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

I had 2 systems. 1 with Intel wireless and one with the killer chipset. Both had the latency issue.

 

Just a thought too but although I am using Bigfoot official drivers, I am not using the latest one - I had read about some users having issues with the very latest set. The ones I am using are the ones just before the latest. You could give them a shot and see if it improves things....

 

guys just so you know that a recent WQHL driver is now out, my fingers are crossed for latency issues.

 

HOLY COW! - about time Nvidia......thanks for the heads up - +1 rep....lets hope it fixes things!

This one, right? - 295.73 WHQL

Graphics Driver - Verde 295.73 Driver - GeForce

In the meantime, whilst I download 'em, I applied Brother Fox's special family recipe using his method as outlined (only thing that I have done is to add a shortcut to the .bat and dropped it into the start folder) and it does appear to work!! - EXCELLENT WORK MR. FOX +1 rep to you buddy!
I left my system with some tunes playing and IE9 open with a few tabs, let it run for over 10mins and below was the result (which was previously impossible to achieve)

Spoiler

 

Thank you, Brother Steve. Glad to know I am not the only one it worked for.

 

Seems to work very well, did you notice any temp increases at all or anything else whislt using this fix Bro? - I will try the new WHQL driver later and see what gives with that......fingers crossed.

 

WOOT! 295.73 Seems to have fixed DPC latency!!!

The NVIDIA driver is not even showing up in LatencyMon!!! It seems to have reduced the hard page faults as well.

Glad we can un-stick this thread.

At around 00:04:30 into the test it spiked and the reference is the NDIS.SYS 6.20 driver.

Hope it fixed the 3D overlay problem, too.

With the Atheros AR8151 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller disabled in Device Manager:


A member of the NVIDIA Forums suggested something interesting that I might play with even though this appears to be fixed now.

 

Rats, it resurfaced at a little over 12 minutes. But, this is without the NVIDIA Inspector tweak I posted last night, so it's still a huge win. I am going to implement the "Fox Fix" again and see how long it can run without any evidence of an NVIDIA DPC issue. Overall, this is a happy day.

 

OK, VICTORY! Adding the batch file back into the Windows Startup folder was a good thing. Even with the new driver, after a while the NVIDIA DPC starts to show up again and keeping P8 and P12 at 200/400/400 is still a very useful tweak even with this improved driver.

AW-FedericoH, would it be possible for Dell to provide an updated vBIOS to fix throttling and improve DPC latency? This would eliminate the need for using NVIDIA Inspector as a tweak.

If this is something you and Mr. Bruno can validate to not cause any harm to the hardware, what I would suggest is:

• P12: Core: 200 - Shader: 400 - Memory: 400
• P8: Core: 200 - Shader: 400 - Memory: 400
• P1: Core: 620 - Shader: 1240 - Memory: 1500 (stock speeds)
• P0: Core: 620 - Shader: 1240 - Memory: 1500 (stock speeds)

This, in conjunction with the new Verde 295.73 driver, seems to be rock solid. I am now at more than 26 minutes without a DPC latency spike. (Only made it to 12 minutes before the NVIDIA driver spiked without the above tweak.)

 

DPC Latency is fixed for me!!! Hallelujah!!!!!! I've been running DPC Latency Checker and Latencymon for over an hour. All green baby....all green!!! This was a serious update outside of DPC latency!!

 

FWIW, we made Nvidia aware of this based on what we learned by reading this thread.

 

You guys are totally AWESOME. We love you, Brother(s) Bill, Federico and Chris. So glad you're part of our community.

 

Thank you x's a googleplexian! I knew you guys had something to do with it.
I'm going to hold off for another 30 minutes on the prototype error. While I bask in all of the no dpc latency glory. + Rep!!!!!! And some people say Twitter doesn't work.................lol.

UPDATE:
After an hour and 15 minutes, latencymon picked up latency problems from Nvidia. DPC Latency checker is in the green. I just did a video conversion and the effects of latency aren't apparent. So I'm good. I'll just uninstall Latencymon...lol.

 

Wow that is a great news!, I'll try it when I get home from work.

 

No increase in idle temps... everything is excellent. Combo of the P12/P8 tweak and the new Verde driver is outstanding.

 

Just in time for the PS Vita launch tomorrow!!! Yehaaa!!! Badaboom http://badaboomit.com/ and DVDfab AIO http://www.dvdfab.com/all-in-one.htm are both working perfectly with this new driver. No video/audio artifacts after conversion!!! Both of these programs are CUDA/SLI optimized.

Everything is going so well that I don't want to try 3D and ruin it.

 

Like others here, I kinda thought you guys had a part to play in resolution of this - I believe that WITHOUT your intervention, Nvidia may well have just carried on and left it unfixed.....Soooo, a HUGE thank you to all you guys over at Dell for taking the time to put this thread at Nvidia to get a resolution for us all.....

NBR & Dell = Great team!!

Thanks Bill & Co.

 

Excellent -excellent he-he!!!.

Excellent work dell team!.

 

FYI... this method works, too.



Simply creating a profile in the NVIDIA Control Panel for Desktop Window Manager (dwm.exe) and setting it to "Prefer Maximum Performance" instead of "Adaptive" keeps the GPU(s) elevated in the 3D state (P0) at all times. I like the batch file method better because the cards can still clock down at idle, but this will also work in a pinch. As you can see, temps are not a concern.

I tested this in hopes that it would allow running in P0 on battery for some battery-powered gaming, but no such luck, LOL.

 

Just a FYI here really....

Just got through installing the WHQL set and decided to check the latency for myself. I wanted to check out first running stock vbios (as I havent changed that yet) and without ANY foxfix for P-States......I just got through a solid hour of testing with LatencyMon and am happy to say that the "green" message of "your system is able to handle blah blah blah without dropouts" was still displayed after just over an hours worth of testing whilst playing music etc. - good enough for me to concur that the latency issue has been resolved....until Nvidia break their own driver again LOL.

Gonna go ahead and test out the same again but this time with the "foxfix" set just for P0 & P1 and see how that goes....then I plan on testing again with "foxfix" for P0, P1, P8 & P12 in place.

Side Note: I too prefer the .bat method, again Fox, great work....amazing actually!

 

no way will download asap and see if it fixes mine. something else is also causing mine to spike in integrated GPU mode and i have reinstalled killern drivers as Fox & steviejones133 suggested.

 

Ok. Test 2. Foxfix for P0 & P1 without the additional P8 & P12 fixes. 1 hour in and still no problems. All green with my "green" 580's - check it out....

Spoiler

I will now do test no. 3 - Foxfix for all P-States and report back...

 

Hmmm... I still have the DPC latency.

 

Me too

 

Try using Resplendence LatencyMon and it will give you more information about what driver is causing it.

Dan, it looks like yours is network related (TCPIP). If you are using primarily WIFI and not LAN, try disabling the Atheros NIC in Device Manager and see if it improves. If not, you can go to the device properties and delete/rebuild the TCPIP stack and that may free up the resources that TCPIP is hogging. Are you using Windows Firewall or an aftermarket app? Sometime antivirus, firewall and other security software can cause DPC latency, and in the case of firewall software it can show up as a "network problem" in disguise.

 

Ok guys, after test no.3 for me, whereby I have used the "foxfix" for all P-states, latency is still great - its actually noticeably lower overall after another hour long test than my previous test no. 2 results. You can see that the levels havent peaked quite so high as before and improves upon overall performance.

Overall, I have had ZERO latency issues since installing the latest WHQL driver from Nvidia, regardless of the fix employed. I would say that employing Mr. Fox's latest and greatest "FoxFix" has provided me with the best overall latency readings and would therefore be my chosen method of reducing latency when needed.

I havent tested on iGFX yet but as I dont use it, it isnt gonna bother me much - though I will test out in the morning.....kinda bored of watching LatencyMon now after 3+ hours LOL......

Spoiler

 

Excellent! Thank you for the comprehensive testing, Steve. You validated my results, and I appreciate it. +1 Rep for the help, buddy.

 

Always a pleasure, never a chore. Glad to help out mate!

 

Thank you. 3 hours is a long time.

 

and what the h... did you did that it is so good? cos see this,

 

Is that your latency after installing the new driver?

All I did was: Uninstall all components of previous driver>Driver Sweeper>ccleaner>install new driver>enable SLI>enable Triple Buffering

 

yeah. but now it is better

 

Super! LatencyMon showed you that it was the Bigfoot Network card, right. Glad you got it sorted, bro.

If that is what it was, please mention which Bigfoot driver you used instead. (Dan and other may need to change that driver.)

Thanks, Brother Bumbo!

 

I'm using the latest one from bigfoot, but I still have DPC latency. I'll try the dell one tomorrow.

 

The Dell driver is worse. I just gave up on the 1103 and went with the Intel 6300 Ultimate. The 6300 also has My WiFi and has the same 450mbps throughput as the 1103. For me it was "problem city" with the 1103. I know that the drivers have improved since then. I'd ask Stevie. I know he has tamed that beast(1103N).

 

Hmmm. That's a good idea brother sky.

 

This is great that you guys have found a solution that seems to work. However I had the latency issue on my system which had the intel Wireless chipset also, so I'm not convinced you should mark it as "resolved" just yet.

Shame I dont still have the system to test.

 

Why not mark it resolved? I have the Intel Ultimate-N 6300 and no evidence of DPC latency relating to the Intel wireless or the GTX 580M. Then, the day after I found a workaround to stop the DPC latency relating to NVIDIA driver, we got lucky and NVIDIA released a new driver that addressed it, so it was doubly great.

 

Ahh. Sorry I misread. I thought the 'fix' was to change Killer drivers, but my system had issues with latency without the killer wireless card. Didn't realise there was a new nVidia driver

 

The DPC latency fix is to change P8 and P12 to 200/400/400. The new driver being released the day after that discovery was a very nice coincidence.

 

I don't know I think you are right cos I uninstalled the Bigfoot driver disable the Atheros drivers and still have the DPC latency, this is after I run the Test for Couples minutes.

 

So, bumbo, you are having DPC latency due to another device other than the GTX 580M? What is LatencyMon referring to as having the highest DPC count?

We would still mark this thread resolved if the issue you are having is due to something other than the GTX 580M SLI.

 

I have to find what the problem is when I get home from work.

 

OK, so I dropped a shortcut (from Fox's .bat for the latency fix for P8 & P12 clocks) into my startup folder but have noticed that upon booting, only one of the cards gets set to those clocks? - to get both cards to Fox's clocks for P8 & P12, I have to manually execute the .bat from the inspector folder where its located. Ideally, I would like both cards auto set to those clocks but it aint happenin' for me right now

Any ideas welcomed - especially those from the author, Mr. Fox!

EDIT: I also now seem to be getting worse results - my initial testing was good but I made a schoolboy error and forgot to enable sli.....since doing so, it aint all green baby....

Spoiler

 

this is crazy, coconut, and more.

 

yeah brother stivejones the dpc latency is not fixed at all. i give up on nv .

 

I agree unfortunently i have tried uninstalling drivers etc and still get DPC on Nvidia GPUs & Intergrated GPU ?????
Its not as bad but still there and when using my Fiio E17 Dac i can hear it more

But i am still testing as could be other apps causing issues.......

 

hmmm. really

 

Well, one problem sorted....I must have hit "relock min" in nvidia inspector and relocked it....since I have re-unlocked it, manually ran the .bat file......rebooted and both cards now show the correct "foxfix" clocks for latency for P8 and P12.

I will carry on running some tests......its good on the whole but at some point, it craps out and I get the "unsuitable for handling - may have pops/clicks" message........

 

Grrrr - this is bonkers.....I cant get the shortcut to constantly set the clocks to those of the .bat file for P8 and P12