Latitude 7450 Owners' Thread

FYI, a new BIOS release (A19) is available for the E7450. This fixes the Meltdown/spectre flaw. Not sure how it affects performance yet. Will be testing it today. This is supposed to have the random reboot issue in A18 fixed.

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=0TFVF

 

Ok so far in quick test with A19, it looks like it has the same CPU clock/power management issues as A18 where if you power the system up while on AC it locks the clock at 3.1Ghz regardless of load or what you set the power mode to be (even if you then disconnect AC power and run on battery, it still stays at 3.1ghz which drains the battery very quickly). If you boot the system while on battery then it will alter cpu speed to meet demand between 0.8 to 3.1ghz. If you however put the system to standby/sleep then wake it up, then it goes back to the 3.1ghz speed (even if you had it on battery power) and stays that way till you reboot it on battery.

 

So up to date, wich one is the best BIOS version? I don't care about of the meltdown/spectre glitch. Just want the best stability and battery/performance. Got mine with A02 BIOS.

 

That doesn't sound good at all. Thanks for the update.

 

If you don't care about meltdown/spectre then use A17. If you do, then A19.

So far A19 is stable in that there is no random reboots. It seems on AC power it will keep cpu at 3.1ghz, probably to compensate for the loss in performance from the patch.

So to work around being stuck on 3.1ghz all the time, what I found is if you power up the machine on battery power, then after it boots, plug in AC. then it will revert to slowing down the CPU when you are back on battery power.
If you power up while connected to AC (either via dock or plugged in directly), it will keep it at 3.1ghz even when you are on battery power. This quickly drains the battery.

 

So A17 is the best one. If I am on A02 ¿can I just throw in A17 BIOS update? or I need to climb up version one by one. Thanks!

 

Is reversion possible?

 

I would update by three increments at a time. Dell is likely to have tested this for problems but not one enormous jump.

There's no difficult in reloading an older BIOS. However, it's not clear whether all the updates included in a BIOS package (it includes more than the basic BIOS code) also get replaced by older code.

John

 

You should be able to do it without any problems. We do that at the office all the time. We often get back machines that have been out in the field for 2 or 3 years (sometimes more) that need a wipe and reload, when they come in, we also update bios and often go from like an A02/03 to the latest version which often is 10 to 20 revisions newer. No problems.

For the most part yes. I went from A18 back to A17, then to A19 when it came out.

 

Hi guys recently I've purchased an USB 3.0 DRIVE but when I transfer any file Its just goes up to 10-12mbps. That's only 2.0 usb speed. What's wrong?