M17x DPC Latency

Yep, that's a wise choice.
Alas, my extended warranty (in Canada) might become useless as my work here might be done in few months and then I might end up in a country with no Dellienware support at all.... In that case, I'll probably return/sell the machine and buy a Clevo lappy...

 

you act like the clevo machine doesnt stutter

 

I got my GPU replaced yesterday. It didn't fix my problem though, which wasn't stutter related (there's another topic on it here).

The tech told me something I thought you guys might find interesting. Apparently he's been replacing a lot of motherboards for Dell recently, and as he understood it, when nVidia and Dell contracted, nVidia gave Dell the wrong temperature specs for their on-board GPUs (the GPUs located on the motherboards). Apparently Dell isn't too happy about this.

 

Guy's what is powermizer?? I am using 86.64 drivers and see no such option?

 

I've contacted Dell, they say its not hardware and that a fix is imminent.
can someone suggest what to do if your're not a 'first owner' of a M17x? (bought it 6months old, it had been setup but not used..somehow.)
or can someone summarise what to do to reduce it / what can happen in terms of replacements etc?

 

I just got off the phone and the tec tells me that a driver is coming out next week. And that it should fix all the problems.

 

Good to hear!

 

I'm not talking about M98xnu and similar clones
Are you implying that ALL Clevo machines stutter? Including the D900F?

And besides,... my point was, that if there's no extended warranty option, I'm out of the Dellienware club. My next project involves a lot of virtualization work which will limit me to 980X CPU, if not even a dual CPU workstation solution.... So the next target would be the D900F successor, I guess....

 

honestly i dont believe this. official news from John-B say that their not even a ETA. and the forum of nvidia and powermizer of notebooks tell me we are still at point zero if we are go to point 1

 

I got the same from them 2 weeks ago and then insisted on switching to ATIs.

 

Who's the chump-stain named Skyhawk21 on the Nvidia forum? This guy is a real class act.

 

A small imput from me for people having lock-ups:
I've been having quite frequent 2-3 min lockups after which the system was working normally, no need for hard resets.
Today I've reinstalled my wireless drivers, installed nvidia 186.82 drivers and disables hybrid sli/integrated graphics in the bios. It seems that the lock-ups are gone. Haven't encoutered any while gaming/surfing internet yet.
I'm running with a single GTX 260M. No stuttering too, but I've never had it, probably because I don't have SLI. The DPC latency spikes are still there tho.

 

Well I've actually removed one of my 260M's to see if it stopped the stuttering and that did not help.

 

Well maybe I got lucky with the stuttering then, since I've never had any.

 

I just got off the phone with Alienware support and the guy I talked too said that this week will have a set of updates/patches/registry tweeks that supposedly will fix all these issues. When I pressed him for info on what was included, its the A03 bios, an updated chipset, an audio driver and some registry tweeks. He did not have a date as to when it will be released, but hopefully this will take care of this overpriced netbook (which is all mine is getting used for now).

 

alienware support works weekends?

 

lol I've been hearing this from Dell/Alienware for many months now, and I don't believe it, I'll only believe it when I see it, and it's not going to stop me from getting my refund or replacement that I've asked for. After many months of non stop excuses and fixes that never actually fix the problem, I'm personally finished with them. There's only two ways left for Dell to fix my issues either by refund or by an exchange to the R2 with the Intel chipset and ATI card's. No Nvidia, no problem.

 

That's what I did, and that's what BatBoy's been recommending on his blog. I rarely had stuttering with Hybrid SLi running, but when deactivated in BIOS - no problems.

I am still paranoid, however,

Edit:
A03 is a friggin' mess. System runs hotter. PowerMizer runs like crap. Stutters still occur for those with a problem. The only superficial, shallow, meaningless, 'visually-appeasing', positive symptom for us Nvidia users is fewer red spikes in the DPC checker, which means absolutely nothing in light of the aforementioned stuttering and other issues. As for the impact of this BIOS on ATi users; no comment.

 

so as to make you understand what the A03 bios is:

1) it just fixes cpu reading as they said. this cpu reading was responsible for the red spikes that appeared every 1 sec . those red spikes (present on A02 Bios) never caused stuttering as they were never so high to do so.

2) They also changed something called thermal table which may be responsible for higher temps ( i dont get higher temps anyway). This thermal table was an effort to remove the red spikes that cause stuttering and are those related to fps drops and stuttering. Of course it didnt do anything.

I assume when Dell was happy about A03 Bios it was just because they removed the red spikes every 1 sec. Useless as if there were not the 65000 or much higher red spikes we wouldnt have never noticed them, at least as stuttering.

So they made their first effort on a Bios level. If a so called fixed Bios cant correctly handle the clocking of the gpus what a driver or registry fix is supposed to do? Nothing as i still believe its a hardware issue.


We should believe that all those notebooks (because they are many more out there except the M17X) have false drivers, registry or whatever?? How difficult is to believe that nvidia ..... up design for small gpus of notebooks for years now? How more simple?

If they cant design gpus for notebooks then they SHOULD be dedicated on desktop gpus on which they are reliable. Why the desktops dont have those issues? because they have much more space to design a good working gpu.

 

Yes, we know. It failed on both fronts. And the thermal tables actually made a mess of things. CPU reading fix. . . Pfft.

 

Yup, 24-7...Guy didn't even give his name though...

 

Couple things.

1. I posted on the nvidia forums. See if you can figure out which one is me LOL.

2. For those who have ATi's, are you sticking it out with A03 or reverting to A02? It seems to me that reverting to A02 would yield lower temps and while the DPC latency checker wouldn't look so buttery smooth, as long as it doesn't stutter, I'd be happy.

3. How are you guys disabling powermizer exactly? Through program or registry hacks? I have 195.85 drivers installed right now and am willing to try disabling powermizer...

 

Guys,

ATI 4870's as I mentioned arrived Thursday afternoon. Due to work I didn't get them installed until late last night.

Couple pointers for anyone swapping the cards themselves (ie. without a tech):

1) Touch control panel is very fragile and has to be removed extremely carefully... Best way I found was instead of using a screwdriver to pry up the panel I used a 'soft' plastic putty knife... no scratches or anything.

2) Crossfire cable is a pain to get connected properly. I ended up disassembling twice because the cable wasn't making good contact.

So far, I'm very, VERY happy... I can now watch, DVDs and BluRay without dropouts. I can also listen to my iTunes as I surf the web without glitches.

I'm in the process now of installing a few games. Performance is faster than the 280s I originally had in 3DMark Vantage.

I'm going to game for a little while and will provide an update of the results in that department.

 

whats the phone number?

 

Its your local support # for your region. See the Support site on http://www1.ca.dell.com

 

Zero,

The 24/7/365 number I use is 1-800-ALIENWARE. Just select the technical support option from the menu.

This is the same place the Dell call routing system sends you.

 

Will replacing the cards yourself void your warranty somehow?

 

Maxwell,

Alienware's basic policy is that it will not void your warranty by replacing the cards yourself. However, any damage done while replacing them you would be responsible for.

I'm a former Apple and HP service technician. About a year ago I was working directly with the Alienware Roswell folks to isolate the cause of the dreaded 'volume slider' issue with the Area51-M15x.

It's noted in my account that I am a PC technician. They never give me any static.... However YMMV.

 

my region number doesnt work on weekends

thanks, works great

 

same here, my tech guy on the phone says its a registry tweak only, nothing else

"theyve been testing it for a while and finally found one that works well" or something like that

 

hehe the tec just told me that the magnetic field from the nvidia cards is what is causing the audio crackle. Its a possibility I mean a changing magnetic field could induce a current in the amplifier circuit and that would probably cause distortion. But I doubt that that is the problem.

 

that is NOT possible....if that were true the cards would fail MANY FCC regulations

 

what the hell :/

i just asked again and he said theyve tested it on multiple m17xs and it works great.

and if i still have to issue im to call back

 

in a reply to a few posts in the previous pages about a03 bios,

i think its a totally useless update. it makes dpc checker LOOK better but the stuttering symptoms dont change.

it also makes my primary gfx card go to max clocks alot more often for no reason eg: when internet explorer is on(i bet its an attempt to stop stutterings by making the cards go max clock more often)

but this prolly causes more problems since stutters also occur when the cards downclock.

all in all, i think a03 doesnt help at all. not sure about ati users though.

 

I would take most things the tec tells you with a grain of salt. Especially if they are telling you that a strong magnetic field is causing the distortion LOL

 

lol ruby. exactly. I remember mentioning this very thing when John-B posted (on December 3rd) about the issue being identified and a BIOS update was in the works.

 

Hehe, the funniest thing of the day! Hooah!
Once upon a time (many years ago) I was fishing in a river near some very small Belarussian town, almost a village... There were 2 other fishermen near my spot and... well, they were drunk and funny. For 3-4hours of my stay there those two... poorly educated human beings were talking about the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle.
I remember them saying something about strange portals to other dimensions, that open there once in a while swallowing up everything dead and alive; unusual electro-magnetic feilds and so on...
Rofl, that rep just reminded me of those two.

 

Well, its nice to know Im not going crazy, and that Im not the only one with these issues. Just bought this laptop (specs in my signature), mostly because I wanted to play Dragon Age, and not have to schlep my desktop around. I was sickened when I loaded it up however, as it locked up so much, it was unplayable. Hi res, Low Res, High Qual, Low Qual, etc. I tried all the little tweaks and updates that google could manage (installing a03, updating display drivers, etc) with no success whatsoever. Im seriously considering returning this laptop if dell and/or Nvidia doesnt get their head out of their big fat backsides and FIX the damn issue.

If anyone knows of any ways to tweak Dragon Age to allow it to play at least halfway decent, please let me know.

M17x - Black Metallic
Intel Core2 Duo T9600 2.8GHz (6MB Cache, 1066MHz FSB)
4GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1333MHz 2 x 2048MB
1GB Dual NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M - SLI Enabled (NB10E-GT1)
GPU Driver Version 195.62
Windows 7 Ultimate, 64bit
IDT HD Audio

 

Return it now that you can and get the R2. If you wait it will be too late

 

Guys how do i disable powermizer and what are the downsides to this?

 

I played Dragon Age with 280M SLI and P8700 with zero tweaks and it did run smooth on highest rez and max settings (just two locations required to overclock the CPU to stay at max) FPS-20-70, 35-45- average.
The OS was Vista though and stock drivers (at that time - 179.85).

But I guess you should return the system for a refund if you can and go for the R2 or something else.

 

@emusican

if possible just get a refund and get the r2 if you really want an alienware. or try other laptops.

if you have to stick to your m17x r1, i guess you can try disabling powermizer and use either 186.82 or 186.64(from dell) drivers.

for me, all the nvidia releases had lots of problems like downclock issues/strange fps drops etc

ive been using 186.64 for a long time together with batboy's sli update profiles.

i managed to get relatively ok fpses on dragon age(around 40) almost all the time except random fps drops due to the stuttering which doesnt happen often.

im on gtx 280s though.. all options maxed out 4xaa

oh and for anything not in the sli profile updates, just manually add the exe in the control panel and set to AFR2 or something to enable sli for that game

 

Need more people to post at Nvidia's forum

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=157614&pid=992176&st=20&#entry992176.

come on guys.

 

Just posted mine

 

Hi guys,
For those asking, I did stay with the A03 bios but I am not sure it afforded much of anything, still I stuck it out given there were mention of other tweaks in it.

The ATI cards have gotten rid of my stuttering. I was having lockups (had one) still but I looked at the drivers one by one in device manager per another thread on NVIDIA about lockups related to their chipset and someone mentioned that the install was not correctly updating the drivers so I went to the controller card (SATA) and forced it to find the best driver, that changed the version to the one I thought I first installed. Guess I should have checked. So far no lockups since that and no DPC issues. Laptop is running pretty good but I still see a dpc spike of about 1200 every now and then.

Someone mentioned the magnetic field. I have no clue about that but I will say that ATI and NVIDIA have specific shielding and heat syncing on specific cards. Each one is different from the other for each side of the laptop. I noticed one of my ATI cards had a foil shield on the card itself. It did not look like a heat dissipation device. It was very light weight, almost like a sticker but covering the front face. There must be a reason its there but the tech and I had not a clue why.

 

I am actually shocked. My M1730 runs Dragon Age Origins just fine. I am not even using the X9000 any longer, which had an impact of the CPU-factor, but the game still ran nicely. I haven't had the chance to test this on the M17x, but common sense dictates that if this slower system--in every respect--is acing the game, then the M17x in question will fly, provided that I have a good setup in place.

I am certain that this is a system settings issue.

 

I'm actually schocked after just installing the A03 update... My dpc latency checker shows the regular yellow spikes have gone, and the most common green bars are lower. But I now have regular, every 10 to 20 seconds one or two full red bars... Before I only had the full red bars when actually doing something but these are now regular when doing nothing..Now I fully understand peoples frustrations as before I hadn't even bothered trying to do anything to sort the stutter

 

+1. Do it NOW.

If consumers buy into the hype and refuse to admit they were wrong, then Dell has no way of realizing that it was wrong, too.

If you must have a laptop, get the R2. Or get something else. Don't buy on promises - buy on confirmed reports.

 

I had a few short pauses with IE in Vista but now I've upgraded to Windows 7. When watching youtube on the full screen, the video will freeze and actually stop moving and the audio will continue running. I can only get the video to continue by exiting full screen mode. This sounds a little different than the experiences of other people, but could it be the same underlying issue?

I'm also using A03 and this install was fresh with only drivers from Dell's site.

 

Exact the same problems here.