Dell Latitude E5570

Hey thanks again John, those were some great insights. Just one last thing, I was looking at Inspiron 7559 before this, due to a fairly good price for GTX 960m GPU, quad core and good battery life. The drawback was because of no support in PCI-e SSD which is around 2x better performance compared to SATA III. So the question is, would a 960m outweigh a pcie ssd upgrade in the future? Plus, with emerging eGPU solutions through Thunderbolt 3.0 (my local Latitude has it), would I be able to connect to them in the future if I am really concern about GPU performance?
THANKS!

 

You can't compare a 960M (which will improve 3D graphics and possibly other program performance depending on the software) with a PCIe SSD. For a given task, a computer's performance is only as strong as the weakest link in the chain. If you are using the processing capabilities of a 960M then it's more likely that disk I/O will become the bottleneck.

The PCIe SSD would help in such a situation although it might thermally throttle under sustained workload (the extra speed requires extra power) and drop back towards SATA speeds. A data-intensive task such as video processing is best done using separate drives for reading and writing - you can put an M.2 2242 drive into the Latitude's WWAN card slot.

eGPU via Thunderbolt sounds interesting but I can't offer any constructive comments on this subject. It's an area with substantial potential demand (most likely for gaming) so there is considerable commercial incentive to make it work.

John

 

Hey John, I really can't thank you enough with all the advice and info you shared with me. After doing some research online with some head start given above, I am now more sure of what I need and what I don't. REALLY, THANK YOU!

By the way, great review! (p/s: it could use a little bit more images, like on internals)

 

I would have liked to include more details but if I put more in the review then it would be edited out to be consistent with the others. If there are other details you would like then I can post them in this thread.

One detail which I have asked to be changed is that yesterday I rechecked the power management / battery charging with a 65W PSU after updating to the newest BIOS (1.05.0) and discoved that Dell have quietly fixed the problem of overloading the PSU. I partly drained the battery and then, using the 65W PSU ran wPrime with 1, 2, and 4 threads. The power drain at the mains socket stayed constant about about 66W while the battery charge rate automatically changed to reflect the system power demand. Even better, the system will run on the old Latitude XT 45W PSU (the size of PSU I like) and will recharge the battery, albeit slowly. It was taking about 47W at the mains socket and the PSU got quite hot, but it survived. A PSU that size substantially reduces the travel weight of the computer.

John

 

Totally agree with you. I currently have a Dell 130W adapter from my current laptop and it's such a hassle.

Anyway, I actually posted a comment on the review but I'll just ask here anyway: is there a way to tweak the fan speed manually? I don't really mind the noise but the heat could be an issue. I believe through HWiNFO, there's an option for it?

Oh by the way, John, you mentioned putting a M.2 2242 SSD in the WWAN slot might be possible? Is it true? Have you tried it?

Also, does anybody know if replacing the laptop screen voids the warranty? Or is it okay to simply replace back the original screen when a repair is required?

 

I was kinda sold already on a E5570, but the review mr. @John Ratsey published sealed the deal. So i am currently expecting the laptop sometime mid next week.
@IAMdiscerning - I ordered my laptop (comes with 500GB HDD) with a ADATA 256GB SSD, and i'm gonna stick it in the WWLAN slot. I'll bring pictures and info on how that works. I hope it works

 

I've seen the HWiNFO fan control facility but haven't considered trying it out. I think it would be good if Dell added a slower fan speed to the rules in the BIOS to cut in at a lower temperature than the existing rules - something they could figure out would be suitable to handle the heat from one core under load. However, I use my E5570 as a table-top, not a laptop, so I've not been troubled by the temperature. A work-around is to set the maximum CPU state at below 100% (99% disables Turbo Boost) which reduces the heat generated. In fact, if running off battery then it's advisable to avoid turbo mode because the CPU is running less efficiently.

See the discussion in the E5470 thread - it's basically the same platform (and shares the same BIOS) so most likely behaves the same.

Follow the procedure in the Owner's Manual and don't break anything. Changing the panel is a 5 minute job once you are familiar with how to rip the bezel off but I don't know if a different resolution panel needs a different display cable.

John

 

Thank you @z3n0mal4, really appreciate it, looking forward to it.

@John Ratsey, basically how do I limit my CPU usage?

 

Right click on the battery icon in the notification area. Then, for your power plan click on Change plan settings. Then click on Change advanced power settings which brings up a list in another window. Scroll down the list to Processor power management then expand that by clicking on the +. Then click on the plus by Maximum processor state. Then change the Battery value from 100% to 99% or lower depending on how agressively you want to reduce the CPU power consumption. Note however, that while Turbo Boost is inefficient and may not be the best use of battery power, slower CPU speeds mean that tasks will take longer to complete and the cumulative power used (and heat generated) may be the same or more.

See my table here for the relationship between Maximum CPU State, CPU speed and CPU power for the i5-6440HQ CPU which should help in understanding what happens.

Edit: I've turned the numbers into a graph. If there was a linear relationship between processor power consumption and speed there would be a straight line.



John

 

Oh, well that sure is easy. Thanks again for all the information!