M17x and DPC Latency

Then if their BIOS update won't fix it and no replacements (hopefully the one with 5870) will be available, we still have the option of overvolting. But let's see what Dellienware has to offer.

 

I just did my QUAD core Desktop Q9550 WIndows XP Pro though and its max is 114 :O It HAS to be a BIOS issue not hardware or software. Though Nvidias drivers sure the hell make it a lot worse for me at least

Aikimox I am going to try an experiment. I just overclocked my Processor to my usaual stable 3.0 and so far its lower then it was with the stock speed of 2.53..

So far highest now is 9,000 compared to ALOT more before.

 

What is the current consumption of a single 4870 card?

 

Interesting. I got the same DPC latency you have on the QX9300 on my QX9300 and also on my Q9000. I hope they'll be able to fix it.

 

I just got my M17x yesterday (Q9000, GF260 SLI). I installed Left 4 Dead 2 and Dragon Age, and both seemed to play fine, with the occasional audio hickup. I streamed an episode of Flashforward off of ABC.com which didn't have a problem either, however I did notice slight audio pops in youtube videos.

The most bothersome thing so far for me, is the computer freezing and locking up when I do trivial tasks, such as bring up dxdiag, open the command center when I'm copying files to the harddrive, or setting a usb mic as a default device. I'm not sure if this is a win 7 issue, or a related to this issue. DPC Latency monitor showed alternating 4k red spikes, with the occasional drastic spike.

Only updates I've done are windows updates.

 

My concern is even if I get another one it wont solve the problem. In fact it can be even worse on a different machine.

The difference in drivers that I was talking about was when I installed the 186.64 for the nvidias. The latency is still the same, still having huge spikes but the main change is that now I can play games, before it used to freeze completely. So in that sense it seems much more stable.

In terms of numbers, with normal programs open max spikes are about 10k max but on some operations they still go to 60k+ and its clearly possible to the freezing sound.

 

Has anyone tried POWER Mizer switch OFF option?
I know it has a few side effects but might still work...

 

yes this has been tried

helped some, did not solve it

 

spikes are at 4000 with me with the new nvidia drivers 195.62 (the first officially released 195.xx drivers for notebooks). win7 x64 ultimate.

 

Did you need a modded .inf to get them to install and did you have hybrid mode enabled when you installed them?

 

no they are officially released by nvidia. just go to their website and fill your gpu details and its ready for download. officially released means no need for modded inf.

 

Here is my G60Vx latency for reference.. while browsing and playing iTUnes in the background.

 

yeah. thats how its supposed to be. I guess it takes much more than just put some parts together..

 

Keep your G60 dude!

 

i have bad latency but i got no stutter withj streaming or in game sounds... and my stutter has stoped since i updated to the 195.62.. so im very happy=)

 

My M17x runs on the standard windows audio drivers. Most soft audio drivers are horrible - that basic ones that ship with the OS are better. The tradeoff is lack of DRM support - no HDMI audio (not that I have tried hard to get it to work).

Here is my DPC chart. I get spikes into the 5,000-6,000 range as I type into my browser (Safari).

MP3 playback is still terrible though. Is it really almost 2010 and I can't get smooth MP3 playback from my pC?

 

OK - I will give that a shot.

 

Well I have an M15x arriving 2 days, not an M17x, so hopefully there will be no DPC issues (though we are stuck dealing with power throttling).

 

This is my M17x on win7 64. I've only noticed sound stuttering with music files so far. Games and movies been fine. Still annoying enough for me to want it fixed soon though!

 

Yeah, I do all my serious work on a Mac (that includes my music collection). I would never probably play music on this thing but now that I know it doesn't work this bothers me.

I watched a DIVX movie last night with no stuttering or static. But MP3s are no good. ????

But more than anything, I need this thing to play games smoothly and reliably. That is the issue that bugs me most.

 

Audio stuttering & popping is definitely caused in part by Powermizer:

Powermizer on:



Powermizer off:



Each of the red spikes corrrespond to an audio stutter or pop in Itunes.

Since you guys have SLI, the issue might be worse... a lot worse.

And the reason why when you're watching a video or playing a game there is no more audio popping or stuttering is because... Powermizer is not active. It would keep your GPU clocks at max the entire time.

Edit: what my first screenshot failed to capture was the note:

"Some device drivers on this machine behave bad and will probably cause drop-outs in real-time audio and/or video streams. To isolate the misbehaving driver use Device Manager and disable/re-enable various devices, one at a time. Try network and W-LAN adapters, modems, internal sound devices, USB host controllers, etc."

 

There's no Powermizer equivalent for ATI cards is there? That's an Nvidia thing.

 

to be honest i was sure that those spikes were related to sound stuttering.

 

Panda, I think problem here is people got red bar even in Save Power mode, like me. You do not have red bar in the first place except when audio skip because of PowerMizer.
I experience red bar either in SLI or integrate card. The different is with discrete card I have red bar at somewhere around 4k and audio is silk smooth but with SLI I notice sound skipping and comes with it is the red bar at around 65k.
Thanks for the input tho

 

Screenshot of my latency. Never notice any skipping or popping unless the 260's are running...usually just on Crysis. Compared to some of the other pictures mine looks to be worse.

 

yeah, thought as much.
"Powermizer&TurboBoost - Crappy Together!"

 

Would turning off 'alternate power state' for the video cards in the M17x bios turn this feature off?

 

That looks just like mine - MP3 playeback is terrible. Audio in games is fine - when games actually work on my computer that is.

 

Just got my m17x yesterday All is good apart from this DPC crap

Donno if i did this right but i just open the app and let it un for a bit and this is what i got.




I get stutter in games/audio ect every 30-120 sec's =/

 

My latency seems worse than everyone elses.

I have done all the BB tweaks and tried various drivers (now using the newest nvidia 195.64 (i think thats it)).

Here is photo:



Is this bad!?

 

Wow, just noticed that pressing Fn+F5/F4 creates crazy spikes as well....

 

Here is throwing in a wrench

See the last post here:
http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=2467

I found this interesting. The tool he mentions can be found here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx

BTW, Mark Russinovich (one of the authors of the tool) - this guy is a brain, check out some of his blog posts. One such article is titled The Case of the System Process CPU Spikes. Very informative.

Perhaps someone can compare the two DPC Latency Checker and his ProcMon tool - see if they are in sync. I'll try to do this soon.

 

Don't have the time for screenshots now but from a brief glance : some of the biggest spikes were triggered by OSD software. Unfortunately, too many Windows modules are involved in a chain reaction making it harder to pinpoint the problem. I'll give it a closer look tomorrow morning.

 

watch this video

starting for 2:20 this will hopefully help out in determining the cause
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bA1pN1IWs8g

 

Yep - excellent find. This is exactly where I have been standing with this. Just because the DPC Latency Checker tool looks 'clean' doesn't mean the issue has been solved. This has been an issue for such a long time on laptops.

The link he mentions ( http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963898.aspx) is another page written by Mark Russinovich - back in 2006.

One thing with the video, he determines on his system the issue is a direct result of PowerMizer. That is fine on his system, however I believe we also have ATI users who are also reporting audio issues on an intermittent basis. So the root cause may be somthing else on the M17x.

Regardless, the xperf route is yet another tool to use to diagnose possible causes. I don't like using just one tool to when researching issues. I prefer to use an arsenal and gather as much info as possible.

Thanks for posting this! Really looking forward to JohnB's next update or word from Dell. It will be interesting to be sure.

 

actually he confirms that:

1) sound-video stuttering is a nvidia powermizer issue which needs time to downclock the gpus?
2) even if dcp latency is always green you can get sound- video stuttering
3) i didnt understand if he has ATI finally or nvidia (nvidia powermizer)
4) i cant find this perflordsrc.reg file (nvidia 195.62 here)
5) the problem again is that this clever guy has one gpu and disabling powermizer works for both sli gpus?

so what is dell going to fix with a bios update if its up to nvidia powermizer? i dont know but i have the impression that they were going to release a bios update anyway which has nothing to do with dpc latency

and finally if the dell bios update disables powermizer we will have to select between high possibility of destroyed gpus and sound stuttering or disabling powermizer will only result to higher power consumption?

 

He has an NV GPU - why he is disabling PowerMizer. Remember, PowerMizer is an NVDIA Technology.

I'm not convinced it is directly caused by powermizer. I say this for two reasons. Some here have killed powermizer and still have audio popping issues. Second reason, I have powermizer enabled and I don't have any audio issues. Now, either I have magical cards or its not a powermizer only issue. As you mentioned, the video may be on a system with only 1 gpu. I don't remember him mentioning SLI in the video.

Ill say this though, if the fix they implement overrides powermizer I will not touch it. I have witnessed first hand what happens to mobile nv gpus which are locked at full clocks constantly. I refuse to let this thing die like my XPS M1730 or XPS M1710. I do have faith in Dell however and will reserve judgement until I see the fix they are looking at.

 

yeah the M17x seems to be having more issues to it then just powermizer, but in his video it clearly shows how the process caused that latency in xperf

for me with my desktop PC it's definitely a video card issue seeing as how i've tried over 20 different drivers using driver sweeper of course, none have worked

at this point i'll just wait to buy a new video card


these are my latencies on idle


even when i force into 3d performance they only get to about 500 max
by playing 1080p video


the problem is when the card downclocks
after closing the video


now, this isn't a huge deal on XP doesn't bother me too much since i don't ever hear a drop out, but on Win7 it is a big mess even for me and i'm using a PC.. from opening a window to browsing pages, it'll force my clocks to change causing drop outs everywhere

this really sucks for me because i really liked Win7, but i can't really enjoy it if my favorite things or music aren't working well

 

d3c3it, your latency is exactly like mine which means our machines have something in common.

At the moment Im also running 195.62 and I believe all my other drivers are up to date, including the non oficial wireless ones.

I've tried disabling powermizer on the older drivers (I can't find the registry keys for these new ones though but I know powermizer is active for sure), I've tried stealth mode and disabling the integrated graphics card.

Nothing seems to help.

One thing I noticed is that my second graphics card is always a bit hotter and with higher clock speeds than the other one, is it weird?


Anyone has any ideas how we can at least decrease the latency by a bit?

 

Mine too looks exactly like that with the qx9300. In Vista with almost no stuttering.

 

Does that mean most of the problem comes from drivers specifically design for win7? or from win7 itself?

I thought win7 was very similar to vista, why are the drivers so different and causing more problems?

Is your vista x64 ?

 

BatBoy, I'm assuming ATi has something in its drivers that also downclocks their cards? If so, then that could explain why it's happening on both cards - not necessarily powermizer, but the drivers constantly checking if the cards need to be sped up or slowed down...

 

Agreed Zath... I was mainly responding to Aristotelhs2060 post where he mentioned he wasn't sure if the tube vid author had an ATI or NV. But, yes - I would imagine ATI has something similar to PowerMizer, at least I would hope so. It is something to explore.

 

It's called PowerPlay and it causes the same side effects in systems with ATI cards.

 

so what is dell going to fix first? lool

 

Both at nice would be very noce. doubt it though. I am so sick of this , I am thinking about getting rid of mine and going with sager 9280. Or re customize alienware no sli and probaly just a T9800 duel core

 

SLi is connected via a cable, right? So it is possible to go in and remove one card?

 

Yes, unlike the M1730, there are 2 physical cards for the SLI setup

 

I hate to sound negative but if they fix this DPC issue 100% on the first try before the end of the year I'll have a total different outlook on Dell, but I Just don't see it happening any time soon.

They will continue to come out with these "We're working on it" communications in an attempt to trump all the negative article just to keep people buying them. At best you might see a BS driver or bios update thrown out there to calm the crowd, but nothing to actually fix it.

Truthfully I pray they prove me wrong.

 

I totally agree with you, I doubt Anything will happen soon. Plus nvidia issues also. My last resort is going back to Vista Ultimate and put A00 bios on computer with fresh install of everything. I had No issues before I flashed my bios. I don't even know how to do alien respan of windows 7