M17x BIOS A03 Discussion Thread

any buddy have the A01 BIOS

 

http://www.stardock.com/products/logonstudio/downloads.asp

Thats the program i think you are after works well Win 7

 

awesome

 

reinstall ur os..then install the origional drivers from the web site and u will be fine

 

yea i think so the ati are the way to go......

 

I have the Sli 280 cards and no issues here with the A03 BIOS

DPC is way better now.

 

Ao1 Bios can be found on link below.

http://support.euro.dell.com/suppor...d=-1&libid=1&impid=-1&osl=en&vercnt=4&os=W764

 

Well not exactly. Xfire was working fine with Stock Dell drivers, but with the 9.12 catalysts I would install them modified, and both GPUS would show up under device manager at working, however the 2ndary card would actually be showing up as a disabled adapter in the CCC information screen with no menu for enabling crossfire. I would rever to the Dell drivers and it would be fine. I was missing out on compatibility fixes and performance updates to the 9.12 catalyst drivers (specifically for borderlands) so this always bugged me. This was on my first m17x. Recieved my 2nd M17x as the replacement about a week ago and reinstalled windows 7, then went directly to load the modified 9.12 catalyst drivers - SAME ISSUE. I was really mad but it was clear it was not a system specific issue to my original M17x. I had to revert to the Dell drivers.

After installing the A03 bios I saw a bunch of patch notes relating to VGA and AMD, I figured maybe the new Bios will play better with the 9.12's and sure enough now they show up in CCC with Xfire running the latest drivers no problem. This didn't happen before A03.

And borderlands runs better. The whole system runs better. I was having crashes if I left my computer overnight (i'd find Windows recovered from a serious error when opening my screen after a night's rest). So far that hasn't happened.

From my POV Dell came through. It looks like some Nvidia GPU users are still having issues.. this goes back to exactly the reason I went ATI, I was pretty much fed up with dealing with this type of stuff from Nvidia.

 

A03 shows a vast improvement on my system as well. Some DPC spikes of ~65,000µs, but very rarely - especially when compared to DPC on A02 bios.

M17x
Windows 7 64bit
P8700
1x260M
4gb ram
250gb hard drive (primary)
500gb hard drive (secondary)
...everything is default clocked

Would definitely like to see some improvement on device drivers or Windows to knock the rest of these spikes out - but I don't think that's Dell's fault. Need to see some improvement from nVidia, and most likely MS on Windows 7.

 

From my POV Dell came through. It looks like some Nvidia GPU users are still having issues.. this goes back to exactly the reason I went ATI, I was pretty much fed up with dealing with this type of stuff from Nvidia.
__________________
me too,.....that was the reason.....

 

I have found ATi and NVIDIA have had thier fair share of driver issues over the years.

I have not noticed any issues with my GPUs to this point.

 

I think anyone with an nvidia card who says the problem is fixed is not looking hard enough.

'A stutter' period is unacceptable in 2010. I had stutter free audio playback in 1997.

 

wow ...i am truly it seems that this is a huge issue for u maybe u should send it in for a replacement

 

im still not happy are you sure you not getting one stutter at all benthedogtrainer?

 

nvidia owners are trying to tell themselves there are no problems now. I can tell you that all nvidia owners have the stutter still. i am having better luck (less popping) with the dox 195.62 drivers. gpu's temps seem in line with the 186.82 drivers that have been the best drivers so far for me (thanks bat for the recommnedation)

 

Wouldn't that be assuming too much?

I am getting spikes though, all the way up to 1600. But they are rare and don't actually pop-up in the middle of stuff. Ran quite a few HD videos, and played quite a few videos. Even switched between power saver and performance modes whilst running a high quality OGG file; not even a single audio stutter.

Yeah, I am probably not looking hard enough.

Also, is it just me, or do the GPU fans kick into maximum blast a bit late with this new bios? When I had A02 running, the M17x would become a loud banshee by the time GPU temps would exceed 65 degrees. Now, this is no longer the case, and that is not good.

 

same here ran a few movies, tried COD4, BF2 Crysis, no issues

DPC test were all in the green (2 -3 red spikes at start then nothing during the next 2 hours testing

Not sure "what testing" I am not doing to verify

 

kade, the gpu temps are up a little for me, 5 degrees or so. i atest that to the fact that the fans are not kicking up as soon. so yes i guess would be ab abswer to your question. The audio popping will most likely occur whwen you are doing more than one thing at a time. if i just let my alienware sit here and play music than it does not pop. when i hit the internet explorer it starts to pop. the issue is with the throttling of the gpu's i think...

 

Play an mp3 in wmp. Press the eject key. No stutter? Please post your specs. Folk with quads seem to be less afflicted.

It's a design flaw. Same as it was in previous dells. Might be fixable with some combo of video bios and driver.

 

I'll try this tonight when i get home and report

 

Yup. I am going to see what remedy they can offer.

 

dave-p, one more upgrade and you have a maxed m17x...what are you waiting for? lol anyway, I think that bios ao2 was better than ao3. i have been testing for a few hours and that is the conclusion that i come to. I have been able to all but eliminate the audio stutter using batboys guide, but i don;t think that we should have to run these things bare to get them to work. try his guide if you have not already. can be found on his blog which you can link through his profile...

 

There were other bugs in A02 I found that were fixed with A03 as well.

One was the Adaptor warnings - when you disable it in BIOS it would notify you everytime even if the brick was connected, the other I found was when ASPM was enabled in the BIOS Win 7 would freeze after boot up.

 

Pretty sure that the display drivers of nvidia cause the latency.

I did a clean reinstall of the OS.

Installed Drivers in order and always checked with DPC Latency Checker after the installations.

Everytime after various Display Driver installations, the latency would occur again....

 

the aspm...thats a odd thing...i flashed min with the a02 several times..and it never was enabled ever one time...thats weird...maybe ur motherboard is acting up

 

Anyone tested how cpu overclocking is effected?

 

dave-p i get the message now with ao3 bios. i never got it with ao2. that is strange how these things are different for us all...scook, i did no change...

 

well...there probably are still bugs in the firmware lol

 

Yeah, man. This is not cool.

The fans should be kicking in earlier. There's still many of us M1730 users who are begging Dell to conceive a similar BIOS for our older XPS laptops, and here we have Dell, possibly ruining the GPU thermal protocol for the M17x. I sincerely hope that we are wrong in our evaluation here, Bjerbo.

As for the playback stuff. Like I said, I have run all those things. What I did not mention was the fact that they were running simultaneously. Two HD youtube videos and a high-quality OGG file in VLC and then in WMP. No stutter.

Now I tried ejecting the drive while running an OGG file, and I got a massive spike. I repeated the process and got corresponding spikes each time the 'eject' button was touched.

By the way, Bjrebo, what was this 'upgrade' that Dave-P would need to max out his M17x? I can't think of any, aside from maybe another 4 gigs of RAM.

 

Mine is all in the green down in the 200-300 mostly now with A03, occasionally popping up to 400 or so once every 3-5 minutes maybe but never higher than that. I didn't have to change any drivers or anything, in fact I'm running exactly the same as before A03. Haven't had a chance to test gaming or audio extensively because I'm at work, but I certainly will tonight. I'm ridiculously anal with drivers as it is though, I'm actually running the 182.xx breed of video drivers and custom Broadcom drivers for the Wifi from way back when I got my M1730 and wanted to eliminate the DPC problem with the Wifi (I switched out my Intel in that for a Broadcom chipset for various reasons).

 

200-300? Mostly? Wow. Mine is like 4 or 5 bars around the 300 mark and then a 1000 bar. I didn't even count that as a spike. My spikes are the red uglies.

Is it true? Are some of our GPUs the culprits?

 

WINDOWS 7x64

I think i solved all of the audio stuttering errors by uninstalling the ITE driver and leaving it uninstalled. WOW would have theses annoying popping sounds while playing and after uninstalling the ITE driver, the popping sounds went away. MW2 during the briefings would have audio sound errors that sounded as though it was ready to crash and that too went away after removing the ITE driver.

 

Hmm weird. Just checked it again. Now I'm seeing almost all below 100 with a few spikes in the 500-700 range periodically. All I did was reboot. Tried again and it's still sitting as follows for me.

 

Thanks, dude.

Well, here is mine. Imagine an ocassional single or pair of very high 1600-red spikes. Is this good? I certainly prefer Elkay's readings.

 

Were you doing anything in particular during the reading? I could try launching some of the same stuff and see what mine does.

 

Since I've installed A03 Crysis Wars randomly crashes after about 30 minutes of playing, it's pissing me off, this never used to happen before I installed this bios update. I guess I have to go back to A02.

 

Sounds like I might be in the minority here... I installed the A03 update and it completely hosed my computer. I am not running a RAID setup, all the settings are correct in the BIOS for a non-RAID setup and as soon as it starts the boot process, I get a flash of a blue screen and the computer restarts. Any ideas? Bios update showed successful and everything looks OK within the bios. I will be very disappointed if I will have to reinstall the OS yet again, this will be the third time this week. (first was when I deleted the RAID, second was after three days of "working" (using that term loosely) the OS suddenly wasn't seen there anymore, this will be third if I need too).

P8600 (I think)
260M

This was a replacement for my m1730 that tried to melt into my skin, waited 6 weeks for it, and have not been able to do ANYTHING that I need it for, since I got it. I do a lot of audio/video work and the stuttering is unacceptable. My m1730 had that issue too, that machine was replaced 4 times for a variety of reasons in the span of 5 months. This heavy paperweight of a replacement is little better.

 

Trikster, thats a problem totally unrelated to the BIOS update. I've ever run raid and even on A02 I was getting the same issue. There is atleast one other forum member with the same problem. Another fixed it by reinstalling the OS. I tried a respawn with no luck. At the moment its a headache I deal with. I'm hopefully going to be returning this M17X soon for a refund and a refreshed M17X.

On another note, I still have the latency, although its less frequently and possibly less severe. It hasn't bothered me really though. depending on what my computer is doing it we become more frequent and at other times mostly green. The first image is at idle with A02 and the second is at idle with A03.

 

Even if it really works it still a no go for people who have surround system.

 

I have just waken up and this thread is growing damn fast What do I miss here? People who run ATI do not have stutter anymore?

I have just tested with the ejecting disc and it's hit and miss.

Stutter also happens with listening to YouTube or mp3 playback while changing tabs in FireFox but at much lower frequency.

All stutters come with 16k + red pikes.

I looked so deep into that and test with every method I can think of. Final conclusion: Audio playback is smoother with A03 than with A02 but skipping/popping/stuttering are still there.

 

Just updated, had to redo the RAID settings as well.

Stuttering seems about the same as before, from my very quick and unscientific tests.

 

This bios update solved my stutters and latency problems when used in tandem with a tweak posted by onizuka05 (see post http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5724525&postcount=923)

My system is Win7 64bit, nvidia 260 SLI, Q9000, which I recieved in early December. I have not installed any other drives aside from the latest nvidia drivers. I should also mention that I have not experimented with the eject button, nor will I, since it really won't affect my use of the system if it stutters on this occasion.

Tested games like Stalker, Bioshock, and Left 4 Dead 2 and did not experience a single stutter. I then hooked it up to my reciever via HDMI and watched an AVI video on my TV (I believe it was in 5.1 although I'd need to double check) again, I did not hear a single stutter or have any issues.

The one thing I'm a little weary about it, is that one of my 260's is about 10 degrees warmer than the other, similar to Batboy's post, although not quite as severe.

 

Can someone hook me up with the A02 bios please?

 

http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=ca&cs=cadhs1&l=en&s=dhs&releaseid=R235673&SystemID=ALW_LP_M17X&servicetag=&os=BIOSA&osl=en&deviceid=19197&devlib=0&typecnt=0&vercnt=4&catid=-1&impid=-1&formatcnt=1&libid=1&typeid=-1&dateid=-1&formatid=-1&fileid=339603

 

Thank you sir.

 

Heh. I had about two different Internet Explorer sessions, with 4 pages each, running. Also, I had a whole album of OGG files on my VLC playlist.

I did close all that down and leave just one browser session and window open, and my average dropped to around 85-ish, but with peaks going up to 1000.

I think you're getting better results because you have the old drivers running, and that means no powermizer for you. How is that even relevant? Well, from a lot of the complaints, feedback, and reading, I am seeing a pattern with these spikes and the GPUs reclocking; even read something about one GPU not downclocking while the other one going to normal 2d mode. Even I have this problem ever since I updated the bios.

 

While I normally think polls are silly, I'd be interested in seeing Dell do a poll of their new Bios to see the level of satisfaction m17x users received from it.

 

Is anyone having a problem with using the BIOS flasher? It stops responding right before it's about to flash. Tried a reboot, no programs open, and still nothing. The error is:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: WinPhlash64.exe
Application Version: 1.0.0.31
Application Timestamp: 47ecb5d3
Fault Module Name: WinPhlash64.exe
Fault Module Version: 1.0.0.31
Fault Module Timestamp: 47ecb5d3
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 00016df5
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.48
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: 0a9e
Additional Information 2: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
Additional Information 3: 0a9e
Additional Information 4: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789

 

ill do one

 

I had this problem so I closed the program, extracted A03W64 and double clicked on WinPhlash64 application and it worked fine there after for me.