Precision 7560 & 7760 Owners' Thread

Thanks! I'll try that on Monday.

 

Ok, thanks. I have successfully shrunk, repartitioned, and cloned a larger drive onto a smaller one in Windows, using the method you describe, but using Macrium Reflect instead of Clonezilla. I was just intrigued by the idea of doing this before initial boot. I could pull the drive from the chassis and stick it into an enclosure and handle all of this on a secondary machine (which is basically what I was planning on doing, anyway). I might try it, anyway, but keep the OEM drive as a backup until I've determined whether or not I was successful.

 

I have finally received my 7560. It's what I expected--powerful when needed, silent for light-load tasks. I'm quite satisfied.

Having said that, there is one thing that I haven't figured out: the performance of RTX A4000 on Linux. Upon receiving the laptop, I installed Pop!OS 20.04, which is built based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. I then proceeded to benchmark the rendering performance of the GPU with Valley benchmark on Pop!OS 20.04 and Windows 10.

The result is that the A4000 on Win10 outperforms itself when running on Linux.

Linux: 81.6 fps, 3413 score
Win10: 119 fps, 4977 score

Set up:

• Linux: kernel 5.13.0-7620 x86_64, Pop!OS 20.04 (based on Ubuntu 20.04), Nvidia driver 470.82.04
• Windows 10: Dell factory setting (no change)
• Test configuration is preset to "Extreme HD" in Valley benchmark.
• Machine: Precision 7560, i7-11800H, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Nvidia RTX A4000, 1920x1080 500nit display

I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong, e.g. not picking up the right linux driver for Quadro RTX A4000 or something else that I may overlook.

I wonder what your thoughts are if you happen to have tried a similar benchmark on both linux and windows.

 

Because I was curious to see how my A2000 compared to your A4000, as well as how much my result differed between Ubuntu and Windows:

• Linux: 32.6 FPS; 1362 score
  
• Windows 10 Pro: 40.6 FPS; 1700 score

So yes, I also see a significant difference in graphics processing performance between the two environments.

Configurations & Versions:

• Machine: Precision 7560, i9-11950H, 32GB RAM, 2TB Samsung Pro SSD, NVidia RTX A2000, 3840x2160 600 nit panel. All software is up to date.
  
• Windows 10: Pretty much as delivered, except for 175% scaling of the display. Both Microsoft and Dell say there are no pending updates. NVidia driver version 27.21.14.6302.
  
• Linux: Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS; kernel 5.11.0-25-generic; NVidia driver 470.57.02. No pending updates.
  
• Benchmark: Ran Valley in both environments with no changes to the defaults.

The only graphic intensive applications I use are Adobe Lightroom Classic and Photoshop. The PugetBench benchmark for Lightroom shows my Precision scores quite high compared to even a lot of desktop machines, probably due to the i9 and the Samsung SSD.

I'm quite pleased with my new Precision, which replaced a Precision 7530, and very happy to have ordered it when the configuration I wanted was still available.

 

New Bios for 7x60. I have not tried yet.

Fixes & Enhancements

Fixes:
- Firmware updates to address security vulnerabilities.
- Firmware updates to address the Intel Security Advisory INTEL-SA-00562 (CVE-2021-0157).

Enhancements:
- Updated the SMBIOS baseboard and chassis information in BIOS.

Version
1.5.0
Release date
10 Nov 2021

 

I noticed that 7X10 and up have gotten a new BIOS in the past week or so. I updated a 7510 and 7530 yesterday with no trouble. I'll try this one here in about half an hour.

[Edit]
Update finished, no obvious issues. The flash process was a lot quicker than going to 1.4.0. Maybe there were less components that needed to be updated?

 

Hello guys! I've received -after more than a month- a SSD replacement for my equipment.
And I finally have consistent behavior of the SSD being recognized on the PCIe 4.0 port.
But after installing windows, I'm seeing very weird/erratic behavior in terms of performance -read//write speeds.

It starts fine on AJA System test, but it starts to behave erratically very soon, with speed dropping dramatically even down to 20 MB.
On CrystalDiskMark, it shows very poor speeds.


On CrystalDiskInfo, it shows that the disk on the PCIe 4.0 port is at 80°C, while the other ones on the PCIe 3.0 ports don't even reach 50°C

My guess is that the overheating of the disk is causing the performance issues. There's a thermal pad on the metal plate, touching the NVMe disk, but there's the sticker with the install instructions that may be preventing the metal plate to spread the heat properly.
And as someone here mentioned before (I think it was Aaron44126), there are no thermal pads on top of the metal plate of the PCIe 4.0 port, when there is on the other metal plates of the disks located on the PCIe 3.0 ports.

Should I ask the support guys for thermal pads to place them over the thermal place to see if that helps with the temps and with the performance of the SSD?

 

I received my (Dell Outlet) 7760 today, and have spent the rest of the day cloning drives. The system shipped with 2x32GB sticks installed under the keyboard. I added two more sticks.

I ran Windows Update and Dell Command | Update, then got ready to create my user account. I noticed at the top of the account settings page that Windows was not activated, so I went to activate it. I got error 0xC004C003, which indicates that I don't have a valid license.

From what I have read on the link rwzeitgeist posted, I don't think this should have been caused by cloning the system SSD, adding another SSD, and adding two sticks of memory. Should it have?

I've got an e-mail in to my sales rep. I hope this is easily solved.

Other than this little snag, I really like the machine. I absolutely love the captive screws in the bottom panel. Fewer little bits to keep track of is good.

 

There is a Dell Firmware update for the Kioxia KXG70PNV2T04. You can try that and see if it helps. Mine came with the Samsung 2TB. It runs hot but I do not think that hot. I will double check.

Edit:
Using my 7760 with lid closed and back raised an inch. Power management is optimized. idle this morning it read 49 degrees. After some light use went up to 57 degrees. I am on bios 1.4. I recall early on (before 1.4) temp was in the 60s (60 to 65). I do not recall checking it after I upgraded to 1.4 so maybe that did something.

 

Use ProduKey and see if it can extract the Windows product key from the BIOS. (...i wonder if they flubbed up and didn't install the right Windows edition for the product key that was burned into the BIOS, or something?)
Note, Windows Defender may complain about ProduKey but it is safe to use.