M17x and DPC Latency

My system was ordered with a single 250GB drive and it came with the caddy for the 2nd drive.

 

Sweeeet.

Sorry, I don't mean to be straying off topic here, so this will be my last post on the HD stuff. When did you place your order for your system, KC0r8y?

 

This was actually a replacement system for my M1730. I got it about a month ago.

 

Back on topic folks. Thanks.

 

I spoke to tech support yesterday, I showed this thread to a rep as well as the engadget page, he put me on hold for a while, and when he came back he said that they are aware of the issue and that a BIOS A03 is on the works but no ETA.

 

In case you missed it, John has stated Dell is working on the issue. See:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=435569

 

i am glad because its the first time the problem have been reported back officially from Dell and that they ensure us that its being under research. i agree with him that its a complicated issue but we gave them so much money to have the patience to do this and support us. I hope this new BIOS will fix the problem no matter if it comes sooner or later (i hope it wont take too long though).

its not clear to me if they are working on the issues themselves or at the dcp latency itself which most of us believe is strongly related to those issues. and i dont know what they are going to do if its an os related issue (vista has less audio stuttering which exists on win7 even after format before drivers installation). thus i dont want to think what will happen if its a hardware issue.

 

I honestly hope they fix it. I really would like to put win7 on my laptop.

 

We deserve better from dell/AW. We payed a lot of money for this.....

They should have this on their top priority since this laptop is the current flagship product.

 

I've run in to this problem myself over the past day. Good to know I'm not alone; I was worried it was a sign of something wrong with the hardware!

 

Haha another M1730 owner thrown into new issues. I'm still very happy with the swap, this is a great machine. But when I've got a blue-ray movie playing over HDMI and it happens... GRRRRRR

And everyone's like lol alienware!

For that simple reason, I hope it gets fixed!!

 

Agreed here, I am tired of people trying tell me I am a retard for wasting all my money on an alienware...when they have no idea what I paid or what the alternatives were for similar performance

And so that this seems on topic I hope this new BIOS makes it out sooner rather than later.

 

Reading on the other forums about the 3 gpu systems the only one I can find is the toshiba a505 and Atheros wireless issue.

 

So over the weekend in preparation for the arrival of my new baby to the family, I started to clean up my E1705 Inspirion and get her ready for adoption (ebay) I figured I would try to fix the latency problems that I've been having with her, downloaded DPC Latency Checker and went out and found a new Intel driver for my wireless card (One of the threads said it was one of the many possible culprits)...and to my surprise, it worked like a charm. I still get spikes every 4 to 5 seconds but they are all very small spikes that most of the time stay at the top of the green, but more importantly, no more huge red spikes above 4k, no skips, hiccups and frame drops while watching streaming video. I haven't checked listening to music but the glitch seems to be gone. I hope I am as lucky when my M17x comes home to me.

 

greetings from the clevo camp.

im running a m571tu with the 280m and i get the same sort of popping/crackling

gone when i disable the wifi from the device manager. tried a different wifi card, same thing, tried both on a different pcie slot...same thing.

powermizer also contributes to the mix, i get less crackling with it disabled

 

lol, i think we should contact nvidia, everyone's been talking about power mizer, did any try running without any drivers at all ? like without even the default windows ones

 

drivers make no difference, i have tried

 

Hey guys. Just a quick update. After pulling my hair out for the last few months. i decided to go to a core 2 duo processor (T9800) and also change out my hard drives to WD 620gb 5400 rpm Blue. These have the best over all review on one of the lab tests i viewed on line. so after changing out the Quad X9300 to the Dual T9800 and changing out the hard drives, also re applied the thremal paste on both graphics cards and the 9400m aswell, thought i may as well since i had the whole laptop apart, i must say this is so easy to strip down and put back togeather, just like having a desktop. Anyhoo i have just perfromed the DCP checker, and low and behold, i get yellow bars every second bar. 2000us , and before with the quads, i was getting red bars every second bar at around 4000us. Still get the occasional large single bar but not often. So this for me is a plus. But i am not sure if it was the hard drives or the processor as i changed them all at once.

See the attached file for a screen shot.

Going to test cmr dirt and grid, as these are the games i notice the stutter and frame rate drop the most. will let you know how it goes!!!

 

Update, just tested grid. Stuttering is worse that the quad!! Mind you i am using windows 7. Think i will try vista tomorrow. I am not in the mood for another fromat tonight. This laptop is about to go through the window. 6th alienware laptop.......... u'd think i would learn. I expected some problems with it but nothing like this. Just spent £550ish quid to test this processor and HD and still no real improvement. Dell better BRING OUT THAT BIOS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Update:

Went back to vista again, stuttering still there. But with the Dual core cpu it is a different type of stutter. Say when viewing the replay, on Race Driver Grid, After you have finished the race, It will run nicley for a min then all of a sudden, a long freeze, along with audio distortion, then it playes back very fast as if to catch up to where it is supposed to be.

Now i don't know if anyone has noticed this: but if you listen to the graphics cards they buzz in different tones ad the screen information changes, this buzz is pretty loud, as i have never noticed on off of the other alienware laptops i have had. Normally you don't notice it because the fans are running at full blast when gaming. But if you put your ear close to where the graphics cards are, you can hear the buzzing perfectly well even over the fans.

Back to Race Driver Grid: Each time i get the lockup or freeze, the buzzing stops on the graphics cards, it is like they totaly cut out for the split second that the screen freezes.

I noticed the Buzzing graphics cards for the first time when i was on Battery power, and only using the 9400m card. Although you are only using the one card, the 2 gtx280's still buzz away and it is loud enough to notice and also due to the fact that when on battery power the fans are not running on the cards.

Can everyone reprot back to me if they notice this buzzing sound??? When i first heard it i thought it was the auto contrast feature of the screen, like it was the inverter doing it, but know i definatley know it is the graphics because you can hear it from both cards either side of the laptop.

I look forward to hearing back from you all

Cheers

 

Switch to Vista and it will become bareable. Win 7 for me was unbareable on my m17x. The part that really sucks is I like win 7 alot.

 

calling alienware as i type so they can notate my problems and attempt a fix. if not i shall return this 2 week old expensive baby.........

 

yeah i'am having DPC latency spike and stutter too... damn... hopefully the new bios will fix all of this... and came out as soon as posible =.=

 

Well not to sound like a broken record but,
i just got my Qx9300 quad core processor, installed it on my M17x. Tge first thing i did is of course to check the dpc latency, and guess what?

It went from bad to worse

I'm getting all red pars on every second par averaging 4k for every other par. The good news is, im not experiencing any stuttering in games. But i did see a decrease in performance in one game (Resident evil 5) and i have no idea why.

I'm om Vista for those who are wondering.

 

I am so frustrated with this. Tried everything i can think of, never had a computer issue beat me. Look at my graph OMG its so high??!! Going to try to move back to 186.24 Nvidia Drivers to see if that helps. (I think its the Nvidia drivers personally)

Things still need to do: Disable Sli (Just to see if it goes down), Try to see how to disable the A band on the wireless card (Still need to find it), and last is so crazy.

Tried: New Sound drivers twice though integrated, Two though Creative Xfi Express sound card. Updated all my drivers as much as i can. Try to disable or turn off Backround or boot up programs i know i don't need. Turn off WIndows Definder, and windows search.

I don't know what else to do other then almost go crazy. Anyone closer to anything?

Update: When i do open Nvidia Application for the settings, i notice mine gets worse at least. Going to try differnt drivers.

 

don't double post dude, it is against forum rules

You already put this up in my "M17x Stutter" thread

 

I deleted it and moved it to the right spot don't trip

 

aight, just checking, don't want you getting in trouble is all

Don't get me wrong, I would love to see both of these problems get resolved (the DPC and stutter)

 

Ya no kidding luckly i have fixed my Video issue stutter, but the Audio one is driving me nuts...

 

It happen when you have headphones on?

 

Oh ya, the graph goes so high when it cracks/pops my lag goes up to over 24,000 a bit then i gets really bad it goes to 40-50,000 this is bull .....

 

Ok that tells me it not the speakers. I am thinking it Windows Vista or Windows 7 that has the issue. I wonder what happen on windows xp or it happen on both 32bit or 64bit in windows vista or Win7.

One idea and this might rule out wireless card why not take it out of the system. Not just disable it but pull the card out.

 

I was just thinking, I just remembered that when I got it, it never had a audio issue it was perfect. I am rolling back all of the drivers that I can remember that came on the machine originally. Right now nvida one just finished going to do sound and network next. I hope it works

 

GL sting let us know :S

 

That good info Stinger61786. If I get my system in a month I will try to look into your suggestion.

 

OMG So tired After lots and lots of drivers the results:

Got it down to a very very little stutter compared to before. Usally did it 10 or more times in a song, now did it once in a song. Still hella anoying, i am out of ideas. I could try to put computer back to stock speed and see if that does anything? I doubt it though. The latency did go down, before the max was like some insane 82,000 for a second when it shuttered. Now the max was 67,000 (For one second lol) Average is alot lower now though was always around 10,000-12,000 now its around 6,000-8,000. Anyone else have suggestings i am open to trying anything else. Even if i have to reformat Frikin again! Windows 7 to me seems like its Slower at responding then Vista. I thought i would never say this, but i miss Vista now LMAO.. When i got this with Vista i had No Audio issues. I am going to bed now, its 2:30am *yawn* i will try to think of anything else, or what else was different when i first got this computer.

 

@Stinger:

You mentioned putting it back to stock speed. What is OC'd? CPU, GPUs or both?

I know its not a solution, but set it to default clocks and see what happens. The only time I OC is for benchmark runs. This may be yet another reason why I see no issues with audio playback, etc.

Now, I am not saying the solution is not to OC. This is a powerful machine and we should be able to OC if we choose. Dell states they do not suggest OCing, but not that we cannot or if we do it will have a negative impact on system usability.

See what happens.

 

So I totally uninstalled my wireless drivers, disabled all NIC bluetooth, just to see if this would help do anything. It appears to decrease the lower bars (in between the 4000u) by about 100u, so the wireless card / NIC / Bluetooth are contributing somewhat, but not much.

For all the people who can't be bothered reading the whole thread (and by the looks of it, thats a few), it appears that:

Small 4000u bars = caused by acpi.sys when windows checks battery levels/charger plugged in status.

Large spikes caused by directx driver when cards downclock.

I have a q9000 2 ghz quad, and I've tried Over clocking/Under clocking, and it has made no noticeable difference. Overclocking sli'd 280s with nvidia performance tools does not disable powermizer and has no noticable effect. I have found no other overclocking program for the sli 280s that works with win7 and can overclock successfully.

Anyone had any success disabling powermizer on dual cards?

 

Right now I am running at 3.03 for the CPU, Stock speed one the GPU's though. Have tested it and is FINALLY stable after many many tinks. I thought mine was locked also but i just caught it downclocking even with high performance mode on. I cannot see why overcloking would be a issue either, but at this point i am trying anything since i am out of ideas. Just need to write down overclock settings

I also tried all of those as you stated it helped but not enough for a difference. I also disabled the sound card, and no difference.

Here are some screen shots of my cpu downclocking.

 

Seems like they have found 2 possible reasons but we'll have to wait for them: http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/archive/2009/11/18/dell-dpc-latency-and-you.aspx

 

Here's what I'm getting on the desktop (idle).


the image is way too small for some reason, but basically the downclock directly corresponds to the huge spike.
Powermizer is enabled, because even when it's disabled it doesn't lock both cards and I get the same results.

 

Awesome, so Dell knows what it is....any bets that it's the same 2 things we think it is?

 

I am so excited also been working on this damn thing forever now. IMO it is either Speed Step/aka Down clocking or Nvidia Drivers have a issue of some sort. If i go back on Nvidia drivers less poping, cracking, etc.

 

those are great news. i didnt understand what they mean with reproduce. this is so easy to reproduce. just a clean win7 install and then play an mp3.

 

registered just to post here

i don't have a m17x but i do however have this exact same issue on my computer, this is the only forum thread i could find that is currently keeping track of this issue.

i never had this issue on windows XP, until recently that i got win 7 i learned about DPC latencies, and then realized that XP aswell has those same latencies, yet on XP the audio isn't interupted by other hardware latencies for me

the only thing i managed to figure out is that every nvidia card regardless of model, creates latencies weather it's upclocking, the real issue is when the card downclocks, it creates this huge latency causing audio to stutter on win7

In Win7 the card switches modes more often than in XP, still on XP audio will not stutter, i wonder why 7 is affected that way?

i've heard that windows7 is a little different from xp with audio because it has its own process seperate or somthing?


also i managed to get semi stutter free audio yesterday
i installed Nvidia's new http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7_winvista_32bit_195.62_whql.html and i bumped my cpu voltage a bit because i found out my overclock was unstable

im now on windows 7 with stutter free audio, the latencies are still there when the card downclocks, but the audio isn't interrupted anymore

 

Cool.. This issue exists in ATI systems also though.

 

do you have a laptop or a desktop? for laptop and gtx280 (dont know for gtx260) the 195.xx series suck. this driver you posted must be for desktops? dekstops have different bios different power management (downclocking or overclocking ) than laptops. thus i would be very suprised to see those dcp latencies on desktops.


anyway please keep this thread clean for M17X and create a new thread on this forum.

 

From what I can see, it's all to do with Windows Aero putting the cards under a bit of load, and then easing off, causing a downclock. Windows XP doesn't really have any graphically intensive "stuff" going on at the desktop, so I doubt the cards would leave the 2D clocks.

Also, windows XP may stutter less when the DPC spikes occur because it has a different audio system. I had an Dell M1710 which had these lights, and every time the lights changed I would get audio stutter on Vista and 7 but not on XP.

 

Same here, have you updated the bios? Is it possible to down flash to an A00 Bios just to see if it would help?

 

I have a gateway FX with Nvidia 9800GTS and I get all green bars, there is no DPC latency at all. My cousin has an HP with an Nvidia chip as well, dont know the model, and all green bars.

 

Yes now that you said this, When i first got this it had old Bios on it. Now it has the new one A02 (I think) I wonder if i can find the old file somwhere? Has anyone tried to Down flash the bios yet?