Kaby Lake Precision pre-release discussion (5520 / 7520 / 7720)

UHD panel and WWAN is not supported right now but I hope to have it soon.

 

I'm changing the keys to allow for some changes that were requested. Not sure if they are happening this gen or next. I'll check.
Not sure what the battery wear level problem is.

 

By “soon”, do you mean that it may be possible in 7520, in the future?

 

Basically, if you have graphics switching off (NVIDIA GPU driving the laptop display), and the system is on battery power, the screen contrast dynamically changes based on the brightness of the image displayed on the screen. This sounds like it could be a nifty feature, but it actually works backwards, dimming the screen when a dark image is displayed, making it even harder to see/read. Certain use cases (like dark-themed code editors as I mentioned) cause this issue to flare up and it is really hard to read anything on the screen.

Again, this occurs only with graphics switching off and the system on battery power. It happens on at least the past three generations of Precision laptops. It is clearly not a hardware issue, as it only starts happening once the NVIDIA driver has been loaded, and the issue is not present for example in the pre-boot BIOS screens or when Windows is running in safe mode.

The issue is detailed in the linked thread: link right here, which includes reproduction steps and additional information.

And yes, I have contacted technical support and it went all the way to the engineering team. They confirmed that they were able to reproduce the issue, but blamed it on the NVIDIA display driver (my conclusion as well). A decision was made against getting involved with NVIDIA to get it addressed, so that was the end of the line for my support request. (I have also contacted NVIDIA on my own, and they also confirmed the issue calling it a "feature", but they told me that change requests for the notebook drivers must come from an OEM.)

Does the new generation support DisplayPort 1.3 (or higher)? With DisplayPort 1.2 in the 7510/7710, two 4K monitors attached to the same port are limited to 30 Hz.

 

With the 7520 but not at launch.

 

I'll look into the NVIDIA driver and contrast changes.

The mDP port on the system for the 7520 supports DP 1.4 with all AMD graphics and on the 7720 the mDP port supports DP 1.4 with all AMD graphics and NVIDIA P3000, P4000, & P5000. The 7720 is VR Ready with both the P4000 & P5000 graphic cards.

 

Are they dedicated "Home" and "End" keys? I sure hope so...!

 

@Dell-Mano_G here are some links to posts from Precision 7510 owners reporting high battery wear levels in relatively short time periods:

Precision 7510 Owner's Thread

Precision 7510 Owner's Thread

Precision 7510 Owner's Thread

Precision 7510 Owner's Thread

 

This please. I would much rather have dedicated Home and End Keys than the media buttons at the top of the numpad..

 

Count me in too!

I'm going through pretty much every precision model and M6500 had it right with extra line of media keys above numberpad. After that I had to use a tool (https://sharpkeys.codeplex.com/ I'm sure there are plenty similar ones available) to do 2 things:
1) disable pageup/pagedown near cursor keys)
2) make calc & media keys to work like pageup/down.

As long as there is a tool available to reprogram keys I don't really mind currrent layout.

@Dell-Mano_G as software dev. I would love to see grouping of Fn keys (space between f4-f5 and f8-f9 ) I often get f-keys wrong when touchtyping
And I hate smaller cursor keys (all developers I work with who use Precisions are disappointed by smaller cursor keys on 7710. That's probably the one and only thing they are not happy with