Precision 7530 & Precision 7730 owner's thread

What's with the combative rhetoric?

I was quite clear on my stance: I don't want a UHD panel on my notebook because I don't like the scaling issues.

Yes, it does bother me that MMC windows, control panels (sometimes not even that that obscure), and several other legacy applications I use have poor scaling. In fact, even the PDF viewer in Google Chrome scales poorly (and about a month and a half ago, the latest update of Chrome, too, had messed up scaling). It reflects poorly on Windows and Microsoft, if elements of its own OS are still stuck in the late '90s, and does not play well with settings within its own OS.

There was no real need to go 'who gives a damn'... Because I do. Incidentally, I use MathType and even that had scaling issues.

Furthermore, rendering four times the pixels per second, has a highly deleterious effect on battery life. The battery life is already poor, at six hours for a 97-Whr battery, when ten or so is likely expected, under normal use.

We have gone completely off tangent: my point was about Dell making a poor choice on the 1080p panel.

Also, @Aaron44126, OS X has scaling options within System Preferences that allow the user to choose what the display 'looks like' — because OS X uses vector rendering for most of its UI. So for example, the UI elements of OS X will look exactly the same size regardless of whether you're viewing it on the 2011 15" MacBook Pro (which had a 1440 × 900 display, or optionally a 1680 × 1050 display), or the 2880 × 1800 Retina Display.

This is because the exact ×2 scaling was ported over neatly from iOS—have the UI elements prerendered or drawn, scaled by a factor of 2 on each axis; have 2 times the pixels on each axis, and the final result stays the same size, but is twice as sharp on each axis.

Windows notebooks have had to work with HiDPI displays since 2013 (my old Clevo had a 13.3" 1080p display, and boy, was that a pain), and its scaling mechanism is still not entirely fixed.

Apple has had a detailed, simple API for UI scaling on both its OSes which Microsoft has not.

 

That sounds like you tried to install it in AHCI mode. Did you try RAID mode? It should show a different device name (Intel SATA RAID Controller or something). In AHCI mode, the NVMe drives are not attached to the AHCI controller, so you wouldn't see any new drives after installing that driver.

If you did try it in RAID mode, well, I have no idea what's going on.

 

Sorry, just edited my post above. Yes, I tried at first in AHCI, and I just retried in RAID mode. Had the same error (different driver names though). Do you have any more ideas?
Pic: https://imgur.com/a/4qfAc5l
Edit: Retried after restoring BIOS to default settings, same result.

 

I'm now running Debian Stretch 9.5 on my 7530 with no issues so far. I haven't done anything with the AMD GPU besides basic desktop stuff -- I'll reserve testing of that for another day. Here are my revised steps for installing Debian Stretch on the Dell Precision 7530. I had my system configured with the AMD Radeon 4150 and the Intel 9260 AC WiFi. If you got one of the NVIDIA GPUs, I would recommend installing the binary driver from NVIDIA's website if the open source nouveau driver isn't enough for you.

1. Put the Debian DVD #1 ISO onto a flash drive. Find it here: https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-dvd/
2. Install Debian as normal, ignore issues with not being able to fetch network resources. Use additional DVD ISOs if necessary to get packages.
3. Debian Stretch comes with Linux 4.9.0.7 at the time of writing. This is too old. Using another computer, grab 4.17 from Stretch Backports (here: https://packages.debian.org/stretch-backports/linux-image-4.17.0-0.bpo.3-amd64)
4. With the system booted, install the newer kernel with "sudo dpkg -i <filename.deb>".
5. Reboot. Make sure you boot into the 4.17 kernel with Grub.
6. Touchpad and Ethernet should be working at this point. Plug your laptop into Ethernet to continue.
7. Add the stretch-backports repo to your sources.list. Instructions here: https://backports.debian.org/Instructions/. Also, since you used DVD only during the install, /etc/apt/sources.list has stretch-updates commented out, and you don't have the main repos. Uncoment the stretch-update lines, and add these lines:
   deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stretch main contrib non-free
   deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stretch main contrib non-free
8. Run apt-get update.
9. Update the kernel to the latest using apt. For me, that was "apt-get install linux-image-4.18.0-0.bpo.1-amd64"
10. Reboot. Make sure you boot into 4.18 with Grub. At this point, run "apt-get dist-upgrade" since you have updated the kernel.
11. Install linux-firmware to get AMDGPU drivers. apt-get install linux-firmware. You might also need linux-firmware-nonfree.
12. Download the Intel 9260AC wireless drivers (iwlwifi). The iwlwifi drivers included in the Debian repos are too old. Grab them from here:
    https://www.intel.com/content/www/u...5511/network-and-i-o/wireless-networking.html
    (You need "Intel® Wireless-AC 9260")
13. Follow the instructions in the driver download. All you have to do is run "cp iwlwifi-9260-th-b0-jf-b0-34.ucode /lib/firmware"
14. Reboot. You should now have working GPU, WiFi, Touchpad, and Ethernet. Enjoy!

I plan to write this up on the Debian wiki as well eventually. If anyone uses these steps and it works for them, let me know!

Edited to add a couple things.
First, I wanted to note that when I was on Dell's Ubuntu install, I was having the occasional flickering issue on the display. That issue has disappeared since installing Ubuntu. I guess it was a driver issue.
Secondly, I wanted to add that if you have a USB to Ethernet adapter that is recognized by Debian Stretch 4.9.0.7 natively, you can avoid adding 4.17. Just install the system with the normal netinst image, and then once you're in, add the backports repo to sources.list and upgrade your kernel to 4.18. I didn't have one, so this was my workaround.
Third, I started the Debian Wiki entry for the 7530. The formatting needs help, and there needs to be a lot more testing (hibernation, OpenGL, xrandr, CPU frequency scaling, hotkeys, and more). However, this system seems like a great Debian system once you get a newer kernel installed! If you want to pitch in after setting up Debian, that would be great! https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Dell/Precision 7530

 

@Ionising_Radiation that's always been exactly my point, you're upset because selected a 1080p panel and Dell put in a crappy 6-bit model, and now you are likely going to spend all this money and imagine all the wasted time you've already and will put into this to buy and install a new custom panel. Imagine how awful the 6-bit panel must be that you are willing to go through this.

I'm just having a discussion and stating my opinion if its worth it over selecting a better UHD panel and having a few scaling issues in some legacy areas of Windows and certain apps. I'm stating my opinion and that is I've been burnt in the past like you have now, I know companies will always skimp on costs particularly in their lower offerings, always know this and think twice before selecting certain configurations.

This is not a true statement anymore. When you are using hybrid graphics and drive the UHD display with the Intel iGPU it is way more energy efficient. On all three of my laptops that have UHD panels there is a clear and major difference in battery life, period. I think the difference in battery life would only be on the scale of 30 mins between a UHD and 1080p panel in this scenario.

 

yo man you still around? i still have your alienware 18x with custom bazel hahahah

 

A dumb question, but better safe than sorry.

Using weaker power supply with 7530. In a pinch is it possible to use 90W (19.5V, 4.62A) power supply?

Two use cases:

1. Recharging a sleeping laptop.
2. Working on it (coding, so tens of seconds of low CPU usage followed by short high CPU load bursts, no dGPU).

Would it be dangerous for laptop, power brick; or would there be just some throttling due to insufficient power.

 

90W is the minimal power the 7*30 series will accept. They'll typically operate as if they are working off their battery; when power usage is low the battery will charge, when power usage is high the battery will discharge.
It will also charge when a laptop is sleeping.

It's safe to connect, you won't damage anything. You just won't get the performance you'd get from a 200W adapter and continous high power draw will eventually deplete the battery.

edit: I'm assuming you're talking about a Dell power adapter. I have no experience with third party power supplies.

 

It is totally safe. It will work fine for charging if the laptop is off or asleep. You can expect heavy CPU throttling, though. (The system will perform faster on battery alone than it will with a 90W charger attached.)

For reference look at Bokeh's M6600 review, he has a section on what happens with lower-powered power supplies connected. The M6600 is a bit old at this point, but the behavior hasn't really changed much...
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...-warning-large-pics-personal-opinions.597919/
Search for "So what happens when you plug in a smaller power adapter?"

 

I tried that on my old m6800:

1) charging while powered off was good

2) running with weak power supply throttled to 400 to 800 Mhz - unusable. I used ThrottleStop to get it running at a decent CPU speed. I preferred booting on battery because the throttling made the Windows boot time super long. So first started ThrottleStop and than attached a 90 or 130W power supply. The weaker power supplies could get pretty warm.