M17x DPC Latency

That is great news. Thanks a lot man!
finger crossed!

 

your case is really odd and this 20-30% difference is really high. i saw in benchmark thread that your benchmark was also not good. most of us if not all of us have better performance with the 4870s.

Have you checked if the crossfire cable is ok?

 

Talk about being on tenterhooks!
Clax's results seem very promising, breath suitably bated.

I know this isn't over yet but well done Bill anyway, you've had a little negative feedback here (understandable in view of the seriousness of these issues) but you certainly seem to be doing what you promised so far. Kudos.

 

Dell want you to do this? Yes that IS *PART* of my tweak guide, which disables powermizer. Look at the address of the photobucket links (my username here is the same as photobucket and on the Kobalt forums where I originally posted that haha)! Guess they dug it up off the endgadget link, personally I find it quite funny that even Dell/Alienware TS/CS are borrowing this now
I can tell its mine almost straight away because of the writing style, and the fact it mentions setting the registry key to 2222, whereas most guides mention 3322.

@Lewdvig.

Your performance issues are certainly NOT normal. My 4850m crossfire setup was not much slower than my GTX280m SLI at all, maximum of about 5-10% slower in the worst cases, and in some cases was noticeably faster. Your 4870ms shouldn't be anywhere NEAR 20-30% slower in the slightest, because that means they're running worse than my 4850ms were, and considerably (not to mention your cards are clocked higher so its not even an even race).

To me it sounds a lot more like only ONE of your cards is actually working properly,the other one isn't clocking up properly, being used properly or one of your cards/crossfire cable is plain faulty.

 

Very funny!

 

I was pretty careful installing it and with all the sticky tape there is no way the cable would have moved. Crossfire is enabled and the logo is on the screen. If I run one card the performance drops by 40%.

The recent French review that pitted a 285m clevo against a 4870xf m17x seems to support my numbers. I don't test WiC or HAWX, but everything else seems to show the Nvidia card doing better at higher detail and resolutions (which is how I test). If a game plays at 60fps using max settings and 19*12 on two 280ms, why would I care if the 4870 cf runs the game better at 720p and medium settings?

http://portables4gamers.com/?p=12340

I see a lot of meaningless benchmark scores in the M17x thread but little game playing which is all I care about.

The more I look into it the more I think you folks are just wrong about the 4870 cards. They are not faster, and at best equal. I'll have extensive test results up in the next few days. If I am wrong I will eat my words.

 

In one of my 3h marathon support calls, the tech was literally browsing the web for possible fixes, and linking them to me.

I convinced them to send me an R2, so I'll no longer be posting here.

 

i see you have vista , have you tried win7? thus even on benchmarks you score lower than with the nvidias right?

 

The only game I have ran tests in is Crysis and I can say for sure that the ATIs win there, by over 10%. And that is a game that usually favors nvidia if I am not mistaken?

And while 3Dmark06 is a useless benchmark for todays games, Vantage is not and it often correctly predicts game performance between different cards based off their scores

Glad to hear the calls paid off for you. Congrats

 

Um we probably should keep this on topic and move this kind of talk elsewhere.
My performance seems to be less with ATIs as well.

 

Lewdvig, I tested in games. The 4850s were hot on the heels of the GTX280m SLI. Something is not right about the performance of your setup.

 

OK. I posed the "can we add some NBR guys to the beta testing" question, and just got my answer. In short, no.

The reason is simple. They are doing the beta seeds (2 only) via FTP server download with login credentials. It would take time away from last minute testing to stop and set up credentials. They want to move very quickly (for some interesting reasons I won't get into) and get the beta version posted "by the end of the week." The only compromise I managed was to have them notify me when they were web-promoting the beta, and I would pop in here and let you know it's about to go up. I take "end of the week" as tomorrow, but they are chasing on some last minute testing details that they would not share with me exactly. The thought is if those small pieces of detail can be addressed quickly, they will modify the code then post. That may or may not push it out a bit. The full WHQL version will come some time down the line, and I'd imagine we'll make sure to characterize this posting as a beta instead of the full WHQL Holy Grail.

 

A new nvidia GPU driver still will do absolutely nothing for the ATI users still suffering from DPC stuff though

 

Yeah, these new drivers have some nice perfromance boosts over the last set of Verdes. Is that the surprise? If so, that's pretty good.

We all look forward to lots of testing a gaming this weekend!

 

i still have to see
1)if there are fps drops in games with the new beta driver.
2) if it can set 60hz to the screen
3) the spikes caused when pressing eject button (if this is related to the gpus as well-on ATIs i got lower spikes with eject button as with the nvidias despite the same osd)

 

I agree I would like some assurance that the DELL fix will not be limited only to Nvidia users.

 

i think one of the questions in Dell Bill list is this one as well. Right Bill?

 

Eject button is a Dell OSD software issue which also needs to be fixed, it has nothing to do with the video card (ATI and Nvidia users have this problem equally).

Proof? Eject from within windows explorer = no spike.

 

Nah, it even causes spikes without the OSD software installed. So it's likely tied directly to the touch button or something it's connected to. Still, the video card drivers aren't likely to fix this.
There are other latency problems as well, probably connected to the chipset drivers or something, and a video card driver won't solve those either, I'm afraid.

 

Oh, yeah that's right. It's getting hard to keep track of everything.

Regardless, I don't think Nvidia's driver will fix the eject button issue - although it would be great if it did.

 

1) ask claxdog
2)yes, you can set to 60hz. I know this for sure.
3)seperate issue still being worked on.

I will take this up as soon as we move on from these drivers being posted. I'm not going anywhere, I assure you. I can't assure you of anything fix related, but I can assure you I am relentless at pursuing issues, and I will pursue this one for ATI users until I'm beyond the point of diminishing returns... or until it's fixed, whichever comes first.

I have been guessing all along this will take a firmware fix. I think you just confirmed it.

 

Dell-Bill you are doing a good work here. and i never say something if i dont mean it. I hope you keep it up. even if this new driver works its only something. issues remain. give it a go for ATIs as well as soon as this new nvidia driver comes out.


Claxdog did you face any fps drops in those games you tried? thus i would like to ask you as i dont know if you had red spikes indepedently of gpus overclocking downclocking.

 

I didnt notice any fps drops while i was playing. I have had my pc on all morning doing school work playing games booking my Jamaica trip and I have not had my latency go over 1483.Just pushed the eject button spiked to 8000.

 

well thats more than interesting.

as for my question i meant if you had red spikes indepedently of gpus downclocking or overclocking BEFORE you install this driver.

 

The whole OSD/AlienFX controller/CommandCenter stuff is very brittle. In fact, all that Alienware exclusive stuff doesn't work as advertised:

• The OSD sometimes works and sometimes just goes out to lunch and doesn't respond. For example, Fn-F4/F5 would stop working to control the screen brightness for a while, sometimes the OSD does show, some other times it doesn't.
• The alienhead now only lights after the AlienFX process starts after booting (after installing and removing the latest CommandCenter).
  
• My first R1 got replaced because one of those CommandCenter upgrades fried the AlienFX controller.
  
• AlienFusion stopped working months ago and I don't even care calling to figure out why it doesn't because I've never needed it to work anyway.
  
• Don't even think about using the stealth mode because it'll take you a while to really get out of that mode.
  
• Wireless network suddenly drops and it takes a while to figure out that it was because I turned off the radio unintentionally when I "flicked" that hair and dust from under the screen "near" the strip.

Anyway, hopefully the new driver will get rid of the powermizer issue and the sudden drop of FPS in MW2 will disappear.

 

you are right but all those are secondary. the main purpose of this machine is gaming. thats why we paid so much. all those must be fixed after the ATI - nvidia drivers. if you cant wait just dont install anything of those or have them disabled until we see what will appear from Dell

thus as far as i understand this driver comes directly from nvidia (as it should anyway) and Dell engineers are just testing this so even if it works i wouldnt put credits to Dell engineers. However i hope they will test it as they should this time.

 

OK, guys. First, apology is in order. We have been bouncing an email string around all afternoon talking about the what/how/when of the beta release. In the very first email, one sentence clearly said, "no support for 60hz in the Nvidia Control Panel." I completely mis-read that and mentally omitted the "no" part. There will be no support for 60Hz. Sorry about that.

On to the rest. We are ready to release the beta driver shortly- I believe within the hour. I will update the thread with the link as soon as it is live.

 

I agree, just as secondary as the eject button causing a spike, which is why I mentioned all that.

 

Make sure you are on the Windows mass storage controller driver, BIOS A03, and the latest Dell WLAN driver before installing the beta. They are getting sign off now. Should be live in a few. I'm waiting for the link. I think it will be on the Drivers and Downloads page.

 

This also makes me unsure that this will do anything at all. If when using both of the cards we still have stuttering problems, what makes them think that a new driver for nvidia GPUs will fix the problem? Its not just going to magically fix the problems the ATI users are having. I think that it will lessen the problems with nvidia systems down to what the ATi's are doing, but not fix it completely. Unless I'm missing something here and this fix will do more than that, I'm not confident in this attempt to solve the stuttering problem. A bit negative but thats what happen when your expensive laptop isn't working how it should be for several months...

 

Thanks for the updates Bill. This thread has moved so rapidly and without your presence and updates we would not be here today. I, and many others, are happy to see this level of response. Thanks again!

 

No worries. Glad to help, and we'll get to the ATI and OSD stuff.

 

Bill, maybe you can answer this for me. Whenever I attempted to run the dell tool to remove nVidia storage controller drivers I get the "Your system does not meet the specifications required to run this utility."

I am clearly running the nVidia raid drivers and the nVidia Serial ATA Controller... Is this error because I am running Raid0? I have read on and off on John B's blog but did not see a resolution but several people reported the same error....

 

I believe if you are in RAID, you should leave the Nvidia storage driver in tact. Thanks for bringing that up. Let me know what happens with the beta in your case.

 

I really want to second that! My thanks too.

 

And away we go....

"The driver has been externally promoted it can take up to 4 hours to show up on the support site, but normally is up within an hour."

Should show up soon on our Drivers and Downloads site.

I hope it fixes enough of the latency to be called a positive step. I will stay engaged here until we get it all taken care of.

 

what you miss here is that its an nvidia display driver and not a nvidia chipset driver. so when using the ATIs it will be like not being there. so simple.

it is because of the raid configuration. removing or adding raid is not so simple. you have to disable raid in bios and then reinstall os if you want to use this remover.

i think your questions to them really speed things up .

 

ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/video/NVIDIA_NOTEBOOK-BETA-DRIVER-_P03_R261769.exe

this?? haha i cant wait for it to show, just search at the ftp site

 

Thanks Bill!

 

Just checked, not live yet. LOL! I am eager... I think I am going to go for a drive and hope the driver goes live while I am out. If I can have a working laptop this weekend, I just might cry.

 

Hold up a minute. I think there might be some order of install questions I need to clear up. Gimme just a minute.

 

sorry yeah I had red spikes due to clock change before.

 

Yes, that's the one. I just found out this is a 2-part fix. You will need to install that video driver that Heah already sleuthed out on the ftp site, then do the PhysX card update second after a reboot. The PhysX driver is coming shortly. They will have it promoted in a few minutes.

 

erm, 2 late i installed it, n yes its working, powermizer worked for both 280ms and dpc is nice

EDIT: i havent install any physx driver, but it seems diff from wad bill says, powermizer is working like a charm, but of cuz the eject button spike is still there as expected. perhaps the next driver to b fixed will b the chipset driver?

 

Untill recently I was not an ati user so did not keep track. Are we certain that stutters afflicting ati users are caused by the same thing?

It must be something else, because the dpc/stutter problem can easily be linked to powermizer.

 

Heah, how did you install it? Did you do a direct install over the existing driver or did you perform a clean install?

Be sure, once the driver is up on the support site for the M17x, to review the notes.

 

i've uninstalled all nvidia drivers (chipset, gpu etc), then boot to safe mode, use driver sweeper to clear all the junks, then reboot to normal windows 7 and install chipset without the NVIDIA storage driver, followed by graphic driver, then restart, thats it

EDIT: removed some crap, n yes it does clock down to 200 119 400

 

I get 200 120 400 for low clocks

 

Very interesting. 200/100 is the lowest clock rate. Keep in mind, the current version of GPUz has a slight delay in showing current clock rates. I have been using v0.3.6 which does not have this issue.

Also, with W7, you will see more changes in clock rates vs. Vista due to the changes in DWM which controls the Aero/Glass look. Don't worry about it - the clocks will reach 200/100. Just leave GPUz open to confirm and sit idle on the desktop for a moment.

 

No, we're on the same page. The PhysX driver will be up shortly. Not sure if it's required to address latency, but the engineers are saying do them both and do the video driver first. So, you're good.

Shutting down, and heading home. Will check back on things in a bit.