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

With graphics switching turned on in the BIOS, the Intel GPU drives the display and the NVIDIA GPU sits idle, as you stated. The Intel GPU also drives external displays (unless you are using an ePort dock or you flip on the BIOS option for the discrete GPU to drive external displays). The NVIDIA GPU doesn't have nothing to do, though. When you fire up a 3D app, the NVIDIA GPU will kick on and render content directly to the Intel GPU framebuffer for display on screen.

The point is, the NVIDIA GPU can actually be powered down when you don't need it. The Intel GPU is more power efficient for regular desktop-type non-3D work.

By default, which apps the NVIDIA GPU kicks on for and which is doesn't is handled by application profiles provided by NVIDIA. Some 3D applications may be simple enough to still be handled by the Intel GPU without performance trouble.

If you go to the NVIDIA control panel, "Manage 3D settings" area, you can configure which GPU to use by default system-wide and on an app-by-app basis. You can also override when you are launching an app by right-clicking on the program shortcut and selecting "Run with graphics processor ...". Either of these options can be useful if you are running a program that NVIDIA has not created a profile for... Any such program will use the Intel GPU by default, unless the program itself is multi-GPU aware.

In the NVIDIA control panel, you can also select "Desktop -> Display GPU activity icon..." from the menu at the top to put an icon in the system tray that will show you when the NVIDIA GPU is on or off, and what applications are using it.

No surprise here. A SSD is a couple of orders of magnitude faster than an HDD. Even if comparing an old system with a new one, tossing an HDD in will kill bootup time, which mostly just depends on how fast your disk is.

 

Thanks for the excellent explanation. Dell should copy/paste that into their docs.

Just picked up a 960 EVO. Will move the OS to that tonight while at the same time switching the BIOS to SATA-ACHI. Maybe I've just become too accustomed to SSD's for the OS and forget just how slow even a 7200 platter is.

 

Is anyone booting with any UEFI WinPE based recovery media on this thing? That's one of the first things I usually do is image the drive but the media that works on all my XPS's will not even attempt to boot on this thing. The BIOS just seems to ignore F12 and boots into Windows.

Even attaching external drives failed to work. Complaining about unsigned drivers.

 

No, in the BIOS-Setup you can select, which graphic card will be used.
The "narrow border"-text from Dell is really not true. Is Dell still using this text? I remember, that at the time, I ordered my 7720, they changed the text more than one time.
You compare a spinning harddrive with a SSD? A SSD can't be so slow, that a spinning harddrive has a chance to win the run.

 

Yeah, narrow border is still on the menu. Definitely not a narrow border. Just a leaky screen.

Well, not really comparing HDD to SSD, mostly I just don't even remember my old Vaio taking this long to boot on a SATA-1 HDD. It's seven years old. I figured SATA-3, fresh OS, many times faster CPU, 8 times the RAM, should have helped some. No matter, I was going SSD anyway. I'll know for sure if it's slow now since my other systems are booting from the same SSD.

After hunting down a tiny screw (mind didn't come with any in the m.2 slots) I've got the 960 EVO in and have started cloning the HDD.

If anyone's thinking of ordering the recovery or driver media, don't bother. The recovery media is Win10 1511 and the driver media had a virus.

The entire OS (as shipped) was screwy in that simple external USB devices would not be recognized. Complained about unsigned drivers. So I built a MS Win10 installer (1703) and installed from scratch. This version already had drivers for the NIC and after several minutes, maybe an hour all of the yellow flags in device manager were resolved. Win10 is pretty good at hunting down drivers and it found drivers for everything.

OH. If you're having issues booting any UEFI USB thumb drives that came from anywhere besides Dell, update the BIOS - 1.5.1. The UEFI recovery media I use on 6 other computers was mis-identified on the F12 screen and obviously would not boot. The BIOS update corrected that. Now I've just got to figure out how to update my WinPE setup to work on this 4K screen. Thankfully the native Acronis 2016 bootable media handles the screen and sees the 960 EVO - enough to get me going.

 

Unfortunately I think for today 1 thunderbolt is not enough ... I need at least 2 ... although of course I would be more interesting Dell precision laptop. Is dell going to increase the number of ports tb3?

 

Since my Win10 from Dell was infected with unsigned drivers, I grabbed Win10 from MS. Currently their builder creates a 1703 installer and that already includes a driver for the NIC. After letting it sit a while, Win10 resolved the remaining missing drivers on its own.

 

So, I've seen one here much worse than this. Does everyone else have perfect screens? Par for the course?

 

One more thing - for some reason I expected better packaging. Is this what everyone else got?

 

Yup, that is normal. You don't get a fancy box unless you get an XPS laptop (might also apply to the 5510/5520?).

Not sure about about other countries but here in the US, there is no reason to keep the box. If you need to send it in for warranty work, Dell will ship you a box.