[*Unresolved* Issue] Alienware M18x: GTX 580M SLI DPC Latency Problems

In many ways (playing games especially) NVIDIA is still the best. AMD drivers leave as much or more to be desired, but they don't have this particular problem.

 

Do you think so... I don't, I still have my doubt.

 

Yes, I do... although I wish my answer were different.

I was an ATI champion for years. They always made outstanding video cards. Following the 5870M CF that I had in the M17x R2 (the last AMD setup that I liked) I have had nothing but headaches with AMD video cards. Most of the headaches were driver and/or vBIOS issues. To be completely fair, AMD has a chance to make things right, but they have a lot of catching up to do in order to win me back. The 6000M series has really tarnished their image in my eyes.

On the other hand, my GTX 580M cards are working marvelously other than the DPC latency. I have a great deal of confidence that is going to get fixed with Dell's influence on NVIDIA. The visual quality of everything with the 580M SLI and PhysX is head and shoulders better looking than with the AMD cards. Games work better. All around just better with the 580M than the 6990M.

 

well... I don't have any problem on my system, but the DPC latency thing that is kinda cocono or jackity

 

What's interesting is before the A04 bios, I never had a latency problem with any driver. I explained this in the last team green conference call and they were aware/confirmed this problem. But could not elaborate on what changes were made in A04.

 

I installed A03 after my M18x came back from the depot. The new mobo had A00, which is not compatible with GTX 580M SLI. After installing A03 I checked for DPC latency. A03, at least on my system, had DPC latency every bit as bad as A04 and A05 do. I went with A05 since there was nothing particularly good about A03.

I don't think the A03 BIOS was fully compatible with GTX 580M SLI. I have a hunch that A04 was intended to make the NVIDIA cards functional and DPC latency was something that had to be sacrificed because of issues with the NVIDIA drivers that cause DPC latency.

 

Ohh Ok Fox, It Is A Great Thing To Interact With Boddy Like You Guy!!!

 

What happened to this thread? :-S

 

Well Dell said they will push nvidia to fix it, thats the best we can hope for so give it time.

 

Don't be worried yet. There is always a bit of lag while they are working on the solution. Be patient. We saw similar lulls in activity while they were working on the Aero/OSD bug, the AMD 6990M overheating and thermal shutdown, and the 580M throttling. They have come through for us on each of those things. The wildcard here is NVIDIA, since a big portion (if not all) of the responsibility is theirs for fixing their drivers. Give it a week or two, or three.

Also consider this. Dell's recommended driver (269.03) is not Dell tweaked. It is merely validated and approved by Dell, but it is a 100% standard NVIDIA reference driver. Since that driver was released there have been a ton of new game releases, most of which had issues with both AMD and NVIDIA cards. Verde 269.03 is the newest driver NVIDIA has provided that passes Dell quality standards, so 269.03 is the latest Dell recommended driver. I'm actually glad Dell cares enough not to "validate" or "recommend" crappy drivers.

Also consider that every NVIDIA driver released since the Dell recommended driver has been tweaked by NVIDIA to provide an improved user experience with the new game releases. How do we know that it's not something NVIDIA had to do to a driver to fix a game performance issue at the expense of DPC latency? We don't know that for sure and if they go back and fix the DPC latency and break somebody's favorite game in the process, they will simply be switching customer groups that are not happy. They may be catering to the largest audience and ignoring the issue that has been identified by fewer customers. Don't get me wrong, I want it all, but it may take time to get it right.

 

obligatory

 

Hmmmmmm. That video has tooooo muuuch DPC latency. Hehehehehe

 

I would like to say that skygunner27 is my new conscience lol

We decided to test if the 460M's had an SLI DPC latency...and oh boy does it have it.

Here is a pic i took from the DPC program:

 

Thank you for posting.

Here's my 580M SLI latency.
http://i.imgur.com/VT4iP.png

 

DELLChrisM what cooking with the DPC Lt. thing ehh, can you increase the fire in the kitchen or in the oven?. jocking

 

Would it be possible to update the OP with a list of games that a) can't run on Dell's older driver and/or b) games that work on our driver but have issues, with short descriptions of the issues?

 

Games that I know that have glitches or poor performance on 269.03 are Crysis 2, BF3( NOT PLAYABLE), Rage, Batman:AC, Alice Madness Returns(update to date) and Saints Row:The Third. 269.03 also lacks SLI profiles for a lot of recent titles(MW3,SR3). As far as I know some of these games run on 269.03. Just not very good. There has been a significant amount of improvements/fixes from 269.03 to 290.53.

I'm sure most of these problems can be substantiated by looking at the change log/release notes of every driver released after 269.03 to 290.53.
BF3: Massive performance issues, artifacts, random crashing to the desktop.
SR3: Massive performance issues, random crashing to the desktop.
Rage: Massive performance issues, artifacts, glitches.
Crysis 2: Massive performance issues, artifacts, HDR & bloom effects problem that causes flickering.
Batman AC: Massive performance issues, artifacts, PhysX problems, random crashing to the desktop, DX11.
Alice Madness Returns: artifacts from old 269.03 PhysX
Saints Row 3: Massive performance issues, artifacts, random crashing to the desktop.

While some of these problems have been patched by a developers released update, they still require a more up to date driver than 269.03 to finalize the patch in accordance with Nvidia's driver.

269.03 also has the 3D Prototype error more frequently than 290.53. I called in and explained this problem to a level I to have this problem on file. I explained the problem through AlienContact and mentioned that I was working with Dell here in the threads to find a solution to both problems. He said that he was aware of who you and Chris are and that he would forward the data over to Chris and a level 3.
Hopefully a mod can edit/add to the OP.



Here's an example not including 3D Vision and the fixes/changes made from 269.03 to pre-285.27
New in Release 285.27

Performance

•Increases performance for GeForce 400 and 500-series GPUs in several PC games vs. v280.26 WHQL drivers. The following are some examples of improvements measured on Windows 7. Results will vary depending on your GPU and system configuration:

GeForce GTX 580:
◦Up to 5% in Call of Duty: Black Ops
◦Up to 7% in Civilization V with SLI
◦Up to 5% in Crysis 2 DX11 with SLI
◦Up to 7% in F1 2010 with SLI
◦Up to 5% in Lost Planet 2 with SLI
◦Up to 5% in Mafia 2 with SLI
◦Up to 13% in Metro 2033 with SLI
◦Up to 8% in STALKER: Call of Pripyat with SLI
◦Up to 5% in StarCraft II (Check out the finals of the GeForce StarCraft II Pro/Am Tournament)
GeForce GTX 560:
◦Up to 4% in Bulletstorm
◦Up to 5% in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 with SLI
◦Up to 6% in Call of Duty: Black Ops
◦Up to 5% in Crysis 2 DX11 with SLI
◦Up to 7% in Dragon Age 2 with SLI
◦Up to 7% in F1 2010 with SLI
◦Up to 5% in Just Cause 2 with SLI
◦Up to 5% in Lost Planet 2 with SLI
◦Up to 4% in Mafia 2 with SLI
◦Up to 7% in Metro 2033 with SLI
◦Up to 11% in STALKER: Call of Pripyat with SLI
◦Up to 7% in StarCraft IINVIDIA PhysX

•Updates PhysX System Software to version 9.11.06.21.
HD Audio

•Updates HD Audio driver to version 1.2.24.0.

New in Release 285.38

•Increases performance in Battlefield 3 by up to 38%i.
•Improves overall stability and image quality in Battlefield 3.<<---
•Improves performance and compatibility in id Software’s RAGE. <<---
•Added or updated SLI profiles for Battlefield 3, Dead Island, Diablo III, Dragon Age 2, Need for Speed: The Run, and Saints Row: The Third.
•Fixed a performance regression found with 285.27 beta in Crysis 2 (DirectX 9). <<---


New in R285.62 Drivers

•This is the recommended driver for Battlefield 3. It contains several performance and compatibility enhancements for the final release of the game. Check here to see if your PC is ready for Battlefield 3.<<---
•This is also the recommended and enhanced driver for Batman: Arkham City and RAGE. <<---
[/B]•Check here to see if your PC is ready for Batman: Arkham City
•Contains a fix for the driver timeouts reported with the R285 beta drivers

Performance

•Increases performance for GeForce 400 and 500-series GPUs in several PC games vs. v280.26 WHQL drivers. The following are some examples of improvements measured on Windows 7. Results will vary depending on your GPU and system configuration:
GeForce GTX 580:

◦Up to 6% in Battlefield 3
◦Up to 5% in Call of Duty: Black Ops
◦Up to 7% in Civilization V with SLI
◦Up to 5% in Crysis 2 DX11 with SLI
◦Up to 7% in F1 2010 with SLI
◦Up to 5% in Lost Planet 2 with SLI
◦Up to 5% in Mafia 2 with SLI
◦Up to 13% in Metro 2033 with SLI
◦Up to 8% in STALKER: Call of Pripyat with SLI
◦Up to 5% in StarCraft 2
GeForce GTX 560:

◦Up to 4% in Bulletstorm
◦Up to 5% in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 with SLI
◦Up to 11% in Battlefield 3
◦Up to 6% in Call of Duty: Black Ops
◦Up to 5% in Crysis 2 DX11 with SLI
◦Up to 7% in Dragon Age 2 with SLI
◦Up to 7% in F1 2010 with SLI
◦Up to 5% in Just Cause 2 with SLI
◦Up to 5% in Lost Planet 2 with SLI
◦Up to 4% in Mafia 2 with SLI
◦Up to 7% in Metro 2033 with SLI
◦Up to 11% in STALKER: Call of Pripyat with SLI
◦Up to 7% in StarCraft 2NVIDIA PhysX

•Updates PhysX System Software to version 9.11.06.21.
NVIDIA SLI

•Added or updated SLI profiles for Battlefield 3, Dead Island, Diablo III, Dragon Age 2, Need for Speed: The Run, and Saints Row: The Third.
HD Audio

•Updates HD Audio driver to version 1.2.24.0.

OpenGL

•Adds support for OpenGL 4.2 for GeForce 400 series and 500 series GPUs.

New in Version 285.79

•Includes several bug fixes and performance improvements for Battlefield 3.<<---
◦Fixes cases of irregular performance (stuttering) primarily seen on DirectX 10 GPUs. The fix improves the performance of both DX10 and DX11 GPUs.<<---
◦Fixes shadow map corruption seen with DirectX 10 GPUs <<---.
◦Fixes cases of black corruption lines/triangles with DirectX 10 GPUs.<<---
•Fixes black screen during playback using Windows Media Center.
•Added or updated SLI profiles for the following games:
◦Aion v3.0
◦Anno 2070
◦Assassins Creed: Revelations
◦Bastion
◦Need for Speed: The Run
◦Payday: The Heist
◦The Adventures of Tintin
◦The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim

•Includes HD Audio driver 1.2.24.0.
•Includes PhysX System Software 9.11.06.21.



New in R290 Drivers

NVIDIA Ambient Occlusion

•Adds NVIDIA Control Panel ambient occlusion support for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. See the comparison screenshots on GeForce.com.
•Adds NVIDIA Control Panel ambient occlusion support for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. See the comparison screenshots on GeForce.com.
NVIDIA PhysX

•Updates PhysX System Software to version 9.11.11.07 for the best PhysX experience in Batman: Arkham City.
NVIDIA SLI

•Added or updated SLI profiles for Crysis 2, Heroes and Generals, Inversion, Stronghold 3, and Syndicate.

Some Key Bug Fixes

•Fixes random flickering as Windows boot logo is loading or fading away.
•Fixes corruption in Crysis 2 with SLI and lower quality shadow settings.<<---
•Fixes ability to set Surround resolutions to 5760x1080 using custom resolutions.
•Fixes some random instances of triangular artifacts when playing Battlefield 3.<<---

•Fixes corruption seen in Settlers 7 with 275.33 drivers . <<---



New in 290.53

Optimizations for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

•Increases performance by up to 25% in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs. 290.36 drivers (measured with GeForce GTX 560 at 19x10 Ultra – Indoor Scene). Results will vary depending on your GPU, system configuration, and in-game location.
•Updates the NVIDIA Control Panel ambient occlusion support for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to a higher performance profile.
•Added new 3D Vision laser sight /crosshair options to better match Skyrim crosshairs.
•For a full Skyrim tweak guide, visit GeForce.com.
NVIDIA SLI

•Adds SLI profiles for Trine 2, WRC 2: FIA World Rally Championship 2011, and Afterfall: InSanity.


Key Bug Fixes

•Fixes some random instances of triangular artifacts when playing Battlefield 3 (fix is now enabled for GeForce 400 and 500 series GPUs). <<---
•Fixes a default panel resolution/ timing bug in 290.36. <<---

Add Skyrim to that list.

Thanks Bill.

 

BF3 won't even open unless you have 283 or newer. It displays an error message asking you to upgrade to the latest video drivers.

 

Thank you, I forgot to add that.

 

and syrim run like crap.

oh Dell-Bill_B, you are the guy i thought i was taking to.

 

So, the green is also bad now? BTW, it has nothing to do with your system, the game itself is pretty buggy and it will take Bethesda quite a bit more tweaking and patching before you can say "it's flawless".

 

Yep...on the whole, I think 290.53 play Skyrim prety well.....apart from the Bethesda "bugs"....

 

yeah prety well. but with my 6990M it use to run at 36/60 FPS, and I don't think it was running in Xfire.

 

It still doesn't run in Xfire, but who cares, as long as I'm getting 60fps+.

 

hey ikimox, I remember that I ask you about The DPC LT. and you talk me that the 580M still have it, thanm I regret not listen to you.

 

Main reason I didn't go green. Latency is not something I'd be willing to negotiate about, even if the 580m were 2x more powerful.

 

latency will get fixed though . lets hope ATI keeps their promise and gives better game support for 2012. we already have xfire support for max payne 3 : p.

 

Can we please try and keep this thread constructive? All these OT posts are just going to make it harder for the engineers reading this threat to find the info thats of use to them to help fix it.

 

This is my original message:
"Hi guys,

First of all I want to mention that I am a complete noob.I have a very strange problem that is completely driving me mad.There is very strange sound coming from the speakers pretty often.Its hard to explain but it sound like a mixture of a falling water drop sound with echo and some electronic sound.usually it happens after the pc has been idle for a bit.And after the sound happens the fans usually kick in a bit.Is there a way to turn it off somehow?Please help me because it is driving me crazy.Thank you very much in advance for any response.I hope to hear from yall soon.

p.s. my system has 2nvidia gtx580 sli gpu

p.p.s. I am very sorry for my english/grammar."

Mr.Aikimox have responded to me and recommended to write in this thread because it is dedicated to latency problems.Is there a way to turn off that strange sound?

 

Sorry for making non-constructive comments. Constructively speaking, from my personal testing (had a couple of green M18x in the past few months), the core of the problem is related to the way the GPU changes its clocks, something to do with Powermizer feature. All the red spikes of 8k+ where happening when the cards switched the clocks from the low to high states. Forcing the clocks to max "fixed" the issue. I didn't do much testing after that, was enough for me to get the unpleasant dejavu.

 

That's dpc latency or the IDT control panel's power save mode.

 

From what I have understand by reading the thread if it is dps latency it should not be at present with nvidia 269.03 drivers.I have double checked the driver version from the nvidia control panel and it says that I have 269.03 installed... =(

I have checked the IDT power management is off on my computer.Are there any other suggestions ?Thank you.

 

I don't know how you continue to stay on 269.03. That driver is horrible for yesterday/todays games. You are right, dpc latency doesn't effect 269.03. Maybe some one else may have a suggestion.

 

I am using Verde 285.62 WHQL and it's a mystery to me how it ever got past Microsoft's qualification lab. It, as well as the beta drivers, including their most current hot and steamy colon loaf (290.53) not only have DPC latency issues, but also problems with TDR on some platforms. (Thankfully, the M18x is not suffering the TDR issues.) NVIDIA really needs to get their act together on this. The DPC latency makes their affected products unsuitable for multimedia editing and diminishes the quality of audio playback.

As far as games are concerned, I'm not finding any issues that I can pinpoint. The GTX 580M SLI is doing a superior job of gaming. In my view, there does not need to be a problem with gaming for the DPC latency issue to warrant resolution. If all I wanted was a gaming device I could save $3,000 by using an XBOX or PS3.

The sad thing is that NVIDIA's irresponsible driver development is causing potentially irreversible financial harm to Dell (and any other OEM) that sells products with malfunctioning NVIDIA drivers. The average laptop/PC owner is a technologically unsavvy noob that only knows two things: (1) the brand name on the product; and, (2) something is not working correctly. The chances of the OEM selling that noob another product with the same brand name on it is diminished.

Here's what the DPC latency looks like with NVIDIA's latest and greatest WHQL "Certified" driver:

Spoiler

And, here's what it looks like with a video running...

Spoiler

Finally, here's an example of what lost future sales might look like to the uninformed noob that doesn't know better and thinks it's a Dell problem:

Spoiler

You would have thought NVIDIA might have learned a lesson from the last class action lawsuit, but it appears they haven't. It's got to be tough for a company like Dell, that truly cares about it's customers and their products, to have to work with a vendor that seems to not give a [insert expletive here] and considers the customer an "end user" without a name or a face.

 

I have suspected as much and I have been searching for a way to effectively disable PowerMizer to see if the DPC latency issue goes away. The second screen shot in my post above this one demonstrates exactly what you are referring to.

So far, nothing I have seen or tried works. The app (posted on this forum, in fact) called "PowerMizer Switch" was designed to disable it, but it does not work on the M18x. Also, registry hacking to disable PowerMizer does not work on the GTX 580M. There is also a tech document in the Dell Level 3 Engineering docs about disabling PowerMizer, but it does not apply to the M18x.

Disabling AMD PowerPlay also makes the 69XXM video cards work properly. I've always found CrossFire to be very buggy with PowerPlay enabled. AMD drivers crash far less frequently with PowerPlay disabled.

 

Problem is, even if we could disable Powermizer and PowerPlay, it wouldn't be a proper solution as the cards would always run hot and force the fans.

 

Yes, I agree with that comment. But, zeroing in on the problem and proving it to be the cause is a great first step in holding them accountable for fixing their messes.

It's too bad that the NVIDIA Control Panel does not include an option to disable PowerMizer like Catalyst Control Center does for PowerPlay. It would also be nice to have a way to turn of tessellation with the NVIDIA drivers.

NVIDIA is probably going to have to work closely with Microsoft to get their mess straightened out. DPC latency has become more of an issue in this post-Windows XP era. The way WDM handles things in Vista and Windows 7 has created some issues. Threaded DPCs are available in Windows Vista and later versions of Windows, and this is where things started to get complicated.

An ordinary DPC preempts the execution of all threads, and cannot be preempted by a thread or by another DPC. If the system has a large number of ordinary DPCs queued, or if one of those DPCs runs for a long time, every thread will remain paused for an arbitrarily long time. Thus, each ordinary DPC increases system latency, which can hurt the performance of time-sensitive applications, such as audio or video playback.

The NVIDIA driver might be the primary cause for the DPC latency, but it could be the way that driver is interacting with something in the Windows OS or another device driver that is resulting in the latency.

 

Try this (credit goes to miemens):

1.Open up Regedit and go to \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\********\0000\
The *'s will be random numbers. There will be a few of them, pick the one with the most stuff in it.
2.Create the 4 Powermizer keys (these will all be DWORD):
PerfLevelSrc
PowerMizerEnable
PowermizerLevel
PowermizerLevelAC
3.Change the values (double click on them) to:
PerfLevelSrc 3322
PowerMizerEnable 0
PowermizerLevel 1
PowermizerLevelAC 1
4.Reboot and Powermizer will be disabled!

 

Here's the problem(s) with doing this:

1. keeping track of these keys as nvidia driver updates come out.
2. making sure these key values don't change when new driver updates come out.
3. making sure these values don't somehow get deleted or reset when a new driver is installed.

It's a lot of work and upkeep for something that should instead be handled by the driver creator (nvidia).

If this does work, thanks for the short-term solution, but I refuse to muck up my registry, so I can't try this out.

 

This is just a tool for the green team to see if the latency is completely non-existent with powermizer disabled. It is not a solution.

 

Ah I see. Sorry for the confusion.

 

No worries. Just trying to be helpful and since I got rid of my green machines, can't do much more now.

 

I'm not sure if this is the same registry hack I already tried for disabling PowerMizer or not. The last one did not do anything, but I will try this in the next day or two. I am traveling at the moment and don't want to try something like this in the airport.

Edit: If what I read on the web was accurate, PowerMizer cannot be disabled with SLI, only with a single GPU. That may not be correct, but if it is, that may explain why the PowerMizer Switch and registry tweak had no effect on my system. I will still give it a shot anyway.

After running AMD cards for so many years, I am used to having to hack the registry to correct driver problems and make things work properly, LOL. I'm not afraid and worse case scenario (which is unlikely) I can delete the keys or reinstall the OS, so not a big deal to me.

 

Hello, folks, a quick question:
Do you have a HPET or High Precision Event Timer option in BIOS? It might be hidden with the official BIOS so probably someone that flashed a version with the unlocked menus can look for it, if there is one.

If you have it, it might be set to 64bit (or 32bit which i doubt), set it to Disabled or OFF and see if you still get high latency values. If there's no such option, then back to the drawing board :/

 

havent tried 'em out on this issue yet but here you go guys....

NVIDIA DRIVERS 295.51 BETA

 

I'm not sure how this would matter given that we don't present with the DCP issues when there's no nvidia drivers installed, or dell-certified nvidia drivers are installed.

 

Installed the latest Beta drivers from Nvidia...checked latency....no changes, in fact, it may be a tad worse....

Spoiler

 

It is worse.

 

This is ridiculous. If Dell 269.xx have no latency problems, surely to god its not rocket science for Nvidia to get things right so we can have up to date drivers for gaming without this PITA problem.