M17x and DPC Latency

If your system came with Vista then Respawn to W7 is not an option. The partition has Vista and if you have the Respawn DVD, its Vista as well.

Best option is to image the drive to an external drive in case you want to restore your current setup later.

 

guys, I have question, what does the cpc latency do ? at first I thought it was related to the stuttering but aparently it isnt.


If anyone just wants to get rid of stuttering.. Windows Server 2003 is the way to go, I haven't had any.. I guess xp would work the same.. If u need drivers for it pm me, my 3d mark results were higher on it then windows 7 / vista..

according to the "checker" the latency is the same on 2003/xp, but it doesnt stutter and I didnt hear any "pops" while listening to music.. I haven't used it THAT much but didnt have any problems so far..

 

Its actually DPC Latency and stands for Deferred Procedure Call.

Microsoft defines it as:

 

Fixed for you Batboy

 

I don't work for Dell or anything, but I'm very confident this issue can be worked out through a reengineered BIOS. We should be due for an update soon from the Dell dudes.

 

LOL - nice

 

My machine had Vista on it, Now it has Windows 7 on it. I know i can't respawn back to Windows 7, I just want this issue to go away i am at the end of my rope. How does the Alienrespawn patch work for WIndows 7? Plus where is your guide for the issues we have been having?

 

Well, for the Vista MBR Patch after upgrading from Vista to W7, grab it from Dell. Not sure if it will work as intended since I have not tried it. I know people have reported it does not work when performing a clean install of W7 and attempting to restore the 'Press F10 to...' Respawn prompt.

As for the Guide - I cant link to it, but its easy to find via my signature. I believe I have three or four different posts on the matter. Not a 100% workaround, however it has worked for me and a couple of others.

Lets all cross our fingers and ask the little greys to speed up Dell's release of their 'fix'. Hopefully, they document what they did to 'fix' the latency issue.

 

I concur,
It might be way too naive to think so but I do believe that the issue will be resolved, be it a BIOS update, some aggressive user-modding or total replacement to a better newer machine.
Personally, I think that a simple bios update should fix it. Even on a user level we managed to narrow on the problem and remove the biggest spikes.
So please be patient, write notes to Santa and most of all - have faith

 

You forget who we're taking about here, but I envy your positive attitude.

 

is this stuff kinda like the sound of when an agent warps into someone's body in matrix? i just got my system replaced and this one's got win 7 installed. dcp has just a few red spikes but i now have that electronic stuttering occasionally. it's not too bothersome since it happens only once every 5 min or so and just a quick stutter.

 

It's not naivete, I've discussed this with some serious hardware nerds who know all about DPC and from what I've told them about this issue (which is what we know in this thread) consensus is that an optimized BIOS with better interupt management that prioritizes audio and video hardware interupts and updated drivers to match would definitely iron this out.

Obviously there is no way to tell but at least we pressured Dell via Engadget and they're working on it now.

 

What's Poppin peeps! The Alien Mothership has finally landed in my house and I am now a proud new owner of a M17x! This is one sweet lil (big and heavy) machine. I got it yesterday and unpacked it, swapped out Win7 Home Premium for Win7 ultimate and reinstalled all the drivers from Resource disk and then did a quick test run on audio, video, gaming and youtube streaming. So far so good. Absolutely no skipping, freezing or crackling going on. However mind you the test was only for 5 to 10 mins of each. I will to some intense testing this weekend after I get all my software installed and download the DPC Latency tool. The only thing I am noticing now is that the fans come on after 5 mins of gaming and stays on and dang it is LOUD! I had to bump my volume all the way up to get over the distracting noise. I will follow this up in the appropriate forum. Just wanted to state my first run, I have not experienced anything yet! (Knocking on wood w/ fingers crossed)

 

My positive attitude comes from close, almost 15 years long IT related business dealings with Dell and others. I'd personally put Dell on the first place in terms of CS and Support (especially nowadays, after IBM left the notebook league) as well as quality of their products.
If it wasn't for them I'd go with Clevo, but their resellers...well...lost cause. I like the innovative spirit of Clevo and their hot pursuit of records in putting desktop gear into laptops etc., but having zounds of small resellers is a poor practice for end customer.
Now some of you complain about Dell' support (including myself sometimes ). But let me tell you something:
When they send you an HDD caddy with one screw, a GPU with no heatsink or a brand new machine with faulty mobo, - it NOT FINAL. YES, you stay on phone with them for hours, and YES they sometimes redirect you to the wrong department etc, but this is NORMAL for a big company and they WILL FIX those issues if you have a little patience, you WILL get your 4screws, a heatsink and a new mobo. I know it's frustrating, and at times I wish to hurl the machine from my apartment window... BUT I also know that this is the BEST you can get as your other options will result in more pain than a mere inconvenience.
DPC issues:
As was stated here a few times already it is not a huge deal to fix. We can do it ourselves if Dell fails on every possible turn. I just don't think it's the right time to mess with it now, days before the new BIOS is out.
Anyway, I can reproduce and eliminate those spikes (above 4k that result in audio/video stuttering) on my lappy just by following BatBoy's guide + OSD tweaking.
But we want EVERYTHING to work, so let's wait just a few more days.

 

I have dont BayBoy's guide and it has not helped much at all, what is this OSD tweaking you have done. I have searched but cant seem to find anything on OSD tweaks for m17x.

 

Set Affinity for OSD_main.exe to 1 core and Priority to Lowest in Windows Task Manager.
In addition you can download Process Explorer
and monitor your processes more closely.
I found 2 more candidates possibly responsible for minor (2-3k) spikes. Again, I would prefer to do minimum at this point as it seems that the problem (especially in systems with higher TDP CPUs) is mostly power related (IMHO).

 

I was just reading this thread once more to try to find some hints that can help decreasing the latency on my laptop.

I noticed a very interesting thing yesterday! For some reason windows update recommended me a broadcom wireless driver which I installed to test. After restart the laptop worked fine, the bars change from "green,red,green,red" to "green,green,green,red,green,green,green,..." and the bars were smaller too.

The problem with this is that for some reason I couldnt use my keyboard properly in this mode! it was taking time to respond and there is no repeating key, so for each character I would have to press it for about 1 second until I actually see it.

Very strange situation but I managed to replicated again when I was installing/uninstalling some drivers and at some point alienfx got screwed up, the lights were off and the keyboard was responding very slowly but the DPC latency decreased again.

So I guess the usual suspects come back to the table again, wireless card, alienfx, osd, etc.. but to find a working way of decreasing the latency while waiting for the fix, even if by a little bit, is super hard (at least on my machine) and I havent managed to do it...

Maybe installing vista or even xp would help but thats such a pain

 

can you upload this driver somewhere? does the wifi work ok now?

 

I tested the Wifi at the time and it worked fine, I just had that issue with the keyboard. I will try to replicate again today when I get home. If the result is the same I will try to extract the .cab from windows update and upload it somewhere so you guys can test it as well.

 

I installed the updates yesterday, including the update for the wifi. There are still spikes that are taller than the empire state building

The only way to keep the spikes under 2000 is to deactivate the dedicated GPUs and run with the integrated so....

 

I see many people saying that but it doesnt work like that on every machine. If I run my laptop with the integrated only I get the same red spikes (except the really huge ones) and instead of the green bars I get yellow bars =/

 

yes, running with the integrated doesn't solve the problem. It's just a remedy like all the other solutions. The problem is a combination of factors and not single sourced. Badly written drivers for windows 7 and badly written bios have done the situation worse.

 

I understand the problem, Im just trying to find temporary work arounds while they don't fix it and to the date Ive been unfortunate in that sense.

 

Still no update from Dell?

 

It will probably appear here first.

 

^^ Thanks for the link. I skim through it. Basically we have A LOT of GOOD NEWS but NONE is SOLUTION

 

I wish they let us bata test some of the bios so we can help in some ways and SillyHoney your picture reminds me of my gecko on a good day. The avatar of my tokay gecko is on a bad day.

 

Or maybe here

 

They are sure taking their sweet time with the fix. I just hope whatever they come up with is worth all this trouble..... I want to put Win7 already...

 

I wouldn't expect Dell to fix this right away on the first try. If you're having problems, revert to Vista.

 

i am not expecting too, ex m17 owner and i had stuttering, now m17x same problems all over again..

are you sure there is no problems at windows vista ?

 

Some. I still get SOME crackling in Vista. Not nearly as much as with Win7.

 

Hi guys, as mentioned before I think our DPC issues are caused by different reasons (M17x vs M980NU) however I've released a V2 of my guide to help minimise or reduce DPC latency on the M980NU so if any of you want to try that guide (tis in the owner's lounge) then feel free, it's all completely reversible and if it helps you, bonus!

I've been stutter free since Thursday

 

which page

 

Right at the end mate, and put in a quote box to make it stand out. If you look through the last page of the M980NU thread it should be hard to miss (there's some pictures too).

Edit: Actually right now its the last post in the thread...even easier to find!
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=404189

last page

Good luck, if it even helps you reduce the massive spikes to lower levels then great

 

It helped me removing the big spikes. However, it only appears to start to work after running a 3D application. Toggling the GPUs in GPUz doesn't clock up the first GPU for me for some reason. I need to run a 3D game. Once that's done, it remains clocked up and the big 8-16k+ spikes are gone. Not the 4k spikes that alternate the ~100 ones, but that appears to be some sort of Quad Core issue anyway.

 

Its defintely not Quad Core related. It happens on Dual Core as well.

 

Sounds to me like you need to redo the Performance Mode setting at the beginning, there is a bug in the driver right now that when you click, the save/apply button, it seems to set that point as your reset point, and your primary GPU had begun to downclock before you clicked apply. (Happened to me first time I tried this too).

Set Power Management Mode back to Adaptive, reboot your laptop and then if you're having issues timing it correctly, open up GPU-Z, and open Nvidia Control Panel right next to it, so GPU-Z's GPU toggle is right next to the save button, change the option to Prefer Maximum Performance so it shows the apply/save button, then toggle the GPUz whilst on the sensor section in GPUZ like mad, go to them both at least 3/4 times, and as soon as you make the last GPU change, flick over to the save button and click apply, then restart ASAP.

See if that helps, first time I tried it I had a similar thing to you, my primary GPU got stuck at 300Mhz core rather than 583Mhz.


REALLY glad its helped you with the big spikes though, that's a start, no? (as those biggys are the ones that cause most stuttering and audio issues)

In your case, it might be worth reversing the guide and starting again. (to do this, simply uninstalling the drivers should remove the driver, settings, clean out those registry entries we made and the display service, although driver sweeping would make sure no settings are left over).

Once you've got this part sorted correctly (and your primary GPU loads at full clocks at boot), then go through the rest of the guide.

PS. I have a dual core machine, and this guide was initially aimed at curing my machine and Comanche SLIs but Im glad its doing something here too!
Im glad I might be able to give something back to the forum

 

Morning to everyone! (Well its morning in Australia at least)

My first post here and my first Alienware and I have to say I am happy with the overall structure of the AU$4000+ machine, however this latency issue is absolutely atrocious. I’m not sure how DELL/ALIENWARE even released a laptop with such an issue that even the most dumbfounded individual with no knowledge on what DPC latency is can figure out.

1. Turn on laptop
2. Install games
3. Play games
4. Go from 120 – 180fps to 6 – 14fps for 15 seconds
5. Rinse and repeat
6. Oops, we have a problem – call technical support for 4+ hours

I think it is pathetic that they even released it like this but that’s not why I’m posting. Why I am posting is because I would like to know if there is somewhere we can be heard on this issue. It needs to be fixed and by reading these 50+ pages it seems like previous owners were promised fixes and they weren’t delivered (politicians anyone?). Where can we go to be heard on this?

I know engadget posted something and even on the DELL forum there is something written by a “John B” but these updates we were meant to have aren’t happening, and we have no idea what is going on in respect of this fix. Does anyone have any input on this?

 

So what I am looking for? I just want to see whats the commotion is all about? I try to snip when there is the most red bars.

 

Well there are two issues to look for. The alternating spike to 400-800 then back down to 50. That isn't the major issue though. Its the spikes in the THOUSANDS that interrupt audio flow and causes other issues.

 

http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/archive/2009/11/18/dell-dpc-latency-and-you.aspx


Check in on this thread and keep an eye on this blog.

http://m17x.blogspot.com/

 

Bought my M17x today and just now im hearing about these problems...hope mine doesn't come with this :S

 

I think this is about the 10th post I've seen with these exact words....

 

Alexrose1uk,

can you please explain whats your solution do exactly?

 

I agree, I was scared when i was reading these posts, but after getting my M17x a week ago i can say i cant be any happier with it. I don't see any studering in L4D2, boarderlands or Fallout 3, and i can play Blu-Ray's just fine.

 

as I repeatedly said there is always a way to get rid of stuttering, and that is to install xp(it seems to work so far)

 

Why would anyone install xp on their m17x, it's archaic. You can install vista or win7 just fine on the M17x.

 

Yes and everything goes well until you try to play an mp3. Suddenly the hours of formatting, installing, driver installs, and tweaking have made you realize that your super high-end gaming machine can't play music. If this isn't happening to you, consider yourself either deaf or insanely lucky.

FWIW, I'm going to try dual-booting with XP in the next couple weeks and I'll post back if I notice a sizeable difference...

 

As everyone and their mothers ignored "your way" to get rid of the stuttering. Please dont ever offer us this "solution." it just makes my blood boils to hear it.....

I mean, whats the point of buying this if you're ok to have XP on it to begin with?