M17x DPC Latency

swapping all nvidias with ATIs would be the first to do if they would like to fix or better make the issues milder, as they love their faulty motherboards so much. I am glad i finally got my ATIs despite the remaining issues as the notebook is usuable now. otherwise I would be much more pissed of and ready for a laywer as my godfather is.

i will tell you the -fixes- then:

1) remain on vista if you want to keep the nvidia gpus (still stutter but much less)
2) if you want win7 demand swapping to ATIs. If you are lucky enough you will get a usuable result. If not demand motherboard change as well. It will still have red spikes but hopefully better than the previous one
3) hope that win7 sp1 may fix the issues in case they are OS related as you wont have quarantee any more.

 

It looks like Engadget updated their recent article with the "fix" that I've sent in, if any of you missed it you should check it out.

I've had the fix work on all 4 of the M17X's I've come across and although it is a band-aid fix, it'll get you up and running for the time being.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/12/still-no-fix-in-sight-for-alienware-m17x-stuttering-audio-issue/

 

I added him as a friend and sent him the info he needed. He replied "Got it".

Hopefully he will be able to help us, I have faith in John_B from Dell.

 

I sent him the guide that I sent to Engadget, and he said that Dell and NVidia were working on something under the same premise.

Joe, I would suggest you try out the guide posted on Engadget, it may help you.

 

No offense, but I wish you would stop it. This is not a fix. Everyone here read that post just like you. You can even get a DOX driver with Powermizer off, you don't need to edit the registry (so your instructions are not even the best way of enabling what you are doing).

Running cards at full blast is loud and hot. It might work in cold climates like Victoria but in other places it is not such a good idea.

 

Just because a climate of an area is cooler then others doesn't mean that where I use my laptop is the same.

I use my laptop inside in a small dorm room with an Xbox 360 and a HDTV running.

That is NOT a cool temperature. It is almost boiling in my room.

Currently I have been running this computer for 6 hours straight and my laptop is still running with both cards at 36 degrees celcius. That is not hot at all. And I'm using that fix.

 

people are getting crazy in here. POWERMIZER OFF IS NOT A FIX BUT JUST A WAY TO DESTROY YOUR GPUS FASTER

 

I don't know why people get this idea. If you aren't doing anything intensive your graphics cards aren't going to see a noticable change in temperature.

I can vouch for that after using this fix for a few months and seeing no difference.

 

Agreed with that. Disabling PowerMizer may assist with crackles but there are other ways around it and DISABLING PowerMizer is not a smart choice. I will say this, if Dell/NV release a patch which locks the GPUs at full clock to just bury this, I'm done with them. The M1730 suffered from this for some time and we all know what happened with that one.

Back at the start of December when John-B first posted of a BIOS fix in the works, I wrote:

Hmmm...

 

After replacing the GPU's 3 times in one year on my old 1730, I agree with you, Bats. On the other hand, the faster the GPU's get destroyed, the faster we get upgraded to the latest and greatest they have on hand, which will also likely have their problems. Sheesh!

 

John-B today said that Dell and Nvidia are working (this was in a pm to me) on something along the lines of PowerMizer. So my guess is they're going to disable it.

Oh, and I can agree PowerMizer is a good thing and it's not the greatest thing to disable it, don't get me wrong. But as long as you monitor it, and have it until Dell and Nvidia come out with a patch, it shouldn't do any harm.

I should mention I also referenced my professor who is a hardware specialist at my University before going ahead with it.

 

No offense m8 but 36c would not be possible without a cooler pad 3 hrs after boot @idle and with PMizer off. You will have ~50c on each card (room temp above 23-25C) and constantly strained fans.
As many said before - PowerMizer kill is not a fix it's a GPU/fans killer on the long run. I suggest you keep it on and wait for the solution/fix or sell/replace the system.

 

Well, I'm using HWmonitor but it may have something to do with my laptop is on a 10 degree angle, exposing more of the bottom to airflow.

But anyways, I'm fine with it off. I don't see the problem and neither does my professor as long as my fans aren't being overworked (barely ever increase speed unless playing games) and the temperatures aren't rising to non-normal levels.

 

@PurelySatanic

Just noticed your spec noted in your Engadget post

Windows 7 Ultimate
8GB DDR3 1333mhz RAM
Dual SLI 280M
Q9300 Quad Core @ 3.9GHZ

How on earth do you manage to get your 9300 @ 3.9GHz!, mines barely stable at 3.06GHz

 

Holy crap, that's an error. I'm sitting @ 3.2GHZ stable. hahaha, how the hell did I hit .9 My bad.

 

Folks - everyone has their own opinion. No need for insults or anything of that sort. Everyone is able to make up their own minds as to what action they determine is best for their system. I do encourage research on this as there is more to it than what is easily seen using HWMonitor.

As stated many times, there are several examples of what happens when PowerMizer is not active or before PowerMizer was properly implemented on NV Mobile GPUs.

What works for one person, is not always the right solution for another.

Lets keep it clean and not slam each other.

 

Yeah, sorry BatBoy. I just got frustrated. I was only trying to help and I get flamed immediately.

It's more so that I just feel bad, because I was trying to suggest to Engadget that there is a "band-aid" fix. Whether or not there are possible long-term problems with it is not the point of me posting it.
Engadget failed to leave out that I meant it as a band-aid fix and that I suggested it only to more tech-savvy users. (Those comments were in the email to them).

 

LOL - I was starting to get an inferiority complex there

 

hahaha, no no not at all.

I'm starting to think I just got really lucky though with my setup after the replacements and what not because I'm not having any problems from my laptop and it runs extremely cool.

 

Batboy i would really like to see your opinion on this whole story and the final result on personal messages to John-B. i know you dont have issues on vista but imagine if you had thus have you tried win7 just for once?

 

I'd also like to point out for many people, Dox Powermizer OFF does NOT disable Powermizer functionality on both cards in an SLI array, just one of them, the guide generally stops BOTH.

I did laugh a little when I realised the linked guide was mine, although I have never called it a fix, just an aid...

 

Oh really, it was your guide? I couldn't find the OP of the guide, but props to you for it, it's helped me a ton.

I didn't mean it as a fix, all I said was it would work until Nvidia and Dell got their act together on a permanent fix.

 

Look at the link in my sig 'Guide to reducing M980NU audio stuttering/DPC latency:', thats the link endgadget have posted.
I originally wrote it up as V2 of my V1 guide on the Kobalt Computers forums, and then posted it over here when I got some positive feedback

I may even still have the word document I originally wrote it up in to make sure I didnt accidentally tab back on my browser whilst writing it.

 

Well, props to you anyhow, if you want to take credit for it on Engadget just pop them an email, when I sent it in I said if I found the OP I would let them know.

Not sure if you find it a huge deal or not.

I'm just hoping sooner rather then later John-B and them will figure something out.

 

I'm not worried about being named or not, Im just glad it's helped some people. As I said at the time I'm glad I was able to help some people.

If you right click the image links you can see all the files are hosted on my photobucket haha
This is the original post over on Kobalt IIRC:
http://www.kobaltcomputers.co.uk/fo...driver-available&p=13596&viewfull=1#post13596

 

well it did work on both of my gpus for me. when i had GTX280s. my machine dpc latency was so green like a garden during spring.

 

Meh!

Yeah seems like Dell and Nvidia have no idea how to fix this issue. And it seems a lot more complicated with how Windows 7 handles power management generally. Looks like Nvidia screwed up Powermizer big time with the new ACPI in Windows 7.

Best case scenario is we get a proper fix for this in a few months..... Judging by how John is asking us to PM help for a solution, that is the scary part. They dont know what to do with the affected users and just want to shut us up in a way.

Well time to go back to Vista. I am done with this. Just dont have the mind or the patience to deal with this issue anymore.

 

Oh and Alex, John forwarded your guide on to the engineering team because "I know what they're working on, and I know how it is related to what you did."

 

The real scary part is how a tech said the solution was similar to the powermizer off bandaid fix.

 

I'm not going to disagree with you on that one, I don't want to keep my laptop like this forever.

 

Based on the dell blog post, I'm guessing we're supposed to try and solve this through regular support channels before contacting John? Because I've been holding off contacting tech support until there's an official solution since a lot of people have been getting grief from support.

 

Now I have a question for the thread and all of you who have labored trying different approaches and workarounds...

Q: Concerning ACPI, did anyone disable ACPI via the registry hack and if so, did you still encounter audio stuttering issues when listening to music playback with media player Visualizations active?

Prefer this was done under W7 and not Vista but will take Vista results if someone tested this under it.

Dont worry - I'm not going quietly into the night. My thoughts will be shared once I have them all collected.

Needless to say, I am not very 'hopeful' with this latest development and am a bit concerned.

 

Well was just a thought, for a small time I wrote/review device drivers, and worked on problem with issues like this for a living. But you get what you pay for, so yes my suggestion likely will not work as I haven't been able to test this laptop with this issue.

 

well powermizer off will be the best -fix- for Dell when our quarantees go off. maybe thats why they want to gain time. to release a powermizer off driver which will damage the gpus when quarantee will be off.

you know what i mean dont you?

it will be like the official notebookandforumreview opinion about the behaviour of Dell. waiting for it.

ACPI.sys disabled will be interesting for the red spikes i see on certain occasions. however we are trying the same thing again and again. acpi off is not a fix and this is the acpi.sys of win7 even if we like it or not. Or we could say Microsoft to release win7 notebook edition instead of desktop edition.lool

EDIT: i cannot suspend acpi.sys on win7! interesting!

 

Neither do I and I wrote the thing. One of the reasons I bought a laptop was it was quiet!

In regards to John forwarding it, I really hope he took onboard it band aid, not a fix, the machine isn't 'cured', its just massively less bad!

@ Aristoles - if you check my Kobalt link, you'll see towards that at least a few of us there have tried Dox and it didnt work for us, glad it did for you at the time though.

I suffer from the latency spikes under Vista as well as Win7, so in my case this issue is not just Win7 related, which is perhaps why Dox's didnt properly disable!

@Batboy - Honestly I cannot remember whether I've done that or not. I've done so many driver tweaks, changes, reinstalls etc since I got this thing I've lost track of what I've done!

 

He knows it was meant to be a band-aid, don't worry about it.


I made sure I got across what I meant.

 

Well, in Kobalt's case they're holding on for word from Nvidia after hearing positive news from them. They know exactly how frustrated we are with the issue though from private discussions, so in our case they've promised if Nvidia don't, they will make it right somehow although the 'solution' as they put it will likely depend from user to user. I trust them; unlike the experience I've had with Alienware Europe, Kobalt have actually tried to help. Hell they even collected my machine and took it back for a week to test it to write up a document on the issues (which they submitted to Clevo and Nvidia), and see if there was any obvious faulty hardware in my machine.

I feel more worried for you Dell guys.

 

It made no difference on my rig, latency still there.

But I get slowdowns in games after 45-60 min. Heat related?

I am probably due for another clean install.

 

Some update:
After getting my case escalated last week and asking for a refund/replacement the decision was made today to offer me a replacement with the same model type I asked the supervisor if it can be reconsidered and got the answer - this is the decision made on a conference with the engineering team, that's a new policy, no exchange with different systems. Then I asked if the policy is ok with losing 200+k when our company steers clear from Dell after this? The supervisor went making another call and returned advising me to write a letter to the CEO with my case.
I wrote to both AW and Dell, but then decided not to ask for anything from Dellienware anymore. They just lost a business partner.
I will stay with this machine for now (and enjoy it, it's the best laptop in the world after all )
Will do some cooling mods soon and prepare a few video guides for the forum on disassembly and thermal paste replacements etc...
I don't care about the faulty chipset anymore. If it dies, Dell will replace it.
And it will do so until the end of the warranty.
Meanwhile, I'll escalate a different project within our company to become
Dell' competitor in the high-end gaming notebooks field in year-two from now. After all, Dell rebrands the same Clevo barebones and not the only one who can do it
And I want to thank all of you guys for the creative and inspiring approach.
I think on this forum we can actually achieve great things!

 

Thanks for the response - I realize the latency was still there - was it readily apparent during MP3 playback as well?

I'm not saying its a fix. Just asking if you tried this and was the audio popping issue readily apparent during MP3 playback?

Thanks folks.

 

yes but you forget something, modyfying anything inside the M17X immediately means its out of quarantee. take it easy m8.

i knew they would never replace it with R2.

 

I dont audio popping after i changed to ATIs my friend. I still have red spikes though under certain occasions. thus i couldnt suspend the acpi.sys, i dont know why. Even the eject button is not able to cause audio popping (45000 K spikes are not enough to cause audio popping). Only the huge spikes of 999000 that occur every now and then can do this.

 

There are a few cases here where Dell replaced the R1 with R2. I think it just depends on who you have on the line.

 

What about before you switched to ATI - I know you were trying many things as well. I'm guessing you didn't attempt it or dont recall since you didn't post your observations.

No worries. I have a lot of free time tonight and will figure out the answer to my question. Wanted to see what others may have observed first.

 

before switching to ATIs i had popping every 10 sec my friend. except the stuttering and stuff.

I remember we were discussing about the acpi.sys but i cant remember if i tried on vista or win7. i cant remember. The fact is that on vista i didnt have audio popping with nvidia gpus while i had terrible audio popping on win7 if this means something to you. Stuttering is an other case. Much better on vista but not absent.

are you going to install win7?

 

Oh, no, don't get me wrong, still keeping the old pads, just in case
The warranty will not be voided, if anything it should be even extended as my manipulations so far reduced the temps greatly and may result in a longer lifespan of the machine

 

Sorry, never messed with the acpi...

 

No problem and thanks for responding.

Thanks. I will be looking at this under Vista and W7. A couple of weeks ago I wiped my drive, installed W7 and no apps other than FutureMark and a couple of other benchmark related items. I imaged the drive to preserve the W7 enviro and re-loaded my Vista backup image. I image my drive weekly so I always have a fresh backup of Vista. Give it up for Acronis folks

The ACPI test will be made under W7 tonight when I reload the W7 image.

This is only a small step in my research - I am trying to verify a theory of mine. In any event, I suggest all M17x R1 owners contact John-B and discuss the situation. Regardless of GPU you have installed. Just a thought.

 

its been months since he opened the thread and he knows absolutely the issues. whatever i know where you are going to with win7. i dont want to influence your research so i wont go on. i am waiting for your audio popping-stuttering feedback on win7. dont forget to install the drivers too. also please leave the dpc latency running on the background to see if any red spikes causing audio popping or not

 

Did anyone send a PM to Dell-John?

Any reply from him?