Dell Precision 7670 & Dell Precision 7770 owner's thread

[Melkor]

On 9/1/2023 at 1:01 PM, Joel said:

As already denounced in a post here above, I see that this laptop is real junk. A real scam even! I chose this machine for its ability to insert several SSDs. (Up to 4) ERROR, upon delivery of the machine I noticed that a port was occupied because of the size of the battery. Something that of course Dell hid before the sale. In addition, this machine causes drops out on the playback of all audio files. I changed the OS back to Windows 10 (For a machine shipped with Windows 11 Pro) This happens less often. (I finally went back to the original OS) I thought I could use this machine being a Professional sound engineer, it is obviously impossible with this Dell 7770. I also tested the SD card reader delivered with the machine and there the results are clear. A Lexar reader connected via USB is 2 to 3 times faster than the reader originally supplied in this Dell 7770. (I can provide screenshots proving my tests) So I'm reusing an old six-year-old ASUS laptop running Windows 10 which doesn't give me ANY problems like the ones this Dell 7770 gives me. Having browsed a number of Dell forums, I noticed that many people were complaining about audio problems on many of their machines. So this problem is not unknown to Dell, but of course these people would rather ignore the problems than fix them. This behavior is despicable especially for a machine over $3500

I've had success in reducing audio drops (to be inexistent, really) disabling "Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling" in Graphics settings on Windows 11.

 

It was a pain, now it is much, much better. I'm using a Focusrite Solo and an Arturia MiniFuse without problems.

[Joel]

Le 04/09/2023 à 21h20, Melkor a déclaré :

J'ai réussi à réduire les pertes audio (qui sont vraiment inexistantes) en désactivant la « planification GPU accélérée par le matériel » dans les paramètres graphiques de Windows 11.

 

C'était pénible, maintenant ça va beaucoup, beaucoup mieux. J'utilise un Focusrite Solo et un Arturia MiniFuse sans problème.

 

Good morning,

I only discovered your message on September 22 (Thank you for your response).

 

I looked in the settings you gave me and they were already disabled.

 

To test I reactivated it and for 30/40 minutes I have not noticed any drop out. (Maybe a hint on a trail, but not sure)

 

If it continues like this, I will be very happy and might consider going on sound recording tours with my Dell 7770.

 

For the moment I use a simple Microsoft Surface 9 which has never failed.

 

As sound cards I use RME, a Fireface 802 or a Digiface USB, obviously never connected at the same time all in ASIO. Thank you very much once again for your contribution to a problem that has lasted for almost seven months and for which I had lost complete confidence in Dell.

 

Sincerely.

[Joel]

Well no unfortunately, nothing works after restarting the PC the drops are worse than before. It's simply unusable. Whatever the parameters used.

 

So I give up and continue working with my Surface 9.

[Melkor]

Sorry to hear that. I've read somewhere there are some incompatibilities present in the USB3.2->USB2 implementation on the chipsets. That would explain the problems you report.

First google search results in https://support.elektron.se/support/solutions/articles/43000572280-compatibility-issues-with-usb2-usb3-and-chipset-problems

 

Maybe if you have an USB2 hub it is worth a try (I've had more problems than solutions with this, but my hubs were a Thunderbolt connected monitor and a TB16 dock, both of which produce drops during playback which I don't have when connected directly to a USB port).

[Joel]

No, I give up. This is a problem specific to Dell which is not capable of resolving audio issues.

 

I've read several forums where people were talking about technical issues and many have been complaining about audio for several years on various PCs sold by Dell.

 

I spent more than $4,000 on a device that isn't even capable of playing audio files correctly, whereas a Microsoft tablet 5 times cheaper does it perfectly.

[Frosty]

On 9/1/2023 at 12:19 PM, Aaron44126 said:

The whole experience was kind of the last straw for me, though.  I really stopped using the system after that.  I did some research and ended up buying a max-spec MacBook Pro later that week. 

Whoa.  That's it?  You're out from the Precision line?  You've been so helpful to me over the years, first with my Precision 7730 and more recently with the 7760.

This makes me nervous about my hefty investment in this machine.

[Frosty]

How do you update your GPU driver?  Do you go by what shows up on the Dell website for your machine or directly from NVIDIA?

My 7760 has an RTX A4500 GPU.  I've been using an old driver 536.45.  Dell Command Update does not show a driver update.  Windows Update does not show a driver update.  But that's an old driver.

Is it safe to go to NVIDIA's website and download whatever version appears there?  I don't see a "check for updates" option in the NVIDIA control panel.

[Aaron44126]

3 hours ago, Frosty said:

Whoa.  That's it?  You're out from the Precision line?  You've been so helpful to me over the years, first with my Precision 7730 and more recently with the 7760.

This makes me nervous about my hefty investment in this machine.

I’ll still be hanging out here. And I’m still using Precision for my work system. But, my workplace is looking at Lenovo systems. I am due for a refresh next year and I’m not sure what will happen yet.

 

3 hours ago, Frosty said:

How do you update your GPU driver?  Do you go by what shows up on the Dell website for your machine or directly from NVIDIA?

My 7760 has an RTX A4500 GPU.  I've been using an old driver 536.45.  Dell Command Update does not show a driver update.  Windows Update does not show a driver update.  But that's an old driver.

Is it safe to go to NVIDIA's website and download whatever version appears there?  I don't see a "check for updates" option in the NVIDIA control panel.

I recommend that you use the latest version available from Dell unless you have a specific need for something newer from NVIDIA. You can check the latest one for your system at dell.com/support. Note that NVIDIA maintains multiple driver branches for business GPUs. A driver may appear to be “old” by version number but still be current on security updates.

[Rinconmike]

I get the replacement battery from dell and all seems ok.  The battery connector looks to seat properly now.

 

One thing I noticed is

 

In the Bios, previously, this noted the Battery Life Type “Long Life Cycle” 

 

With the new battery it notes “Standard”.

 

The part number of the new battery is the same as the old.

 

I did order the system with the long life battery.  Anyone know the difference between “Long Life Cycle” and the Standard when the physical battery is the same part number?

 

[Aaron44126]

2 minutes ago, Rinconmike said:

I did order the system with the long life battery.  Anyone know the difference between “Long Life Cycle” and the Standard when the physical battery is the same part number?

 

My understanding is that they are the same battery, physically.  The "long life cycle" battery disables some fast-charge functions and in exchange it gets a longer warranty.  ...Though I would think they'd be different parts because something in the battery would have to tell the system whether it should be using fast-charge functions or not.

[Rinconmike]

2 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

 

My understanding is that they are the same battery, physically.  The "long life cycle" battery disables some fast-charge functions and in exchange it gets a longer warranty.  ...Though I would think they'd be different parts because something in the battery would have to tell the system whether it should be using fast-charge functions or not.

 

I doubled check and same part number on the batteries.

 

In Dell Optimizer under Power I can now toggle on and off the Dynamic Charge Policy.  Previously I could not.  

 

Now, Dynamic Charge Policy (Recommended) is "on" where with the other battery in Dell optimizer I could not turn on the Dynamic (noted it was off and grayed out) and it would state:

 

“Your 3 year warranty on this battery has locked your ability to change charging modes"  

 

Although it was grayed out and notes off, maybe it is locked "on" the Dynamic Charging so if I leave it, it is the same thing.

 

Now If I turn it off, I can then choose a charging mode.

 

Some photos below.

 

Also, in Bios previously I could not change the battery configuration.  Now I can and it is on Primarily AC use.  This system will be used on battery for a couple hours one or two days a week and other than that it is on AC power.  So I assume this is a good setting,

 

Dell Optimizer with Old Battery

 

Dell Optimizer with New Battery

 

 

[Frosty]

21 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

I’ll still be hanging out here. And I’m still using Precision for my work system. But, my workplace is looking at Lenovo systems. I am due for a refresh next year and I’m not sure what will happen yet.

 

I'm glad to hear that.

Just before I bought the 7730 I considered switching to Mac -- for the first time in decades of using Windows machines.  I was drawn to the upgradeability of the Dell, since I need a large amount of internal drive storage and frequently upgrade my drives as larger capacities are introduced.  And it's also helpful to know that I can upgrade RAM and potentially other components too.

 

But I've had to fuss with Dell too many times over the last years.  My 7760 might be my last Windows machine.

 

Quote

I recommend that you use the latest version available from Dell unless you have a specific need for something newer from NVIDIA. You can check the latest one for your system at dell.com/support. Note that NVIDIA maintains multiple driver branches for business GPUs. A driver may appear to be “old” by version number but still be current on security updates.

 

Thanks.  I don't think I need something specific in the newer drivers.  I've run into frustrating slowdowns with the latest versions of Adobe Lightroom and one of the first troubleshooting steps that have been suggested is ensuring that the GPU driver is up to date.  The SupportAssist component on the Dell support website keeps freezing when I try it, so I went looking and yesterday did manually install the latest driver that appears for my machine.  Hopefully that helps with the Lightroom issue.

[Aaron44126]

2 hours ago, Frosty said:

But I've had to fuss with Dell too many times over the last years.  My 7760 might be my last Windows machine.

 

I have sworn off Windows as a personal OS since April.  (Still use it for work; don't really have a choice.)  I was on Linux for two months before getting the MacBook Pro.  I am still using a Windows VM to run a few applications, though.

 

The MacBook Pro has downsides for sure (lack of upgradeability, no numeric keypad, and generally having to get used to a new OS with new ways of doing things, different keyboard shortcuts, etc).  I bit the bullet and just got a max-spec system and I think I'll be good for six years or so.  I'll say that "as a laptop" it is a league above anything that I have seen from a Windows-based laptop.  The mini-LED display is brilliant; the system can offer high performance when needed but is silent doesn't operate as a space heater when doing office-type work; and, it can operate on battery power three or four times longer than my Precision could, and without any throttling.  I don't see myself going back.

 

I do use Lightroom Classic and I have found the performance on macOS to be much more consistent than I'm used to on Windows, where the app always seemed to be struggling for no apparent reason.  Adobe Acrobat, on the other hand, seems to behave notably better on Windows than on macOS to me.

[Frosty]

22 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

I'll say that "as a laptop" it is a league above anything that I have seen from a Windows-based laptop.

 

That gives me some buyers remorse over the 7760, despite really liking its upgradability.

How much of a performance loss have you see running Windows apps in a VM?  That's been a trade off that's made me pause.  With Apple's own silicon, aren't there compatibility issues with some apps?

[Aaron44126]

3 hours ago, Frosty said:

That gives me some buyers remorse over the 7760, despite really liking its upgradability.

How much of a performance loss have you see running Windows apps in a VM?  That's been a trade off that's made me pause.  With Apple's own silicon, aren't there compatibility issues with some apps?

 

The Windows VM performs fine but I'm not doing anything especially intensive.  I use Quicken and some office-type apps.  I wouldn't expect any graphically intensive to perform great in a VM.  It is Windows-on-ARM, which has an x86/x64 emulator built-in that works well, but it doesn't support emulating any device drivers or low-level system apps.  So, for example, I have an old Canon printer/scanner that I can't use in Windows on ARM because Canon hasn't provided an ARM driver; and, apps like Macrium Reflect or AnyDVD HD install kernel modules which won't work on Windows-on-ARM until/unless they produce an ARM version of those modules.  (You'd have the same limitations on an ARM-based Windows systems like Surface Pro X.)

 

My more intensive tasks, I have been able to run natively in macOS.  (Photo work, video encoding, and gaming.)

 

Not saying everyone should go and switch to Mac.  There are notable pros and cons for sure.  You'd have to examine your workload and see if it is even workable at all to start out with.

[Frosty]

18 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

 

The Windows VM performs fine but I'm not doing anything especially intensive.  I use Quicken and some office-type apps.  I wouldn't expect any graphically intensive to perform great in a VM.  It is Windows-on-ARM, which has an x86/x64 emulator built-in that works well, but it doesn't support emulating any device drivers or low-level system apps.  So, for example, I have an old Canon printer/scanner that I can't use in Windows on ARM because Canon hasn't provided an ARM driver; and, apps like Macrium Reflect or AnyDVD HD install kernel modules which won't work on Windows-on-ARM until/unless they produce an ARM version of those modules.  (You'd have the same limitations on an ARM-based Windows systems like Surface Pro X.)

 

My more intensive tasks, I have been able to run natively in macOS.  (Photo work, video encoding, and gaming.)

 

Not saying everyone should go and switch to Mac.  There are notable pros and cons for sure.  You'd have to examine your workload and see if it is even workable at all to start out with.

 

Yep, thanks for the overview.

[jorgeregula]

Hi! Can some of you share what your "total System Power" is when idle? CPU package power is at 9-10 watts when idle, system power total is at 50 watts for me. It seems high but I don't know how to reduce it further.

 

Running a 7670.

[Aaron44126]

2 hours ago, jorgeregula said:

It seems high but I don't know how to reduce it further.

 

dGPU stuck on?  Assuming you have graphics switching enabled in the BIOS, and you're not running any graphics tasks, try disabling and then re-enabling the NVIDIA GPU in Device Manager and see if that helps.  Sometimes that kicks the dGPU into powering off properly.  (I was just complaining about this the other day.)

 

Also be aware that your monitoring tool might cause the dGPU to stay powered on by trying to monitor it.  Might be better to use something external like a Kill-a-Watt to measure the system power usage.

[mkolejak]

(Update: solved - you need to install original Nvidia Driver - NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-545.29.06 and backlight is working!)
Hi guys, 

Any of you tried to run linux and managed to get display dim on nvidia drivers? Im on Rocky Linux and Gnome (basically Red hat distro), no matter what I tried, display backlight only works on Noveau drivers, on Nvidia drivers Im stuck with 100% brightness on laptop display….Other than that everything works without installing any additional drivers and works nicely!

(7670, i9 12950HX, Nvidia 3080ti, 128gb DDR5 Camm)

[win32asmguy]

On 1/23/2024 at 3:20 AM, jorgeregula said:

Hi! Can some of you share what your "total System Power" is when idle? CPU package power is at 9-10 watts when idle, system power total is at 50 watts for me. It seems high but I don't know how to reduce it further.

 

Running a 7670.

 

I have noticed that my 7670 also has very high idle power consumption recently, easily 40W or more despite having the GPU and CPU idle. It seems like this issue may have cropped up after updating to the 1.16.0 bios. If also effects any of the performance modes. Sustained load seems to be fine. I do use Windows 10 22H2 but I need to restore the stock Dell image to rule it out and begin a support request. As it is right now the system cannot last through a meeting more than 1.5 hours which is not great.

[RYANKO]

Anyone suffered from the same problem here?
https://www.dell.com/community/en/conversations/precision-mobile-workstations/precision-7770-bios-1180-overall-system-performance-degradation/65c7802d0217a51eb1a3ebd3?page=1

[win32asmguy]

1 hour ago, RYANKO said:

Anyone suffered from the same problem here?
https://www.dell.com/community/en/conversations/precision-mobile-workstations/precision-7770-bios-1180-overall-system-performance-degradation/65c7802d0217a51eb1a3ebd3?page=1

 

I have experienced this issue before on both the 7670 and 7780 with any bios version. The issue was traced to a PROCHOT event being tripped which causes the CPU to throttle itself to 400mhz and also the iGPU to 800mhz. This causes problems because if you use the iGPU to drive any display then it causes that display to become sluggish and unresponsive. This can even happen with CPU temps well under 80C. The source of the event was unknown but I have heard it can be power supply overheating, CPU or GPU VRM overheating, GPU over a specified temperature threshold, or the CPU itself going over 100C (but should hot happen due to TccOffset).

 

The best way to stop it is disabling BDPROCHOT so the CPU ignores these events. I mentioned the hidden UEFI bios variable for that in this post, similar process to setting Undervolt flags, AC LoadLine, etc:

 

 

I paired making this change also using a 330W AC Adapter meant for an Alienware 51M R2. They are not sold with Precision but are detected in the bios as 330W and obviously have much more headroom in combined load scenarios.

[RYANKO]

1 hour ago, win32asmguy said:

 

I have experienced this issue before on both the 7670 and 7780 with any bios version. The issue was traced to a PROCHOT event being tripped which causes the CPU to throttle itself to 400mhz and also the iGPU to 800mhz. This causes problems because if you use the iGPU to drive any display then it causes that display to become sluggish and unresponsive. This can even happen with CPU temps well under 80C. The source of the event was unknown but I have heard it can be power supply overheating, CPU or GPU VRM overheating, GPU over a specified temperature threshold, or the CPU itself going over 100C (but should hot happen due to TccOffset).

 

The best way to stop it is disabling BDPROCHOT so the CPU ignores these events. I mentioned the hidden UEFI bios variable for that in this post, similar process to setting Undervolt flags, AC LoadLine, etc:

 

 

I paired making this change also using a 330W AC Adapter meant for an Alienware 51M R2. They are not sold with Precision but are detected in the bios as 330W and obviously have much more headroom in combined load scenarios.

I have tried "setup_var CpuSetup 0x7A 0x0" according to the post but have no luck.
For me, the sympton after upgrading bios to version 1.18.0 is CPU frequency locked to 0.39GHz which makes even right click menu on the desktop extremely slow.

The issue magically disappeared when I unplug AC power and reappeared when pluging AC back.

It's very repeatable.
In addition, activate the Quiet profile under Power > Thermal Management in the BIOS or the respective section in Dell Power Manager helps a bit.

The sad thing is BIOS 1.18.0 is not downgradable even enabling BIOS Downgrade in the bios menu.

It looks like only way to fix it at this moment is to replace the motherboard with older bios which is tedious and time-consuming.

Any other steps or suggestions I could try?

[win32asmguy]

6 hours ago, RYANKO said:

I have tried "setup_var CpuSetup 0x7A 0x0" according to the post but have no luck.
For me, the sympton after upgrading bios to version 1.18.0 is CPU frequency locked to 0.39GHz which makes even right click menu on the desktop extremely slow.

The issue magically disappeared when I unplug AC power and reappeared when pluging AC back.

It's very repeatable.
In addition, activate the Quiet profile under Power > Thermal Management in the BIOS or the respective section in Dell Power Manager helps a bit.

The sad thing is BIOS 1.18.0 is not downgradable even enabling BIOS Downgrade in the bios menu.

It looks like only way to fix it at this moment is to replace the motherboard with older bios which is tedious and time-consuming.

Any other steps or suggestions I could try?

 

Try having throttle stop limit reasons up while you are triggering the issue. It could be something else.

 

You can also confirm in hwinfo64 or throttlestop if BDPROCHOT was successfully disabled after the uefi variable change.

[RYANKO]

8 hours ago, win32asmguy said:

 

Try having throttle stop limit reasons up while you are triggering the issue. It could be something else.

 

You can also confirm in hwinfo64 or throttlestop if BDPROCHOT was successfully disabled after the uefi variable change.

It turns out to be "setup_var CpuSetup 0x7D 0x0" instead of 0x7A in this machine to unlock BDPROCHOT.

However, it's only unlock BDPROCHOT control, rather than disable it.

After that, I could check/uncheck BDPROCHOT option in throttlestop.

For temporarily usage before upgrading BIOS/changing mainboard, I have to boot the laptop without AC, launch throttlestop to make BDPROCHOT disabled and then plug AC power.