M17x and DPC Latency

Are there any people with the ATI cards reporting issues with stuttering and audio pops?

 

I am not sure about the ATI cards. Has anyone noticed that when they plug a projector in using the vga port the laptop becomes almost unuseable because of the latency??

I feel for some of you guys who are almost out of warrenty, I hope they are able to fix this problem. If they are not able to fix it I hope we can send the laptops back to them.

 

I'm giving Dell until the end of January then I'm going to start really harrassing them.

 

I dont have stuttering on my ATI rig, even with my busted motherboard it was not stuttering ever.

 

Well guys, I really wanted the m17x to work out for me, but with no solution in sight in the immediate future, I just could not justify letting the 30 day return period expire without a solution to this problem. I am pleased to inform you that Dell did the right thing, and gave me a full refund for the machine. I was not once pressured to pay a restocking fee.

I have moved on to the gateway p-7915u fx, and it of course has stuttering / dpc issues too. However, they appear to be less severe, and more centered around the powermizer issues. Most importantly, it was a 1/3rd of the price of the M17x, so I am much more open to work arounds.

I am sure that there is more to the dpc issue with the m17x than just powermizer, but anybody that values simplicity and wants an easy way to deal with at least one of the contributing factors should check out Powermizer Switch, a nice simple tool for disableing powermizer. It makes a world of difference on streaming media for me with my Gateway. DPC goes from all red with the media acting like the slo mo button on the sega genesys control got pressed to a normal graph and fluid streaming media.

 

wow the gateway has that too ? this DPC issue has to be fixed once and for all lol

 

maybe thats the reason they dont care to fix it for many years since it first appeared. because more or less all notebookshave this issue so its not a matter of comparison. lool

they know it exists!!! that makes me more angry than anything else. looks like a conspiracy between all notebook brands. advertising the specs and hiding this issue

 

if dell/alienware manage to fix it with a single bios update, other companies better "wakeup" aswell lol

 

Your patient i am now giving them until Jan 1 to get thier you know what in gear. I have been having non-stop issues, and i am so fed up now after 1-2 months of this ..... It shouldn't take 3-4 months for a BIOS fix, i don't even know if thats it for my computer. Windows XP pro get here already so i can do my last 1-2 tests! Dell is like a Wall they don't do anything or care until you start in or ridding them. I am still with tech for mine on and off for 2 weeks or so now. Not getting anywhere at all.

 

Yes, the issue is old and well known, especially in mobile computing. I do have the same issue on Sony Vaio and Toshiba (and it's even more annoying than on AW). I think it's more OS-power-mngmnt-related than hardware, but BIOS update can probably fix it by not letting windows take power control of the device/s.
As a supporting fact, I installed OpenSuse linux and had 0 stuttering in audio/video playback. However it's not the best solution since almost everything in linux requires some tweaking=time=frustration. I couldn't make wireless work, had issues with skype (my A-MUST communication prog) and as a result reverted to W7. Pity.
But at least I know now that stuttering is OS-dependent.

 

Thats wired as i have never had a issue with any laptop i have had. Only had a Toshiba (Was Windows XP Home) Just was a pos. Then Apple Never had a issue with their macbook pros either, even my friend has a laptop that we lan on thats a Toshiba (major pos lol) but always seems to work great (Very sad and frustrating for me) and it can't even run battlefield 1942. But it works. This alienware is the first ever for me. Though i think one of my GPUS are bad, getting HORRIBLE fps even in old games. The other day in DOW, and Fry Cry 2 it randonly kept dropping for no reason to 10-19 FPS while my desktop 9800GTX was troppin along with 40+ easy. (Would of been more but i maxed Everything X8 AA 1900X1200 and Very high/high everything.

At least my tech is nice, resoultion agent is a Butthole though. He was arguing me with about how DPC latancy is for the Internet only, and has nothing to do with OS or anything else. Plus more BS stuff. I am about to install Good old Windows XP Pro on this bad boy. Litallly acually its a girl so bad girl. I never had any of these issues in XP, wish me luck. I wil be out of a laptop again for the 7th time for the next 20-30 minutes.

 

Greetings!
I have been following this thread pretty much since it's beginning and I have found a solution that works for me using the information posted by Lord_Zath back in post 643 using Process Hacker. The thread ID 100 didn't work for me in Windows 7, but I used it to find my own ID's which were 192 and 184. I have 2 ACPI's listed, I don't know if this is normal or not, but I created a BAT file which suspends them and a BAT file to resume them before I shutdown/suspend because the computer has issues doing these things with them disabled.

My suspend BAT contains the following lines:
"c:\Program Files\Process Hacker\processhacker.exe" -e -type thread -action suspend -obj 192
"c:\Program Files\Process Hacker\processhacker.exe" -e -type thread -action suspend -obj 184

And my resume BAT contains the following lines:
"c:\Program Files\Process Hacker\processhacker.exe" -e -type thread -action resume -obj 192
"c:\Program Files\Process Hacker\processhacker.exe" -e -type thread -action resume -obj 184

I don't know if these numbers are universal so I will show how I got these numbers on my system. When you bring up the Process Hacker window, you will get running processes on the system. The ACPI process is a thread under System. So find the System process and double click on it.



Click the Threads tab and scroll down until you find ACPI.sys. As you can see below, I have 2 threads, the Thread ID being the number in front. Mine being 192 and 184.



If your numbers are different, just plug those numbers into your BAT file, replacing mine, if they are the same, that BAT file should work.

Before using this method, my DPC Latency Checker looked like this



And it now looks like this



This may not help everyone/anyone else, but it has been working well for my machine, and if there's a slight chance that it could help anyone else, then this post is worth it IMO.

Also, make sure to run the BAT files as Administrator (right click, select Run as Administrator) or you will get Access Denied errors.

Take care fellow Alienwareians.

 

Very very interesting, i'm going to give that a try

In the mean time I downloaded the new drivers:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebook_winvista_win7_x64_195.62_whql.html

and my DPC went from stupid 14k spikes to bad (4k spikes) which is a lot better... just a thought.

 

please fix the link

 

i cant find this tread tab.


i used your bat commands and here is my dcp latency. i get those huge spikes ( i normally have 4000ms ones) in longer time periods when i am doing something i parallel with running dcp latency. when i run only dcp latency i have a maximum of 186ms!


so here are my results:

1) WITH ONLY DCP LATENCY RUNNING



YES ITS THE M17X!


2) THOSE HUGE SPIKES OCCUR WHEN I OPEN A WEB BROWSER (firefox or internet explorer and webpages-not during browsing but when it loads them)



3) i remind you my "normal" dcp latency (even after using the restore bat file without restart)

 

small request... for those of you who use this workaround, please post back if you encounter any windows stop errors... thanks

 

i will test for a while now and feedback.

 

I have not gone as far as setting up the .bat 's but on my system its only TID 176. I chose to suspend it and look what happens in the checker. Researching this process now... more to follow. Have some ideas I want to explore.

 

where is this thread tab finally? i cant find it in process hacker

EDIT: ok i found it. i have to right click on system process -. properties and then click threads tab.


my TIDs are the same as win7 of winslayer

those huge spikes dont occur when just listening music (so no sound stuttering!) and not doing something else especially web browsing.


No issues till now Batboy

 

Well, its time to thank the two who posted this.

Although I have not had an issue with audio popping/skipping since I used my workaround for the stuttering FPS issue, the info posted by Lord Zath and the expansion/recap post by Winslayer certainly did the job.

As noted in my previous post, I suspended TID 176 and it turned the red christmas bars off in the DPC Latency Checker tool. Very interesting. I am going to leave this as is (monitoring system stability of course) since according to ProcessHacker it was showing TID 176 was hitting a nice 13 - 14k Cycles every second or so. Regardless if I was seeing a popping issue or not, this cannot be good. I am still researching the cause.

Rep for both of you. Thanks for sharing your findings. Nice work!

Also, FWIW, I'm still running the same chipset drivers.

------------------------

@Aristotelhs2060:

System Stability issues may present at any time. They may not happen right away, they might not happen at all. ACPI.sys is a mystical/mysterious component Just keep an eye out.

 

you are right sometimes those spikes occur when i am browsing some others it doesnt but i could say it has strong correlation with loading webpages.

but one is for sure. under standby i always get green bars.

so you say that i have stability issues or something? i need some people to try or win7 as well...

and this acpi.sys couldnt be fixed by microsoft a company of billion of dollars from the people who invented this file.. but i think that other issues still shouldnt be excluded right?


First issue here: with acpi.sys suspended hwmonitor stucks ! and i guess this may happens with other hardware temps detecting programs as well.

 

When I mentioned 'system stability' issues, I meant system hangs, BSODs, app crashes, etc. Its an unknown since ACPI.sys touches a great many things. Also, FWIW, I only disabled/suspended one thread (see my screenshot for the one I disabled).

EDIT:
Looks like I spoke too soon. After rebooting and suspending the TID 176 via a batch file loading at startup, I am seeing intermittent lockups @ the desktop. HDD activity continues and the mouse is responsive however everything else is dead. Hard shut down was required to clear. Continuing to look into this. If I am unable to resolve, I will be skipping this 'workaround' since I was not having issues with audio playback. Will let Dell post their 'fix' when its ready. I'll update the thread if I am able to determine the cause for the lockups I saw.

Use at your own risk

 

Hey, good to see there's some more progress on this for you guys, in Dell's absence.

Edit: nevermind

 

RIGHT!

"c:\Program Files\Process Hacker\processhacker.exe" -e -type thread -action suspend -obj 184

This one is enough for win7. i am also testing on disability to log off from windows!

 

in case you missed my edit, see above Aristotel... not good (at least on my end).

 

i dont see any lockups on win7. the contrary. however i cant shutdown windows 7 when using the bat file to disable only one of the acpi.sys ("c:\Program Files\Process Hacker\processhacker.exe" -e -type thread -action suspend -obj 184) ! something that takes 2 secs with my ssd!

so i have to restore it before shutdown or restart!

 

Yeah - something is buggy with this. Looking forward to Zath's comments - he actually may not have tried this since it was posted initially for XP.

 

ok i correct my previous post. i saw those lockups too on win7 before a while when i disbaled ony the obj 184 acpi.sys. i think i didnt get this when i disabled 184 and 192.

testing again.

 

Hmmm... perhaps I should kill both. I'll give it a try. LOL @ me if it works. I'm just a bit leary about killing acpi.sys.

EDIT: Ok, someone want to explain to me why after a reboot, the TID's have changed?? Prior to the reboot, it was TID 176. Now its TID 180. If it changes on each reboot, then the batch file is useless.

 

Did you guys install Windows 7 yourself or have it pre installed?

I haven't had a single issue at all with my system. (win7 factory installed)

 

I'm on Vista and don't have any audio issues. DPC Latency Checker will report red spikes however I am not seeing the issues some of the others are.

If you have intermittent audio popping/skipping during MP3 playback, then you have the same issue.

--------------------------

EDIT:

Ok... after looking at the ProcessHacker suspend approach I have decided to not use this. I don't like the fact that it kills HWMonitor. This tells me suspending these two threads via ProcessHacker is touching other areas handled by ACPI.sys which in turn may be called by other apps. Having to hard shutdown is also not something I like to see. Its not just one process which is causing the nice red spikes we have come to love. Something else is at work here... Is it a pure Microsoft issue? I don't know. What I do know is that Dell, according to JohnB has found a possible issue which can be resolved via a BIOS update. I look forward to their findings/notes - if they are posted.

One thing is certain, on Vista (at least my system) - the processhacker workaround is not a viable route.

Thanks for the info though - it was fun testing.

 

ok

1) with both acpi.sys disabled i dont have those lockups (at least not until now)

2) i have also to run the bat after each restart but the TIDs dont change. it must be loading system file defaults.

3) i have to restore the acpi.sys files to restart or shutdown

speedfan works even with both acpi.sys files suspended.

for win7 x64

 

Nice find. With the process suspended, that's what the DPC Latency should be. Note, however, that this will likely also cripple some vital ACPI functions, which may lead to crashes and other unstable and odd behavior of your hardware and software that relies on it's functions (HWMonitor is just one example, but more notable any power management functions like dim display, switch off display, sleep, hibernate, etc. as well as shutdown won't work properly and cause the system to hang) - so I wouldn't recommend doing this unless for research/testing.
Nonetheless, it's a good find, as it indicates that adjusting the ACPI tables/functions in the BIOS might even fix DPC latency issues on the M17x for good.

No, the Thread IDs (TIDs) are not universal. For example, they're 200 and 196 for me (Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit). Just a heads-up for people to check what the TIDs for the ACPI processes are on their own systems first before they use it and kill some random thread.

 

disregard - obvious answer... oops.

 

These huge spikes look like the ones that are being caused by Powermizer downclocking one (or both) of the video cards. I get them as well as long as powermizer is enabled. Installing the official 195.62 Nvidia notebook drivers (in which powermizer doesn't downclock one of the cards after use, which might be intended or a bug) shrinks these spikes to ~8k for me, disabling Powermizer according to this guide completely removes these huge spikes in my case (combined with suspending the ACPI process, I am now completely red-spike free). However, disabling Powermizer requires caution, as it will cause more heat and more strain on your video cards as well as the whole system.

It appears that the alternating ~4k DPC Latency spikes are caused by some sort of ACPI issue with Core 2 Quads now, and the huge 16k+ spikes by powermizer downclocking video cards on the M17x. The former should be fixable by Dell with a BIOS update (or maybe Microsoft could improve things with an update to how Windows handles ACPI), the latter can likely only be addressed by Nvidia.

Another question is whether these DPC Latency spikes are actually the cause for the video and audio stutter on the M17x. There may be others.

 

i enabled performance mode in nvidia control panel (just for testing those spikes) with 195.81 but i didnt change anything in registry for powermizer (and i dont think i want to fix sound stuttering and cause more serious problems). those spikes were random (or after certain time periods) and closely related to browsing as well or not. related to browsing and not at the same time.. i dont know how to describe it whatever . the fact is that:

1) when i just listen to music from my hard drives i rarely get any red spikes.
2) when i listen to online radio using winamp -> random red spikes every now and then ( just a note- downloading data when hearing online radio)
3) when i listen to music and browsing - red spikes usually related to loading webpages but not always.
4) most of those rare or random or periodical red spikes result to sound stuttering ( i mean those after suspending acpi.sys threads and not the red spikes without doing so)

so: absolutely green bars -> no sound stuttering
any red spikes after suspending acpi.sys -> sound stuttering most of the times

yes i checked once again. TIDs for the acpi.sys files remain 192 and 184. same screenshot as winslayer' s post. this is an other proof and not a coincidence. if OS matters, win7 x64 ultimate



but i said before the OS seems to load system file defaults. if both acpi.sys files are needed to shutdown or restart then i guess they are needed to start OS as well. so i have to run bat after each start or restart and restore bat before i do anything actually with log off, restart or shutdown.

hard testing day.. lool

 

Bit freaky when you start exploring the root issues eh? don't feel bad, been there before. This is something which is best left to the engineers.

The TIDs did change on me under Vista which is odd if they remain the same under W7. I give up. Too tired to deal with this now. thanks for clarifying Aris...

 

tried this solution, everything gone green but music and video lag spike is still there. nothing change, just shows green but video on net and music in media player stutter somehow.

green green green RED..

 

yes and we are not supposed to do so. we are just users not technicians. we are all freaked to do so. lool

yes actually the result is that the red bars that dont led to sound stuttering ( i mean before suspending acpi.sys) are all green now but those that really led to sound stuttering (when browsing or whatever) are still there and red and much much higher than before

this for mine and win7.

when you just hear mp3s from hard disk (not from webpages) you have any audio stuttering or red bars? vista or win7?

 

Hm, I was monitoring DPC Latency some more and noticed that whenever I play games, I get all kinds of high DPC latency spikes, with or without suspending the ACPI process. It depends on the game, too, and whether I'm running it in windowed mode or full screen (windowed mode generally seems to cause much more DPC latency/larger spikes while fullscreen is generally alright). I'm guessing this could be a Nvidia issue.

 

i can confirm that my huge spikes are related to downclocking and/or overclocking of both gpus. using gpuz sensors and dcp latency at the same time. when clock was changed for any of the gpus then it was followed by a huge red spike. acpi.sys files suspended so its not the reason. and as those red spikes are the ones lead to sound stuttering i can finally say that acpi.sys may cause red bars which however dont lead to sound stuttering but downclocking overclocking of gpus stutters the whole system

 

I just fired up GPUz and had the DPC Latency Checker open. Granted I am not running the ProcessHacker bypass, but opening several websites and allowing pages to complete loading (flickr.com, netflix.com, support.dell.com, NBR, MSDN, ebay, cnn.com, etc.) - checking the GPUz log I see no changes in clocks. They remain at 200/120 regardless of web pages loading. DPC Latency does show increased red and green---> yellow spikes but clock rates remain the same.

This is with 186.82, Vista and 9400M G disabled. I so hope what you are seeing is not a W7 only issue. If it is, I will not be using that upgrade disc I received

 

damn you guys have been busy! I haven't messed with this stuff just yet (just started 2 weeks of winter break). I'll try to mess around today or tomorrow and see what I come up with. If I could sum up what seems to be happening:

1. Processhacker works to get green bars. Though that doesn't necessarily save the day, because: a, the TID changes sometimes, and b, there's still audio stuttering.

2. updating video drivers and disabling powermizer so the cards don't downclock seems to solve most audio stutters.

Very interesting. I'm really glad none of you guys screwed up your computers using my post. I would've felt really guilty!

 

well, be careful. I encountered some lockup issues. be sure you image or backup first.

 

The audio stuttering exists but is not always related to the spikes you see on the screenshot. The spikes were also related to the downclocking of the GPUs but again not solely related. There were other smaller spikes even when the GPUs idled at their lowest clock values. I am not running the ProcessHacker bypass either.

http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/4460/latencyu.png

 

actually what i was describing was downclocking after i closed call of duty mw2. clocks were reducing from 583 to 200 with steps. with every step a red spike.

and you are right. when browsing none gpu overclocks. thats why i not always see red spikes when browsing. but every time gpus overclock or downclock i have red spike for sure. i think you understand the difference.

 

Yep - it was posted prior to your first edit...

 

just a question. can someone upload the factory win7 recovery disk that came with your machines? just to test for any issues

 

Sorry guys... this is strictly covered by NBR's forum rules.

I know the intention is to test Aristotel but this type of discussion, be it forum post or via PM, is not permitted.

Thanks.

 

ok.
i know the forum rules. just to let you know when we have win7 upgrade for free its like we have it already. except the fact that upgrade is never recommended. thus if someone installs it on no M17X machine it wont be activated so no illegal really, thus the drivers being only for this machine. this is actually what should be offered by dell and not the upgrade dvd. anyway thanks for claryfying.