Dell Precision 7670 & Dell Precision 7770 owner's thread

[jeamn]

16 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

 

With screen brightness at 90%, Optimus on, 10+ apps open, and no particular effort to minimize power use (other than using Process Lasso to make sure background tasks stay on E cores as described earlier), I am getting about four hours of battery life.  I'm sure that it could do much better with lower screen brightness and some tuning, but I rarely use the system away from power, so four hours is totally fine with me.

 

Does Process Lasso work pretty well?  I get frustrated a lot with random background tasks pinning themselves to the dGPU (especially when you dock/undock) when on battery.  I'm not sure I'm going to enjoy having to wrangle them onto the right cores as well.

[Aaron44126]

On 8/12/2022 at 2:09 PM, jeamn said:

Does Process Lasso work pretty well?  I get frustrated a lot with random background tasks pinning themselves to the dGPU (especially when you dock/undock) when on battery.  I'm not sure I'm going to enjoy having to wrangle them onto the right cores as well.

 

Process Lasso works well for this purpose.  It basically lets you set priority and affinity rules and Process Lasso will apply them as soon as it sees a matching process running.  (You can set affinity from Task Manager but it will not "stick" if a process is restarted.)  There are a number of options to set rules for processes.  You can use the executable name or something specific like a part of the full path or even command line options passed to the executable when it was run.

 

There are some "gotchas", you have to be a little bit aware of how Windows passes affinity around.  If a process with limited affinity starts another process, the affinity will be carried over.  For example, if you were to set File Explorer (explorer.exe) to run on E cores only, any programs you start from File Explorer would inherit that affinity and also run on E cores only.

 

There are also a few system-level processes that you can't mess with, like MsMpEng.exe (Windows Defender).  They get to use P cores if they want to...

 

————

 

August 15, the day I'm supposed to get my display panel replaced (second attempt), and ....... parts are not available, so I have to wait some more.

 

[Edit]

August 16, I was just given an ETA of "tomorrow" 8/17 for the part to be in.  So, hopefully I can still get it replaced this week.

[Aaron44126]

Spent some time gaming on the Precision 7770.  I played Final Fantasy XV.  Had to do some tweaking but got things running at pretty solid 60 FPS, with 4K/DLSS, and pretty high graphics settings.  It's not the newest title but DLSS looks pretty great on the 17" panel.  This was my first time messing with DLSS.  I was not able to notice any sort of artifacting.  (This isn't the best game port, lots of people report stuttering issues; maybe not the best game to start out with but I've been wanting to play it for a while.  The biggest thing that I found to help keep the framerate stable is turning off motion blur in the game graphics settings.)

 

 

Anyway, I noticed a few things.

 

The battery light came on just a little bit into gameplay.  I checked, and sure enough, the system battery is draining during gameplay (presumably to provide extra power to the system which can't draw enough from the 240W adapter).

 

...Also, all of the CPU cores maxed out at 100 °C at some point during the first few minutes of playing.

 

 

After about an hour of gameplay, the battery was down to 78%, so it must be drawing somewhere in the ballpark of 20W.  Fine with me.  I very rarely go for more than two hours at a time.

 

Also, I noticed that if the "thermal mode" is set to "quiet", then the NVIDIA GPU won't go past the P3 power state, even if you try to force it with NVIDIA Inspector.  It tops out at around 350 MHz.  Definitely not good for any moderately intense game but would be fine for some casual or older titles.  (I need to work out a way to automatically switch thermal modes when firing up a game.  For now, I will just manually switch to "performance" when I start playing and then back to "quiet" when I'm done.)

[Aaron44126]

It never ends...

(RE: Replacement display panel)

I wonder what happened to the one that they were prepared to install on August 8, while I was out of town?

 

More Final Fantasy XV last night and the battery was not engaged to help out this time.  I was sitting in a different spot and using a different 240W PSU.  I'm wondering if maybe the one I was using the day before is having an issue where it cannot provide enough power, and that's why the battery drain started?  Neither of them is the one that came packaged with the system.  Anyway...  More investigation required.

[WouterJMW]

I had a question on the configuration of the video output and the dedicated GPU.So if somebody with the 7670 could be so kind as to test this for me? As we need to use our potential next laptop for running VR applications, I was wondering if the USB-C/DP was internally connected to the dedicated GPU. As this is a requirement for any VR headset to work. 

 

The NVIDIA Control Panel could give a hint as to which ports are connected to what device:

https://uploadvr.com/oculus-rift-s-valve-index-no-hdmi/

This might require to set the BIOS to use "Discrete Graphics Controller Direct Output Mode" though.

 

I find the (display output) manual to be lacking to be clear on which ports are directly connected to the GPU. 

[Aaron44126]

20 minutes ago, WouterJMW said:

I had a question on the configuration of the video output and the dedicated GPU.

 

If Optimus is on, the USB-C ports follow the setting in the BIOS for "discrete graphics controller direct output mode".  If it is on, the USB-C ports are connected to the dGPU.  If it is off, they are connected to the iGPU.  (This has been the case in Precision 7000-series systems for several generations now.)

 

I'm not sure about the HDMI port, haven't tested it yet.  In previous generations it was always connected to the dGPU, regardless of any BIOS setting... but it was also physically on the dGPU (not the motherboard), which is not the case this time.

 

(There is no DisplayPort or mini-DisplayPort on these new systems.  You can use a USB-C adapter.)

[heikkuri]

Rant on <

Have you noticed? Dell does not support 7X70 model as good as other models.

 

Latest audio driver 6.0.9363.1, A03 is behind one version.

This is supported for Precision 7670, 7770 and Latitude 7330, 7530.

Now Latitude 7330, 7530 got a new version 6.0.9376.1, A04 but Precision 7670, 7770 support is "removed".

 

Latest Bluetooth driver is 22.130.0.2, A23. All other Precision 7X40, 7X50, 7X60 etc. models got a new 22.150.0.6, A24

 

Latest Wi-Fi driver is 22.130.0.5, A25

But exe file name is 06 => Intel-AX211-AX210-AX201-AX200-9560-9260-9462-8265-3165_Y3YYC_WIN_22.130.0.5_A25_06.EXE

All other Precision 7X40, 7X50, 7X60  etc. models got a new 22.150.1.1, A26

 

Latest Intel PCIe Ethernet Controller Driver driver is 12.19.1.37, A23.

But for Dell 7X60 it is 12.19.2.45, A24.

 

Just few examples.

Rant off >

[Aaron44126]

Display panel replacement

 

Today, I had a tech stop by and replace the display panel.

 

The part that Dell sent was an entire display assembly with the display panel installed in it.  So, the bezel, aluminum backing, hinges, cables, webcam... everything was replaced.  There are two cables running from the motherboard to the display enclosure; one is labeled "eDP" so it would be the display signal, and I guess the other one is for the webcam / microphone array.  ...Makes sense why the part would be hard for them to come up with right now; it's not just a panel, it's the entire display assembly for this machine.

 

The heatsink had to be removed to replace the display enclosure.  There are screws holding the hinges in that are underneath the heatsink and heat pipes.  (The repaste job that he did was "passable" at best.  He did not clean off the old paste and I'm not sure what new paste specifically he put on.  I have my own paste and thought about asking if I could clean and repaste myself while he was here, but I was under a time crunch when he arrived, so that will have to wait for another time.  I'll repaste myself when I can find time, maybe this weekend.)

 

The good news is that the new panel doesn't have any stuck pixels.  I took it to a dark room to check carefully and I can't find any pixel issues.  One issue resolved.

 

The new panel does still support variable refresh rate (I was wondering about this a bit since it is not an "official feature" as far as I can tell).  I also checked and can confirm that G-SYNC is not supported.  To use VRR with this panel, you must have Optimus / graphics switching enabled and pipe the graphics through the Intel GPU.  (Here's a decent Reddit post about it.)

 

I asked the tech about the "bent" heatsink and he thinks that it is normal.  I'm inclined to agree after looking at it closely.  I don't know why the image in the service manual doesn't appear to have the same bend.  @win32asmguy should be getting his system "soon" and I'm interested to see what someone else's CPU performance is like...  I will also run benchmarks again after repasting sometime in the next few days.

[microdou]

On 8/23/2022 at 3:26 PM, Aaron44126 said:

I'll repaste myself when I can find time, maybe this weekend.)

Please share your procedure and experience 🤝

 

On 8/23/2022 at 3:26 PM, Aaron44126 said:

I'm interested to see what someone else's CPU performance is like...

Mine is still stuck at "Confirmed" 😭

 

Although only 5 days left, Dell website still believes my order "is being scheduled for production and is on track to meet the estimated arrival date" 😂

[Redrider]

On 8/23/2022 at 12:26 PM, Aaron44126 said:

Display panel replacement

 

Today, I had a tech stop by and replace the display panel.

 

The part that Dell sent was an entire display assembly with the display panel installed in it.  So, the bezel, aluminum backing, hinges, cables, webcam... everything was replaced.  There are two cables running from the motherboard to the display enclosure; one is labeled "eDP" so it would be the display signal, and I guess the other one is for the webcam / microphone array.  ...Makes sense why the part would be hard for them to come up with right now; it's not just a panel, it's the entire display assembly for this machine.

 

The heatsink had to be removed to replace the display enclosure.  There are screws holding the hinges in that are underneath the heatsink and heat pipes.  (The repaste job that he did was "passable" at best.  He did not clean off the old paste and I'm not sure what new paste specifically he put on.  I have my own paste and thought about asking if I could clean and repaste myself while he was here, but I was under a time crunch when he arrived, so that will have to wait for another time.  I'll repaste myself when I can find time, maybe this weekend.)

 

The good news is that the new panel doesn't have any stuck pixels.  I took it to a dark room to check carefully and I can't find any pixel issues.  One issue resolved.

 

The new panel does still support variable refresh rate (I was wondering about this a bit since it is not an "official feature" as far as I can tell).  I also checked and can confirm that G-SYNC is not supported.  To use VRR with this panel, you must have Optimus / graphics switching enabled and pipe the graphics through the Intel GPU.  (Here's a decent Reddit post about it.)

 

I asked the tech about the "bent" heatsink and he thinks that it is normal.  I'm inclined to agree after looking at it closely.  I don't know why the image in the service manual doesn't appear to have the same bend.  @win32asmguy should be getting his system "soon" and I'm interested to see what someone else's CPU performance is like...  I will also run benchmarks again after repasting sometime in the next few days.

Have you noticed any improvement in CPU heat with the new paste application?

[Aaron44126]

Did the repaste today.

 

Pretty straight-forward.  To get the heatsink out, there are the obvious eight screws (four CPU and four GPU) plus three holding the fan assembly in, and the two little cables that run the fans.  The whole thing comes out as one unit.

 

I cleaned off the old paste with isopropyl alcohol.

 

Some photos:

 

Bottom side of the heatsink.  Delta fans...

 

CPU & GPU.

 

I used Arctic MX-4 for the repaste.  Maybe not the absolute best but it is pretty well liked, and I've used it in other systems so I'm comfortable with it.

 

I also took the opportunity to blow dust out of the fans.  After about one month of use it had accumulated a visible but not ridiculous amount of dust.  (I plan to blow it out about once every four months as I did with my M6700.)

 

I ran Cinebench again (multi-thread, 10 minutes, "ultra performance" Dell thermal profile) and got 15488.  Slightly better than last time but nothing game-changing.

Spoiler

 

[Rojaho]

That's a very worrying CB23 result, as other devices with that chip are in the 23-24k range. Could you provide what the sustained wattage was to get that result? As it seems consistent with a 55W Loading 

[TwistedAndy]

1 hour ago, Rojaho said:

That's a very worrying CB23 result, as other devices with that chip are in the 23-24k range. Could you provide what the sustained wattage was to get that result? As it seems consistent with a 55W Loading 

 

Yes, it looks to be 55W consistent power limit. I have the same results on XPS 17 12900HK with 55W limit in the Ultra Performance mode.

 

Luckily, the power limit may be increased with ThrottleStop. Noise will increase as well.

[microdou]

18 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

I used Arctic MX-4 for the repaste.

I will probably do liquid metal once I get mine 🐶

[Aaron44126]

14 hours ago, Rojaho said:

Could you provide what the sustained wattage was to get that result?

 

I checked some more today.  It is being capped at 85W (PL1) but only running CPU cores are topping out at around 81 °C.  HWiNFO reports power limit as the performance limiting factor.  It seems that there is thermal headroom.  Need to play with ThrottleStop…

 

Can’t say why performance at 85W seems not much better than 55W in the ASUS system.

[AL123]

10 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

 

I checked some more today.  It is being capped at 85W (PL1) but only running CPU cores are topping out at around 81 °C.  HWiNFO reports power limit as the performance limiting factor.  It seems that there is thermal headroom.  Need to play with ThrottleStop…

 

Can’t say why performance at 85W seems not much better than 55W in the ASUS system.

Interesting, 85W power limit sustained isn’t bad, but still seeing low scores is odd. Id like to see higher than 85W with low GPU usage though given the total power budget. . I’ll check my 7760 soon see how it compares for PL1 and PL2 I know that varies the PL1 value when you load up to GPU heavily.
 

couple of other thoughts

 

- Are you still running process lasso during the tests? Maybe worth disabling that.

 

- The other thing is one of our early orders for precision 7770  around mid July with 128GB CAMM got cancelled and the reason given to us was performance issues with the 128GB CAMM. The others with 32GB and 64GB did not.

 

it’s been rebooked  now but i don’t know if it was a BIOS/other firmware type fix  fix or something else. Worth asking tech if they are aware of anything though. 

 

We are yet to recieve any of our 2022 generation machines ordered in July but will certainly do some testing when we recieve either 7670 or 7770 as have ordered a few different specs of each. 

[Aaron44126]

33 minutes ago, AL123 said:

- Are you still running process lasso during the tests? Maybe worth disabling that.

 

- The other thing is one of our early orders for precision 7770  around mid July with 128GB CAMM got cancelled and the reason given to us was performance issues with the 128GB CAMM. The others with 32GB and 64GB did not.

 

My primary operating environment is Windows 10, but I am running the tests from the stock Windows 11 install with basically nothing extra added.  No Process Lasso in the mix.

 

Interesting about the 128GB CAMM.  That could be something.  I know that the 128GB module runs at a lower speed but I wasn't expecting it to impact performance that much.  I don't necessarily mind, if that's the way that it has to be; I'd take the extra memory capacity at the expense of some performance.  Still, if a "fix" for it is going to be available, I'd absolutely take it.

[AL123]

45 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

 

My primary operating environment is Windows 10, but I am running the tests from the stock Windows 11 install with basically nothing extra added.  No Process Lasso in the mix.

 

Interesting about the 128GB CAMM.  That could be something.  I know that the 128GB module runs at a lower speed but I wasn't expecting it to impact performance that much.  I don't necessarily mind, if that's the way that it has to be; I'd take the extra memory capacity at the expense of some performance.  Still, if a "fix" for it is going to be available, I'd absolutely take it.

Cool I’ve got 64GB and 128GB models coming… eventually! Will run Cinenbench when they arrive and see how they compare. Until some more get tested we don’t really know what is “normal” for these hopefully more people will start receiving them sook .

 

Certainly wouldn’t expect the lower speed 128GB CAMM module to make much difference apart from if there is a specific issue I was told caused the cancellation (should have been a hold but they cancelled it!)

 

It could be your laptop slipped out before they noted the issue, or could have just been a batch of modules with the issue which affected my order.

 

 I didn’t place orders till more like mid July due to holidays and since then everything has been slowed down waiting on chassis Dell are happy with the quality. I would rather have it that wa round though!

 

However with Pro support you don’t have any worries In my experience they will do anything it takes to sort issues. Had some early Precision 5750s replaced due to power throttling issue that couldn’t be fixed with firmware and they just replaced them with no fuss 🙂

 

[win32asmguy]

5 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

My primary operating environment is Windows 10, but I am running the tests from the stock Windows 11 install with basically nothing extra added.  No Process Lasso in the mix.

 

Interesting about the 128GB CAMM.  That could be something.  I know that the 128GB module runs at a lower speed but I wasn't expecting it to impact performance that much.  I don't necessarily mind, if that's the way that it has to be; I'd take the extra memory capacity at the expense of some performance.  Still, if a "fix" for it is going to be available, I'd absolutely take it.

Does your Windows 11 environment have core isolation / VBS disabled?

[TwistedAndy]

5 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

 

My primary operating environment is Windows 10, but I am running the tests from the stock Windows 11 install with basically nothing extra added.  No Process Lasso in the mix.

 

Interesting about the 128GB CAMM.  That could be something.  I know that the 128GB module runs at a lower speed but I wasn't expecting it to impact performance that much.  I don't necessarily mind, if that's the way that it has to be; I'd take the extra memory capacity at the expense of some performance.  Still, if a "fix" for it is going to be available, I'd absolutely take it.

 

Memory speed does not significantly affect the Cinebench R23 score. I get nearly the same results with one or two DIMMs.

 

As for the power limit, it makes sense to check it using the HWiNFO (CPU Package Power). Under sustained load you should see something nearly 55W. It corresponds the ~15500 score in CB R23 MT. Under 75-85W CPU Package Power there should be 18000-19000.

 

Also, it is worth checking the Intel DTT (Dynamic Tuning Technology). It has a related telemetry service, which should be enabled for the best performance.

[Aaron44126]

48 minutes ago, TwistedAndy said:

As for the power limit, it makes sense to check it using the HWiNFO (CPU Package Power). Under sustained load you should see something nearly 55W.

That’s exactly where I spotted it capping at 85W.  I’m getting the 15000+ scores at 85W, not 55W.  (“Why” is a question I would love the answer to.)

 

I will check on core isolation / VBS and DTT.  I have purposefully left things at the default settings for initial testing.

[win32asmguy]

1 hour ago, Aaron44126 said:

That’s exactly where I spotted it capping at 85W.  I’m getting the 15000+ scores at 85W, not 55W.  (“Why” is a question I would love the answer to.)

 

I will check on core isolation / VBS and DTT.  I have purposefully left things at the default settings for initial testing.

From what I understand some chips leak more power under load than others. This is similar to the measurement Nvidia used to report as ASIC quality on their GPU's. It is very hard to measure on a laptop without access to VR VOUT monitoring other than just observing a chip running hotter than others for no other reason.

 

You can also measure a voltage variance between the same SKU. Some 12950HX can operate at 4.2ghz at 0.950v while others may need 1.150v. Obviously the ones that need more voltage to be stable at a frequency will consume more power to do the same work, or do less work at the same power / thermal limit cap.

[Aaron44126]

The benchmark above was taken with core isolation disabled and the Intel DTT telemetry service active.

[operator]

Just two questions regarding the SSD slots in general.

As far as I could see on the initial pictures, Dell delivers each slot with its own heatsink - is this correct?

 

So you could either decide to buy a SSD without heatsink and use the one shipped with the Dell Laptop, or buy a SSD with its own heatsink and you have to throw the one from Dell away, since it does not fit on an SSD with factory provided heatsink..?

 

[Aaron44126]

4 hours ago, operator said:

Just two questions regarding the SSD slots in general.

As far as I could see on the initial pictures, Dell delivers each slot with its own heatsink - is this correct?

 

Yes, Dell provides a heatsink for each NVMe slot whether you order the system with a drive preinstalled there or not.  (The tiny screw that you need to mount a drive is also included.)

 

As for aftermarket drives with heatsinks included/preinstalled when you order them, you'd want to be careful there.  These are generally not designed for laptops.  You only have 2mm or so of clearance to shut the case on top of the drives, so the heatsink would have to be super slim.  The "Samsung 980 Pro with heatsink", for example, has been reported not to fit.