Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

There should be some entries in BIOS about "Intel Rapid Start" and "Intel Smart Connect". Disable both entries. Uninstalling the Windows driver is not enough.

Not sure about Fedora, but on my Arch Linux machine, I can uninstall xf86-input-libinput in favor of xf86-input-evdev. I'm not sure though, if Fedora is Wayland-only. I'm very pleased with the evdev driver; but I agree; using ibinput makes the touchpad feel "weird".

Well, I'm kinda happy to tell you, that this sounds like a simple configuration error, but not a deep problem. I'm using GNOME since 3.10 on this machine and didn't reinstall it for nearly 2 years - no problems. Closing the lid sets the device into sleep mode (ofc turning off the screen / device). And also, I have a timer set to 5 minutes, which locks my session & successfully turns off the screen. Like you already mentioned, it probably is a bug, caused by an ancient configuration.

I've come across a new bug though: closing the lid & waking up sets my device into flight mode and turns off the keyboard backlight. I need to manually turn on keyboard backlight and turn off flight mode (Fn + Print). It's annoying.

 

Good info. If my clean install doesn't fix the palm rejection I'll give this a try.

If I set it to sleep on lid close then it does indeed sleep (and the backlight is, of course, off). But I prefer not to have lid close cause sleep but then the backlight is stuck on unless I do the xset dpms thing, but that doesn't stick for long. I'm hoping you are right and that I can get this fixed with Fedora 24!

I get that flight mode thing too, and also waking with WiFi turned off. Annoying indeed!

 

- I uninstalled the nvidia driver all at once, and now it has the basic window driver
- I couldn't find any "power saving" option in the BIOS
- uninstalled the Intel Management Engine
- uninstalled Intel DPTF
basically, I uninstalled everything related to Intel except the graphics driver.
- I even re-flashed the BIOS (I'm already on the latest version A10), although I had nightmares time after my first BIOS update with the XPS 15, with 4 motherboard replacements after that.

Still, nothing worked

I can't find those entries. All I see is that it's set to AHCI boot , and apart from Intel SpeedStep technology, I can't see anything related to Intel.

I think it's all because Windows was first installed on the original XPS 9530 motherboard, and after replacing it to a Precision M3800 one, everything got screwed up.....

Before I do a fresh format, should I try the "REFRESH PC" feature in Windows 10? It will be a big deal to backup all my Lightroom pictures library, so maybe "resetting" windows will fix it.

 

Hey M3800 owners
XPS 9530 owner here suffering with the same Turbo Boost issue caused by the Intel DPTF drivers. Using old drivers or drivers for other Dell systems doesn't provide a fully stable workaround.

I think I figured out why the provided DPTF driver is disabling Turbo Boost. I noticed in msinfo that the only DPTF modules loaded were DptfPolicyPassive, DptfPolicyLpm and DptfPolicyCritical. It doesn't seem to matter which power profile is chosen f on AC/DC power.

I played a little trick to make the system load the Active module by renaming the Passive Module as Active and vice versa in the ufx64 folder. Upon reboot the CPU was using Turbo Boost properly and GPU performance seemed normal. The system was also quiet!!

We need to get Dell engineers to look at this and provide an updated driver package with proper configuration that will load the correct modules as required. I encourage you to contact Dell directly and demand an update. This issue has existed for far too long.

Dell thread is here
http://fw.to/UysSBOD

Cheers



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Well, for me anyway, the Dell DPTF "207" actually worked fine (turbo boost, etc) once I upgraded the Intel Video Drivers directly from Intel.com (Windows Update will install these as well... but I am not certain when or why it decides to do so). The only issue being that the video card now idles at a higher clock rate on battery. This concerned me at first until I started noticing that my battery was lasting longer. I am getting about a full 1.5 hours MORE on battery than before. I cannot explain this. Maybe the drivers are performing some other magic. But am happy with the results.

 

Higher frequency doesn't necessarily equate to higher power consumption. Tasks finish faster at higher frequency. The spec states 400Mhz but I'm pretty sure the 4th gen iGPU runs at 600Mhz in most systems. It does on my Surface Pro 3.

The newer 207 or 221 DPTF drivers are an OK workaround but not an ideal solution. They are great for day to day stuff since Turbo makes everything snappy however when performing heavy tasks like gaming or multiple VMs, I've encountered random power throttling. The temps get close to max but haven't encountered thermal throttling. The power throttling is inconsistent and happens without being near actual limits. My guess is this happens because the DPTF drivers being used were designed for CPUs with higher TDP that are also better with dynamic frequency scaling.

 

Howdy fellow M3800 owners,

My apologies if this has been discussed elsewhere, but a search only lead me to a different model. Has anyone used the new NVIDIA QUADRO DESKTOP/QUADRO NOTEBOOK DRIVER RELEASE 361
(Version: 362.13 WHQL Release Date: 2016.3.29)? I keep having an intermittent issue with "Heidi Module Load Error" on my machine when running Autocad. I have one of the original 2013 units running Win7. I'm currently on Version 353.06. It says this driver is compatible with the M3800, but not supported by Dell.

NVIDIA thread is here: http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/101285/en-us


Cheers

 

Dell seems to have just released new version of DPTF. Version is 221, which you mentioned, but perhaps it fixes the issue in some other way?

 

Anyone having the GPU throttling problem ?

It seems whenever I am gaming, after a few minutes the GPU throttles down to 135mhz and stays there. This seems to happen when temps are over 80oC which happens ofter. Some users seem to have it, some others not.

I tried every advice and every driver/setting possible but this problem persists.

Any help ?

My model is the 2014 one with the 3200px screen resolution

 

I had this on one of my XPS 15s and after getting Dell to repaste it the throttling went away. First make sure your fans are working and blow out any dust. Doing your own repaste with high end compound would be best. Then trying some undervolting with XTU or similar. Try the latest BIOS since early ones didn't have optimized thermal rules. If none of that works ThrottleStop might be next.

HTH!