Dell Latitude DPC Latency Issues

Sorry, I thought I could ask here because he advices to use the broadcom driver to resolve the latency issuses (also mine too) and so I hoped someone who installed them had already the same problem.
But ok.. I started a new one..

 

Dell released 8.8 Intel Storage Matrix Package (driver + software) -

http://ftp.us.dell.com/SATA/Intel_Matrix-Storage-Manager_A05_R218081.exe

Works on all flavors - x86 & x64, XP & Vista

 

I just installed the latest drivers for the Dell 1510 WLAN card for my E6400.

The driver on the E6400's driver list is version 4.170.77.3. This version caused endless audio dropout and stuttering. But I found version 5.10.38.26 in the Studio series laptop's list of drivers and since I've installed it, the average latency has dropped to around 1175 microseconds. The DPC latency checker shows the latency to be mostly in the yellow zone, frequently dropping to green and occasionally climbing to red. Much better than the old driver which caused latency to be mostly in the red zone.

Happy now! No thanks to Dell!

Edit
I forgot to add that I've disabled the Intel Matrix storage event monitor service and the application at startup. That must help a bit too, I think.

 

You can also uninstall the IMSM software altogether and just load the driver only

 

I'll try that. Thanks for the tip.

 

I tried it but I've noticed any further difference since disabling the IAAMON service and application.

In any case, latency is now good to acceptable most of the time with occasional spikes. Nowhere near as bad as before when I'd have drop-outs every few seconds.

 

After thinking the cause of the problem was the wireless card (dell 1395 made by broadcom) when analaysing in DPC latency checker, I bought an intel wireless card and the DPC latency red spikes no longer occur. Sound plays without any skipping whatsoever. To top it all the intel card has better reception.

If your laptop has a broadcom based wifi card (all dell branded, some acers and a few others) then swap to an intel one and your system will not only play music without any skips, online games seem to run smoother too, network lag is reduced.

 

I feel like I've exhausted all potential fixes in an effort to get rid of the dropouts and clicks that occur maybe every 30 seconds. I received my E6400 about a week ago from the Dell Outlet and immediately began to notice the issue. I've upgraded the Intel Matrix drivers to the most recent ones and the problem remains. I've updated the Dell 1510 drivers, the TSST DVD/RW drivers, the BIOS, and pretty much everything else and nothing has completely solved the issue. It even happens with my external USB audio interface (Edirol UA-1EX) using ASIO.

I've used the DPC latency monitor to see when latency spikes, and there seems to be no clear pattern that I can discern. I can get a small spike when I switch the wireless card on and off, but there are other larger spikes (in excess of 16000 microseconds) that cause an extremely noticeable pause in audio. Perhaps I wouldn't mind if this problem was only affected onboard audio, but this has affected my USB interface that I thought might be immune from the issue. Any other options, or am I stuck waiting until yet another driver release?

 

@ geogaddi (was a great album btw )

did you try disabling devices in your device manager one by one to see what causes the spikes? If you do this while running dpc checker the results will be visible pretty good. try removing the e-modulare bay, this seems to have helped for a lot of people but mainly before the IMSM 8.8 was released.

And...you should maybe consider getting an intel 5100 or 5300 iso the Dell wireless card

 

i agree...my favorite BoC album

I've disabled and reenabled pretty much every device on the laptop with no appreciable change in performance. The e-mod bay does not seem to affect latency for the better or worse. I've noticed lower latency overall when wireless is disabled, but I still get spikes above 16000 microseconds unforced about every 30 seconds even then. Latency performance in Windows 7 is significantly better, although there are occasional hiccups. Using WASAPI w/ foobar works in 7, although it is cumbersome and does not solve the problem in Vista.

So basically I'm still in the same situation. Dell support has only suggested the new Intel driver, which I've installed, and playing around with startup services through msconfig, which I've done. So...what now? I'm not sure if I want to spend the cash to replace the wireless card if it's not guaranteed to solve the problem. Perhaps my latency performance is no different than anyone else's after the Intel 8.8 driver, about half green and half yellow with the aforementioned unforced red spikes, but I still find the performance wanting.