Dell Precision 7540 and 7740 Owner's Thread

Why should a "running" second graphics-card save power?

it will reduce runtime on battery power if the display works on RTX -xxxx and CPU-internal GPU is switched ON.

But i am going to switch it off.

 

If graphics switching it turned on, the Intel GPU drives the displays and the dGPU is used for rendering support. (It can write directly to the Intel GPU framebuffer.) If there are no applications running that need the dGPU, it powers off. The Intel GPU uses less power than the dGPU even if the dGPU is only under an idle workload. So if you're just using a web browser or office apps or whatever, being able to power off the dGPU will give you extended battery time.

 

Maybe.. if so. Never heard about that.

but it increases heat in the cpu-die. And throtling CPU's (i9) -due to temps- is the bottleneck, not warm discrete GPU's.

No matter which discrete GPU you take, if you run browser or other easy apps, it is close to idle, with very low temp and small energy-consumption.

I will, when my 7740 arrives, test the battery time with and without graphics switching/Optimus ON and OFF. Also compare the CPU Temps.
Then we will see. (I just read a litle about graphics switching / Optimus)

 

This will be really interesting!

My point is that I don't need any 3D special function. No CAD, no games, nothing. I only use the gpu for 2D, video, VMWare and ultra basic graphic editing. So no reason to have something over the intel 630 (and spend some 3-4-500$ more).
Assuming that, I also think that a RTX normally is on 6-10W (at least) in utlra basic tasks, and this costant power will drain battery and goes in the heatsink loop.
I don't think that intel gpu is at same level in heat/power drain, specially in my kind of use.

Honestly I had not considered the option of power off intel gpu since I didn't even know it was possible to totally bypass switchable graphics.

 

Hi Hopper82,

Like i said, we will see.

 

I feel like @Ionising_Radiation will have a thing or two to say here.

 

BTW, new bios 1.2.3 is available. I'm updating now.

EDIT:
Ok, update done with no problem so far, no significant changes to report at the moment.

 

@Hopper82, beware.

If you truly do not need any sort of video/3D/parallel acceleration (all of which a dGPU can do), then you shouldn’t get a video card upgrade.

The implementation of Optimus on the Precision 7000 series notebooks is, for some reason, extremely poor, and drastically increases power draw. On my 7530, power draw is anything from 15-35 W, sometimes even 45 W on idle and while unplugged—two hours of battery life is honestly pathetic, and has been the source of much headaches on my end.

I’m not sure how it is with the 7X40 notebooks; it might just be the same. You’d have to check with anyone else here who has a 7540/7740 with a dGPU. Speaking of, could the name of this thread be changed to add in the 7540 too?

 

Someone would have to ask a mod to do it.

 

@Charles P. Jefferies, could you rename this thread to 'Dell Precision 7540 and 7740 Owner's Thread'? Thanks!