Precision 7770 - BIOS 1.18.0 - Overall system performance degradation.

Contacted helpdesk pointing them to this post and they assured me i can downgrade without side-effects, so let's see how that goes...

Btw, transcoding videos using FFmpeg through dGPU's hevc_nvenc went from achieving 180fps to 76fps ... there is something obviously wrong with the management of the nvidia card(s)...

from the release notes:

Fixed the issue where the system reboots repeatedly and stops responding at the Dell Logo. This issue occurs when a system with an NVIDIA graphics card is connected to an 8K monitor.

Never experienced such reboots and my external monitor is 4K, fwiw.

Uhm, i do use the drivers from the nvidia site, instead of the one shipped by Dell tho, but that has never be a problem...

This is very odd... i seem unable to downgrade the BIOS

Same problem here. bios 1.18 killed 7770 performance WHEN plugged in. it is lagging. not possible to work

What is going on dell? impossible to work on the super powerful laptop what i paid for lots of money $$$.

I experience the same issue. Not possible to work with the machine. Moreover, I am paralyzed, and I must use an eyetracker for interaction. It is the only way I can communicate with others. Now, this is lost.

I beg you for a quick solution. Having the laptop plugged off doesn't work that long.

Same here. I've been running in circles with my Premium Support Plus since thursday. Not helpful at all, changing people that always follow a checklist with things they want me to do that obviously have nothing to do with the problem at hand.

A real shame.

Same, 7770 performance terrible when plugged in. Sound crackles and video lags. Usable when unplugged but this is little help for a machine that pulls power like it does. Please hurry Dell, at least find a way to let us revert to free our machines. It's the least we beta testers deserve.

Maybe sharing some vague observations

• it seems like the cpu clock drops on all cores when the cpu load increases
• that seems to cause the stuttering 
• it seems to also be related to the gpu and its load

Maybe hitting the "I have this problem too" button will give this more attention.

Thanks guys for reporting you have this problem too, it has been a pure nightmare during the last days for the discussions i've been having with Dell's support / helpdesk team, this may does open their eyes because they keep stating to me there is nothing wrong on the BIOS.

Things went a little bizarre for me, because after troubleshooting with them many many hours, they concluded there was something wrong with my motherboard, so they insisted in sending a technician to replace it, guess what... after it has been replaced, we found the same issues did persist, and not only that... i do now have more issues than before, i.e. faulty fingerprint reader, touchpad, bluetooth, even when the technician ran an F12 diagnostic we found a PCIe warning about the link being degraded... When i told the technician to put the original motherboard back, he refused to do it, why? who knows... he then leaved me alone without fixing anything and with more issues than i had before.

Be aware, if you do contact their helpdesk and they tell you to replace the motherboard, just reject it.

Btw, some of you mentioned you do only have the issue while AC-plugged, this is not my case, i cannot work on battery because the screen keeps blinking, so i need to be plugged in. It's the kind of "blink" you do have while HDR is enabled and then Windows disables it whenever it detect it's using the battery, excepts such blinks are endlessly until i plug AC back. So, wondering if you do also have Windows, and if so with or without HDR enabled (?)

Latest thing to try might be a hard reset. Not sure it does help, but you might want to give it a try. 
How to Perform a Hard Reset on a Dell Computer | Dell US

Please report back if you did this.

@diegocr​ Without HDR enabled. Mine is basically a fresh load with mostly default configurations in BIOS and Windows (11).

I got a call from a Level 3 technician, glad to see the escalation. I linked this post and the Dell posts in my reply and they asked for a video of my fuzzy sound issue on startup (it's all the time with sounds actually).

@andyschoe​ I asked my technician if I should do it, not sure it will help but willing, I'll wait to hear from them before I crack the case, still in my 30 days

@diegocr​ exactly my experience. 7 days of stupid attempts at solving a software issue, and now a motherboard dispatch. I’m just hoping the new board has an old BIOS. 

@Skoorb317​ Thanks for confirming, thing here is that if i disable HDR while plugged in, then i get the blinks when on AC as well, i only did that once and good i have backups to restore the system with, because it's impossible to do anything.