M17x DPC Latency

BluElf,

I'm VERY familiar with the problem you're describing...

The symptom you're describing is a known compatibility issue with the Synaptics Touchpad driver.

Many of our graphic artists here at work use Wacom and my assistant and I were going crazy trying to track down the cause a few months ago... Uninstall the touchpad driver and the issue should disappear.

 

I'll definitely have to give that a whirl when I get home tonight - I hope that does the trick thanks!

 

I got a call too. He left a vm. No call back number, just his name.

Before steping out for lunch I called aw support and the wait was 20 minutes. No thanks. I have wasted enough time on this.

I'd like an accounting of the dollar value of our time wasted so far.

The support Dell/AW offer is horrible.
- notes not taken and included in service history
- online self service that tells you almost nothing about a case
- promised follow ups not kept
- emails unanswered
- inconsistent service levels actoss regions
- lost information
- procedural run around when often the first person you reach could fix the issue

 

I have a question for all M17x owners when WIFI is disabled does the problem continue?

 

yes for me

 

As for sound stuttering?

 

@dwarfking, your posts were moved to the M17x Owner's Lounge.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=423170

 

Then How am I to find out whether this is due to the stuttering or latency issue?

Latency can and will cause games(graphic applications) to slow down or lagging from time to time.

 

the slowdown in games is NOT due to latency, that is only accounting for sound issues

intermittent FPS drops are do to power shortages in your laptop due to either the gpus or cpu or both drawing more current than the power circuitry can provide

 

And the laggings which occurs when I get red spikes?

 

yes (last time), but now i've disabled powermizer, so whether the wireless is turned on or not doesnt account for stuttering

 

the best way to see if it is linked to DPC would be to monitor the GPU clocks and see if a change in clocks coincides with the red spike and game slow down

because the gpu clocks changing has been found to be a source of DPC latency

 

actually i can remember from the GTX280s that the audio stuttering red spikes were caused by the changing clocks of the gpus. They were around 65000K. the rest red spikes usually didnt cause audio stuttering except eject button of course.

 

I get red spikes from time to other in idle mode... However, they are rare and seldom reach more than 4-5000

 

Not really. It does hesitate every now and then for a split second but that is due to the darn DPC latency stutter. Not what you are describing. As Denver said below, if I remember correctly this is what was causing the issue.

Thanks for the reminder.. I agree, he should uninstall the driver.. Although I have mine installed and is working fine...

 

So the aliens have left with data. They have data that says the down clock of the card is causing some of the stuttering problems. This might not be the only dpc issue. They ran some test on my machine and took the data with them to present to nvidia today or tomorrow. They told me that they would call me as soon as they some more info. I think this shows that they are working on the problem and are trying to get a fix.

 

Thanks for the report clax. Hope they reassured you and left you feeling a bit better about the situation.

 

Definitely felt like were concerned and that they were trying to fix this problem. They told me they would give me an update this week so that is cool of them.

 

Yep - they are all over this.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latency_(engineering)

Just so you know

 

Thank you for sharing the information, Clax.

I certainly hope that these new events pertain to a proper, fully addressed solution for the R1.

 

No problem glad to share anything. They gave me the feeling that they really are working on this they were emailing people at dell at alienware and at nvidia from their phones the whole time they were here. They stayed for about 3 -4 hours. Brought a pimp alienware monitor to run some of the test(took It back with them, crap) . Overall very good and informative experience.

 

was it the new 120 Hz monitor? they look nice but cost too much for me

 

I'm glad to hear that they seem to be invested in the issue. If they want to restore customer confidence and loyalty, this is how they need to do it. Hopefully they'll have a fix for us in the very near future. Thanks for the info Clax.

 

I certainly hope that too. I have wasted way to long time on this machine. At least the Bios A03 update reduced the trouble by 8-90 percent. Perhaps a Bios 04 could remove the last few red latency spikes

 

Indeed.

You see, what I am -really- interested in is the prospects of having Nvidia cards without the spikes or issues associated with Win7 and visual beef in Vista. Then I can confidentally invest in a QX9300 CPU.

 

yeah, I think It was the AW2310.

 

Just as a follow up to my post, last night I decided to get rid of the software RAID setup. I installed only one Scorpio Black, changed the BIOS to ATA (not AHCI), then installed Windows 7 x64 Ultimate. All drivers were left as Microsoft supplied only, except for the Nvidia 186.82 drivers on BIOS A03. I allowed windows update to do its thing as many times as it needed to, and have put no Alienware drivers on it yet.

Latency has decreased so that now I only get one 10000 spike, every now and then but 99.9% of the time is under 100, so I am very pleased with it. I am also convinced that it is only a matter of time before a real patch is sorted.

 

I have been out of town for a few days... Am I reading this correctly that the A03 bios is supposed to fix the spiking of the battery management? Is this only with W7 or does it help in Vista too? I ask because with the ACPI enabled on my Vista machine, I am still getting spikes in the 1100 range, every 15 seconds. If I disable it, the spikes go away. Now I realize that 1100 is nothing in comparison to the upper stratosphere spikes we all can get (my largest was 897000) but this is still bothersome. I really want to transition to W7, but it appears that the issue is even worse on W7. Oh, and this is using the 9400, hybrid disabled in the bios. I get spikes anywhere from 65k~100k with the 9400...the issue is far worse with the 260m's enabled.

That brings me to another question/observation. I see that the most vocal here have really pimped out m17x's...high end processors and 280/ATI cards. I was given (I had a pimped out m1730) the low end setup as a warranty replacement. Unless the power system for these laptops is completely inferior, should it not be able to handle my system just fine?

What do you folks think I should do? Should I try and wait this out or should I pitch a fit? I have had this brick since late October and have not been able to do anything with it. Every video I render is corrupted at some point (audio/video gets out of sync) and any effects aren't done properly. I ended up losing my gig over this laptop because I used it as a work machine. I would like to tell Dell to replace this with a m11x and maybe a TV. Those I could use. With all the flak that Dell/AW is getting on the R1, I cannot sell it for anything close to what I paid for it. No one wants to buy a shoddy laptop.

 

Hi trikster sorry to hear you story. From what I can see then Dell is really trying very hard to fix this issue. The A03 Bios is taking the most of the red spikes which can be seen if you are using the Latency Checker from www.thesycon.de. I can not tell what to do here, But I can tell you that I will wait for a little longer as it looks like Dell is really, really taking this serious(now Batboy don't you move me into a new thread named "Thank you Dell we love you"). You could try to make them repair the machine or perhaps even try to convince them to offer you a replacement... In the end the decision will be yours to make and for Dell to process/approve.

 

Not wishing to put a cat amongst the pigeons, but I'd been playing Aion, with the customary sound pops,crackles and fps stutters that had become almost standard.

Then last week my PSU kept tripping 3-4 times (dropping back to battery mode - the tip of the power cord went out and only unplugging for 3 mins would make it work again.

A quick call to Tech Support, and they had a new M17x PSU at my door the next day! Big improvement (though still some stuttering). I don't know if there is anything to do with the M17x trying to draw too much current, or if there might be an issue with the PSU rating - but food for thought...

Cheers

Trelawney

 

Was just on the phone with tech support for another hour, as they gathered data from my system using a single ATI 4870 (integrated 9400 disabled)... took notice of the DPC latency even while using it, instead of the nVidia card, jotted down driver versions, etc, and passed on to the Dev team.

No fix as of yet... but they're still definitely trying to figure out what the main cause is.

Funny thing was, they left the connection on after they ended our call... so I sat there playing around, making the DPC spike like crazy for them. Hopefully they saw it.

 

How much will dell charge for another gtx 260? and damn thats really cheap for a qx9300.

 

Just spent another hour on the phone w/ the Alienware tech. Ran some updates that were "just released" today, took my issue back from over 6000 constantly, to spiky again.

"we'll contact you when we have a fix, thank you for calling."

 

Well after hours on the phone with tech support, a fresh install of the os with tech support loading all the drivers nothing has changed. Still getting high spikes, locking up and stuttering.

Alienware tech support said there isn't anything else they can do, they are not issuing a replacement, they said this is a software problem and they are working on a solution so that is their fix.

 

They just told me the same thing....I'm not going to be done with this call until I get a new one.....

 

i had my PSU changed out when i had my GPU's changed out. The old PSU made a horrible buzzing noise.

 

Well then they better hurry up

 

A manager told me next week, unfortunately I don't believe that one bit....

 

they are just buying themselves time.....

 

Well if it's true then we will all be very happy. But if it is another diversion maneuver then I think a lot of people will think twice about buying another lab form Dell/Alienware as the blogging rate about this issue just might start to increase. The net can be a very useful tool to spread the gospel with.

 

Hopefully it will...can't even talk to a person anymore, they transfer me somewhere else saying this person can help you better....

 

I got the same message here in Denmark too. The person I spoke to could not help me as he was not really skilled enough (according to himself) with the m17x so he would have another person to phone me tomorrow. Then why did he call me in the first place He knew that I had an m17x with red spikes At least he was polite.

 

new sig. with dell's quote.

 

you need a date next to that quote don

 

Very likely, m8.

Any specific info on what kind of fix we will be getting this time?

 

Should have known, Dell runs on Valve time... http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time

 

last time was Command center error. this was sunday.

the dpc was a month ago. they are 3 weeks late on that.

 

why hasnt bill posted yet. id like him to know what he thinks is a suitable timeline for us to wait and if he can tell his superiors the timeline so as to authorize a recall or something.

at this rate we ARE going to wait till our warranties expire and till we all go bald from tearing our hair out.

 

I noticed something interesting. I don't get a lot of red spikes when I'm in the balanced power plan but I do get a lot when I'm in "high" performance.

I have also always blamed the crappy trackpad for the lack of responsiveness, but I'm wondering now if it is due to the latency. I noticed that it seems to be connected to a large spike in the latency but I think it's an indicator and not the cause as it seems to follow right after it.

I can trigger spikes around 5000 just by changing tabs in Firefox. That seems very strange.

I can never tell whether to call or not, it seems like all it does is end up in frustration around here.

The worst part of Dell's response has been how uneven it is. First John at the Dell communities, then Bill shows up here and each new appearance is a sign of hope. Continually throwing up "fixes" or "reasons" that they haven't validated with testing in the field. Did someone at Dell come from Toyota?