Precision 7530 & Precision 7730 owner's thread

Most laptops don't support XMP outside of some gaming laptops. I am surprised that it's not running it at least at 2666MHz, but perhaps there isn't a JEDEC for that and the system doesn't know what to do. I'd just get some cheap OEM 32GB 2666MHz ram if I were you and save the money.

 

According to this spec sheet, though, the Precision 7X30s do support XMP. And @anuraj1 mentioned that he could get his 3.2 GHz kit up and running. Oh, well.

 

Well if that's the case, then perhaps try updating the bios? Are you able to find anything in the bios related to XMP? Does XMP work on Xeon CPUs as well? Typically Xeon's don't allow for any memory overclocking...

 

There are no XMP settings in the BIOS, however, users very early in this thread reported getting the modules working with XMP speeds "automatically" after the first or second BIOS update put out by Dell. I remember at least one user reporting BSOD's when the modules were working at XMP speed when they were stable at the slower speed. Maybe Dell rolled this back in subsequent updates, they don't sell the system with XMP RAM modules after all...?

 

Hey,

I've had it for about 3 weeks and these are my thoughts:


The Good
- Performance - great, 4700 MHz clock speed average without thermal throttling, 4ssds which is truly makes this laptop unique
- Keyboard - great, best I've used. Sometimes the alt key is on when not pressed (just have to press it once to fix) - happened on my XPS with the windows key often
- Palmrest doesn't attract fingerprints at all
- Build quality is top notch, it's big but fine for me. Had to get a new bag to carry it - this one is great and fits it perfectly https://www.kensington.com/p/produc...ington-securetrek-17-laptop-overnight-roller/
- Technical support - great and best in the business. You get directed to a Precision specialised team who are highly trained and come from the country you live in. Very helpful and the reason I go with Dell for Windows PCs!

The Bad
- Fans - only way to control them is with power manager which doesn't make sense, often High Performance or Optimised is quieter than quiet. It will thermal throttle occasionally when doing intensive tasks like 4K video unless you use third party fan software such as HWiNFO64 (I recommend having this anyway and gives you more control and ability to monitor your system).
- I was a little disappointed with the video performance in Premier Pro - drop frames at 4k full res which is surprising. The Alienware m17 can play it fine. Still perfectly usable if you reduce the playback resolution
- Screen - It's a Sharp SHP1446 4K panel - Okay but to be honest not as nice as the 4k XPS 15 screen, a lot of backlight bleed but very bright
- Trackpad - sensitive and does the job but feels like it's from 10 years ago and cheap. XPS is better. Why do they still have trackball on this, has anyone used them since 1998?

Really bad
- Audio - terrible. The Realtek driver puts out a terrible quality sound which lacks bass and resolution. Using headphones wouldn't switch over sometime. I mostly fixed this by just using the default Windows HD audio. On battery there are often clicks, pops and dropouts which is unacceptable in my opinion.
- DPC latency is bad and I think this is causing bad real-time audio performance. It's very powerful but you can't set a low buffer in Ableton (512 samplesmin) without dropouts. Kind of fustrating.
- SSDs - I got two with the unit - a Toshiba KXG60ZNV512G and Samsung PM981 1tb. They both achieved 3000 mb/s read/write which was great. I installed two Samsung 970 evos and they also had 3000 mb/s read/write. However, the last couple of days they have all dropped to around 1000 mb/s read/write and I don't know why.

To be honest, I'm thinking of returning it and getting a Macbook pro. Never used one but they are optimised for audio and low latency. Similar price for a specced out one.

If you plan on buying one, I recommend getting minimum ram and ssd and buying third party - you will save a lot of $, don't understand dell's pricing for ram or ssds, I know they are covered under warranty but they charge 4 + times the price!

 

I get dropouts when on battery and playing any audio from the laptop (youtube, audio player etc). I am not able to put the buffer size in Ableton below 512 samples without dropouts. I could go down to 128 samples on my old XPS. Pretty dissapointing.

 

On this one, try disabling graphics switching in the BIOS if you haven't already so that the NVIDIA GPU will be driving everything; I'm running this way because the Intel GPU doesn't seem quite up for driving multiple 4K displays (I get stuttering when doing anything somewhat intensive).

 

I suppose this depends on what you mean by audio: merely listening, the audio quality is excellent, plus the Waves enhancement. There are two 2W speakers underneath, and clarity and bass are excellent. I don't use the machine for real time audio, however, and I can't comment on that.

Are you simultaneously reading to/writing from the drives? You can achieve a maximum throughput of ~3500 MB/s (just a teeny note of pedantry: mb in lower-case actually means millibit, whereas MB means megabyte—the latter is 8 billion times as large as the former), but because of the DMI limitation as mentioned earlier, each drive is bottlenecked and therefore if you simultaneously read/write, you will achieve speeds halved, or even quartered, as you've realised.

 

Agreed. I haven't really got the time to fiddle around with unlocking BIOSes and all, so I will probably return this and get myself some Kingston 2666 MHz ECC—it's not much more expensive than the G.Skill kit, but at least it has ECC thrown in. Whether or not Xeon allows XMP I really have no idea; neither Intel Ark or Wikichip mention XMP at all, even for the 8950HK. I was admittedly disappointed. Maybe I'll give it one last shot by removing one stick and testing...

 

I have to run Ableton on the integrated graphics for several reasons. It drives external displays perfectly. Just the performance in premier pro isn't as good as I thought it would be despite using the dedicated GPU or just software.