M17x and DPC Latency

He said later on he's stutter free. Presumably meaning he gets some DPC spikes, but nothing that results in any noticeable stuttering anymore.

Regards your fraud comment, I know how you feel, Alienware Europe have horrendous support, I had to threaten to take them to court to get a refund/decent support on a ~$3000 laptop.

 

interesting.. X-fi card final solution??


edit- nm googled that quick, no diff

 

lol im getting this on my Gateway 7901h as well

using default win7 drivers, it hits 16k in DPC

 

Exactly! There is no stuttering even though I'm still getting occasional spikes around 5k. When playing games, listening to music I can't even see/hear the stuttering, it's gone...so far at least. Will do more testing but so far=so good

 

This is why I'm really, really hoping a proper fix/fixes will be firmware upgrade, drivers, another Bios, anything other than having to give up the idea that windows 7 will work with the 280m's (but if that is the case in the end I'd just try to revert back to vista, grudgingly)

Don't want to have to fight with Dell support people on the phone to first convince them there is a problem, remote connect and go through what I already know is an issue (and have to wipe win 7 yet again), have to pay a charge to get the ATIs and have someone rip open my machine in a futile attempt to install them...



Well, I'm still finding Dox 195 drivers with Powermizer off and my SLI disabled the best solution to my spikes. Absolutely no latency in games, and when I press eject, the spike is now down to 8000 from 16000. I'm only happy with this being temporary though lol

 

if your computer is still under warranty the ATI card should be free. My card was a free upgrade. free installation and when they wanted to reinstall everything i just put my phone down and let them do it themselves. A free upgraded card from a 260gtx to a 4870 for some time on the phone? not a bad deal.

 

I'm not even sure there's a single system in the whole world that can remain in the green field of that DPClat program no matter how many stress you put on it.
In fact, If I just run Media Player or do nothing at all I see ONLY GREEN BARS.
Those rare spikes occur when browsing many flash-loaded sites and opening/closing many demanding applications. I think it's as good as it can ever get,...on any system. But we still have time and can push it till R2...

 

With ATI cards the spikes from pressing the eject key are down to just under 4k.

 

You won't have to pay 'em for the ATi cards. In fact, they will owe you by virtue of their own strange policy and pricing where the ATi is cheaper; they know this themselves so if you want to go ATi, go ahead. You'll win.

Edit:
I assume you have warranty, because then it is an easy win. You could even get something extra out of the exchange.

 

I understand your frustration m8, it's really getting on my nerves, the whole issue.
Let's not be too hard on the mods, they are oblivious to our headaches and can't be blamed for not being able to share our stress.

I can assure you that the issue is gonna be fixed. If you are unhappy with ATIs get the refund and go for R2 That's what I plan to do if the stuttering will bother me again.

 

For now I'll see what they can do for the Nvidia cards to save any hassle now with arranging to have ATI's installed.

This is a very true point. I ran latency checker on my previous HP laptop and it had yellow spikes in the 1000+ range as background latency. Wasn't running anything other than msn and browsers and I've never had issues gaming on it.

 

Just got my ATI cards installed

From calling them to installed was less than 24 hours

 

How are you finding them?

Ps...where's my set?

 

Change the sig, install the Catalyst and run some benches!
I just got a little over 8k in vantage with a [email protected]. This is not worse than what I got with 280s.

 

Make sure you're on recent Catalysts not Dell's ones Akimox #
Read elsewhere some 10.1 betas were already floating around with mobility support as per ATIs recent 'This Year "TO DO"' list. I'd be surprised if Dell's drivers are beyond 9.6/7

 

I have mob modded 9.12's right now

Need to do some stock runs for you all (and myself)

 

I'm using the desktop Catalyst 9.12 + the latest modder for mobile cards.

 

To make sure we are on the same level - what driver version are you using, I mean what does the Device manager say? mine is 8.681.0.0

Also do you have the CPUID HWMonitor? Does it display the cards correctly?

 

You could always try mobility modded 9.12 hotfix drivers

 

I think that's the one that was installed but did overwrite the existing ones, so I'm not sure if the drivers were installed correctly, that's why I need Scook to confirm his version number. I'm currently using the same Catalyst 9,12 with the latest mobility modder.

 

Loving the new ATI users. They're rock solid awesome cards. I'm not going back to Nvidia's BS anytime in the forseeable future

 

Did 1 run of Vantage with stock everything and no tweaks.....got over 11k GPU score!

I have the ones from Mandrakes thread. 9.12 mob modded
8.14.10.0716

 

My cards are headed back.

Cards will be here Mon and Dell/Unisys want to do the work on Monday. That would be great except that I am in Toronto next week (I told the Dell CSR this) and Unisys says they can only hold the cards for 4 days before they have to go back.

Not sure if I will bother with this... so much work for so little gain. Plus I have to be home for half a day to watch the tech do a 30 minute job.

 

Just call dell back next week and tell them to come back, don't worry about the part. The swap was authorized so you're just rescheduling, bump it to next week when you'll be back and don't stress over it.

Meanwhile

For the 9.12 HOTFIX drivers you have to mod the install of those hotfix drivers. Why don't they just roll them into one and call them 9.13 (??!?!)

 

ATI does 12 drivers per year. There is no 13th month.

Next driver (leaked already) is 10.1

Hotfixes are quick update to fix specific game performance - the changes will be rolled into the next update, but some people can't wait.

 

Looks like Nvidia is not only playing games with its product names but also hiding the actual temps:
When I had the 280s and their temps would hit 70c (Everest) I would start feeling the heat on the keyboard (QWER keys) but when ATIs hit 70c The keys are cold all the time. Probably Nvidia diodes are calibrated downwards while the ATI' ones - upwards, or something like that. I remember there was some huge debate on desktop gaming forums about the differences in temps readings...

 

Do you have any games you could test?

Here are my scores: http://notebookcritic.com/2009/12/16/review-alienware-m17x-all-powerful/

They were all done with simple FRAPs runs rather than in-game bench utilities (I don't trust those).

 

The only game I have from your benches - Dragon Age, but your tests are way higher than mine were with 280s, I never got more than 50FPS average on max even with my [email protected], so there is no point for me to test it since my system is weaker, I can only compare the results to my own runs with 280s. But never really tweaked the drivers for better performance.
I'll run DA anyway in an hour and we shall see....

 

Time to put this back on DPC Latency. Benchmarks can be posted in the benchmark thread. Thanks.

 

Well following my ATI "upgrade/fix" I have stutter that is all green now. With the GTX 280m's I was getting 65k spikes every 18-20 seconds and more if I actually did something with the machine.

I woul say the ATI cards do seem to fix the problem. Mainly, the drivers are better than the nvidia ones

 

Yes, I concur

 

Winter - your post has been merged with the OL thread.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5772198#post5772198

 

Guys,

I'm almost ill after my call this evening with Alienware...

Spoke with a tech this afternoon attempting to see what could be done to address the latency/stuttering issue. He provided me with a 14 step sheet to work through and told me if it didn't resolve the issue to call back.

Well... I called back about 5 hours later and got another tech.

The tech I spoke with actually conferenced in an engineer and we both learned some very bad news... According to him, as of today all Alienware M17x nvidia chipset based motherboards are officially defective. There is nothing they can do to completely eliminate the issue.

Apparently they are working on a new Intel based motherboard revision but it will be some time before it is ready for us.

I for one am not going to sit by and have my $5300+ notebook 'gutted' for a motherboard replacement when it was defective goods to begin with that was never tested.

I just finished filing a request with the Critical Issues department and am now waiting for them to get in touch with me.

Unless Dellianware takes this piece of junk back and does a proper replacement I, as well as my company (a large publisher), won't ever buy anything from them ever again.

My day now officially sucks!

 

Since we are close to 1500 posts in this thread and given the fact John-B from Dell mentioned this thread in his blog post I am closing this thread and we will continue the discussion in the one John-B mentioned. Please continue to post your observations and findings.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5772356#post5772356

@Denver: your post has been copied over as well. I'd like to see an official comment from Dell on the info the tech mentioned to you during your call.