Precision 7550 Degraded Performance After BIOS Update

Same problem for me...

Same problem here, downgraded to 1.7.0 and everything back to normal again - tried the BIOS reset to default but didn't make any difference.

@Ryan C NYCdo you have any ticket number about this case? Is this problem really recognized by Dell support?

I tried to ask but it's totally unknown for them. How did you measure the performance?

No ticket number they claim it's "in the works."  Frankly there is no urgency to update if your BIOS / system is working fine anyways (which 1.7 should do).

The same problem here.  i-7 CPU, 64GB RAM. Ubuntu 20.04. The performance fell by 3-4 times as for topic starter. Went back to the previous BIOS version.

Not sure that it is related to the whole system performance. But nvme SSD performance has fallen by 4 times. Measured with Linux `dd` command.

Hi,

First after BIOS 1.8.0 update I did notice anything special.

Today the CPU was stuck to 0,86 GHz. Unplug power cable and plug again resolved my case.

Now the CPU is back to 3.6 GHz - 4.25 GHz.

If I restart the PC with power cable connected the problem is back and temporary solution is the same.

You will defined note when CPU is working below 1 GHz. For example Cinebench R23 multi core result will drop from 7000 to 2000.

Better to wait the new BIOS version. Why this problematic 1.8.0 version is still available to download?

Hello everybody !

I had the same problem on my Precision 7750 i9. I upgraded the bios to v1.8 on July the 14th and it slowed down dramatically.
It even  made some problem when I plug my machine to a WD19 DC dock : on startup the bios prompted me that the AC Power was not enough (though this docking station is designed for Precision laptops !). That problem seems to confirm that the issue is AC power related !

I had no other choice then to downgrade to 1.7 to make my computer work again properly.

I can't understand why Dell released an update with such a bug (and still let it available to download more than a month after the first problems coming out) !!!

I have just had this same issue with the 1.7.0 Bios - but this was after I left the machine on for 1 hr and it went to sleep mode. When woken up it resumed to the 790-830Mhz speed until I unplugged the power lead then it jumped back to normal speed off battery - but it also resumed normal speed after plugging the power back in.

I had previously upgraded to 1.8.0 then back to 1.7.0 to sort out the low speed on AC power issue.

Installing a new 7550 just delivered a few days ago, found usage a bit sluggish and laggy sometimes (e.g. as simple as twitter feed scrolling in firefox), compared to my 3yr old precision 5520. Running solely from a WD19 dock now, so AC power issue was not expected to be an issue.

sudo dmidecode -s bios-version

confirms this is the 1.8.0 version.I have to diagnose more before considering downgrading, but this is suspect No 1.

Maybe this will help some folks because the last thing I want to do is back level my bios from 1.8 to 1.7. That is like asking for some serious issues, isn't it? Either Dell of Microsoft will never be the same after something like that. I mean if they rarely test an upgrade of the bios to find performance problems, how often do you really think they test an uninstall and reinstall of the bios? Yeah, right!

I do not know if a bios installation caused my problem or not. I know that I had installed the latest Dell updates as prompted within the last few weeks. Today I opened up Adobe Acrobat Pro and boy was it a dog ... I mean "Adope" is a usually a dog (those guys just don't know how to make things fast in software. You would think they were being paid to sell hardware?) ... but the performance was horrible: searching, indexing and finally doing a simple OCR just drove me nuts.

So, I fired up Nitro Pro (experimenting with dumping Adope) which usually is snappy and it "went to sleep" trying to do an OCR of the document. That brought me here.

I saw the recommendation to back level from 1.8 to 1.7 bios, but all I did was unplug my docking station (Dock WD19DC) and then click on the battery icon and push the slider bar to "best performance"  and suddenly the fan kicked in which I hadn't heard all day and the OCR started running like usual - slow but not a doggy.

So, I guess I will run on battery power with the slider bar on "best performance" while better guys than me at Dell figure out how to ship a 1.9 bios that fixes the 1.8 issue ... if that is the problem.

Good luck guys ... wasted a good few hours on this one.

Back to work

Cheers mates!

- Pete

Just asked support for an update on the 1.8 fix, fingers crossed it will be sorted soon

I've been banging my head against the wall for the last 3 weeks with a 2 month old Precision 7550 (i7-10750H, 48GB RAM, Samsung PM9A1 512GB NVMe) running slower than molasses in the winter. I reinstalled Windows multiple times, swapped the NVMe, and finally decided to downgrade the BIOS from 1.8 to 1.7. 

Below are benchmark results from CrystalDiskMark (Settings: NVMe SSD, Profile: Default) for the exact same drive from BIOS v.1.8 and v.1.7.

Precision_7X50_1.7.0

Precision_7X50_1.7.0

Precision_7X50_1.8.0

Precision_7X50_1.8.0

There is clearly a problem with BIOS v.1.8.0. It would be awesome if Dell would take this seriously and resolve the problem.