Dell 580m "throttle" contact group

New dial-in info arrived with new code, but there's no single number for Europe, so it seems I am out. Silly. I hope you guys can handle things right. I've got free calls in Europe only. Even I if call an US toll-free number that's regular cost of a transatlantic call for me.

 

We are in the call with the leader code. Let's try again.
7958253207 then #


Country Toll-Free Dial-in Number
Australia 1800-177-609
Canada (+) 1-866-3355-847
China 800-858-0756
India 1800-425-3101
Japan 0800-919-3355
Korea 080-857-0117
Malaysia 1800-881-497
Mexico 001-866-335-5820
New Zealand 0800-452-256
Russia 8800-555-0094
Singapore 1800-395-7977
Taiwan 0800-666-553
USA 866-335-5847

 

Right, even Russia's there. What about the EU?

 

Sorry, guys. We are here and waiting. Not going anywhere until we get this done. Use one of the dial in numbers and the participant pass code above to get it.

 

none of that stuff is working. been trying for like the last 12 minutes.

 

same the number was invalid (the code)

 

im in now...

 

7958253207 then #


Country Toll-Free Dial-in Number
Australia 1800-177-609
Canada (+) 1-866-3355-847
China 800-858-0756
India 1800-425-3101
Japan 0800-919-3355
Korea 080-857-0117
Malaysia 1800-881-497
Mexico 001-866-335-5820
New Zealand 0800-452-256
Russia 8800-555-0094
Singapore 1800-395-7977
Taiwan 0800-666-553
USA 866-335-5847

 

I'm in...yaaaay.

 

0x29A check your PM.

 

Sheesh. I'll have all this worked out correctly next time. We eventually got underway and are having a great discussion with Louis. Even though this is a sputtering start, the next one should go off without a hitch.

 

Thanks i'm in.

 

Just dialed in, we'll see how long I can stay on the call. Good conversation going on. Thanks Bill. +1

 

Glad you made it. I heard you enter. The Team Red call should be interesting as well.

 

Thanks, Didn't catch a name on the sole Dell-Alienware Graphics Engineer, but definately Kudos to him. He's a bright guy who has definately done his research and taken his time to speak with us. Bill give him a pat on the back from me.

 

That's Louis B. I think he's been reading this thread, but I'll make sure he sees it after the call.

 

Definately sounds like he's been doing some research.

 

Yeah. I got you THE man.

 

Wow, didn't realize that temps in one respect were a legality issue. Interesting.

 

Thanks guys, I had to run. Gotta get back to work. I'm hoping to remain on the line for the Red discussion.

Tell Louis thanks for me.

 

I agree.
10 chars.

 

now that was very informative!!
thanks again bill and louis!

side note:
hey bill, was that score with or with out physx? i think it's with physx.

 

Okay, we are done with the meeting. That was an excellent talk! The dell people were very easy-going, ready to face any question/issue. Here's a couple of the most important things (I hope I understood everything okay, at some points call quality was low and I am not a native speaker - correct me if i am wrong anywhere):

1) The true "throttle" is caused by the power limitation of the MXM port. This obviously cannot be avoided in any way, since the machines are already built and the MXM has its specification that cannot be changed anyway. We were told to expect two things:

+ New Nvidia drivers may introduce many important changes which will make the throttle and the consequential switching between performance levels less of a hassle, so always update your drivers. The newest 285.62 driver already introduced more 'operational space' re power limits tolerance, so use it.

+ Dell engineers will be in touch with Nvidia asking for extra performance levels between the current P0 and P1, so the throttle issue should become even less problematic. Note that this is to to be done and we cannot be sure Nvidia will actually agrees to do it. Stay tuned and hopeful. That's it.

That's for the throttle. This means the Dell people are aware of the problem and are doing their best to address it in the most efficient way they can.

2) Regarding other interesting things:

+ There are many temperature checks built-in in the machines. Even the keyboard has its sensor and things like that may influence the GPU throttle if the temps get too high, yet that's rather unusual and the main cause/limitation is the MXM power limit.

+ BIOS cannot be unlocked by default. It's a legal thing between Dell and hardware vendors e.g. Intel

+ The latency issues should be addressed soon by a BIOS update.

+ Fans will stay user uncontrollable

+ Dell people got higher 3dMark scores johnksss did, by some 700 points

Was there anything else?

Hey there community! People to rep: johnksss, skygunner27, bar-code, xeneize and possibly me.

 

i thought he said 7200 points.

 

I understood 700. BTW, johnksss, you still on an analog phone? I barely could understand anything you were saying.

 

Physx

Another topic. With the whole Bios unlocking. Now he stated that the are under NDA, which is understandable. He also said there had been contact between those who unlocked the bios, and Intel. At least thats what I understood, was dealing with work at the same time.

What, if anything came from that? Threats by intel? Thought it was an interesting point of conversation.

 

That's right. They said that intel legal teams are in contact with those people.

 

I wonder how that will play out, given that the individuals responsible did not sign any NDA. I suppose the legality of the entire issue becomes the fact that they posted in online, rather than keep it for themselves as Loius pointed out. I wonder if TheWiz was wrapped up in all that jazz.

 

Well, I just hope Da_G doesn't get waterboarded by Intel mercenaries.

 

you were the only one that couldn't hear me.
and the phone is a samsung epic 4g touch.

side note:
they have been hacking bios files for years so who knows....so far they are still doing it so only time will tell.

 

if the phone is 'epic' then it can't be it, can it?

 

as long as i didn't have to repeat anything to them...all is well

with you missing the first 5 minutes...kind of had you at a disadvantage. we went with the original plan of finding out what was going on, before asking questions. and once he said that mxm was locked in at 100W with a little leeway...i knew right there...time for a contingency plan. that keyboard thermal was a shocker. we knew about the psu. but mxm was suspected. and that dell was not responsible, but in fact nvidia, which i suspected as well. learned quite a few things in that call and confirmed a few suspicions as well. found out that the bios editors were in fact right about fan control..controlled by the bios and the ec. which is why hwinfo can control them some what..but the software causes more throttle/stuttering when in use to control fans.

all in all..it was a nice relief to get most of our speculation questions answered.

took the new driver and ran 33.6k gpu score...nothing conclusive yet though.

 

You are a great organizer and did a wonderful job setting this all up. It was especially brilliant when you consider the overseas phone you had to deal with on top of not being a native English speaker. It was John's accent more than anything else, I'll wager. I know because he sounds like half my family and all my friends.

On temperature checks. This is one where poor audio got you. We don't have separate sensors for every component. Through testing we know that when the GPU hits temp X, the keyboard will be at temp Y. So we monitor the GPU temp and apply algorithms for each component that give us a mathematical reading for the expected temp of any given component.

It was 7100 and change better and I saw the rig they did it on. It's an Alienware laptop like John Force's car is a stock Mustang GT. I was in that lab for like 5 minutes. Let me tell you, there is some good stuff being looked at. I won't say another word other than "wow."

I second the motion on rep for these guys. They were all simply brilliant, and we could not have asked for it to go any better. On my way to add rep to each of you guys.

 

i knew i wasn't hearing things!...LOL!

you guys were very fun to talk with.. that comes from both sides of the fence...(stock to over clocked )

i concur, 0x29A did come through. so much i had to implement his plan when he wasn't there yet..

 

Serious LOL at the "mainstream team", if you remember that part My appearance was delayed because of no phone number for Europe. Bill sent me a number I can call several minutes after the meeting started. But that's okay. We talked another 1.5h anyway.

 

you dont grasp the rig they used to do it with yet. not your standard setup like this here.. and no low power constraints. very hard to come by machine at that and very expensive.

side note:
yes, that extra time was good indeed! else we might have missed some things.

second side note...need to understand the tc1/tc2/tsp settings now for throttle...hahahaha

 

"You have given out too much Reputation in the last 24 hours, try again later."

I'll get rep points added for the others later.

 

That did not refer to the 3DMark score there, but rather how the red team was described, by you yourself actually, I think. Just a cross-reference from 'lol' to 'lol'. Ewwwww you spoilt it :/

 

Louis wouldn't let me snap any pics either. It's definitely something you would love to have, though.

 

they had a picture of it on hwbot.org at the beginning of the month.

 

What was the pic of? The lab toys and setup for testing? That would definately be neat to see. Havn't been to hwbot much except for uploading scores. Wish I could have been on the line for the entire meeting.

 

im trying to find that picture now.
but basically it's like a desktop setup but built to test mobile parts. with allot of play room to work with.

something like this but far more indepth.

 

Thanks to all of the NBR forum members who participated in the conference call with Dell/AW today. I'm thrilled to see all of the posts following the call - looks like everyone enjoyed this direct contact opportunity!

A big notebookreview.com thanks to Dell's Bill-B and Louis for making this happen! These guys are the best!

For those of you involved in the contact group, please take a moment to bookmark this thread if you wish to continue to use it as a discussion tool concerning the 580M conference call topic. I have removed it from sticky status since we have two threads on this (and they are both stickied - lol). No need for two threads.

For the AMD folks, I believe Bill-B and Mr. Fox will be coordinating a similar event. I have not received any current info on this but if this is on the books, as soon as I (or Mr. Fox) receive confirmation, we'll start a similar thread and get it stickied.

Thanks everyone!

 

oh yeah, it's on the books...that was mentioned in the call as well.

 

Mr Fox is my guy? Great! Get with me in PM, and we'll get the ball rolling via email, Mr Fox.

 

Wow is all I can say...I know I havent participated in the debate over 580 throttle etc but I have watched this and other threads from the sidelines. Absolutely brilliant to see Dell working with its customers. Fantastic. Makes me feel like part of a "family" instead of just a statistic who buys from a large organisation.

As I have 6990's, I will be on the look out for the AMD related topic soon with Foxy and anyone else...

Great work to all those involved. Hats off to the lot of you.....

 

I sent you a PM a towards the tail end of last week Bill.

I will shoot you another in a bit - walking out the door. Thx again for setting this up!

 

side note:
our psu is 330W's rms with about a 15% max power rating..
so about 380W total power.
just adding to 0x29a's already completed list.

 

Hi Dell-Bill / lewis etc and the NBR form members on last nights chat (oppsss sorry morning for the majority of attendees)

I went to bed at like 6.00am and caught up on some sleep/work etc and didnt have time to thank the Dell engineers/support groups etc for their feedback and continued support to the community, this alone will bring me back to the product alone, so thank you.

All your comments/suggestions made sense and like johnksss said it cleared alot of missing links.
I accept the safety restrictions in place (if we can call it that) to make the m18x experience what it is today, a beast that can handle extreme conditions and at the same time be tamed and gentle.

I hope to see more improvements in the future, to get, just that little bit extra.!!

So thank YOU!!!!


P.S Dont forget the part number for the 3 pipe cpu cooler please!! I need to have this on my M18X.
Pic attached incase you may have forgotten what is looks like only jk

 

Bad news from Louis re: additional p states. Quote from email this morning:

"Nvidia said No, as expected. I am going to keep trying, but I recommend you let the forum folks know. Any data, like video of the “glitches” from changing states, would be very persuasive."