M17x DPC Latency

As a round up for you, as swapping the GPUs doesnt cure the issue, it is hardware independant (although most users of the ATI cards suffer noticeably less, at least implicating Nvidia's hardware/software in making the issue worse), either suggesting OS, Drivers OR issues with the chipset.
It has been repeatedly shown there is at least a link between spikes, and the Nvidia GPUs downclocking. This doesnt sound like the ONLY fault, but a clear and traceable link is there.

Im quite comfortable saying this as my M980NU from Clevo,using exactly the same chipset, also suffers some almost identical issues with DPC latency and Nvidia GPUs. Disabling powermizer whilst not fixing the issue has helped many people get a useable machine, even if not a perfect one, although it has not worked for everyone.

If you remove the Nvidia GPU drivers, for a large number of people, whilst running windows standard VGA drivers the DPC spikes are gone, suggesting it's at least something inter-related with the drivers.

Regards

 

the issue in general is the graphics switching clocks

powermizer disabled with nvidia power management on max solved it for me

the other two ive heard of are a mix of the clocks, wireless drivers and storage drivers

 

Right, but spikes of over 60000 definitely do, and most of us are still experiencing those spikes

 

I'm well aware of that link, I was trying to provide some info for Bill to try and help him build up a causation catalog a little easier with a quick summary, I wrote the guide in my signature after all (which is the one endgadget linked to)
That it doesnt work for everyone as a band aid until a real fix is sorted does suggest there are other issues creeping in as well.

@Above poster, above 25-30k, its very noticeable, generally spikes of 10k or more are noticeable when you're concentrating on something. Spikes in the 6-10k range wont affect audio but can cause delays/issues in things like encoding however. The large spikes also have a nasty habit of disrupting external devices

 

Well of course we are angry I mean we paid the big bucks for this machine and therefore expect that it will be flawless. The truth is that this issue should have been solved before hitting the store... Hit you.. No way... Give us a flawless machine that we paid for... Talking to you will not change the fact that Dell owe us some money, a solution or perhaps even a new machine.

 

Even though I didn't have much stuttering in the past, I decided to try out this fix to see what would happen. And guess what? The stuttering has gotten worse. A lot worse. Kind of annoying. I guess I'll just have to use windows restore to go back to what I had before. Not looking forward to doing that again.

 

Definitely, they cause problems

 

I agree, it's been months of waiting for a fix and some have even been told by tech support to wait for this 'fix' and nothing else can be done for them, but the fix (the second attempt at a fix, even) didn't work...

I think with all this we've had to put up with we should get R2's

 

Now seriously Bill, thank you for you determination to help.
You should let the engineering team know that we are well aware of the situation. This fix was already used by us before Dell even wrote the A03 BIOS.
From what we know:
ATI cards improve the situation A LOT, resolving 80-90% of all the stuttering and latency cases.
However they do not solve the issue entirely, and we still have occasional stuttering and high latency spikes along with freezes.
Knowing a little about the difference between the ATI and Nvidia GPUs makes us think that the issue is strictly chipset related (software or hardware, maybe both).
ATI cards have a peer-2-peer communication/hardware acceleration allowing them to bypass or reduce the overall load on the chipset/MCP, resulting in less stuttering and latency.
This can be further proved by monitoring the chipset temperatures (using Everest Ultimate for example), as they stay lower than in the same conditions but with Nvidia cards installed.
One of the possible conclusions is that the chipset can't handle the 'traffic' and becomes a bottleneck of the system.
Another supporting nuance is that the current consumption level of each 280M GPU is 75W and each 4870~60-65W. This means the ATI cards basically require less 'juice' to normally deliver the max performance. It can also mean the limit of the power operations of the chipset on a hardware level.
So there's enough info for the ET to think about and look for a solution.

Thanks in advance.

 

I find it somewhat amusing that their engineers swear they don't see anymore latency after these updates. What, do we need to start sending in our own laptops so they can try and duplicate their amazing work?

 

Indeed we should get a flawless replacement. Anything else would be robbery. Which firm sells a defect product and then keeps on telling the customer a fix is on the way? We can not wait. We bought a laptop because we intended to use it right away! Who in earth buys a car only to accept it is defect and then waits for two or three months using it? The customer would ask for a replacement right away. I need a flawless laptop for study and I think it is pretty fair to demand that Dell live up to that agreement. Bill am I demanding too much here?

 

Exactly! As I said before I find it so odd that they post these fixes thinking that they will do it for us. Same thing happened with the A03 release, they told us it fixed all their issues when it really didn't help any of us...

 

OK. Let's officially reset so I can be prepared for a couple of things I know the engineers will come back with when I report.
Please, humor me, and reply back verifying these 3 things. If you are running swapped out Intel WLAN cards, or ATI GPU's, I am going to set your results aside just for now and work with factory shipped hardware configs. Just for the time being. Please try not to kill me here.
Please try these steps in order:

1. Verify you have BIOS A03 installed.
2. Run the script.
3. Uninstall and re-install the latest Dell-posted WLAN driver.

I will be gathering unique user count replies to this specific part of the post above. Feel free to tell or ask me anything else you want, though obviously I may not be of too much help just yet. I am going to just read the entire thread and start from scratch.

 

no i cant remember. any other way to find out?

well writing a script should have taken 2 minutes for them not 2 months.

thus tell them they are useless and completely ignore everything we said.

thus tell them to spend time on gaming with nvidias.

thus i can give you a detailed guide to reproduce red spikes even with ATIs.

Thus testing during idle is not the case for a gaming machine with stutter issues.

Thus tell them not to show our fixes as theirs.

 

Im in the same boat d.k. I cant even take exams right now because the proctor program I use checks the dpc latency and It fails every time because of the huge spikes. For someone who received this pc as a replacement for a broken pc. To get a replacement that is BROKEN is very frustrating. The thing that gets me is they sent me this PC after this problem was discovered. You would think if a product is known to be defective they would stop selling at least until they got the problem resolved. Just my humble opinion.

 

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Yes

Still getting 60,000+ spikes. Great fix.

 

I give up. Fine let us try this solution too. I mean I paid for a expensive high end laptop so I could spent countless of hours trying to repair it

 

Bill,

I am running BIOS A03.
I ran the script.
I have uninstalled and re-installed the WLAN Driver.

I am still getting massive 65k+ spikes in the DPC Latency checker, as well as audio popping, cracking, and stuttering.

 

Did this 2 months ago with tech agent on-line and remotely controlling my machine, after that my 280s were replaced with ATIs as the fix didn't work.

 

1. Yes, definitely running A03
2. Done
3. Ok, already had the driver but reinstalled anyways

Still getting 60000+ spikes at idle, same spikes when listening to music but with music the stutter is now audible

 

If the hardware ids is: PCI\VEN_14E4&DEV_432B&SUBSYS_04B114E4&REV_01
then it's the 1510

 

Got it. Thanks, guys. I'm headed home for the night. I will log back on in a bit.

 

guys demand ATIs and motherboard change in case you still have audio stuttering with the ATIs.

if they dont swap to ATIs go the legal way. I would if i still had audio crackling with the ATIs.

 

A03 actually did fix part of the issue. I posted on this here. There is more than one issue here folks. IMO, Dell did fix part of it in A03 and at present is working dilligently in resolving the other issues.

On another note, I just had to clean up several recent posts which violated the forum rules and also were OT. I asked everyone to keep it clean and remember the forum rules when posting right after Bill made his announcement post. I understand exactly where all of you are coming from on this issue and the frustration related to it. This does not mean we can just disregard the forum rules - specifically:

Let's keep it clean folks.

Thanks.

 

Is it just me, or does there seem to be a COMPLETE and TOTAL lack of communication between the various departments inside of Dell? Personally I'm surprised that they would offer this fix after a tech call like yours. Why hasn't the fact that this fix has been tried before and done nothing, at the behest of their own tech people, and nobody in engineering seem to have heard about it? The fact that Bill hasn't even "noticed" this thread until now (if he actually hasn't noticed it until now) shows that there is a real disconnect within the company structure between the higher ups and the tech guys. The fact that it's taken them this long to figure this out shows that they need to do a bit of corporate restructuring and rule writing for this kind of crap.

/rant

 

1. Current Bios A03
2. Ran
3. Uninstall and re-install the latest Dell-posted WLAN driver.

Same issues from nVidia cards up/downclocking

 

I agree. How can a firm like Dell demand such a high price for a product when it does not deliver? Bill, Dell should had put this product on hold. That would of course have influenced your profit maximising. But that would have been more decent at least as many people use their laptop for studies and work. Hence Dell has with their decision made many peoples life rather complicated (including my life as I have spent countless of hours trying to understand this issue).

 

1.yes
2.yes
3.yes
still has 100000k + spikes.
thanks for your info bill b.

 

Mine is still fine. I am not risking another win7 install just to be disappointed.

 

1.bios a03 installed
2. ran the script - could not complete couse the computer doesnt meet minimum specifications
3. reinstalled drivers

Still get the 65k spikes when cards downclock and the laptop is factory configuration , nothing upgraded/changed inside of it.

 

So to be completely sure I did everything again ran ccleaner and restarted after every step and am still getting 100000k spikes.

 

I managed to install it and follow JohnBat's instructions and still have Audio/video stuttering DPC Latency issues. Here are screenshots of my system's DPC Latency after following the instructions and Alienware OS Customization 2.0 script:

While Idle:

Bad spikes, cause

While gaming:

Horrible. I've never seen a system with such constant high DPC latency while gaming. And this is supposed to be a "all powerful" gaming machine.

As you can see, this "fix" sadly didn't fix a thing for me. I can't even do any gaming (bad stutter of video and audio as well as short 1-2 second freezes whenever a DPC Latency spike hits) or watch videos/listen to audio without audio and video stutter on this thing, much less video or audio editing/recording that I need to do. I have to use my brother's XPS M1710 for it, which is a shame for such an expensive and supposedly "All powerful" system. I've been struggling with it since I got it back in July as well, always being promised "the fix is coming soon". This is just inacceptable. I'm one unhappy customer. I used to like Dell...but after the experience with the M17x...and especially the unwillingness/inability of tech support to admit the system is faulty and properly solve the issue made me hate it.

 

UPDATE:

I have contacted a law firm that is interested in taking this issue to class action.

 

Guess what? While sitting here and reading this thread my m17x with a Bios A03 installed gets 4000 us red spikes every 30 or 40 seconds... The Tech man from Dell in Denmark told me that the Bios A03 would solve this issue(this he told me yesterday). I even reinstalled everything by a respawn as told by the tech man. Well now the only thing open is the firefox browser and guess what RED SPIKES! ... hmmmmmmmm...

 

Since July Well that is pretty much it. Dell, Bill and John with all respect if you are reading this. If I do not receive a replacement that works then the m17x will be the last thing I ever purchase form Dell No more "being part of the solution" No more so called "Programs". No more taking my money without delivering the product. Shame on you.

 

this did not work for me
I still have problems
incredible what is happening

 

Incredible that Dell cannot see that this is damaging their reputation as a decent laptop manufacture

 

I second this, for a piece of tech to come out of a major company that is this flawed is shocking. it has been months and there is still no fix and we cant even get anything from tech support but "you have to wait for a fix " is totally ridiculous.

 

Some sort of exchange program for dissatisfied M17X owners would be nice. Goodwill gestures aren't typically good for the bottom line, however...

 

Customer satisfaction should be more important than the bottom line.

 

Indeed I can only agree. I have sadly lost my confidence in Dell. But yeah I know the next fix is here And then another one and another one... Dell you can only fix this by one: refound OR two: replacement with a flawless system. You cannot ask someone to wait for six months

 

As you can see Dell people releasing fake fixes only makes the situation worse. what are you thinking of?

good to see that. go on

 

i think.... i think i love you..

PM'd

i wonder if im still allowed to be in a class action if its from the states?

 

Who tried this fix?

Official Dell announcement today.

http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/...dpc-latency-for-alienware-m17x-customers.aspx

 

Monday will contact my lawyer
and I will sue dell here in Spain to the consumer
It was enough

 

I did. And it didn't work, see my post above.

 

Yep, just tried and same thing. It's a bunch of crap. I cannot believe that they have the audacity to waste our time after so many months of stupid fixes.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=406085

 

i will try it and see what happens.

 

I live in Sweden and might not be able to participate in a lawsuit in the states(I am Danish citizen). But I will contact the Danish department Of consumers (it is a part of our government and they will then sue Dell for not living up the law of a two years warantee which states that all electronic products need to be flawless within that period). I actually wrote Dell in a mail telling them if they would not comply with a repair that fix the issue or a replacement I would do this. No answer for the last two days.