Precision 7530 & Precision 7730 owner's thread

Yes, as long as you have the display attached directly to the NVIDIA GPU and not passing through the Intel GPU; this means turning graphics switching off or flipping the toggle in the BIOS that has external displays always attached to the discrete GPU.

I don't think anything regarding GPU upgrades is guaranteed anymore, even with regards to systems with MXM graphics. MXM seems to be on the way out (sad as that is), I wouldn't be surprised if within another GPU generation it is pretty hard to find systems that use MXM cards and the generation after that they are gone. What happens when the GeForce 11 series starts rolling out will be rather telling.

On the workstation side, the GPU cadence is very predictable. New GPUs only come out when new systems come out, and that is tied to Intel's CPU refresh cycle, about once every 15 months. It does look like NVIDIA is about to kick out a new batch of GPUs, but it will take it a while for them to appear in laptops — Pascal took about six months IIRC, though they might try to speed it up to hit the holiday shopping season, with GeForce 1160 not landing in desktops until the end of October I wouldn't be surprised at all if they miss it — and even longer them to appear in workstations (third quarter next year).

All this to say that if you're seriously considering the Precision, this is a great time to buy, these systems are brand new. The 8th gen Intel CPUs are also brand new (for laptops) and the best CPU upgrade that we've had in several generations with the move to six-core, so this is a good time to hop on from that refresh perspective (regardless of which company you end up getting your system from). Also with Thunderbolt it's now way easier to get an eGPU setup for gaming, if you don't need to be mobile while you're doing it, it will offer a better performance per $.


Regarding the bottom panel of the 7530, I don't have any issue with it. It seems solid to me, I can't believe that it would ever "crack". It was a bit harder to get off the first time than subsequent times, but there's no danger of it "falling off" now, it's attached by seven screws after all... And while not as simple as the two-screw setup of prior systems, seven screws hardly makes the system "cumbersome to open" (how often do you really need to do that anyway). I guess I lucked out on the screen, I have the 4K screen and I can't see any backlight bleed, dust stuck in, or stuck pixels. My only issue is the viewing angle seems just a bit worse than my previous 1080p IPS display in my 7510.
I do have issues with this system but they are mostly related to the Thunderbolt dock.

 

Hi, could someone please test, whether the cpu performance is the same on a 7530 on ac adapter vs on battery? That would be very kind.
(I have a Lenovo P50 right now and on battery the cpu is considerable slower than on ac power)

 

That is controlled somewhat through the Windows operating system's Advanced Power Options setting for "Maximum Processor State %" when plugged in and when on battery. Or have you already taken that into account?

 

On my P50, yes. Tried BIOS settings, various Windows power profiles settings including setting the minimun process state to 100%. I don't think it's a windows thing, more a thing to protect the battery from draining to much power oder so. It was so with the original Lenovo installation and also with a new windows installation.

I certainly want to prevent the same thing happens to a new 7530 (which I probably gona buy), so the easiest thing ist that someone tried is out with out-of-the-shelve settings.

 

I bought a 7730 and here are my comments and concerns. I wound up buying a Precision 7730 with a Xeon E-2186M CPU to test it out for a bit before going whole-hog. It is much faster than the Latitude E5570s that several workers are still using. The only problem that I am having is the smell from the fan vents. People have commented that it smells like something is burning. This model has four vents and it does not seem to be running all that hot (it does not get my legs as hot as the Latitude for example, but the smell is a little bothersome and I'm wondering if it's just a 'new car type of smell' or if this is potentially a hazardous fume.

My impression is that this is very well-made, durable machine. The look and feel are better than any computer that I have owned. I gave a trial to the Precision M7720 and let tell you, this 7730 is actually thinner.

So far the CPU suits my purposes and everything else is working well, except for the smell that other people have observed. They say, "Is something burning in there?"

 

Short update regarding the fan control:
I did not install the "Dell Power Manager" because description states only battery related stuff. But you can also setup the "Thermal Management". When setting to "Optimized" or "Quiet" fans are almost at low RPM. This solves my fan issue.

Edit:
Also reduced core voltage offset by 0.15[V].

 

I tried running a CPU-heavy job on battery and the clock rate never went above 3 GHz. It's definitely throttled. I was expecting this since I've also experienced it on my M6700. It doesn't bother me (desktop-type work isn't impacted and I'm not going to do any CPU-heavy work while not plugged in).

Also, I'm not sure about this one but prior systems had a hard cap at 100W on what can be drawn from the battery (and if you do draw 100W you will use it all up in an hour), so for a system with a 180/240W power supply, of course there will be a compromise when running on battery power.

I think that you'll find this type of throttling with any system of this type.

 

Has anyone been able to buy a 7530 or 7730 with Ubuntu and a Radeon graphics card? Not sure why Dell thinks it isn’t compatible.

 

Nope. But tried to install 18.04 on 7730 P3200. Install fails asap because of some strange error (docking station HDMI interface was not correctly initialized. Something like that). I gave up.

 

I think now the Dell next day onsite service is a joke. My new screen replacement will be available after 9/04 but they offered me a system exchange that may take 8-10 days after approval.