Hands on Dell Precision 7710

A note that may or may not be relevant. If you have ever spent time switching between switchable graphics off and switchable graphics on...

The NVIDIA GPU shows up as two different devices to Windows, depending on whether you have switchable graphics off or on. Each one can have a different version of the driver installed. When you update the NVIDIA driver, it does not update the driver for the "hidden" GPU from the opposite mode.

I previously ran into BSOD trouble once these two versions got far enough apart. A new driver was trying to load a file from the old driver and crashing. The old driver file was around because it was installed for the "switchable graphics off" NVIDIA GPU, and I only ever updated the driver for the "switchable graphics on" NVIDIA GPU. It took me a while to even figure out what was going on... I had to dig into the BSOD memory dump file and after a bit I realized that it was trying to load two files of different versions.

To avoid this type of thing if you have ever switched modes before, I recommend:
Decide if you are going to keep switchable graphics on or off. Switch to the *opposite mode*, go to Device Manager, and uninstall the NVIDIA GPU. Then reboot and switch back into your preferred mode. Windows should only know about one NVIDIA GPU now unless you switch modes again.

 

Thanks. That is Interesting and I was not aware they were separate existing drivers for each mode. He's been using switchable graphics for at least 6 months or longer and not changed switchable GPU modes in that time. However, I'll clean and reinstall the NVIDIA drivers and in just the mode we'll be using. I'm noticing a boat load of "Programs and Features" updated yesterday so even though we did not explicitly update the nvidia drivers they may have updated automatically on his system yesterday with win10 build 1703. About half of the list shows install date of 4/12/2017 (date of build 1703 update) and most are not related to the OS directly. weird.

My other grievance with build 1703 is that they dropped ability to jump quickly to Programs & Features list. It is no longer in the right click context menu of START button. Neither is it quickly searchable by cortana by typing it in start menu. Have to go first to Apps and Features (not same as Programs and Features) and then click another link.

 

I noticed this but it seems like "Apps and Features" is fine if you are just looking to uninstall a program, it seems to show everything that "Programs and Features" shows, and it has a quick search and appears to be totally usable... My gotcha was when I was looking for the "Turn Windows Features On and Off" option (to enable or disable Hyper-V for example) which is now a bit more hard to find.

And yes it is normal for the date in "Programs and Features" to get reset after a Windows in-place upgrade... I'm not sure why it happens for some programs and not others, but I've been noticing that since going from Windows 7 to Windows 8, and every time since, including these Windows 10 incremental upgrades.

 

His just had a 2nd BSOD on same nvidia file as before. - Hes been using switchable graphics and was in email client (outlook).

Mine went all black screen about 30 minutes ago (no BSOD), was in my host OS using SSMS while a VM guest was running the sql server database(i'm working undocked with no external devices at the time). similar to my blank screens yesterday except then I was docked with external displays. Also different from yesterday it didn't reboot today but just went dark (like when video driver crashes but no BSOD)- I had to force shutdown by long press on power button. - I had been using dgpu exclusively (switchable disabled).

So, I'm going to fresh install nvidia drivers as @Aaron44126 describes a few posts above.

 

actually, we decided to recover back to previous build 1607 for now. I rolled back and set update to defer for a few months. In a couple months I'll try the new build again. I uninstalled the Nvidia drivers while switchable graphics was disabled and clean installed them again in switchable graphics mode where I'll leave it be for now. thanks

*Update since reverting back to build 1607 from 1703 . No more BSOD (we had 5 BSOD before reverting back with a BSOD every few hrs) and no more sudden blank displays after recovering back to 1607. Although we also uninstalled the Nvidia drivers and then installed them while Switchable Graphics mode enabled. So unsure exactly which was the culprit (build 1703 or if simply needing to reinstall Nvidia drivers). Whatever was causing the crashes, it is gone now. I'll move to Windows latest build in a couple months.

 

Very interesting. Last days I was LAN connected only, but will have a look when back on WLAN.

Did you notice WLAN performance differences with the older 6.30.x.y drivers compared to the newer ones?

 

I haven't done detailed performance testing between the two versions, but I can get over 300 Mbps consistently on an 802.11ac network with the drivers I mentioned, which seems pretty good to me for Wi-Fi.

 

I was trying to use an android device (Samsung S7 Edge) as USB tether and I was really struggling to get it to work in Win10. It would cause serious lag on the entire Win10 OS. Even Task Manager graphing of the CPU would halt. The network adapters showed one new Ethernet2 connection as "Remote NDIS based Internet Sharing Device".

I found this blog describing same problem that I was having and contained solution to update the NDIS to a different Microsoft driver. The fix worked great. Basically just forced update of NDIS driver. Now working remotely via USB tethering without a problem.

Posting the link to solution below incase it helps others using ethernet USB adapters or android NDIS devices who are having probs in win.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/i...llipop-usb-tethering-leads-lags-freezing.html

 

I'm trying to upgrade the screen on my 7710 from the FHD to the 4k screen, but it appears that the 1080p screen uses a physically smaller connector than the 4k connector. Do I have the wrong screen (model B173ZN01.0) or do I need a different cable? If I need a different cable, can I just swap them, or can I not do this upgrade?

 

@TriBeard

Check these:
https://www.parts-people.com/index.php?action=item&id=23286
https://www.parts-people.com/index.php?action=item&id=22710

as opposed to the 1080p 7710 lcd cable:
https://www.parts-people.com/index.php?action=item&id=22706


my 7710 came with 4k and looks like same display 4k part# you purchased. Hopefully you just need the 4k cable. Ive read some sellers say that the displays are not interchangable because of mobo, but not sure how accurate they are in those statements.