Precision 7530 & Precision 7730 owner's thread

I think nVidia drivers are the #1 pain point when you get one of these new machines. Even the latest nVidia drivers were balking when it detected Windows Pro for Workstations, which is the normal SKU for 6-core notebook CPUs, but GeForce Experience was able to get past that. They have probably corrected that issue by now. Once I got the latest drivers, though, this machine has been extremely smooth.

 

Either could be newer depending on where they are at. They sort of treat QNF as the beta line, you can use those drivers if you want to get the new driver features a little bit early. (Technically they are not "beta" releases, they usually drop simultaneously with "production" GeForce releases that have the same version number.)

When they are launching a new major version, they put the first few releases in the QNF branch and then promote it to the ODE branch.

For example, when they moved from 411.xx to 416.xx, you had 416.30 and 416.78 in the QNF branch (with corresponding releases 411.81 and 411.95 dropping simultaneously in the ODE branch). Once the new line was "stable enough" (I'm not sure how they determine this), they dropped 418.81 on the ODE branch and there hasn't been a QNF release since then. When they start up a new line (who knows, 425.xx?), they'll drop the frist few releases on the QNF branch again.

I always stick with the ODE branch, opting for stability over new features. I also have an RSS feed that tracks the ODE branch, if you have a feed reader you could use it to be alerted of new releases. https://rss.aaron-kelley.net/nvidia-p5000/

If you look at the GeForce side, you will see that the version number only marches upwards; they don't maintain multiple branches. (You can't find a GeForce release of 411.81 or 411.95.) This might be changing with the new "Creator Ready Drivers" line, can't tell, there's only been one of those so far.

By the way, if you go to the Drivers -> All NVIDIA Drivers page and then select "Beta and Older Drivers" from lower down, you will get the page that I linked. (Funny how you can actually discover newer drivers from there.) I just have that stashed in my bookmarks...

 

Sigh, NVIDIA...

This is another fun NVIDIA anomaly. It has not been fixed (I was fighting with it just last week).

On the "Advanced driver search" page that I linked, you will see that there are options for "Standard" or "DCH" drivers. DCH drivers are friendly with "Windows 10 S" (you grab the NVIDIA Control Panel from the Windows Store, I think); I'm not totally sure of the differences, but there is no difference between the two performance-wise. And if you look at the list, you'll see that new "Standard" and "DCH" versions have been dropping simultaneously.

The kicker is: If you have "Standard" drivers installed, then the NVIDIA installer will refuse to let you upgrade to newer "DCH" drivers. If you have "DCH" drivers installed, then it will refuse to let you upgrade to newer "Standard" drivers. The error message that you get doesn't make any sense, it is along the lines of "This update can't be installed on this computer, try upgrading through GeForce Experience" or something like that. I suspect this is what you ran into.

The second kicker is: The first NVIDIA drivers that Dell offered for the 7530/7730 were "Standard" drivers, but they have since switched to "DCH" drivers, so if you installed the early ones from Dell then you may not be able to upgrade to the newer ones. Also, if you had some drivers installed by Windows at install time (automatically or through Windows Update) you probably got "Standard" ones and won't be able to install Dell's newer "DCH" ones.

The workaround that I have found if you want to switch is, extract the files from the driver that you want to switch to and then manually install it through Device Manager. After that, run the NVIDIA setup process and reinstall it with the "clean install" option. After a reboot, you should be good.

I think a proper fix for this would be for NVIDIA setup to allow the cross-upgrade but require that you do a clean install when doing it.

 

Thanks, I suspected that this might be the case. There's a high chance with new motherboard things won't change. I had my panel replaced due to bleeding - no improvement, actually stayed with the old one. Had my palmrest replaced due to unresponsive fingerprint scanner - now it is responsive, but fails to recognise me, hence no real improvement. Going through another replacement procedure seems like a waste of time...

 

Just use DDU, you should do it anyway when instaling different/older branded drivers.
Had the same problem, DDU worked for me.

 

Same here. My tb18dc firmware has not been updated yet, but I doubt this would help.
Usb-c is a small but lousy connector...

 

Interestingly, I got my hands on another 7530. Tried it with my dock and the behaviour is much better. You can still manage to break the connection by moving the cable up and down, but tapping the connector (something similar to unintentional interaction) won't affect it. The difference is that this one runs on Linux. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with it...

 

This behaviour, or at least the basic issue, seems more like an hardware (construction) issue than an software issue (why should software react on tapping a cable ??).
Most likely there is a bad contact construction/design on the usb-c connection side that results in very small signal distortions or maybe a grounding issue.

And most likely the linux software is simply a bit more fail tolerant in that department than windows.

But nevertheless the basic issue is a hardware issue and I fear it's some conceptional thing of the dock and/or the precision itself (I have a strong suspicion regarding grounding or something like that). This will, most likely, not be fixable by software :-(

 

I have two TB18-DC's; one I use at my client site and one I (was intending to) use at my home office. The one I have at home has the same issue with the connection failing at the slightest touch of the cable. The one I have at my client is rock-solid and doesn't budge.

 

I was wondering if OS could have something to do with that (better stability under Linux). In many cases the dock itself doesn't get disconnected (no device disconnect sound in windows), so maybe it just a slight data stream interruption. But I do agree the source is in HW.

That's actually a very good tip - I'll see if I can check it with another TB18DC. If it's in fact a dock issue, I'll see if I can have it replaced.