BUG REPORT: disable "Switchable graphics" make Dell Precision 7510 unusable

what do you mean GPU drivers? Graphic drivers? please advise? if you may provide a driver link of dell precision 7510, that would be great.

I had my 7510 serviced, MB, GPU change first, then the UHD panel.

The panel was the issue, I assume the replacement was a newer revision.

Now I can turn switched graphics off and boot menus etc are visible, also works quite good in Windows (some minor issues, maybe drivers).

Alright, one full day of using the FirePro as the primary card, in other words switched graphics turned off.

To reiterate myself the issue was an old panel - a new replacement fixed the main issue of getting a blank screen.

Previously I had all the issues you have listed above. With some driver & BIOS -combination the image light up when at Windows login screen, but had massive troubles, screen blanking temporarily or permanently and other graphical glitches.

Now it seems the post boot screen comes alive with 100% success, and when using the laptop with a charger the graphics in Windows do seem to work quite OK. At the beginning of each boot to Windows there is some stuttering, meaning the graphics get stuck for a second or to, and that keeps happening for say 15 minutes. After that, if plugged to the wall, I haven't noticed any issues.

What does seem problematic is running on battery. When going to sleep without a charger the screen won't come back again, a reboot is needed. Happens also when coming out of sleep with battery power.

I would suppose these are BIOS / driver issues. I have both the newest from Dell support site.

Hope this helps, get your 7510 serviced and the panel changed. The initial MB & GPU change did nothing for the problem, but I cannot say with certainty if the new panel would've worked with the older rev MB & GPU though.

Edit: Not a suggested answer anymore: still a lot of issues. For some reason things were okay for a good while, until now again I get random black screens multiple times per day. Only sleep->wake->sleep->wake... cycle will bring it back.

An update after over a month of using the 7510 with Switched Graphics turned off - FirePro W5170M as the primary GPU, after the MB, GPU and finally the UHD panel service replacements.

I guess from the lack of replies, not many care about the issue anymore, but thought of making you aware how it is after all the parts replacements & different driver version testing.

The 7510 has still problems with the Switched Graphics off: mainly the screen freezes sometimes quite often, then unfreezes, and sometimes I can go for days without it happening. The bigger issue is the screen going blank alltogether and not recovering until going to sleep and back, sometimes needed to be done multiple times. Can happen anywhere from 0 to 20 times a day.

I hope Dell & AMD would still fix this as it mainly looks like a software issue now that the GPU & panel can actually talk to each other at least in a semi-compatible way.

I Face the same issue and I have done that and its working fine now...... Display only belong to Ram check your Ram stats or removed your Rams and clean the past after then reinstalled them in your system... Hope that will work with your system...

I have exactly the same problem, except my processor is a Xeon E51535M v5. I am running Windows 7. When I unplug my external displays (I have two) the laptop screen is lost, although the mouse cursor is still visible.

Consider yourself lucky I guess. I don't need to do anything for the freezes to occur. I am not sure what the above poster said about RAM, but that too has been tried with this machine.

The only thing that did anything was the UHD panel replacement. That got the screen lit up during boot and working to some extent in Windows 10.

There isn't much to replace in this laptop anymore, hope there would be a software solution. Could be a HW bug in the MB, in the way it handles the output from discrete GPU and forwards that to the panel(s).

Big problems still. Disabled switchable graphics. Internal display is working no problem however when pluggin in external display using Display Port Windows 10 crashes and get a bue screen.

This has been a problem with the Latitudes and multiple monitors for a couple years now, be nice if Dell would fix it :(

I had the issue go worse after the latest BIOS & GPU driver update (AMD). I can still access the BIOS most of the time which is great, but black screens & hangs increased quite dramatically.

With the previous BIOS / drivers resetting the display driver 99% of the time did the trick, but now I may need to put the laptop to sleep and wake it up, and do it again if the screen refuses to get up and running. Tip: in Windows, press right Win+Ctrl+Shift and B resets the driver.

To AxelX. My 7510 got to a partially working condition after the panel (UHD) was swapped to a new one. Was done under warranty (after the replacement of all other components inside).

I have same issue with latest BIOS (1.14.4 ). I tried different versions of the BIOS - nothing changes.

My hardware configuration is Intel i7-6820HQ, Nvidia quadro M2000M, 4x16 GB DDR non-ECC and UltraSharp IGZO-Display Ultra HD.

I talked with a specialist of DELL support in Russia for about 20 minutes - he could not help me.

It is not a cheap product. This is a depressing situation with the quality of DELL's BIOS firmware for Precision.

Sorry to hear. But I can comfort that much that while changing the panel did get the display light up during boot, the problems are still present.

I am leaning towards this being a hardware issue on the motherboard. Would think DELL would've fixed this already if it was firmware, but I don't know their interest on the issue, might be low as the amount of users with UHD display and switched graphics off is quite low I'd assume.

I still hope they are listening and would fix this if it indeed is fixable.

remak,

I used a laptop with an external display and could not know any problems. Now i found out that the laptop was experiencing such problems and ufortunately my warranty ended a few months ago.

I beleive that there is a firmware problem. Because the display passed all tests. When I run through the Fn+Power or D+Power the display ALWAYS works.

I ask the engineers of Dell to investigate the problem in the firmware!

remak,

If you look at the history of firmware fixes, you can see that several similar video issues have been fixed. Hence, not all have been corrected.

If the new panel works better for you, could you share the details of the panel?

For this you need to export the branch [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\DISPLAY\] using the REGEDIT.EXE program in Windows.

You will get a text file in which there will be a line "EDID"=hex:00,ff,ff,ff,ff,ff,ff...... If you have used multiple display there will be several lines. Panel data is encoded in this text.

I hope you are right, and hope they are still interested in the issue. Sometimes I don't only get black & hang up screens, but corrupted data at around 1/6:th portion from the top of the screen and at the same time the display hangs for 1-10 seconds.

I am not exactly sure what you want to see under the registry, so here is the whole branch. https://pastebin.com/kfxFdtBT

I hope any larger Win update haven't cleared any information from there.

While the panel was being replaced I did not ask if it had a label for a newer revision or not. The motherboard that was changed had the exact same revision, and I guess so did every other part, but the panel change absolutely made an immediate difference. Before that I could not access BIOS (except for memorizing the key sequence for reactivating switched graphics and doing it blind)

Edit: it would seem one Win update at 22.4.2017 did update the write times, but as far as I remember the panel switch was done at 12.5.2017 which is visible in the registry. MB & GPU change were shortly before that date.

This laptop is from late 2015, guessing the first 7510s available.

An interesting little tidbit about the build process and quality checks for the initial, non-repaired, state of the laptop: the CPU heatsink was not attached to the CPU / MB at all until the MB was swapped. It did have screws, but the backplate was not there for the screws to hold onto anything. Thermal paste was all that was even trying to make contact! How that went unnoticed from the factory escapes me. The new MB, while having the same revision (A0 if I remember it right), did come with a plastic "shield" that was missing from the first.