Precision 7530 & Precision 7730 owner's thread

Check the first post in this thread.

 

Well read so many pages except for the intro . Thanks
Since a few people purchased those systems now is there a comprehensive list of all the negatives of those laptops?

 

I'm curious if you are seeing any throttling that you weren't before? Is the 7530 power throttling with this GPU? (GPU-Z "Sensors" tab "PerfCap reason" will reveal this if you leave it open during a benchmark or something.)

 

I was definitely seeing Pwr throttling with the stock vBIOS; it hovered exactly where the power limit was defined: 65 W.

The new vBIOS lets the GPU reach 75+ W of power draw, but like I said, I haven't done any detailed monitoring and benchmarking, yet.

 

What that would tell us is if the decision to power limit the P3200 was a technical or a marketing decision.

 

Indeed, I was also wondering if maybe attaching a 240W adapter would let the P3200 with 7730 vBIOS perform a little bit better (assuming that there really is a sort-of good reason that Dell decided to limit the power in the 7530).

It would be an awfully odd "marketing decision" considering that Dell hasn't even disclosed that there is a difference between the P3200 in the two different systems...

 

Calling it a 'difference' is putting it mildly; there's a 35% (or 26%, depending on which is your baseline) difference in the power limits.

I never got the reason for that, from the outset. The GPU runs at a balmy 60 °C under transcoding load (ffmpeg nvenc_h264), and perhaps 3-5° warmer under an intense gaming load (AC Odyssey, Kingdom Come: Deliverance).

There is plenty of thermal headroom for more power, and perhaps a little more voltage.

Since I have Shadow of the Tomb Raider, AC Odyssey, 3DMark, Cinebench, and ffmpeg, I'll run all these over the weekend and prepare a detailed report. I'll see if I've got any other games that have built-in benchmarks (since there's little statistical point in running through games/benches without repeatable results).

If any of you have suggestions for benches (ideally graphics-focused), please let me know.

 

Hmm, is there any difference in transcoding performance with the different vBIOS? This is a case where I think there might not be. NVENC doesn't use the CUDA cores, my understanding is that it uses separate hardware that is actually identical across all Pascal chips. (NVENC performance should be the same between the P1000, P5200, GeForce 1060, and Titan X. Or at least the difference would not be very drastic between the low and high end if it is impacted by the core clock speed... but I think it might be even separate from that.)

 

So I'm certainly not the only one that has installed additional M.2's in the slots beneath the 7730 base cover. One of the slots is mechanically correct. The other two seem backwards. The implication in the manual is that you attach the heatsink and slide into place. But with two of the slots, you can't do that. The "slide" would be in the direction for removal, not insertion. In the photo below, note the red arrow. The only way to get that tab from the heatsink into that position would be to insert it through the slot and slide LEFT, not RIGHT. The M.2 slot above does not have that problem. The guides are such that you slide the entire assembly to the left to remove the M.2 - doing so aligns that tab with the notch in the case such that you can remove it.

I must be missing the obvious - please point it out to me

 

The heatsinks are oriented backwards between the two slots that are right next to each other, so you're right, one should slide left to install and the other should slide right. I wouldn't put it past Dell to goof up on the direction of the arrow, the manuals often contain small errors.

Anyway, the heatsinks were already present when you got the system, right? Just install them back how they came (take care to remove the plastic film covering the thermal pad if you didn't have a drive installed there to begin with).