Dell Precision 7670 & Dell Precision 7770 owner's thread

[SvenC]

I'd say it is crucial for those who like the flexibility of at least two RAM slots and we'll see if other companies find it crucial enough to sell those as well, so we get some market competition for better prices, maybe in the next slim Precision 5780 or XPS17/18?

[Reshen]

New driver released for the 7X70. Wonder if it'll does as it claims 🙂

 

[MyPC8MyBrain]

54 minutes ago, Reshen said:

New driver released

that driver appears to be a year old,

generally speaking you want to stay away from Intel's Dynamic Tuning,
especially when undervolting or overclocking (i have the service manually disabled),

[Reshen]

I didn't notice that. Is it normal that the Dell service recommends such old drivers?

[Aaron44126]

42 minutes ago, Reshen said:

I didn't notice that. Is it normal that the Dell service recommends such old drivers?

 

It's not a new driver; I downloaded that same version from the 7X70 support page back in August.

 

Dell typically doesn't post new drivers whenever a new version is available upstream; they just do it if there is a specific reason (support for a new Windows version, security fix, critical bugfix, etc.).

[DarginMahkum]

I hope Dell takes this more seriously for the next generation, as even Razer can do 32K CB23 with the 13th gen HX processors - and that is with the 16". I, for sure, would not buy a Razer laptop for work but...come on Dell (taken from the Dave2D YT preview video)...

[Kataphract]

Hah, nice. Really want to see the 10 minutes and 30 minutes throttle test for the new Razers.

[DarginMahkum]

28 minutes ago, Kataphract said:

Hah, nice. Really want to see the 10 minutes and 30 minutes throttle test for the new Razers.

I don't want to do that as it will probably be depressing knowing how much Razer castrates the CPUs. 🥵 But looks like at least this year's laptops are half a cm thicker with a huge vapor chamber. which is a step in the right direction. Also 16:10 18" screen.

[Kataphract]

Are they? Will go check out the numbers. My wife's Blade 15 Advanced is ridiculously thin, which is just bad, so I could see the 16 one getting thicker by half centimeter. But from the video the 18 looked identical to current 17 pretty much. I will love to be proven wrong.
Sorry for OT.
My MSI Titan Raptor-HX can sustain 33K for 30 minutes, although it sounds like jet engine doing so.
My Razer Blade on other sounds like jet engine as well, just lacks any performance whatsoever. So I hope they get onto the "loud but powerful" wagon at least :- ).
My Dell 7670 at least, while not really powerful, is at least really silent imho.
 

[MyPC8MyBrain]

6 hours ago, DarginMahkum said:

even Razer can do 32K CB23 with the 13th gen

that's a 20% generational improvement, my current 12950HX can get to 25.5k on CB23
(I'm pretty sure it can be pushed beyond that score with LM TIM),

 

[TwistedAndy]

22 hours ago, DarginMahkum said:

I hope Dell takes this more seriously for the next generation, as even Razer can do 32K CB23 with the 13th gen HX processors - and that is with the 16". I, for sure, would not buy a Razer laptop for work but...come on Dell (taken from the Dave2D YT preview video)...

 

Dell does not care about performance in third-party apps like Cinebench R23. At least that's exactly was I told by two different Dell representatives while resolving issues with my XPS 17.

 

I think, the updated Precision 7680 and 7780 models will achieve 16-18K out of the box and nearly 25-27K after aggressive tuning and with noise levels like a jet plane.

 

Razer paid more attention to the performance in the new generation and increased the cooling system.

[MyPC8MyBrain]

4 hours ago, TwistedAndy said:

I think, the updated Precision 7680 and 7780 models will achieve 16-18K out of the box and nearly 25-27K after aggressive tuning and with noise levels like a jet plane

we get that now on the 7770 and it doesn't sound like a jet taking off at all (not even by longshot),

id expect more in the 30k (+) CB23 range out of the box from intel 13xxxHX line,

[MyPC8MyBrain]

anyone is seeing brief rapid brightness flicker across the entire screen? (7770 with 120 refresh and 4k screen option), this is random not very frequent but still happens the entire screen flashes as if increasing brightness to max rapidly then stops back to normal steady brightness, it doesn't go black at any point just flicker brightness to max 100 few times (brightness is set to 85 with blue filter and HDR on, i tried turning them off didn't help), this is mainly happens when i bring up a white blank screen, i hope this is a driver issue not hardware related,

[Aaron44126]

30 minutes ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

anyone is seeing brief rapid brightness flicker across the entire screen (7770 with 120 refresh and 4k screen option), this is random not very frequent but still happens the entire screen flashes as if increasing brightness to max rapidly then stops back to normal steady brightness, it doesn't go black at any point just flicker brightness to max 100 few times (brightness is set to 85 with blue filter and HDR on, i tried turning them off didn't help), this is mainly happens when i bring up a white blank screen, i don't think this is a driver issue not hardware related (i hope),

 

I generally keep the screen at 90% brightness and I have never experienced something like this.  The display has been pleasantly free of any sort of flicker issues.

 

I do not run with HDR mode enabled for the desktop.  I find that it makes the colors appear pretty washed out for non-HDR applications (...which is basically everything).

 

I do have something funny that happens with the screen.  Occasionally, I open up the laptop and it decides that it doesn't want to put the brightness above about 60%.  In this case the brightness-up button (Fn+F7) actually makes the brightness indicator/slider thing and the screen brightness level to go down, like the system knows there is an issue with the display and wants to lower the brightness.  I wonder if the display is overheating or something?  It seems sort of like how my phone behaves if I run a high load and heat it up... it will eventually lower the screen brightness.

 

If I repeatedly press Fn+F7, it will end up putting the brightness down to about 10%, but I can still move it higher by dragging the slider with the mouse (still won't go higher than about 60% — the slider will, but the actual brightness tops out well before the slider reaches the top).  Very odd.

 

When this happens, the workaround is to just wait a few minutes, shut and open the lid again (forces the display to power cycle), and then it will be working fine.  It's an infrequent occurrence (maybe once every two or three weeks) but it has happened both before and after I had the display panel in this system replaced.  Actually, I guess it hasn't happened since I installed the 1.8.0 BIOS (but now that I say that I'm sure I will see this issue recur tomorrow).

[MyPC8MyBrain]

27 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

it doesn't want to put the brightness above about 60%.

been having issues with system not putting brightness back to where it should,

I actually exposed the settings in power management so I can manually set 40 brightness when on power supply and 85 when plugged in, whenever the cycle happens the system ignores the values and places brightness randomly where it wants, each time I plug in and out I have to manually put brightness back to 85,
I have auto brightness and presence awareness off in bios and any windows app,

 

I think windows modern standby schema is bugged out,

I should be better of with old classic stable power schema for the time being,

[Aaron44126]

1 minute ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

I think windows modern standby schema is bugged out,

I should be better of with old classic stable power schema for the time being,

 

Yeah, I don't know about modern standby issues, I have had it disabled since I got this laptop.

[MyPC8MyBrain]

5 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

I have had it disabled since I got this laptop

interesting... 

for the first time ever i wanted to see what modern standby is like so i didn't disable it out of the box,

i did disable modern sleep and pagefile functions but kept the one power schema they try to drive all power options under, it functions but far from being smooth and its kind of annoying,
 

[MyPC8MyBrain]

came across another issue, turned on classic power schema,

on ultimate power plan when i unplug my power the entire screen starts flickering,

until power is plugged back in the system is unusable, anyone else using classic and can check this? (bios is on cool)

[TwistedAndy]

I did deeper research regarding the undervolting lock and found many interesting things. This feature is called "Dynamic OC Undervolt Protection" and blocks the negative voltage offsets.

 

I have described it here: 

 

 

 

Good news:
- This feature can be enabled or disabled by a particular vendor and controlled by 0x195 MSR.

 

Bad news:

- We all know which option Dell will choose...

- The 0x195 MSR is read-only (R/O), so no easy tweaks

- It may affect all the existing and future CPUs using the updated microcode (released in August 2022 and newer).

[MyPC8MyBrain]

54 minutes ago, TwistedAndy said:

The 0x195 MSR is read-only (R/O), so no easy tweaks

seem to be RW and is unlocked on my system with bios 1.8.0

 

 

[TwistedAndy]

Another interesting fact. I have found, that Precision 7670 and 7770 have a hidden setting called Undervolt Protection in the decompressed BIOS and it is enabled by default. At the same time due to the older microcode in the latest BIOS (1.8), this setting does not affect the undervolting.

 

Unfortunately, XPS 15 and 17 does not have this feature despite sharing mostly the same EFI structure and offsets. I have checked the 0x381 offset and it was disabled (0x0)

[TwistedAndy]

2 minutes ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

seem to be RW and is unlocked on my system with bios 1.8.0

 

 

 

You are changing EFI variables (configuration). BIOS (firmware) reads them and sets MSRs accordingly.

[MyPC8MyBrain]

7 minutes ago, TwistedAndy said:

hidden setting called Undervolt Protection

tried to mess with that EFI value got my system lagging and slowed down to a crawl for whatever reason,
I think the name is misleading and that's some current protection element,

[TwistedAndy]

2 minutes ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

tried to mess with that value got my system lagging and slowed down to a crawl for whatever reason,
I think the name is misleading and thats some current protection element,

 

It might be related to the IA CEP (Current Excursion Protection), but I'm not completely sure.

[MyPC8MyBrain]

59 minutes ago, TwistedAndy said:

BIOS (firmware) reads them and sets MSRs accordingly

what's the corresponding EFI registrar corresponding to MSR 0x195 than?