M17x r1 dpc latency issues?

A friend of mine just bought an m17x r1 for a decent price. Specs are:
QX9300
4gb ddr3
gtx 280m sli
2x 500gb hdd

I was thinking about telling him to return his purchase because ive heard of ppl having the stuttering issues with the r1 series. Has this issue been solved? If so could you guys tell me a solution to it? Cheers

 

A simple search would get you this

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/434691-m17x-dpc-latency.html

 

Nonsense mate his system will eat what's in your sig.
Mine has a little better specs and performs like a beast. Reading some threads around here first will be better than saying no to a good machine.

cheers

 

I know its a good machine but eating my laptop is an exageration. The problem is this guy doesnt have much of an idea of troubleshooting wen it comes to computers and I want him to have a stable machine because hes not a hardcore gamer. Im just wondering if this has been fixed because the thread is too long for me to go through :/

 

The thread referenced by Dave-P. It's already been solved. Most of the Dell beta drivers and all verde drivers incorporate this fix. Besides, it mainly gives these issues when downclocking -- shouldn't really affect his gaming. Then again, others have reported random pops in audio, so there's still no harm with using the Dell beta drivers, or alternatively, BatBoys modified drivers.

The R1 is one mean beast! Just a tad bit neglected by Dell, and that's where utilities like UncleWebb's ThrottleStop can help cope with the problem.

 

Thnx man just wat i needed i guess. How does throttlestop help with the dpc latency stuff?

 

TS prevents your CPU from throttling,you can find a guide here.
I will advise you\him to uninstall and remove any remainders of the display drivers and as stated above install the Dell beta ones P06(you can find them on their site)
upgrade his BIOS to the A06 also on Dell's site.

And as for

Please run a benchmark on both systems and you shall see for yourself.

Cheers

 

Its like a gtx 280 vs 5770, difference isnt worlds apart.

 

Numbers talk for themselves!

 

Hello;

I am wondering if I may have DPC problems. Currently when I game the system doesn't stutter (that I notice) anymore.

When I play with WoW SLI disabled I have this:
http://img841.imageshack.us/img841/3570/m17xr1single.png

When I play WoW with SLI enabled I have this:
http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/7611/m17xr1sli.png

I realize Warcraft isn't really optimized for SLI, but this same behaviour occurs when I play other games. At the very least having both cards active is a nice way to distribute heat. Since when a single GPU gets hot the fan comes on and it is super noisy.
But I am wondering if the DPC in the red could be preventing slightly higher FPS.

Currently I am running the non-Beta video drivers from DELL. I started playing RIFT and that game was complaining about out-of-date video card drivers.

I am wondering if this DPC issue is even worth bringing up. Advice would be helpful.

Also would upgrading to a qx9300 be worth it? I figure my CPU is the bottleneck for my FPS scores. How high is a stable overclock for the qx9300?

Specs:
Two IDE Hard Drives in Raid 0 - one of which has been replaced because of clicking noises
GeForce GTX 280M x2 in SLI - one of which has been replaced because fan failure
Q9000 (2ghz) - overclocked to 2.1ghz - motherboard replaced; had random system freezes/crashes.
4gb RAM
M17x R1 with A06 bios.

Thanks for reading
--Betsuni

 

What Dell driver?

 

I changed from "197.84, P06" to "257.38, A03"

Also in the BIOS Hybrid is Off and Integrated is Off.
I'm exclusively using Discrete.

 

Well stay with the P06 for now and away from the Verde drivers from nVidia.

 

Not going to say you 'dont' have an issue but the second screenshot - unless you are seeing issues with the game, those red spikes will not generate a audio issue which you will normally be able to hear. I believe its closer to 10k and above.

Also, since this is WoW and we know WoW has always had issues with Dual GPU configs, something else to keep in mind.

As long as this is true -

Don't worry about it. Also take katalin's advice... stick with the P06

 

3dmark benchies are useless in this situation because it is so cpu dependant. In real world situations difference is not a astronomically big as those bechies imply.