Dell Inspirion 7577

Thanks for the snappy reply. I had initially thought this too, but it wasn't doing this before when I first got the laptop or when I would open these programs as far as polling the GPU and creating this constant spike. Do you use any of those programs on your 7577 (HWmoniter, GPU-Z, NV Insptr, CAM)? If so, do you have the same type of polling spikes? I can't imagine this would be unique to just my machine. I have scoured the net to see if anyone has ever encountered this. While I found a few cases, they were all desktop GPU's and in most cases a resolution was never found.

 

I just opened GPU-Z and it is what is causing that polling you are seeing in its charts. Clear as day on my machine. HWiNFO and Rainmeter were both blank for my dGPU prior to opening GPU-Z.

 

Where did you get drivers from? Nvidia site od Dell support page? Maybe that's the cause. Did you reinstall Windows from clean image or from Dell recovery partition?

 

See my post above, it is caused by GPU-Z itself polling the dGPU.

 

At first I used the drivers from Dells website or the support assist tool. Then a little while later, maybe a few days, I went to NVIDIA website & downloaded the most recent game ready driver at the time. I did a clean install from a sort of default image I made after I had updated and set up everything how I wanted. However you saying that jarred my memory, I made a recovery flash drive and a system image upon my purchase of the laptop and I made that image before anything else like installing programs or changing any settings, so it was just like a factory reset. I forgot that system image was on a external HD. To satisfy my curiosity I decided to do another reset with that image. This is because the issue was not happening the first couple weeks of ownership and thought maybe there was a file or something I may have added or changed to cause this.

Well upon successful re-image, no more constant memory and clock spikes. When it was reset the first time. I uploaded all drivers and just reopened apps and programs from my Z: drive
(my second 2.5" SSD). This re-image I just did was basicly just like it came from the factory. Even though Maleko48 said he was able to replicate the issue on his end with GPU-Z. I think it may be a driver.

I ran HW mon, TS & GPU -Z and there was no constant jumps at idle or polling of GPU. I am wondering if this is happening to multiple owners they just are not realizing it because once the 1060 kicks on, all is fine with temps and clock speeds. So you would only notice if you were actively monitoring temp programs on idle and with the IGPU running the system.

So literally as I am typing the above paragraphs, I had process explorer open and I noticed that I had CAM set to start at startup. I disabled that process and opened CAM to see if CAM would give me accurate and correct clock readings as all the other ones were. No such luck, it just started happening again, the constant spikes. So now I have no clue what it is. I suspect still it may be a driver, as I just did a fresh re-image, all my settings will be at default, which will be automatic driver updates from windows. It may have downloaded something in the background in the time between me checking all my system monitoring tools and getting the readings I desired, to the time I started typing this and opened CAM to bring the constant spikes back.

I opened HWmoniter, GPU-Z, NVIDIA Inspct, HWINFO & CAM; they are all giving me the same constant spikes as before. Whereas a few hours ago, I was monitoring, NI, HWM & GPU-Z and the issue was no longer happening. I can't imagine this is normal behavior for the monitoring programs to constantly poll the GPU @ idle non stop? Even though Maleko48 was able to replicate the issue, I'm unsure if this is normal. I am not sure if its a 7577 issue, a driver issue or if this if the constant polling is actually nothing to worry about, completely normal acceptable behavior and I'm just crazy & have OCD, because this jumping up and down is driving me bonkers, haha.

I got it to stop momentarily, as you can see from my above post. Now its doing it again. I dont think its normal behavior though.

 

You should really only be using 1 monitoring suite at a time tbh. Did you try monitoring with Afterburner or HWiNFO alone after completely closing GPU-Z?

I think you are over-analyzing this myself.

Some of the programs like HWiNFO have specific GPU-polling options that can be toggled in the settings.

Hell, even ThrottleStop can easily show you if your dGPU is being used or not. In TS's options, there are CPU/GPU/Clock boxes to check in the 'Notification' area. If you check them they will add 3 additional icons to your system tray. I have my GPU's font color set to green for its icon. When the dGPU is NOT being used, it reads 0. When the dGPU is being used, it reads out its current temp. Keep in mind the short blips of GPU-Z polling most likely won't actually show through the TS tray icon because it's so fast.

 

Can this be swapped with a better screen? (higher refresh rate with g sync?)

 

Better screen yes, GSYNC no. You can use Nvidia Inspector to turn on Fast Sync however.

 

I think the better question is which 120hz/144hz panel can it be used with that also adjusts brightness?
Or are all of them stuck on max brightness.

 

Anybody with Windows 10 build 17133.73? Be sure not to update to that version, after updating my audio stopped working properly (no output through the jack output on the right side of the laptop) Waves stopped working (I am using headset) and even the internal mic doesn't work. Tried drivers from Dell and directly from Realtek - didn't work either.

 

Just updated to 17134 today night no such issues so far. Something must have gotten borked while it was upgrading for you.

 

Windows updates are known for messing things up. First, try to completely remove any audio drivers and then reinstall proper one.

 

How did you get build 17134? Are you in a different Insider channel?

 

Fast Ring, not much changed from the 17133.73.

Also I’m using the newer build Realtek Drivers meant for the G7 7588, because the Max Audio Application on that one in modular as in it’s a separate install via Windows Store. But I’m pretty sure even with the older driver it shouldn’t wouldn’t matter in terms of stability.

 

Good call with the new driver. sound is ok but my mic doesn't work in third party apps and doesn't register any sound in Windows (unless I check the button which makes me listen to everything I say to the mic). It was ok on the stable, I will just probably wait for new drivers

 

Any new enhancements in that driver? I wish we could have volume normalization or dynamic equalizer, like Dolby has.

 

wow, do you remember some one in this thread complaining how inspiron 7577 cannot activate fast sync because of nvidia optimus? He will be happy if he read your comment.

 

I have been trying out the I5 7577 1060 6GB for VR. It has worked out fairly well with both Rift and WMR Odyssey.

I have found though, the game I wanted to use this the most for, Eleven Ping Pong is unplayable. It works great on a desktop 1060 3GB, but on the 7577 the ball stutters, the frame rates must be dropping a lot. It works fine on other Ping Pong games, but I want to use this one in order to play other people.

Any thoughts on if I can increase performance for this? I have read through the last 50 pages of this thread, but didn't really understand if someone found a way to disable the maxq throttling. I think it is great to keep on for efficiency but would like to have the higher power when I need it for a bit. I have avoided a full windows install because I am not sure that would help. I don't see CPU or memory being maxed out with this game so I am thinking bloat wouldn't be an issue. I have TS and have the CPU undervolted .14.

 

Best you can do is keep your CPU between 3.4 and 3.8GHz but it will likely stay at 3.4-3.5GHz when actually loaded and playing due to core boost limits. That's the best we can do for our i7 7700 HQ (locked) processors.

In TS set your SST value to 0 for maximum throughput and no power savings, use a Highest Performance Profile for Windows, use AfterBurner to OC your GPU (+190/+500), set your NVIDIA control panel to use your GTX1060 for whatever application you're running AND set its profile to prefer Maximum Performance. You can also tweak your priorities using Process Lasso. And finally trim as much auto-start and system processes as possible (check out Black Viper's services list).

Note:

Your clocks will be slightly lower on your i5 7300HQ - 3.1GHz on 4 cores, 3.2GHz on 3 cores, 3.3 GHz on 2 cores, 3.5GHz on 1 core would be my guesses. Also, you could try buying gaming RAM that is OC'd by default. Make sure you are running 2 matched sticks of RAM for full memory throughput too. Oh and don't forget to check that one box in TS to actually make your SST value work.

 

Hey, thanks for the info. I may play around with those, but I have found the solution to the VR Ping Pong problem, and it is an amazing difference!

I enabled HUD in VR using Oculus tool, so I could see framerate, and sure enough it would drop to 60 or less and ASW would kick in to have it at 45, which made play really bad. Without ASW enabled it was tolerable, but I needed to have lowest quality and supersampling even set to .7 and it would still be dropping down in frame rates. Moving quality up to default medium and supersample to 1 and I would get down to 45 fps even without aws enabled.

So experimenting around, I remembered the trick someone had posted about Steam and WMR. (Even though in this case I am running Rift and Oculus.)

The trick is to shrink the playback window on the screen down to its minimum value! The minimize button, so it isn't seen at all, doesn't help at all. Neither does maximizing it. Just grabbing the window at the corner and shrinking it down as small as it can go makes all of the difference in the world!

My quality settings are all up and I am running with 20 to 40% headroom at constant 90fps instead of 45 fps. Its incredible. It now runs perfectly.

I wonder what is going on here. It must be internally, not needing to render the display at a large size is freeing up a ton of GPU.

 

I'm glad you got it sorted. I did not follow everything you wrote up 100% because I'm not really into VR myself. Do you have the 4K screen though (the UHD screen)?

 

I just have the 1920x1080 display. What I was saying is when you are in VR, what you are seeing is also shown on the notebook display. Dragging that screen to minimum size made an incredible difference in the frame rate coming to the VR headset.

Regarding UHD. I had read about someone who had terrible performance in VR with a UHD. They set the display down to 1920x1080 which got rid of their VR problem. So what is being output to the display is making a difference with what is coming to the VR headset.

 

Most definitely. I am baffled it is such a clunky process. Why force it to do double duty unnecessarily when a user has a headset on anyways? That makes no sense.

 

Well, one reason they have this, is so other people can see what you are doing in VR, which is fun to do and not as interesting when you can't see the beautiful scenery or the attacking dinosaur, etc.

But I have read people saying before that it doesn't take anymore GPU power to also send to the display, though this isn't looking to be true, or at least not true with this laptop. Perhaps something to do with the Max-Q logic going on.

 

Someone on Dell forums said that Windows 1803 RS5 eliminates bugs with Optimus and Toshiba speeds with newest firmware and in RAID On mode.

 

Anyone order the new G7 yet ?
Would love to seasons opinions about the screen, I know the last version I say in person the screen was pretty crappy.

 

UHD screen is very OK regarding color reproduction, nobody forced you to purchase FHD version. I have two UHD 7577 and one UHD 7567 in my household...

 

That’s fantastic for you but UHD screen is a waste of money with this hardware in my opinion.
Was just wondering if they upgraded the screen to something better with the new models.

 

I don't think 1000 EUR was waste of money for top spec 7577.

I think only upgrade in new G series are cpu and some cosmetics, because service manual is pretty identical.

 

Well it’s not even close to that price for the G7 with UHD screen now, if it was worth it I would just get the UHD screen and set it 1080P but not for the price they are asking now.

 

So something I have seen on rare occasions since I got this laptop and I'm seeing a little more often now and I think I've narrowed it down a little. But seems like when I'm running on battery (usually with a Balanced power profile in Windows) if I resume from hibernate or Standby and sometimes even cold boot but more often seen from Standby/Hibernate is initially everything acts pretty sluggish. Mouse cursor is slow and delayed as well as switching application. It eventually clears up though and is perfectly usable on battery after the fact.

Haven't had a chance to delve deep into all pages of this thread to see if it was covered so I apologize. Just curious who else has seen this and is there any good ways to resolve it?

 

Check your auto starts and services and task scheduler. Also you can use Throttle Stop to set your laptop into max power during startups which will significantly speed everything up. I think it has to do with default power saving schemes. Some of your auto start stuff and scheduled tasks will run when you log out/in or resume from sleep/hibernate.

Also is your O/S on your HDD or SSD?

How many tray icons do you have on a fresh boot?

How many processes on a fresh boot?

It could also potentially be a problematic driver or task set by a program you have installed.

Do you have your Google Chrome set to not run in the background after it is closed?

 

Boot drive is on the SSD and it is the good 256GB Samsung SSD. So no speed issues there.

Don't know the number of processes/startup items/etc off the top of my head but isn't much. I'll have to confirm that later.

My biggest concern is the major lag/delay in the mouse movement as I haven't run into that since Win9x/XP era hardware where the I/O availability simply was not there under load. Even relatively modern but low powered systems I've never seen this. Just feels weird coming into this relative beast of a laptop.

 

It is all power saving related most likely. Is your Windows power plan defaulting to the power saver end of the slider (on the stock balanced power plan)? There are 3 positions for the slider on the stock balanced power plan.

 

Sounds like your CPU is getting stuck at a lower clock speed. I'd expect this not to happen with the high performance power plan, or that you could get it to come back up to normal clocks by plugging the power supply in for a second.

 

how to downgrade bios from 1.4 back to 1.2 ?

 

I just got the 7577 a week ago. I have to say, I'm impressed with what dell has packed into this machine. I'm in the process of reading through this thread, but here are my thoughts so far.

I have the UHD display, i7 7700HQ. I have played pubg on it a fair amount, and tested with OCCT. I found that the GTX 1060 max-q stayed in the 'very acceptable' range with a maximum temp of 76C.

The cpu runs a bit hotter and I was seeing temps up to 90c. I found that my stable undervolt was around -.150v in XTU and now it has dropped to a MUCH more acceptable 78-83c when I tested it with OCCT, and stayed around 3.3ghz-3.5ghz



This laptop has very good performance for the price, glad I grabbed it. Ill for sure be upgrading the SSD to a 500gb

yes, it can run crysis LMFAO

 

Yes, FCLK is SA clock. Sorry for late reply, busy with life...lol...
I notice that my 7577 reported there is one M.2 NGFF slot empty (3 total), but I only spotted 2 so far (WiFi and SSD), where is that one?
New Dell G5 having additional slot for Optane so Im pretty sure one slot for us was planned but hidden somewhere...

 

Hey guys, I've got some good test results to share with you all soon. I'm just redoing them one more time and snapping a few pics and screenshots for proof.

On my NVMe m.2 SSD I noticed disturbingly high temps when running CDM and other tasks that really hammer the drive. It nearly instantly gets up to 89C on big writes!!! Luckily the fix is the easiest mod you can do for your machine.

Approximately 2+mm of cheap blue silicone thermal pads dropped my temps to a stable 70C when performing the same exact CDM tests.

 

Speaking of the m.2 (256GB) NVMe Toshiba drive, my Crystal Disk Mark tests showed write performance around 350MB/s. I installed a firmware update (going from 4102 to 4104). Write performance nearly doubled to 690 MB/s.

 

Here are my final results:

Ok, so my initial results did not hold as tightly as I had hoped, but I still have a 10C reduction in maximum temps under the harshest conditions, which I am still very happy with. I remembered reading somewhere that ATTO disk benchmark hammers the disk much harder than CrystalDiskMark does, so I switched to that to finalize my results and it definitely drove my temps up a bit more. My ambient room temp is between 27.2C and 28.0C for the record.

The pads are cheap blue silicone type, approximately 1.05mm to 1.09mm thick so I will call them 1mm pads. The label on the package states: "COOLOOdirect30Pcs2...forCPU GPU Heatsinks Made in China" with a barcode that reads: "X001J1AV9Z" and measure: "20mm by 20mm square"

Upon examining the heat spreader plate in its stock configuration from Dell, you can see blue edges peeking out from one side under the heat spreader plate that are sandwiched between the actual memory chips mounted on the PCB and the heat spreading plate itself. There is approximately a 2mm air gap between the surface of the heat spreading plate and the bottom cover of the laptop.

Initially I only added 2 layers of pads and they made minimal contact on the center thermal pads with the foil flashing that is bonded to the inner side of the plastic bottom cover. I placed these very carefully and tried not to handle them too much because I did not want my oils from my skin getting on them or degrading my test results. After running CDM a time or two my temps maxed out at 70C (laptop had been off all day prior to these runs, so the chassis had minimal additional heat soak). The problem was that I hadn't taken a baseline reading or specs with no pads at all so I didn't have anything besides my previous post here to go off of. And I also forgot I had posted stats and screens here previously anyways, lol. So I decided to pull the pad job off and run the test again with no pads. On CDM I saw my temps quickly max out at 89C before CDM even got through its first half of tests. Success was confirmed at this point, but I wanted more hard data and proof to offer you fine folks.

Next I reapplied the same set of pads I had removed and re-ran the tests with CDM. This time with the same set of pads I noticed my temps kind of shooting up unusually compared to the original test that maxed at 70C (of which I had no screenshots for), but still not as bad as when tested with no pads at all. This round of testing with the reapplied pads maxed out at 76C. I assumed that peeling the pads off then reapplying them made them ever so slightly thinner and thus contact with the foil flashing was reduced or inadequate (in addition to possible finger oil contaminations). Upon removing my laptop's bottom cover, all of the pads were actually stuck to the foil flashing pretty much confirming my theory.

So naturally, I went back and peeled them all off once more then reapplied all of the same 2 layers of pads back onto the black metal heat spreading plate then added an additional 3rd layer for a total of ~3mm of thermal pads stacked on the heat spreader. By this point I didn't care so much about the finger oils as the pads had been stretched and handled enough that the results would be what they were- and contact pressure/consistency seemed most important anyhow. I should note that the 2 layers of pads equaling 2mm seemed to sit flush with everything and the 3rd layer that made their collective thickness 3mm had a more satisfying protrusion I was happy would maintain solid contact with the (admittedly flexy) plastic bottom panel with the foil flashing bonded to it. Upon running my CDM tests with 3mm of (reused / reapplied) pads it scored maximum temps of 71C and 75C on the first and second passes respectively. It was at this point I remembered I should have been using ATTO all along- doh!

Next with ATTO fired up, I ran 3 passes with no changes to the padding and saw max temps of 77C / 78C / 79C respectively. It was at this point I decided I was satisfied and did not bother running additional passes.

So my final conclusion was an approximately ~10C reduction in peak temps when running harsh hard disk tests was good enough for me. Compared to no pads at all where the temps spiked nearly instantly during the harshest portions of the CDM test, with the 3 layers (3mm) of pads on the even harsher harshest portions of the ATTO tests the temperatures creeped up much much slower. Overall I call it an easy success. Now the annoying part is whenever I take the bottom cover off it peels off the pads with it and I don't like assuming they will end up placing correctly on the actual surface of the heat spreading plate when re-attaching the plastic bottom cover to the laptop, so I feel the need to peel them off the cover and reapply them back onto the heat spreader covering the SSD prior to re-attaching the plastic bottom cover back onto the laptop- but that is probably just me being too OCD. Additionally I have considered using thermal compound to smear the area of the foil flashing where the pads like to stick to in order to keep them on the heat spreader plate when removing the plastic bottom cover for other service / modification reasons- mostly just as a hassle and time saver. (I don't expect that to change the results any.) Sorry for the wordy response but I feel the need to be precise and clear with my procedure and results here for obvious reasons.

NOTES:

Crystal Disk Mark was v6 (64bit) and averaged approximately 67% CPU load when performing its tests. (Since CPU is primary heating source in most laptops this may matter more in other machines or configurations- worth keeping in mind in the back of your head imo when performing trials such as these.)

ATTO was v3.05 and averaged between 5% and 15% CPU usage despite being much hotter and harsher on the SSD temps themselves.

My machine's fan was approximately 3k / 3000 RPM during these tests as that is where it idles when I keep my external monitor plugged in and it keeps my dGPU active and prevents sleep states deeper than C3 on my machine.

All tests were performed with my machine set to absolute maximum performance profiles (SST: 0) using ThrottleStop and (Windows power scheme) Bitsum Highest Performance profile. This essentially maintains an all-core minimum of 3.4GHz on my CPU and a maximum boost clock of 3.8GHz. Additionally I was running a stable -0.150V undervolt during all tests as well.

And finally I selected 8GB test lengths with Queue Depths of 9 which I have been under the impression are slightly harsher test conditions than the defaults that CDM and ATTO open up with.

 

Samsung PM981 1TB (MZVLB1T0) (FW 4L2QEXA7, thanks Lenovo for kind FW update for this "no warranty" OEM SSD), Win 10 17655 Insider with modded Samsung NVME driver (for PM981 recognization).
Modded heatsink for this SSD, since it run hot!
Heavy cha-ching $$$ but best M.2 NVME SSD on the market right now (beside those 960 Pro one)

 

Nice speeds, I wish I could afford the 1TB model. The extra speed is noticeable on the bench. What did you use to mod your heatsink?

 

I use the EK M2 heatsink for it. And the thinnest thermal pad ever for it, scrapped off the included pad on the block (since the heatsink block will bump with the back cover, so u need slim thermal pad to minimize it, dont worry the 7577 back cover can handle some flex without crack).
And since the PM981 is an one side SSD and some of the hottest ssd around (5 core nvme controller, like your phone cpu) , i also put hefty amount of thermal pad and copper shim to transfer the heat to laptop PCB under the card (or top of it when u flipped it, lol) . 4 layers (3 layers of 1mm thermal pad and a layer of shim sandwich between it) . U can feel the heat via keyboard when the drive is in full load. One way to transfer the heat to somewhere else than heatsink.

 

I see. What kind of overall max temp reductions have you seen so far?

 

68 at full load. I live in tropical country, so you might lower. And ambient temp has the greatest effect on M.2 drive so make sure to keep overall system temp cool enough...
Also not mentioned that I run a WD Black 7200rpm as 2nd HDD so that might affect the SSD temp too....

 

Run 3 passes of 8GB and 9 queue depth on ATTO to really thrash it- that really pushed my temps much higher when testing. Those temps sound good though, but that heat sink seems too thick for my liking despite its lovely looks. There is only 2mm of space on top of the stock spreader plate as it is.

 

Use slim pad and dont use the clip included and the back plate. U can shave off 1-2mm and that totally fit my system. Back cover only bump a bit but not touch the surface (beside the bump i made when modded heatsink for RAM, lol, 3000MHz at CL18 and it can compete with SSD for heat generating champ)

 

If anybody want to void their warranty and improve the thermal then u can use thermal conductive epoxy and some large enough copper plate on the gap of heatsink on the back of 7577. Connect heatpipe together so heat transfer evenly on all the heatpipe...I wont try that yet, someday, maybe....

 

for SSD, PCH, DIMM cooling, I have found an interesting type of heatsink: metallic foam.
screenshot from datasheet:


https://ca.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Versarien/LPH0005/?qs=sGAEpiMZZMttgyDkZ5Wiuiv2zlXXvC6eZ9fuuZAcHH4=

lightweight, low profile, adhesive included, soft enough to not damage the components, can be cut to fit.