M17x DPC Latency

ok its a usb mouse? its microsoft?

thus can you scroll the pdf file inside stamatisx test? in fullscreen please.

 

I used the most up to date physx driver on the nvidia website and I had on there previously, I never unistalled it.

 

the version I have is 9.09.1112

 

that is the same version I am using.

 

My computer seems to have stopped having audio problems, but I'm still regularly getting 8k spikes... it's not a constant stream of greens like some of you are getting.

How do I know if the beta properly installed? I check my uninstall windows and it lists the Nvidia Driver version as 1.10.

 

No one seems to be having the startup screen that Im having: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoliNUVE2W8
I'm conpletley sure its related with the new driver for i rolled back to my previous driver 186.82 and it was ok, back to the new beta and i get the same screen on bootup.

 

Let me understand, your audio is fine, your fps are fine, but the problem is you arent getting a stream of green lines on dpc lat checker?

Imho ppl shouldnt care of DPC checker, i mean, if you dont have a problem, your pc runs fine, dont get paranoid cause dpc checker gives you red spikes, im pretty sure 99% of ppl never used DPC checker on other laptops and dont know probably any laptos gives some huge spike, the important thing should be your pc running smooth, no audio noise, no fps drops. Just check carefully if audio/fps are fine.

Im downloading the driver now, hoping for no audio stutter.

Just a suggestion, when installing something read the notes.
I think someone posted them before too, but you can see them on dell's site.

"Known Issues:
1) If a clean driver install is performed (e.g. remove old driver, reboot, install beta driver, reboot), you may experience some brief LCD color cycling and horizontal flickering lines during the Windows startup process on the initial boot with the beta driver. This occurs briefly and will go away after you have logged in to Windows (fix will be available soon).
2) No support for 60Hz refresh rate
3) Ejecting the optical drive will cause a spike in DPC latency (fix will be available soon). "

Dont take me bad, i didnt want to be annoying.
Also remember that we are trying a beta, it isnt bug free (well, not even release are bug free...).

 

Could it be to the higher polling frequency of your gaming mouse? Gaming mice tie up the bus a lot more than a standard intellimouse for example.

 

I have set up my pc to turn off the display after 10 minutes or so, but everytime I move the mouse to turn it back on I get a single ~16k-ish spike that pauses sound.

 

that's normal.

 

After one hour of testing with the new driver i got these results.

Absolute maximum dpc spike 1405. I didn't hear any audio stutter, stop, noise etc.

I played 2 youtube videos 1080p side by side on chrome, 1 internet streaming radio, 1 mp3 with windows media player, scrolled a bit some .pdf, repeatdly opened and close browser windows, moved mouse around fast and randomly (setted on 500hz ill test if the 1000hz setting will give problems).

I'll play some games later, but i never had any fps problem, so i dont think ill get now.

About dpc lat, i never got any red spike (normal usage, i dont even read ppl talking about red spike when the notebook is going out of sleep or ejecting the dvd, i have seen so many laptops acting strange in these situations, i know too well that these are critical stuff and dont matter in testing (or real usage)), so, no red spikes, some yellow, rare, about 1 bigger green every 15 seconds. Also would like to add that the using the System Temp monitoring software (HWmonitor), results in some more bigger green spikes, never red.

I'd say atm its everything all right, just the only thing is that when i installed the beta driver it seemed to mess up with the nvidia ethernet driver (yellow ! on the device manager), just had to reinstall that driver.

Ill probably do a format and clean install of everything in these days.

 

I used his test playing 2 1080p youtube videos, mp3 with visualizer, scrolled with pdf fullscreen for 30 secs constantly. Not one red spike. Here's a screenshot after the test.

 

I've done pretty much the same tests as in the posts above - No red spikes. Just from the eject button now which isn't even worth my time to think about.
Seems they did a good job with the driver - Not having much knowledge in the driver department i'm just hoping they haven't done anything to decrease performance.

 

Performance wise, running 3dmark vantage I scored 500 more points then with 186.82 drivers. One big downside atm is that I need to press the F8 everyboot

 

Finally..
A03 and the 196.86 beta drivers resolved all latency/stutter issues of my M17x.

Thanks NBR!

 

Me Dos!!!! Wooo

 

I'm pretty sure they saw it. A few of them are watching the Nvidia thread and this one. I know they're keen to pick up on anything that shows how AW engineers were instrumental in getting some movement on this, such as a Clevo owner modding our inf and posting results.

Have you got a copy of Win7, or interested in seeing what happens in Win7 instead of Vista?

Long lunch. Back in a couple of hrs.

 

guys can someone please try to reproduce my tests...

switch off SLI, monitor your GPU clock, let your GPU clock down to the minimum state, and suddenly stress it with a movie or 3d application. I'm getting single 18k spikes when the GPU goes up from level 1 to level 4 clock, but all other transitions are clean.

seems like there is still a DPC problem when the GPU jumps up clock rate too fast. you wont be able to reproduce this if you run a thousand different applications at once, you need to let your GPU downclock to the minimum

 

hehehe thanks Bill, my pleasure

 

Yes there are still DPC spikes with the new drivers. But it is MUCH MUCH better than before. I dont notice any audio stuttering anymore unless i stress out the laptop.

Nicely done.

 

You can pop out the nicely done once you get a working final whql driver

 

I still think we need to get an updated nvidia chipset driver released as I don't think the video driver is the ONLY cause of issue.

So, this updated vid. driver is good and a step in the right direction... but now Alienware needs to focus more on the chipset driver and then the OSD driver.

*cracks whip

D.

 

please run the test exactly as stamatisx says and upload there this dpcisr for all of us to see.

 

i still have 16k spikes running 3dmark vantage if anyone is interested.

 

I agree. It looks like the Nvidia gpus are now where the ATI gpus are at. Time to start working on the chipset! I occasionally get a spike above 5000, but I shouldn't.

It's good that Dell is working on this and that has restored a little faith, but definitely not all. They are actively working to stop the bleeding, but the question is how are they going to deal with the damage to their reputation.

I was sold a laptop with a known issue they ignored. Do they want my business next time? The answer might not necessarily be yes on either side, only the post fix response will tell. There are some guys here that deserve a lot for their work and they should be especially recognized. How will Dell respond post fix?

I wrote this on my S10-3T and dpc checker is all green from the start and it is a netbook tablet!

 

nvidia chipset is thought to be fixed by removing the chipset controller right? loool

thus i dont think nvidia will spend time for a unique chipset. dont forget powermizer was an issue on many notebooks.

the next steps should be:

1) fix the ATI driver as it also causes red spikes when scrolling big pdf files or resizing-switching windows. the driver is very old as well. the nvidia driver is now almost the latest. do it for your ATIs too. it will be for the R2 too.
2) and then OSD.

3) and then chipset if they are willing to.

4) finally what is going on with the command center? will it be unique for all R1 R2, m15x? or not?

I have to confess regarding the new nvidia driver that things seem to be good now. So well done for this because we have to recongize good actions as well. Maybe the R1 will be red spikes free in 1 year. lool

 

I wasn't even having serious problems before this driver after going to A03 properly. Well done, Bill and. . . Dell/Nvidia engineering department.

Of course, this is a BETA driver, and there are finer touches that need to be introduced, but at least these guys have taken a stride in the right direction.

 

Just installed the new beta driver and tried some music and some light games - no stutters or crackles.

I believe a further well done to Bill and to anyone else involved has been earned. It may not be completly fixed to some people, but I'm very happy with the fix thus far.

 

"BatBoy has exceeded their stored private messages quota and can not accept further messages until they clear some space."

...and Dell Bill B is almost there. hehe.

 

Appreciate the kind words, but I'm still in humbled mode after my first post on this thread.

 

here comes the first confirmation that overclocking of ATIs also causes red spikes. it was never as serious as with nvidia gpus so no one bothered. look the gpuz sensor and at the same time the red spike.
Stamatisx this was when i open firefox in fullscreen!

Have a look Dell-Bill

http://i49.tinypic.com/2h3sf2u.jpg

 

I don't think that's overclocking. I get the same kind of spikes when using firefox or pdf's and I'm not overclocked.

 

Oops. Let me fix that right now... LOL

EDIT: FIXED. PM Away.

 

then what do you think it is?

here is for downclocking. the relation between clocks and spikes is not absolute but you can see the gpus downclocking in more steps than nvidias.

http://i45.tinypic.com/10p6n85.jpg

while scrolling large pdf files i get not change on the clocks as well. dont know what is wrong with this machine..

 

I see a 2.9K spike here, I don't consider it as a problem though.

 

as for audio stuttering of course not. but..


here are the red spikes when just open the gpuz. gpuz always loads with the gpus at full clocks just for a while

http://i46.tinypic.com/spudmx.jpg


what i am saying here is that ATI driver is not as good as Dell may think. it needs to be fixed and updated. i cant understand why notebook drivers should remain so old.. especially for a gaming notebook. of course not all red spikes are related to it.

 

One thing about that checker - its a tool which was designed by someone to test their own drivers. While it does provide a visual, there are other tools which are far more accurate. This quote is dead-on accurate:

Now here is the kicker... even some of Microsoft's components violate their own 100μs limit.

 

ATI issues are on my list. Thanks for the screenie.

 

thank you too Bill

here is also another screen. look how much clocks are related to red spikes.

the first red spikes are when open gpuz (clocks at full speed for a while) and the second ones when scrolling pdf files when the clocks also change. PDF SCROLLING RED SPIKES ARE ALSO RELATED TO ATIs clocks. i had to press the selection to refresh the gpuz when on background to see that

http://i48.tinypic.com/1h7aww.jpg

 

While I agree that serious audio and visual stutters shouldn't be accepted, I also believe that thanks to programs like DPC latency Checker, hysteria and pickyness have ascended to impractical levels.

I remember when I was using the M1730 for multitracking and mixing audio. Hell, we even did videos on that machine. No worries. Suddenly, someone makes a thread about DPC latency via the latency checker, and the machine was deemed a complete failure for tasks pertaining to any level of audio or video editing. This did not happen because it was stuttering like mad on its own componenets, and not because it was actually giving problems with videos after the cheap BIOS-based lightshow would be switched off. This happened because DPC checker revealed graphs that promoted worry and chaos without any signficant numbers of real-world issues that hindered experience in a manner that latency would hinder.

I am not trying to say that genuine cases are false. I am not trying to say that genuine audio stutter should be ignored. However, complaints about a red on the checker, and silly things like audio pops when the system wakes up; these complaints do not belong in practical real-world use and application. Will I be listening to my music while constantly putting it to sleep and bringing it back out? Would I be playing videos and music while hammering my machine's eject button as though I am finger-fretting an Eddie Van Halen solo? NO!

 

yes this is true. but its just the sense that everything works ok or not. thus scrolling pdf files stucks while doing it with full speed.

watching how good desktops work on this part makes you wonder why i dont have it on a 3000 dollars notebook? its its price that makes you demand the best. dont you think? as i said to many people via pm if it had serious issues i wouldnt wait for fixes or anything and i would move the legal way if Dell didnt reply as it should

and be sure that i tolerate stuff like bios loading with fans at full speeds when it wants or the fact that my motherboard burnt 3 months after i bought it or the right speaker led which became dead due to unknown reason. I highly appreciate Dell service which is the fastest i have seen and replaced my motherboard and the leds very fast.

They initially refused to swap to ATIs but i have my way to persuade them. be sure for that.

 

This has nothing to do with good desktops.

I said, genuine stutters and issues of that sort are real.

Non-issues like odd crap whilst doing odd crap to the machine is just. . . odd.

Understand me on this, I am not condemning real problems, or real complaints.

This is why I also start to wonder when I make such a comment, why people get defensive. . . until and unless they're really ticked off, or they've got fickle motives. I digress, however; both ways, they're missing the point.

 

So are the improvement on both Vista and W7 or just W7 ? I have to do a clean install and have the choice to install any of the two.

 

the real issues were the nvidia gpus and i was waiting for them to be fixed before i post some things about ATIs. Because some people are more patient than me and waited and they deserve it.

My point is that everything should work ok. dpc latency is not there for nothing. Not real issue from your point of view but its still an issue.

 

Totally agreed! It's painful, but it's the fact that technology is never gonna be perfect.

At least I can use my M17x properly now

 

I do not have a copy of W7, but would love to see what happens with one. What do you have in mind Bill?

 

Yes. The GPU driver will resolve the latency spike which results in audio interrupt. Install either OS. Be aware:

 

Batboy who told you this about eject button?

its not only the eject button but all the touch panel buttons except those for music-sound. also enable disable touchpad causes red spikes of the same range. let the eject button be fixed first anyway.

any news if the new command center will come out or not?

 

Quote from ADDITIONAL INFORMATION on Driver Release Page:

 

Okay.

No offence, but your post is proof that you can't grasp my point of view at the moment. Did I say DPC latency is not a real issue? No. It is a real issue to me by every standard. So what did I say? Funny stress tests, are not really funny. I am not interested in someone popping in and saying, "Hey, it gives a red bar when it wakes up! Issue is not fixed!" - "Okay, so do you like your machine to remain in a perpetual state of 'waking up'? Is that your concept of normal 'okay' function?!" It's a silly approach. Start from the basics and the real issues that effect proper fucntionality, which I don't deny weren't there in the past. Now on that front, progress has been made towards fixing things. The Nvidia treatment is a large step in that direction.