Dell Precision 5510 Owner's Lounge

On the 5510, it is showing no power draw when the card is not active. Am I reading this wrong?

Edit - Even with 99% GPU usage, it is showing NA for power draw on the M1000M

 

I expect to try the Samsung drivers in the next couple of days, so I can give you an update then. What exactly is the reboot problem? Could you link me to an account? I think I've seen it mentioned a few places, but can't remember details. Anyway, I'll take a problem that only affects reboot over random BSODs any day.

 

You are one lucky man... (pretty sure)

If your SSD really is Toshiba, you almost definitely have a better SSD than the Samsung most of us got. The bar is so low that in terms of speed literally any other NVMe drive currently on the market should be faster than the PM951.

Make certain it's your SSD and not the hard drive that's Toshiba, but if you've confirmed that, it's likely that none of these problems apply to you as they are driver issues specifically with the Samsung drive AFAIK. There may be other problems, but you have a better starting position regardless, so be happy about that. And to be clear, you definitely won't be using Samsung drivers. I would try the MSFT default driver first with the driver set to AHCI like you wanted and see how that works out. I have a feeling you won't have issues.

If not you should probably look into Toshiba drivers. I don't recall reading about the 5510 coming with a Toshiba 256GB SSD, but the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 apparently uses either the PM951 or a Toshiba NVMe drive. It's luck of the draw which one you get in your surface, and the Toshiba drive is drastically faster. Coincidentally, the Toshiba drive just happens to end up in all of the review units. Anyway being that MSFT is an OEM using the PM951 as an option, it's certainly possible that the Toshiba drive Microsoft is using is the same one you've got. I think (uncertain) there are only a handful of M.2 NVMe drives on the market, and if you're looking only at OEM units that narrows it down further. Anyway, you might be able to use the drivers and tips suggested for the Toshiba drive in the SP4 provided you verify its the same one.

 

I agree. That fruity company gets a lot right, but upgradability and serviceability are two of my requirements. This was the Zbook style I was looking at - it has a column of navigation keys but no numpad. Were Samsung still selling their notebooks in Europe I would also be looking closely at this although I think the claimed battery run time is wishful thinking.

Thanks to everyone for the various suggestions about controlling the dGPU's thirst for power. I'll see what is a good compromise - probably start with the Nvidia control panel. The (relatively feeble) Nvidia GPU in my E7450 didn't have a significant impact on the power drain when not running so I hope this one will be the same.

Another potential power-saving option on my list is to turn off hyperthreading (so I effectively have a slightly faster version of the i5-6440HQ that's in my E5570) since I don't normally run heavily parallelised programs. If I can get the CPU running at full speed without throttling when running on a 65W PSU (I've already bought the DC plug adapter) I'll be very happy.

I see that my order is now showing as shipped so I would expect it to be delivered by the middle of next week.

John

 

hmmm, I would tend to believe what it is saying, if that is showing 0 draw. But displaying N/A I think means it cannot read the power usage. I'll do a test as well. I need to reboot with switchable graphics enabled to find out. moment...

@Bokeh

Here is what I see. Mind you this is on a 7710 with different nvidia gpu and possibly different driver version than what you have on your 5510 too.

with my laptop bios set with switchable graphics enabled, Preferred GPU being the Intel, Physx set to CPU and without any programs launched. Even so, my dGPU is being utilized a little bit 1% it says and therefore still a draw.




I still get a power draw from the dGPU.

*edit: follow up on nvidia-smi regarding reporting on power draw. I found a document on the tool dated from 2014...

http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/6_0/rel/gdk/nvidia-smi.331.38.pdf

page 12 of that pdf. Says that power readings are only available on specific GPUs that have power management support...

"Power Management A flag that indicates whether power management is enabled. Either "Supported" or "N/A". Requires Inforom PWR object version 3.0 or higher or Kepler device.
Power Draw The last measured power draw for the entire board, in watts. Only available if power management is supported. This reading is accurate to within +..."
​

so it seems the nvidia-smi command isn't as useful on 5510 using m1000m. Another software I do like is the program "speccy" (free version, not paid). It give some useful power usage info, but perhaps it won't show either if nvidia's own command will not report it.

 

I love the dedicated number pad on my M4800. As an engineer who types dimensions into cad programs all day long, YES it's worthwhile.

I got used to the offset keyboard in a week or two. Humans brains are amazing at adjusting to things/learning, they evolved to do it. This is why shortly after coming into money people are rarely happier than before the windfall - they've become used to being rich (and will get depressed after spending the money and returning to "normal").

Also, with respect to the PSU messages, you can turn them off but I believe the system will still throttle if "underpowered" unless you use something like throttle stop.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

In principle I agree with you but my experience is that the ability to adapt diminishes with age (and I think I'm a few years ahead of you in that respect: my computing experience at university involved punched cards).

John

 

Just a note. 5510 does not have the option to enable/disable switchable graphics in the BIOS. Switchable graphics enabled is the only way to run.

 

Yes I really have a Toshiba SSD instead of Samsung PM951, and I searched in google there are some people having Toshiba too. So you means I should use Microsoft driver rather than Samsung and will get no problem, neither BSOD nor reboot error? i found still some people saying Toshiba has its NVMe driver, but I can't found it.

 

1) I'll have to play around with the fastboot to see if that makes any difference.

2) The drive is the first in the boot order for sure. So this shouldn't be an issue.

3) It is the BIOS drive password. It works on all drives, but with drives that support self encryption, it is the password you use to de-crypt and actually use the drive. My understanding is that after the drive password has been entered on initial boot, the drive should keep running with access enabled until the drive is reset. I'm thinking the Dell BIOS is doing this drive reset every time instead of skipping that step. But let me check fastboot to see if that helps.