Precision 7530 & Precision 7730 owner's thread

Another note from Dell on the docks, no progress to share but I learned something interesting...
If you have the TB18DC dock, download the firmware update 1.0.6 and run this command from the command prompt (elevated). You will get a dialog box that shows a list of all of the firmware components.

DellDockingStationFwUp_1.0.6_TB18DC_20180816.exe /componentsvers



The 1.0.6 dock firmware update only updates the Dual Cable PSOC component, to version 1.15.
(What kind of world are we living in where cables have firmware inside...)

Does anyone have different values for the other components...? (Specifically anyone who is not experiencing the power issue.)

 

So regardless what you do it's always going to be stuck 90/60?


Can you overclock and set voltages (using msi afterburner CTRL + F curve) on the P3200?

 

CPU clocks and power limits, and GPU clocks, voltages and power limits, are completely locked.

The CPU (regardless of type: i7, i9 or Xeon) is locked at 44/43/42/41 for 1/2/4/6 active cores, and locked at 90 W short/60 W long.

The GPU is locked at a 78W power limit, and both the memory and core clocks and voltages are also locked.

Quadro GPUs could typically never be overclocked without a VBIOS mod, and this is a CFL machine, so we can't use the power tweaker either to unlock.

 

I thought the P3200 on 7530 is 56w?

The pascal vbios tweaker doesn't work? http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/mobile-pascal-tdp-tweaker-update-and-feedback-thread.806161/


So many limitations... Doesn't sound attractive at all right now. Maybe if the price is low enough (lower than the P52).

 

Well, the Quadro P3200 has 40% more cores than a GTX 1060, even though it is power limited. And the warranty makes it a great buy.

 

56w or 78?

 

It's a P3200 Max-Q even though it's not labeled as such anywhere. When we checked Unigine Heaven, it was tripping performance limit reason - power at about 66W GPU power.



The 7730 has the full 78W P3200.

 

I'm hoping the Pascal vBIOS power tweaker is updated for Coffee Lake soon. Do you know why the CPU being 8th-gen means that the same Pascal GPU vBIOSes cannot be tweaked? Has some dumb nVidia DRM changed?

 

Unfortunately I don't know if there's any hope for that. The author hasn't been on NBR since 2017 and the tool hasn't been updated in well over a year. It just doesn't support the newer vBIOSes that are required for compatibility with 8th gen systems.

 

Snap. Makes me wonder why on earth notebook GPUs would require vBIOS compatibility with 8th-gen CPUs, while desktop ones would work just fine without vBIOS updates... Crappy segmentation and DRM rules all over again. I would really like to somehow unlock the full potential performance of the P3200, given it has 40% more cores than a GTX 1060.

With a potential memory and core overclock, it could approach 90% the performance of a stock GTX 1070.

The problem is that everything now is potential, and not realised.