Dell Precision 7670 & Dell Precision 7770 owner's thread

[Light]

52 minutes ago, operator said:

 

I think at least on 3DMARK CPU it was over 60% gained by @MyPC8MyBrain

(9.5k to 15.8k)

 

I will let you know later what it did to my numers...

OK, thanks! That sounds phenomenal -- can't believe I missed something so significant when configuring the machine with one SODIMM if it's that much. The Dell module is out of stock now, but for that kind of boost, I think it's worth keeping an eye on it when it comes back in stock for a quick upgrade!

 

Thanks!

[MyPC8MyBrain]

@Aaron44126
found this nested in bios settings...

setup_var CpuSetup 0x1FC 0x1 # Acoustic Noise Mitigation (default 0x0 = off)

 

[brunooo84]

5 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

 

@brunooo84

I played with the C-states options and found that disabling dGPU C-states causes a definite hit to dGPU performance.

 

The top C-states option seems fine to disable.  (This one has existed in the Precision BIOS for a decade or more.)  The bottom one regarding dGPU C-states is new and seems to actually cap the dGPU speed.  Don't turn that one off.

 

I had disabled the dGPU one as well and just noticed the performance drop when I tried to play a game.

 

btw, the issue with mouse freezing is still happening, I re-enabled dGPU c-states now and I'll see how it goes, very annoying

[brunooo84]

Something looks wrong... amy GPU never goes above 10% of usage doesn't matter what I'm doing, according to task manager... is this normal?

 

This screenshot I took while running a heavy game benchmark...

 

[brunooo84]

15 minutes ago, brunooo84 said:

Something looks wrong... amy GPU never goes above 10% of usage doesn't matter what I'm doing, according to task manager... is this normal?

 

This screenshot I took while running a heavy game benchmark...

 

 

nevermind... it's back to 100% usage if I re-enable Hardware-accelerated GPU Schedulling.

[operator]

I changed RAM to 2x32GB SODIMM and re-run 3DMARK.

Did not beat CPU score of @MyPC8MyBrain  - I am over 1k away from it.

 

Even if it did not turn out to be such a huge gain compaged to @MyPC8MyBrain - I only have a i7-12850 and not a i9-12950, so I guess this is ok..

 

https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/81758288

 

 

 

 

After letting the machine cool down, I started another run in "cool" profile. Graphics went down again to 5k and at the same time CPU went up to 16.7k - I guess this time the CPU won the fight over electric power against the GPU..... Thought both would be slower in "cool"

 

 

[operator]

Just did the normal run again and had nearly the same result. CPU peaked at 89W and GPU at 102W.

 

I am wondering if CPU score would go up, if it had lower temps - or is this a total power limit thing..?

[Aaron44126]

New Wi-Fi & Bluetooth drivers today.

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=HGCNG

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=Y9PHH

 

Now, I've got some catching up to do...

 

11 hours ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

here we go gents... regain ≥ 10% performance by enabling resizable bar.
3DMARK first test with these settings activated, no under or over volt (still with 125 TDP),
(my cpu is clearly not happy atm not being undervolted and is basically capped throughout the run)
 

setup_var CpuSetup 0x42B 0x1 # Enable PCIE Resizable BAR Support (default 0x0 = off)

 

That's interesting, but my system is already showing resizable BAR enabled (in NVIDIA control panel / system info).  I can also see the "Large Memory Range" resource on the dGPU in Device Manager which is the indicator that rBAR is working.  Was there indication that it was not enabled for you before ...?

 

9 hours ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

correct me if i'm wrong,
didn't i read somewhere on here that you turned off turbo in bios?

 

I keep turbo boost disabled (Windows setting, not a BIOS setting) when I am not doing heavy work.  (I have a whole article about this, linked in my sig.)  Of course, I have turbo boost enabled for benchmarks & gaming.

 

8 hours ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

if you game, run a session and see if you can spot a differences in-game performance,

 

I haven't noticed any difference between the Dell-provided drivers and the ones straight from NVIDIA.  Performance should be the same, though in the odd case that NVIDIA has a significant performance improvement in a driver upgrade (i.e. 522.xx series improves performance for DirectX 12 games) then you will have to wait a bit for that to trickle down to Dell's releases.  I generally recommend to stick with Dell's as they have been tested/certified for these laptops, unless you are into gaming, and then maybe you want more current ones.

 

6 hours ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

@Aaron44126
found this nested in bios settings...

setup_var CpuSetup 0x1FC 0x1 # Acoustic Noise Mitigation (default 0x0 = off)

 

Thanks but, once again, as Dell's fan control implementation is completely separate from the Intel IME stuff I rather doubt that changing this will make any difference at all.

 

4 hours ago, brunooo84 said:

btw, the issue with mouse freezing is still happening, I re-enabled dGPU c-states now and I'll see how it goes, very annoying

 

I guess it's a different issue then.  I can say for sure that this is not happening on my 7770.  How is your mouse attached (USB or Bluetooth or ...)?  Can you reproduce the issue just using the touchpad?  I'd suggest maybe pop Task Manager open to the "Details" tab, increase the poll rate (see menus at the top), and see if you can pin a spike in CPU use of a specific process to the mouse blips.  Otherwise, it might take Windows Performance Analyzer to figure out what is going on here.

  

4 hours ago, brunooo84 said:

nevermind... it's back to 100% usage if I re-enable Hardware-accelerated GPU Schedulling.

 

Also odd.  I'm definitely able to fully utilize the GPU with hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling disabled.

 

3 hours ago, operator said:

After letting the machine cool down, I started another run in "cool" profile. Graphics went down again to 5k and at the same time CPU went up to 16.7k - I guess this time the CPU won the fight over electric power against the GPU..... Thought both would be slower in "cool"

 

"Cool" seems to throttle the GPU but not the CPU.

 

[MyPC8MyBrain]

3 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

Was there indication that it was not enabled for you before ...?

interesting, i do not show rbar settings in nvidia cpanel at all,
didn't see it there before or after applying, maybe its the driver differences,

my rbar setting were off before i applied the new key found,

 

6 hours ago, operator said:

I changed RAM to 2x32GB SODIMM and re-run 3DMARK.

you did beat my score, more important you proved to yourself, myself and everyone following that LM is not critical,

further more it is now clear as day how badly the dGpu is healed back,

 

3 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

doubt that changing this will make any difference at all

me too, i saw it and immediately thought of you :) i 
think its a relic entry from spinning hdd days,

[operator]

4 hours ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

you proved to yourself, myself and everyone following that LM is not critical,

...but I guess it could improve thermals which is still an issue I think.

Still not knowing if the throttling is really due to thermals or due to power limits...

 

I was thinking to open a support ticket at Dell about that. 

 

Curious what your findings are with your replacement unit when it comes to tewaking without LM this time.

[Aaron44126]

22 minutes ago, operator said:

Still not knowing if the throttling is really due to thermals or due to power limits...

 

HWiNFO can tell you if throttling is power or thermal related.  (It will say Core Thermal Throttling = Yes in the sensors list if it is thermal throttling, anyway.)

[brunooo84]

8 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

New Wi-Fi & Bluetooth drivers today.

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=HGCNG

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=Y9PHH

 

Now, I've got some catching up to do...

 

 

That's interesting, but my system is already showing resizable BAR enabled (in NVIDIA control panel / system info).  I can also see the "Large Memory Range" resource on the dGPU in Device Manager which is the indicator that rBAR is working.  Was there indication that it was not enabled for you before ...?

 

 

I keep turbo boost disabled (Windows setting, not a BIOS setting) when I am not doing heavy work.  (I have a whole article about this, linked in my sig.)  Of course, I have turbo boost enabled for benchmarks & gaming.

 

 

I haven't noticed any difference between the Dell-provided drivers and the ones straight from NVIDIA.  Performance should be the same, though in the odd case that NVIDIA has a significant performance improvement in a driver upgrade (i.e. 522.xx series improves performance for DirectX 12 games) then you will have to wait a bit for that to trickle down to Dell's releases.  I generally recommend to stick with Dell's as they have been tested/certified for these laptops, unless you are into gaming, and then maybe you want more current ones.

 

 

Thanks but, once again, as Dell's fan control implementation is completely separate from the Intel IME stuff I rather doubt that changing this will make any difference at all.

 

 

I guess it's a different issue then.  I can say for sure that this is not happening on my 7770.  How is your mouse attached (USB or Bluetooth or ...)?  Can you reproduce the issue just using the touchpad?  I'd suggest maybe pop Task Manager open to the "Details" tab, increase the poll rate (see menus at the top), and see if you can pin a spike in CPU use of a specific process to the mouse blips.  Otherwise, it might take Windows Performance Analyzer to figure out what is going on here.

  

 

Also odd.  I'm definitely able to fully utilize the GPU with hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling disabled.

 

 

"Cool" seems to throttle the GPU but not the CPU.

 

 

it's not that I can't use GPU, it's just task manager that never report it to be above 10% usage with gpu scheduling disabled...

[operator]

1 hour ago, Aaron44126 said:

if throttling is power or thermal related

 

Still very inconsistent results on my side.

I was able to make one normal CB23 run with 100W CPU peak and after that CPU power was stuck to 35W. Don't know why.

And during several other tests one of the P-cores was not marked as throttled but had only 800MHz. Also on another run some P-cores were marked as throttled (and sometimes not) but only had 79°C/174°F.

All in Ultra Performance mode.

I don't get it..... 

 

  

9 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

"Cool" seems to throttle the GPU but not the CPU.

 

Can you verify that? At least on CB23 on "Cool" it gets up to 125W for 20 seconds or so and then cuts CPU off to 25-30W.

 

I also noticed that some times on HighPerformancxe CPU it cut at 75W but never saw a throttle, so don't know why it was cut at 75W then ...

[MyPC8MyBrain]

@Aaron44126
ive swapped nvidia drivers back and forth changed bios setting yet no matter what i did i do not show rbar option in nvidia system settings, wondering what's the difference's (this is unrelated to the bios cpu rbar command i posted earlier) 

[brunooo84]

After enabling resizable bar, GPU didn't like it but CPU did! 🤣 it was ~13k before

[Aaron44126]

1 hour ago, brunooo84 said:

it's not that I can't use GPU, it's just task manager that never report it to be above 10% usage with gpu scheduling disabled...

 

I've found Task Manager reporting of the GPU usage to be unreliable, I prefer to use the graph in the "Sensors" tab of GPU-Z if I really care about it.  (Though maybe Microsoft is able to get a better read on it with whatever they're doing if hardware scheduling is enabled...)

 

1 hour ago, operator said:

Can you verify that? At least on CB23 on "Cool" it gets up to 125W for 20 seconds or so and then cuts CPU off to 25-30W.

 

Actually I haven't checked myself, I was going off of other reports that I have seen posted, I believe @MyPC8MyBrain actually reported getting the highest CB results on the "Cool" setting.  But, maybe those were just short runs.  I really only bounce between the "Quiet" and "Ultra performance" modes myself.

 

59 minutes ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

@Aaron44126
ive swapped nvidia drivers back and forth changed bios setting yet no matter what i did i do not show rbar option in nvidia system settings, wondering what's the difference's (this is unrelated to the bios cpu rbar command i posted earlier) 

 

Well, odd.  My NV control panel doesn't show it either, I was going off of earlier recollection — I know for sure that I checked this shortly after receiving the system.  NV control panel doesn't show Dynamic Boost 2.0 either, and I know that was showing there before too.  Further, my Precision 7560 does show both of these things and shows that they are both enabled.  (The Precision 7560 has the same NVIDIA driver version and same Windows version as my 7770.)

 

Maybe one of the more recent Precision 7770 firmware updates changed something here?

 

Anyway, I realized that you can also check resizable bar status in GPU-Z and that is showing "Disabled" right now.  So, here shortly I will try to enable it with your tweak and see if that flips.

[MyPC8MyBrain]

5 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

NV control panel doesn't show Dynamic Boost 2.0

huh... my system info does show dynamic boost = yes option

 

[Aaron44126]

Dynamic boost 2.0 will be listed separately.

 

I did the command and after reboot, GPU-Z still shows resizable BAR disabled.

[Aaron44126]

Never mind, it is indeed now enabled…. I was looking at the Intel GPU there.

 

If you click the resizable BAR bit in GPU-Z, it shows you details on why it may be disabled.

[MyPC8MyBrain]

AFAIK rbar control in nvidia settings is currently reserved only for desktop 30 series and up,

[Aaron44126]

Yeah, not talking about "control" for it, just showing if it is enabled or not.  Here is my Precision 7560.

(Also, what the heck.  Dynamic Boost 2.0 should be enabled, it was enabled in BIOS 1.8.0, and now apparently disabled again...)

 

[operator]

52 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

maybe those were just short runs

 

I normally do only short runs to have a fast check if a tweak works or not.

Thats why I said it worked for 20 seconds or so and then CPU power gets limited.

 

But you can also see 3DMark on "cool" did deliver very good results on CPU side.

 

1 hour ago, brunooo84 said:

GPU didn't like it but CPU did

Was this done on Ultra Performance? Grafic score seems very low, even when GPU was limited.

 

[Aaron44126]

Ran 3DMark Time Spy and got 11,081 — the teensiest better than my original run when I first got the system.

https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/81802568?

 

[Edit]

GPU-Z is showing resizable BAR is showing "Disabled" in Windows 10 and "Enabled" in Windows 11 (where I ran that benchmark).  GPU-Z shows "Yes" for everything related to resizable BAR in Windows 10, yet it is still showing Disabled.  (Not going to worry any more about it.  Clearly it didn't impact performance very much.)

[Light]

23 hours ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

going by 3DMARK cpu score i saw ≥ 50% performance increase, before i added the second stick i got around 9k now 15.8k, you can scroll back you will find my earlier scores posted (i may have deleted them though from my 3DMARK account record),

I have the i9, so went ahead and ordered a second stick from Dell as it is in stock today. Hopefully will see a  nice improvement from the second memory stick going from single channel to dual channel too! Thanks!

[keks2k]

I just stumbled across this one:

 

 

Perfectly nails it!

 

He could've dived into the improper cooling a bit more, not only the high voltages (the llc observation?) and the underrated power brick, as he pointed out to have even repasted one of his units, though.

But that's just nitpicking I guess..