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T7910 performance Issue add diagnostic problem
We bought a T7910 in May to replace the old T5500, and it has been running very strange. The new T7910 has a dual 3.5Ghz EE5-2637, and it is the fastest clock CPU that you can get from Dell.
It has been running only about 20% faster than the 5 years old T5500 with the original dual Xeon (it was a 3.0Ghz), so it is only the clock rate that is working, not memory or disk performance (and T7910 is shipped with SSD). Turning on/off hyperthread, turbo speed, etc changed little.
Furthermore, the motherboard won't pass the F12 hardware diagnostic test (network 1 2000:0620 failure) when we started to improve the performance. Dell replaced the motherboard twice, and it is the same issue as soon as we turn on the RAID controller. We finally found out it is due to the latest A08 BIOS update, and had to revert it back to A07 (reverting to A07 will cause memory error : amber color, won't boot. Reseating the memory may solve the problem).
The question now is, we have asked Dell support to confirm this error, and the Dell Precision support just keep rolling in/out with a team of support that can not keep track of the issue after 2 motherboard replacement, and wanted to do the replacement again.
Any one had any of these issues? Any ideas how to improve this latest generation workstation performance? It is well passed the machine return option now.
htedlin1
4 Posts
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October 16th, 2015 20:00
We have tried A08 bios (released in May), and it has issue with RAID, and we just tried the latest A09 BIOS just released in this month (September), and it is still bad. If you just run a on-board diagnostic, it will show up as network 1 bad.
We have checked with LSI about this, and they said they don't support SAS3008 OEM (such as Dell). We have now disabled the RAID bios just to get it going.
Any ideas/help about this issue?
GWDell
6 Posts
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December 15th, 2015 05:00
No errors.
GWDell
6 Posts
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December 15th, 2015 05:00
No errors are reported in the diagnostics on my system. LSI controller is enabled.
GWDell
6 Posts
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December 15th, 2015 05:00
I also "upgraded" from a T5500 to a T7910 and noticed performance was terrible. My new system is half the speed of my 5 year old system (en.community.dell.com/.../19663126). I've also tried disabling hyperthreads, adjusting clock speeds to maximum, etc., but it is still much slower than my old system. There are other issues, such as it often takes 20 seconds to come out of sleep mode (just freezes during that time). My old system only took a couple of seconds. I'm going to try the diagnostics to see what comes up.
GWDell
6 Posts
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December 15th, 2015 06:00
After more searching, I've found other people reporting performance problems with the T7910. This system seems to be a lemon.
htedlin1
4 Posts
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December 15th, 2015 07:00
The network issue is actually more severe in A09 bios. The network port 1 error will show up if you turn on RAID/LSI bios and use legacy hard drive format. Dell replaced the motherboard for 3 times, and finally the 0215PR A03 version of the motherboard seems to bee more usable, but the performance is still bad.
There are definitively some issues with T7910...it went through 9 BIOS updates in less than 24 month, and 3 motherboard revision version based on the update history. We have stopped migrating all workstations to T7910 and looking into other solutions. T7810 isn't any better either (the first purchase).
The worst situation is Dell no longer has any US-based Precision Workstation support team, and all tech supports are offshore (Philippian?). The support has very low level of RAID/hardware understanding, and just a waste of time unless you have specific question to post to them so they can search DB for answer.