Precision 7510 Owner's Thread

Da

Scientists use clusters (with server CPUs, GPUs, accelerators and ECC memory) for numerical simulations and artists (both 2D and 3D) should remember about making saves. ECC memory is required when you have only one try, for example surgery, space flights, short-time exchange or forex trading.

 

I got the laptop today. 4k screen.

At the moment I'm not really happy about it:

• I now understand the earlier complaint about the screen. It is very weird but it seems the anti-reflective coating is having a very negative effect on the screen. The views are wide angle but as soon as you move your head the colors change. Getting darker sometimes. It is a very sharp screen but annoying to look at as earlier mentioned by someone else.
• I do not understand how people can say this laptop is quiet. I was always afraid of this and it seems it has not changed. Dell just has crappy heat management. The laptop is not quite. The fans are always running. If one of the 4 cores is used heavily (25% load) the fans will spin up to an annoying but bearable level and won't come down for quite some time. I hear the fans constantly. Now it may seem a quiet laptop compared to other manufacturers but I'm coming from a Lenovo that was fully stacked 2 years ago (i7, SSD) and I have never heard the fans of the Lenovo at this level. The Lenovo is much much quieter. I have the Dell and Lenovo on top of each other idling and I cannot hear the Lenovo due to the fan noise of the Dell. I have a very quiet room and the Lenovo was never an intrusion. The Dell is clearly too noisy for my taste. I always have a virtual machine running and the CPU is tasked heavily. So the fans of the Dell will have a very hard time in this scenario.
• It is a very fast machine. But really not noticeably faster than my 2 year old Lenovo. The clear improvement is the m.2 ssd which is blazing fast.

So in general a disappointment. I expected a complete new experience since my last Dell and since I bought the Lenovo. But comparing my 2 year old Lenovo T540P to this brand new 3k euro Dell I see that my preferred machine is the Lenovo which is very disappointing.

I'll see if Dell will take the machine back. I hope they won't make a fuss about returning it. Does anyone have experience with the return policy of Dell?

 

I would like to clarify some things.

• I should have exactly some screen (3840x2160, 100% AdobeRGB). Truly the matte coating is different then usual. However, after few days I have found display amazing.
• I use Windows 10 and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. Even under some load (up to 50%) the fans are stopped and the notebook is noiseless. Which operating system do you use?
• It is fastest machine on the market. There are only two competitors: Lenovo P50 and HP ZBook 15 G3. Everything else is slower.

Dell has better display, is faster, had better build quality, so why do you prefer Lenovo? Maybe you had expected some miracle.

Remember, every Intel's Core generation is about 5-7% performance up. In optimistic scenario two generations increase preformence about 14-15%.

 

The model I had with I7 Windows 10 pro 1080p touchscreen was also very quiet in a very quiet room too.

Dell small business didn't give me any problem when I made my return. They refunded full am out within 10 days for me. I'm currently waiting for the thunderbolt to reorder.

 

I use Windows 10 and an Ubuntu 14 VM. The fans are not stopping. The temperatures vary between 35-50 for the cores but the fans stay on at a low level but noticeable. When I start to use the machine more seriously the fans are even more noisy.

The fastest is a matter of perception. I have seen that the CPU scores of the 6th generation CPU's (like the Dell) are not that much better than the 4th generation CPU's like the 4700MQ series 2 years ago. And frankly I don't see a lot of difference too. The only thing that is very fast is the m.2 SSD. Otherwise it is arguably the same as 2 year old laptops with that CPU.

And you are not really going to notice a 5-7% performance gain. The passmark between the MQ cpu's (in Lenovo) and the Dell now is around 5%. That is not perceptible.

 

Something must be wrong with your hardware or software. Which CPU do you have? I have i5-6300HQ, SpeedStep and C-states disabled (for better Linux performance, so constant 2,3 GHz + Turbo at all cores) and system is noiseless even on load. Did you installed GPU drivers? Maybe you do not have 3D acceleration and even desktop effect are non-accelerated.

Of course, 5 or even 10% performance gain is really hard to notice in ordinary usage scenario. However, performance is higher and that is the point. It is evolution, not revolution.

 

It's an i7 6820HQ. Installed all drivers from Dell website and checked that they all are the newest version. The CPU is throttling correctly. On balanced profile it goes < 1GHZ when not tasked and turbo boosts when needed.

Right now all cores are around 33 degrees celsius which I think is low but the fan is on. Even though it is on its lowest level and the exhaust is at the back I hear the noise of the fan constantly.

Maybe my ears have been pampered by Lenovo now that I consider this a "noisy" laptop while others do not

 

It is not about your ears. My unit (with Core i5-6300HQ and AMD FirePro W5170M) is noiseless almost all the time, because both fans are stopped. Most of time my units is passive-cooled only.

Maybe one of your fans is broken? Upgrade BIOS (if older than 1.20), upgrade both operating systems, check BIOS settings. If nothing will help, you should call Dell support.

 

Owners of the version with the Xeon e5-1535M v5 ... can you please comment on the temperatures that it reachs under very high load (stressing the CPU with prime95, cpuburn or something like that).

For how long is it able to run without throttling the cpu frequency?

 

Check and see if you can find the thermal/noise control options. I'm not sure where it is on 7510. On my M6700 (two generations old) it is in the Windows power options, advanced settings, under a special "Dell enhanced settings" -> "Thermal mode" section. On M4800 (one generation old), they moved it to its own app, I can access it by right-clicking the battery icon in the system tray and selecting "Dell Power Center".

In any case, you will have options for "cool" (fans up), "quiet" (fans down), or "max performance" (fans up a lot). I keep mine on "quiet" almost all of the time, but this does throttle the CPU somewhat --- it won't go above 2.4 GHz on my M6700, for example, but this is fine for my daily work. I change it when I am running a CPU-intensive job.