Hands on Dell Precision 7710

Hello,

Consultant advices vPro mobile workstations for start-up of around 120 PCs -
would like to know whether new Dell precision lines 7710, 7510, 5510, 3510 have vPro options available to build to order?
Anyone got any clue?

Great to have found this forum and nice to meet you.
Cheers!

 

Yes

 

FYI - BIOS update fixed this issue. These 16GB 2400 MHZ crucial sticks work well.

 

I posted this in the 7510 forum but it is also valid for the 7710.


Just a tip for anyone installing ecc ram on a system with a xeon CPU that originally came with non-ecc ram. Make sure when you first install the ecc ram, the amount of memory is different (i.e. if you had 32 GB of non-ecc ram, remove the the 32GB and install 16 GB of ecc ram first). If you install the same amount of ram, the ecc will not work - it will operate as standard non-ecc ram. I was pulling my hair out. I was running:

wmic memphysical get memoryerrorcorrection

and I kept getting a value of 3 instead of 5. It was only when I changed to one stick that it finally showed as ecc (i.e. value of 5). I then installed the 2nd stick and re-ran and it still showed 5. This was the case on 2 systems..... Value meaning for running "
wmic memphysical get memoryerrorcorrection" from the command line under administrator:


Value Meaning
0 (0x0) Reserved

1 (0x1) Other

2 (0x2) Unknown

3 (0x3) None

4 (0x4) Parity

5 (0x5) Single-bit ECC

6 (0x6) Multi-bit ECC

7 (0x7) CRC

 

@hodgeMN Dell is killing me now. I have two 7710, one with Dell installed 64 GB and one with Dell installed 64GB ECC

-a 7710 with 64GB Dell installed ECC
-a 7710 with 64GB Dell installed non-ECC

they otherwise are identical, both with same CPU and everything. What is Dell doing special that third party RAM doesnt work out of the box? Are your notes tested for all RAM, including Dell installed?

 

I had a system come in that had ECC memory installed from Dell. I tested the Crucial ecc 16GB sticks and they worked correctly in that system. It was then that I decided to install just one of the Crucial 16 GB ecc sticks in the xeon system that originally came non-ecc ram (2x16). It worked. I then installed the 2nd stick of Crucial (2x16) and they both now worked. The key was to install a different amount (in GB) of ram in order for the system to recognize it as ecc. Initially the xeon system had 2x16 of non-ecc. When I installed 2x16 of ecc it kept showing as non ecc. This was over a couple days and several boot cycles. It was only when I installed a single stick that it correctly registered as ecc. I then added the 2nd stick (2x16 now) and both were working properly as ecc. This same process worked on 2 different Dell systems with xeon cpus.

 

Hello, I'm about to order and was hoping people could help with pros and cons on the AMD W7170M vs Nvidia M3000M? I'm using it for mobile image editing and VMware and when at home plugged into multiple external monitors.

Any help is much appreciated.

 

Adobe Premiere is able to take advantage of the Nvidia GPU acceleration for effects. I don't know enough about AMD or the software tools you will be using to give a recommendation. I had an older circa 2011 laptop with an AMD gpu and that was my only experience using an AMD GPU. I've been using an Nvidia and have been happy so far. I use Premiere Pro, but only as a hobbyist and only on weekends, so I'm not the best judge. I use VMware Workstation 12 on a daily basis, almost constantly in fact.

The issues I've encountered are how the individual programs scale in Windows 10 when using multiple displays of various resolutions and scaling, particularly when one is 4k display. When I use a conventional 2k external display at 100% scaling and native resolution and my laptop is 4k scaled to 175% some programs will only recognize the scaling % of the primary display. In other words, if my external display is the primary and if I launch Acrobat Reader it will appear at 100% scale on my laptop and the toolbar will be VERY tiny, even though the laptop display in Windows is set to 175%. If I set the laptop UHD as the primary then when I drag Acrobat to the external, it will appear huge because it wants to scale to 175% even though I told windows to use 100% scaling on the external. The reason is that Acrobat Reader is choosing to use the primary display scaling. That is program's fault in my opinion and it is only an issue on some programs. Adobe Premiere Pro, in contrast to Adobe Acrobat Reader, doesn't appear to have the scaling issues that Acrobat Reader has. VMware Workstation 12.1 works great on either of my external displays and also on my laptop display having UHD. It requires vmtools installed and it is set to auto adjust the resolution of the guest depending on the window size. Then in the guest (my guest OS are also win10) I set the scaling to whatever percentage I prefer. I don't often drag my VMware Workstation window to different displays after I launch my guests. But I sometimes enter Unity Mode or extend my VM guests across my displays with push of a button. That works very nicely.

Some programs that do not scale well on UHD, like acrobat reader or Eclipse (IDE I use for programming), I had to enable use of external manifest files for these programs to fix the scaling. Else they looked super tiny and unusable.

If I later disconnect my laptop from the external display I always remember to reboot, else it may display some things funky on the laptop UHD for some reason. I also set my BIOS with Fast Boot disabled and set to "thorough" so that it can properly determine what devices I have connected to my laptop. but I'm at an older 1.3.12 BIOS version and perhaps 1.4.8 would prevent me from having to reboot after disconnecting external displays.

 

Actually, I don't remember seeing ECC RAM anywhere in the OS or BIOS even though they are Dell installed 16GB ECC modules. They show as simply 16GB modules. I was assuming the system knew they were ECC even though it didn't specifically say so anywhere in the BIOS. Maybe I need to install only a single stick as you did for it to register as ECC and then reinstall the remaining modules after that?

Where should I look in the BIOS or in Device Manager to see the "ECC" once it correctly registers as ECC?

Thanks

 

Run the following command with admin privileges from the command prompt:


wmic memphysical get memoryerrorcorrection

if you see 3 as the result the memory is not running in ecc. If you see a 5, it is running in ecc mode.