Hands on Dell Precision 7710

I never let it sleep so have not had sleep issues.

Sent from my XT1650 using Tapatalk

 

Well, I've had my 7710 for a year now and here's a bit of a long-term feedback.

I am uterly disappointed, so far, comparing to my old M6600 which I still have.
Boot time have _not_ improved and my 7710 boots into Win10 twice as long as the M6600 does into Win7. Half of which is BIOS boot no matter what secure/fastboot options I choose (yes, latest BIOS and drivers installed). Mind you I have 2 x Samsung 950 Pro's on 7710 (no raid).
I have consistent issues with putting machine into sleep or hibernate, as 80% of the time it just powers off instead. No idea if it's related to OS install, I'm planning a fresh clean reinstall shortly so we'll see how that goes.
I have NOT been able to get used to the lack of the standard keyboard controls available on M6600, like separate volume keys, home/end. A year since I started to use this laptop I am still at a loss with this, the moment I jump back at M6600 everything is perfect.
I keep having issues with the cursor jumping into the current position (like a click has occured). Seems to be triggered by the touchpad. Unfortuntely, no touchpad settings seem to be coping with this. Never had this issue with the M6600.
I have not, so far, been able to activate boot logon using fingerprint, as I used to do with M6600. I have to type the password to get past BIOS into OS load.

I have had none of the above issues with the currently-6-years-old-M6600 which I STILL USE every now and then. And it is way more comfortable to use the older M6600. It just works, does the job.

Dell, you have failed utterly with this line.

 

Thought I'd mention a little victory.

We've had sleep issues previously on both of our 7710s since day 1 - nVidia gpu, ePort dock, and with Switchable Graphics disabled. Not sure what was the cause. On our two 7710s the issue wasn't putting it to sleep. Problem would be that if we put it to sleep, sometimes when it awoke the laptop display would be empty (display backlight was on but no picture). External displays worked fine via dp though

Our workaround was to use switchable graphics and that has been working fine.

But I noticed since moving to latest 1.10.7 BIOS, latest nVidia (378.66) and basically going through entire list of latest driver updates, our sleep issues were resolved even with switchable graphics disabled. I don't know which update fixed it though.

@Winger - Here is how I've setup my power options incase your laptop sleep issue is related to a setting there:





And in BIOS I set not to allow USB devices to awake it from sleep

I also set each network adapter not to allow waking the laptop

You've probably tried all that already.

My boot time is slow too at 51 seconds most recently, according to task manager's startup tab.

 

Wow, I'm in the 5-7s range with my M4800.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I just checked again a few times and they are consistently at 20s now (still kindof slow especially compared to what you see on the m4800). I'm not sure why my 50s bootup was as slow as it was. Probably updated a driver or something prior to that restart. *edit: I think that was around time I upgraded vmware and it asked to restart. I wonder if it includes time it takes me to type in my window login credentials in the startup timer.

 

I've wondered that too, but I don't believe it does - I'll occasionally check and never see much higher than an occasional 12-15, and I frequently will dock my laptop when I walk into work, open it and power it up, and then walk away to get coffee or start up some equipment I'm planning on using.

Not the most scientific testing, or concrete proof, I'll admit.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Anyone know if the 4k screen will fit into an m6800? Was there a touch edo version for the 7710? Will that fit into the m6800? If there was a touch did the quality improve over the m6800? I heard someone yesterday tell me an m6800 can use a 7710 4k screen

 

I noticed that after the BIOS update, special graphics mode is now called ""discrete graphics controller direct output mode""

Also, when this is enabled, the mDP on the machine doesn't work even though the description in the BIOS said the mDP would be driven by the dGPU. Is anybody else having this issue?

 

I see the same behavior as you. If I enable switchable Graphics and then also check mark the "Discrete Graphics Controller Direct Output Mode", the mDP is no longer working at all. I do not have any Type C devices to test the TB3 port. HDMI still worked though.

Here are screen captures in nVidia Control Panel. First with swithcable Graphics DISABLED and with HDMI display and mDP connected directly to the laptop (I'm docked to E-PORT dockstation but all external displays are connected direct to laptop in this experiment, not to the dock).


and below with Switchable Graphics ENABLED and with the new Discrete Graphics Controller Output Mode checked in BIOS. Same externals are plugged in as before:

dGPU only sees the HDMI display and not the mDP display. The laptop display is being driven by the iGPU as you would expect. But neither the nVidia or the iGPU is driving the mDP when that new "Discrete Graphics Controller Output Mode" is checked in BIOS.

Seems like a bug to me also.


*here is the Discrete Controller option for those who have not seen it:

 

Thank you ygohome, I appreciate you checking! I am currently working with the someone from Dell REC, so hopefully they will be able to fix this issue.

For the past year I've been experiencing excessive monitor flicker when using dual 4k monitors. They told me the 7710 only supports a single 4k monitor and referred me to this article: http://www.dell.com/support/article...3510-external-4k-x-2k-display-support?lang=EN But I am using the TB16 dock, which supports DUAL 4k monitors. With Dual 4k Dell P2715Q monitors on the TB16 dock I get a huge amount of flicker on the monitors until they slowly go offline. This only occurs with switchable graphics enabled. If I disabled and run only on the M4000M, then everything runs fine.

Does anybody have a TB16 dock with two 4k monitors experiencing flicker with switchable graphics enabled? I'm also curious to know if the 7720 has this problem as well.