M17x DPC Latency

iPhone typing = fail

 

lewdvig
You got the 4870s installed yet?If so hows latency

 

Well I got my new ATIs installed and put A03 back on here.
Wireless card is disabled btw in device manager..
I have 4 you tube videos playing windows media player with visualizations playing and nothing but green and one yellow DPC to 1400... So then i started browsing the web and no spikes. One thing though as soon as i started typing my reply here I got some yellows constantly and then highest spike is 2.5k on dpc (I am using a usb keyboard)... Much better then my nvidia cards so far. The window 7 index rating only gave the cards 7.2.

I had to install the dell ATI drivers first because I did the 10.3 first and it wasnt giving me the enable crossfire option.. Removed 10.3 installed dell then upgraded to 10.3 and crossfire is still there.. I also like being able to see the bios on my external monitor now where I wasnt able to do that on nvidia since the HDMI would not activate until windows booted..

Now I need to play some games and see what is going on..

So far after 5 mins of streaming audio and video, playing windows media player with visualizations, browsing the web no higher spike than 2.5k and no sttttttuuutttter in music.. More testing to come...


Edit.. I decided to post a screen shot.. I did reset it since I typed the above so 2083 is max..

 

I should get them Monday or Tuesday.

 

You can prevent that from happening if you change the plan settings (Power Options) Turn off hard disk after: Never and put the Sleep, Sleep after: i.e 45 minutes

That way the laptop will go to a sleep state rather trying to make the HDD start spinning after they have been deactivated. That's why you experience those lock ups. Should that happen? No, Why? I didn't dig any deeper into that issue. Is there a work around? yes, the the one I mentioned above. Is the DPC latency affected by that? Definitely.

 

Well i loaded WOW and even during loading it and zoning in no spikes no skips ect.. Ran around dal, used some portals ect all while playing music and no spikes still at 2083 and no skips.. Its so nice how much more fluid it is now and not laggy.. Gonna run a dungeon to put more stress on the cards.. So far so good... Its like playing on a new pc again... Frame rates are a little lower than what I am used to with nvidia..

 

You know its sad that we are happy when the computer is barely getting by. There should be no yellow at all. On a normal machine you will never see that thing pop that high.

 

YES! My M17x is ALMOST as smooth as a $300 netbook! SUCCESS!

 

LOOLL.....

 

Oh i know.. I am not saying its resolved but tons better than what I have had thus far.. Just did a heroic and no spikes higher than the 2083 and no skipping.. so i have to say the atis have improved my usability quite a bit.

 

Ill try that also. I'm sure Dell will adopt this as a "fix" but that's what has me worried. Every little workaround seems to degrade the laptop in one way or another whether it's reducing battery life, driving up temperatures, etc.

 

Could you run the test on my signature on the normal machine you mention and post the results on my thread so I can take a look at them?

 

For this particular one, instead of first stopping the HDDs and then go to sleep, going to sleep at once will save more battery life. For the rest of the work arounds I have to agree with you...

 

I know we all know that watching YouTube videos will make the stutters appear. I have watched the two videos that stamatisx has in his analyze thread...these do cause the stutters/latency on my computer. The following video does it far worse...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ7R_buZPSo

Its a cool little video. 720p is the highest resolution it will do. What I ask you do see, have the latency checker going on in the background and watch the video full screen. You should hear audio pops and crackles for at least the first minute or two, the video has slight skips throughout. Just with this video, nothing else going on, I was able to fill up my DPC screen with yellow and red. I will try and get a screen shot of it and post it here.

Pics are attached. Not as bad as a lot of you, but still unacceptable. The pics got all out of order... The first one is how it looks running full screen (it is worse when it is still downloading/streaming). The second is the initial spike when the vid starts. The third large one shows that this is the only things running, you can tell when I turned off the full screen, but I fumbled around getting the screen shot, so I didn't get some of the other spikes that were there.

 

My 120gb vertex died a couple of months ago... a few blue screens, then died completely. OCZ gave me another one, but I'm not sure if I trust it.

 

Off topic but It's a cool video btw ken block knows how to drive the Gymkhana.

The sound I think is from the video itself, not from the latency. For you guys though with the NVidia cards it's a different story unfortunately... Standby for a fix from Dell

 

The second Dell tech confirmed that the first one had noted that if this "fix" doesn't fix the issue that I will be demanding for a replacement since I haven't had a good lappy since May. I hate to be semi-rude with people as that is not my nature, but I'm just tired of troubleshooting their issue.

Here is to hoping and praying we get a fix soon.

 

It's not. I can watch it on my desktop and I don't hear the crackle in the audio.

I am on the phone with Dell right now. 45 minute wait to get through to a rep. Will post back what they say.

 

WOW, i clicked that link and it looks like it would take a person all day to set it up. I can happily run DPC latency checker and send SS's.

 

That isn't going to send him what he needs. The steps produce a table showing the latency and the specific process that is causing it. That is far more valuable than a screenshot and saying, I was running Winamp at the time.

My case has been escalated up the Dell food chain. Will see where it leads. One thing I did find humorous was the tech trying to get me to run the OS script that removes the nVidia storage drivers...I was like sir, that is for W7, I am on Vista and I never even installed those storage drivers to begin with. Gave me a lot of confidence. Plus the 7, yes 7, transfers was fun too.

 

Only 7? You got it easy, I was transfered about 17 times total in two calls.

 

Well, 7 times in less than an hour. All of them blind transfers too. I have no idea who I talked to the last time, some guy in Costa Rica, but at least he did a TON of typing on his end. And he only typed after I spoke, so he wasn't on Facebook or something else at the same time. He has till Monday before I call back pissed off.

 

Wow, that sounds exactly like the last guy i talked to. He was also from Costa Rica and after I said somehthing would be typing for like 3 minutes. He said he would call me back yesterday... Unfortunately no call...

 

That is lame. Well, I told him that if I did not receive a call, I would call myself and I would be less then cordial like I was today. We will see how it goes, but I will get service, one way or another.

 

Yeah, I really want to call them again, but they won't do anything except for tell me to wait and I'm really getting sick of it. Been on the phone with them about 6 hours total and have achieved absolutely nothing...

 

If they give me that kind of brush off, I will go to the BBB. I know it isn't much, but it is something.

 

Yeah, its at the point where waiting is not okay anymore...

 

That is exactly what I told all the reps I talked too. I have been waiting since November for a fix. Not another band-aid, a fix. I am done waiting.

 

I haven't had a big spike in a while but I just had a 100k one browsing and opening a pdf (ironically the Alienware service manual to see what they are going to do to fix the other issue below).



My ATI 4870's have a high pitch whine whenever I really load the GPUs. The tech diagnosed it as a bad GPU fan. I know that's not the issue because it happens before the GPU fans kick in when I start a game and immediately goes away when I close it but with the GPU fans still on high. I told him that it was Dell's time and effort if they wanted to waste it but I was sure the tech or I would be calling back. I will get the right fix eventually (I think it's a bad capacitor on the video card(s)) but I guess it'll take another service call after this one.

 

Well there is always the test on my signature you can try and see what caused the red spike.

 

The whine is associated with the coils on the card, the nvidias did it too. And it is not due to GPU load....as in Diablo II it always happens at the pentagram in Act 4 lol (DX6 game locked at 30 fps lol)

I guess you can try to get a new set of cards but from what I have heard pretty much all of the cards have it

 

It really is triggered by starting Crysis or another game that loads the GPU hard. The rest of the time it's either not there or maybe it's just inaudible and I can't hear it? Browsing the web or watching a movie doesn't trigger it, rendering something in 3-D where the GPU load goes up does.

I really don't want another reason to dislike this computer so I hope you're wrong. Do all the 4870 GPUs really do this or did a few of us just get unlucky?

 

I guess you are talking about the noise that coils produce when current runs through them right? If that's the case then yes, I had both NVidia and ATI cards and under load they produce the same noise. It's nothing to worry about unless you experience problems and weird behavior. To check if we are talking about the same thing, go to: control panel, system, click on the windows experience index, re run the assessment. During that procedure you can listen to that sound.

 

One thing that I have noticed that causes more spikes than not on the M17x and on my desktop is when I have Everest running and monitoring temps. If I kill the program no issues.. If I have it running, at regular intervals i get a 2-4k spike..

I usually have it running minimized and putting output to the sidebar widget in vista/win7 and to my g13 game pad on my M17x

 

The only game I get DPC spikes is WOW, every other game is fine.

 

Not only everest but also HWMonitor will introduce latency with spikes around 500μs every 5 seconds.

 

I havent had issues in WOW now with the ATIs. I kept DPC up all night last night for 4-hours straight and the highest I had was 1.8k spike.. I use the usb wow mouse and the g13 game pad as well.. I had media player going the background with some tunes and Ventrillo the entire time.

 

Yea 500 isn't that bad i suppose but 2-4k.. thats kinda crazy. I know when I was using the dell ati drivers, I couldn't even launch Everest.. It would hard lock the computer... with 10.3 it doesn't hard lock it... I can replicate the issues on my desktop as well and I have sli 8800 gtx on there...

 

Exactly, what you mentioned here kilthro is very important because it indicates/verifies that a 3rd party application can introduce latency to the system

 

I am noticing that as well Wow spikes hard and I get loud sound spikes and frame rate drops.

 

the point is that latency appears just after installing the gpu drivers and resizing windows. so if we follow the dell recommended order of drivers installation then the only drivers installed are (nvidia chipset, doesnt matter if you install it or not), then osd driver and then the gpu (nvidia or ATI) driver and then resizing windows even before installing the rest drivers.

 

So a week has gone by and no news. Is Dell Bill the only person who can update us? He is the only one with lion taming experience?

 

Yeah considering how serious Dell are supposedly taking this issue.How hard is it to keep us informed here ?.Rubbish we are being led down the garden path.

 

many such weeks will pass. I personally dont believe latency will ever be fixed. I still believe its the motherboard-gpus connection plus power issues but even if it is a matter of drivers i dont believe anyone is going to spend time to fix every .sys that may cause those red spikes. They have proved they wont.

They just hoped everything would be ok from the beginning. If not then it needs so much time, effort and most of all desire to fix it. Finally even if they fix the latency related to nvidia gpus they wont fix other kind of latency issues seen even on ATIs.

And if i am not wrong the official final reply from Dell (from John-B) is that its -impossible- to see red spikes after their -baby- fix and if you still have issues each one should contact techniqal support which has been proved from numerous posts to be compromised by people who even dont know anything about the issue (so just propose format and follow dell row of drivers installation) or say to wait for a fix that officially Dell has said that was the -baby- fix nvidia controller remover (contradictionary isnt it?)

 

Aristotelh the .sys are not the problem here, something else is preventing those .sys you mention from functioning properly and that's where Dell should concentrate the efforts

 

Of course the .sys files are not the problem themselves as they are the same on all pcs with win7 or vista. i just said -fix- whatever this means. and from what you have seen already do you still have hopes they are so experts to fix it? or admit it if its hardware issue or even more offer R2 replacements? we all have latency issues more or less.

as for the R2 because you referred something about well done for Dell in your thread i would say well done Intel instead. Dell was just lucky everything works ok as for the latency of course.

I forget everything about drivers and just ask about the eject button. what differs between R1 and R2? Its only the bios? is it just better programmed? you referred about difference between desktops and notebooks bioses but we now compare two notebook bioses.

 

all my positive rep are belong to you.

 

thanks and more to add i believe there is a conspiracy going on on the background to cover the real reasons of the issues, get rid of their duty to replace with R2 and even more the so called fixes are just efforts to say that Dell has good techniqal support and that the remaining issues that you may see on the web are just limited cases.

Did anyone in Dell said that pressing the eject button after their fix doesnt cause red spikes? (i refer this because its the simplier step to cause red spikes) NO. why? they are just saying general things to impress the engadget or other such researchers and maintain their already screwed up fame.

 

Dell customer support supervisor said there was only 3 poeple besides me that still have the issues after the latest round of "fixes". Is anybody else out there still trying with them??

 

no conspiracy, they barely sell any of these M17x units

plus you are giving them too much credit

if they wanted to they could refund/recall/exchange everyone

right now they are spending more than that on futile repair visits and new parts (although the 4870 cards seem to help).