there about C-states and discrete graphics.  I wonder if that "feature" is involved with the dGPU "stuttering" issue that I described above...  I will experiment with it.

Thank you Aaron!

 

Does it have any other effect on performance by disabling it?

[Aaron44126]

2 minutes ago, brunooo84 said:

Does it have any other effect on performance by disabling it?

 

If anything it will improve performance at the cost of higher power use / lower battery life.  It prevents the CPU from dropping to lower power states in certain conditions.

...Though I did some testing on my Precision 7530 which had this issue and I found the impact to both performance and battery life to be pretty negligible.

[MyPC8MyBrain]

5 hours ago, operator said:

How can another copy of the same thing you already have, help to improve?

 

Thank you Operator,
we learned the past few days some of us received 3080 units with 125 some with 150 and some with 157 TDP,
one member notified me in private that he received his 7670 with 3080Ti at 157 TDP, 
the search is after the higher TDP vbios variants,
we should have a repo for these once located,

(the member with 7670 & 3080 Ti & 157w TDP who notified me in private has not visited the site since i replied 😞)

 

 

 

  

41 minutes ago, samatsu said:

Who knows Sunon fans part number for the M7670 ?

grab your spectacles 😉