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January 14th, 2018 00:00

Dell Venue 7140 crippled by latest BIOS (A14) with the Spectre/Meltdown patch

The latest BIOS (A14) update with the Spectre/Meltdown patch simply killed my 7140. The start menu stopped responding, icons failed to refresh and Dropbox couldn't sync. I had no option but to go back to the A13 BIOS to restore my sanity. Security updates are one thing, but they shouldn't be released in a manner where they render the device unusable. I do not recommend anyone to flash this BIOS despite the security implications and hope that Intel releases a proper update and Dell follows suit accordingly.

I have been recording a couple of benchmarks with every fix to capture the performance impact and sure enough, the results can be easily seen in the screenshots below.

CineBench

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January 14th, 2018 03:00

Same problem on my Venue 11 Pro 7140. The A14 Bios slows down the tablet (processor itself and the iops on the SSD) so much, it makes the tablet so sluggish, you can hardly use it anymore. Please fix this - and fast!!!

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March 25th, 2018 09:00

Performance with the latest A15 BIOS is still far from ideal. The tablet feels a bit more responsive compared to the A14 BIOS but is significantly worse off when compared to the A13 BIOS. A performance impact was certainly expected, but not of this magnitude.

A15 vs A14 vs A13A15 vs A14 vs A13

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