A09 BIOS update released for XPS 1645

I have WLED And I get super throttling

 

Anybody else concerned about the increase in overall temperature being put out by the machine? With A08, i never had an issue with GPU Throttling, the highest that i got was 81c. Playing the same apps with this new update im in the 88c range (With Zalman NC2000), and ive changed nothing. Surely Dell couldnt of missed this increase in their testing, which leads me to believe they cant find the sweet spot between heat, throttling and stability

Im moderately concerned about not only the battery, but life of the machine when its putting out an average of 5-10c more, anybody else have the same concerns?

 

I don't have any quantitative data to back up what I am about to say, but between A08 and A09 I haven't experienced any difference when I'm just using my laptop (ie. not trying to benchmark it or make it heat up with Prime95 and Furmark). It's likely that the games I play don't tax the system enough to make it throttle, or it's also possible that I've been one of the lucky ones that received a system that was put together in such a way that it handles heat better... I don't know, but this past weekend, I played Dawn of War II all weekend, and experienced no issues. My laptop came with A08 on it, and I installed A09 as soon as it came out.

*addition: though through testing I did determine what everyone has already noted, that the GPU no longer throttles.

 

My 1645 hasn't seem to have gotten hotter since the new bios...

 

ok got a tiny bit of testing done

I downgraded to A08 and then ran every program i have (all at the same time) including a couple of instances of explorer and firefox, a bunch of powerpoint lectures, utorrent, adobe acrobat reader with a full textbook, 2 1080 p movies (one in vlc and one in wmp), itunes, lime wire, notes, msn, skype, mass effect 2, bioshock 2, prince of persia, need for speed shift, red alert 3, and assasin's creed II all at once....

everything ran smoothly. cpu usage according to my all cpu metere (gadget) was 90% I could switch between all these programs effortlessly and without any problems...i even put the computer to sleep with all these programs running and when i woke up the comp..while stuttering for a few seconds at first after that everything was smooth again...


ive attached the log..it looks good to me maybe i dont know how to interpret it though..

later on tonight ill upgrade to A09 again and do the same thing and log those results...

 

Hehehe... I like your testing methods. Though if you are interested... running Prime95 puts 100% load on the CPU, which is much easier than trying to load up as many programs as you can.

 

Its more interactive this way haha. Plus you cant appreciate a quad core until you actually see what you can really do with real programs..

with just prime running the numbers dont move...the multiplier says at exactly 12.00 and eveerything else at 100% except DTS

 

Lizard,

Your CPU shows throttling. The lowest that it had gone down to was 62.5%, so losing 1/3 of your performance isn't too bad....

 

Actually, I don't know about that... the "throttling" I see in his ThrottleStop log is most likely just the CPU cutting down the multiplier when it isn't under load.

 

I personally think A09 works fine. I know there's few people who show weird CPU death and/or modulation for no good reason (it's not temps). I don't see this with Prime+Furmark (no modulation) and Multi stays where expected due to lack of power from the adapter (10s to mid 11s).

Maybe they'll give us all the required power with A10...one can hope. Heat is a non-issue for me.

Dirt2 game run for around 10mins appears to show it runs as it should.

 

Resident Evil 5 might use all 4 cores but it's only loading each one 25%. If you run a benchmark like Prime95 Small FFTs, you can run from 1 to 8 threads and watch what's reported for C0% to make sure it is working correctly.

 

The very first line in your log file shows throttling. The C0% shows the load on your CPU. When that is showing 100%, a Core i7-720QM was designed by Intel to run at a minimum multiplier of 12.0 and nothing less. Your log file immediately shows average multipliers dipping below 12.0. That's throttling. Your CPU is running slower than what it is supposed to be running at.

After that the bios tells the CPU to use clock modulation which slows down the CPU internally. This fools some people because it reduces the load on the CPU and lets the CPU start using turbo boost again. Clock modulation readings of 62.5% means your CPU is running at approximately 62.5% of the performance level that it was designed to run at.

I guess these CPUs are so powerful these days that some users don't mind a little bit of throttling.

CPUs are not supposed to be using clock modulation except under extreme circumstances like when the core temp gets up over 100C. Well over 100C and just before the thermal shut down temperature of 125C. The reason the CPU is not under load is because clock modulation is killing performance.

 

i forgot to delete the first couple of lines which are actually from yesterday..notice the date is is 5/24...

if you start at 5/25 you'll notices multis of 7.xx but i think thats because the cou wasnt under any load at all...as soon as i started firing up programs the multi went up and never went below 12.00 after that.....

looking at that i cant tell how im losing performance

 

I guess I didn't look hard enough at the log file date and I assumed it was all from one session. Lots of throttling yesterday, but nothing unusual today.

error-id10t: Your log file while playing Dirt is how a log file should look. No clock modulation being used and the multipliers are not sagging below 12.0. Lots of turbo boost too above the default 12.0 multiplier.

 

Hmmmm, my CMod and Chip are both at 100% and I'm not even doing anything. I just have a web browser, IM, and e-mail open. Multiplier is sitting around 7.

 

You want clock modulation always at 100.0%. That means it is not being used. That's a good thing. 12.5% is a bad thing.

At idle your multi will drop down to 7.0 with the help of SpeedStep. You need to test at full load to see if your CPU can maintain full performance without significantly slowing down.

 

Gotcha, thanks.

So what good is setting the minimum processor power to 100% if it still uses speedstep to lower CPU Mhz?

 

Well, I did a reformat today. Installed the latest drivers of everything (the ATI drivers from dell, for those curious) and I was still getting massive throttle in performance. I downgraded back to A08 and everything is back to normal...appear to have fixed my hulu crashing issue through the latest flash player beta.

I notice my throttle happens when my machine heats up considerably; I'm fairly certainly that A09 would be for me if I were to re-apply new thermal paste and all that fun stuff to the CPU/GPU etc...but the problem is I'm fairly inexperienced when it comes to these things:

Should I mail or call a Dell tech to have them redo the thermal pasting or should I attempt to do it myself? Thanks guys.

Note: This is one of the first Dell Studios XPS 1645 shipped, if it makes any difference in regards for performance; running on WLED 1920x1080

 

Well today playing world of warcraft the GPU temps were 79-86C, but it only throttled once noticeably after about an hour of playing, requiring a restart (note this is with graphics and turned down to 1/2 or less) and Dell still hadn't called back as promised after the last tech visit...

So sadly after speaking with the Dell tech tonight, he looked and saw how many times the laptop has been serviced he asked to have it sent in to the Dell "Depot" for repairs. I don't really want to send it in but at this point the in home tech seem to fix one things and cause another, they said to keep out my hard drive and battery. So it looks like 7-10 business days i'll be without my laptop.

Also since its going in I added in two other cosmetic issues at the time, the plastic piece with the vent wouldn't go all the way on so there is a gap (I think the tech caught some wires where they shouldn't be), and the front left corner of the silver border is starting to come loose and is raised slightly (I think this is the glue melting from the heat ).

 

Same thing happening to mine...except it's the right side; also noticed there's a small tint on the silver where the screen lifts up and down. Also, below where the intel and window stickers are, there's....a small square plastic that kind of embeds out? No idea what it's for...maybe a LED or something...anyhow, the plastic off there.

 

Its the infra-red reciever, for remote etc

 

I also would like to know if setting the minimum processor state to 5% instead of 100% actually makes a difference. Both settings seem to me like they are equally "cool," and equal in terms of performance. In theory, it would seem that the 100% minimum should make the laptop use more power and have higher performance.

 

I don't have a Core i7 but on the 45nm T8100 I tested, this setting doesn't make any difference to power consumption.

You can use the Windows Performance Monitor to monitor the Battery Status / Discharge Rate which is the power consumption for the entire laptop when running on battery power. Using a Kill-a-Watt meter, I saw no measurable difference in a wide variety of Windows settings when the CPU was idle. It didn't seem to make any sense but the Performance Monitor power consumption numbers confirmed this.

I later discovered, also using Performance Monitor, that my CPU was spending 99% of its idle time in the C3 state so all of the traditional multiplier and voltage ID settings were being ignored at idle. The CPU was in a low power state where these settings had no measurable affect.

I'd be interested to see the same sort of testing on a Core i7. They are designed to shut down cores as much as possible at idle so I think you will probably see the same thing that this setting doesn't do anything to reduce power consumption.

 

Disregard... found solution on page 11

 

Hi, new here.
Specs:

Dell 1645 Studio XPS i7 820QM model 0Y517R
BIOS: A09
ATI Radeon 4670 1Gb
Dell 1520 Wireless/370 Bluetooth
16" HD 1080p RGBLED
8Gb DDR3 RAM
8xDVD RW (no Bluray)
130W adapter (replaced fried 90W)

Fresh Win7-64bit install but
No Face Recognition
No DataSafe
No Failsafe
No Dell Remote Access
No McAfee
SB XFi removed, other Creative left as is
Current drivers as per Dell website or Windows update only (no modded drivers)

Started with laptop out of the box randomly giving me hard lockups (killed my 2Tb external drive during one of these lockups, thank god I was only backing up my 1Tb...) anywhere from once a day to every 10 mins.
Found this site and then Dell forums.
Undid XFi and voila - no lockups ever again and my laptop is on 24/7 (longest period without restart is over 2wks).
No issues with sleep/hibernate on A07.
Then 90W adapter died (was REAL hot just about all of the time).
Plugged old PA-10 90W from a Dell I6400 and decided to run Prime95 (standard torture test settings) for the 1st time as a test - overloaded the PS and tripped it. Thankfully switching it off and on reset it so it's still going.
Confirmed bad CPU throttle (mult 9x clock mod at 12.5%!) and 84C GPU throttle with A07/90W running Prime95 and Furmark simultaneously.
A09/130W no CPU throttle (mult 13.0 and no clock mod) with Prime95 and full brightness,
BUT add Furmark (standard settings + post-fx and extreme options) and it throttles - mult 9x and 50-62.5% clock mod at full brightness. At min brightness no clock mod but multiplier still fixed at 9.0.
GPU throttle gone (got to 92C).
Haven't found a site yet to test the Flash to see if I need to try the Adobe Beta software or modded ATI drivers (no full flash vid from southparkstudios in Oz) or whether A09 has done the job.

Any pointers? Any particular Youtube vids that are known to be problematic? (briefly tried some HD movie trailers in fullscreen @ 720p but most are only 2-3mins)

 

Any flash video (any Youtube video, etc.) can show the problem, if you have it. I particularly noticed my slow-down/blackened screen (not exactly a complete lock-up) when I was watching videos on Hulu. All I did was get rid of the XFi, like you did, and installed Flash 10.1 Beta and all of that lock-up behavior is in the past. So just try any Youtube/Hulu video for about 5-15 min to see if anything out of the ordinary happens. I have a feeling the final version of 10.1 is around the corner...The betas are stable enough though.

 

I haven't read all 18 pages about the A09 Bios Update..

But from what i've read so far, there is no more throttling issue with the A09 bios update right??

does that work with the 90 W adapter? or do i still need to get my hands on the 130 W adapter, AND upgrade my bios to A09 to have no throttling issue?

thanks

 

Wrong; There is no GPU throttling... still chipset and I believe CPU still though.

 

You'll definitely need a new 130w adapter. But I'm surprised...a while back, there were some Dell reps here that took in PM's both on this forum and the official Dell forums -- as long as you gave them basic info (name, service tag, etc.) they sent a 130w free of charge, no replacement required. It's not much of a hassle to receive a 130w...unless they changed their policy since then.

Anyhow, because the A09 relieves some GPU throttling issues, and previous versions relieved some CPU throttling problems...you're going to experience more voltage/power usage and more heat...there's no way your 90w is going to handle all that.

 

Ok..if i do get the 130 W adapter..
should i really upgrade my bios to A09?
read up to like page 11 of this thread, and realize how some people said A09 is not a good choice..

GPU throttling is worse, or CPU throttling?
like someone said, it's like Dell takes one step forward and two steps back

 

GPU throttling is better with A09...umm, CPU is either worse or about the same. The only way to really tell is to test it, and go backwards if you don't like it (thread on how to do that someone on the forums).

It seems like I'm one of the select few that has problems with A09...although I'm chalking up my problem to poor air circulation/cooling issues -- I'm in Texas at the moment where it's crazy hot outside, and I'm positive that the thermal paste was applied poorly on this machine...

 

Ok, i'm getting my 130 w adapter tomorrow..
my question is..is it alright if i leave it at A08?
will the throttle stop with A08 + 130 W adapter?

 

Hi, I have bad gaming performance (just cause 2, nfs shift) with my dell xps 1645. I'm running a09 bios and 130W adapter with Catalyst 10.5 and display driver version 8.732 . I've been trying unclewebb throttlestop but it does not seem to change anything. Does throttlestop work with a09 bios? If so, do i need to do anything special like the sleep workaround (I tried it and it didn't seem to change anything). If not, should I downgrade to a03 and run throttlestop on startup? Also can you please explain me every steps to get rid of the throttle with a03 bios.

Finally can you please confirm me that a09 still throttles with a 130W adapter, because answer are still confusing me.

Thank you for your help

 

It depends on your laptop.. some see severe CPU throttling, some only see CPU throttling when using Prime + furmark at the same time(heavy stress), and some have no noticeable thottling at all.

Gpu throttling has been 'fixed' because they removed the 84c limit on the GPU

 

nicnad: Run a log file when using ThrottleStop while gaming and select the More Data option. It will create a large log file so upload it to SendSpace or somewhere convenient and post a link. Delete any old log files before you start collecting new data.

Some here might like to debate this but the Dell engineers aren't dumb. Now that ThrottleStop has been out for 6 months, they know exactly what it does and they can adjust their newer bios versions to throttle the CPU more and fight harder against ThrottleStop. That's why one user has gone back to A03. Back then Dell didn't know too much about ThrottleStop.

A log file while gaming will help me understand what Dell is up to with A09. ThrottleStop is very efficient when minimized to the system tray so there is lots of room for me to increase it's anti-throttling abilities if that is needed.

 

Running A09 with TS on. Started with Furmark for about a minute and then started Prime... http://www.sendspace.com/file/4y339m

 

Cbaty,

It's nice to see that the throttling is as strong as ever. I see that your machine goes from 100% down to 12.5%. That is a huge performance hit, that makes your machine about as useful as a microwave.

I would seriously consider A.03 and ThrottleStop, no question.

 

Thanks for taking a look man, fortunately there is a 1647 on it's way and I am not going to mess w/this machine anymore : )

 

When fully loaded with Furmark + Prime95, there are not enough CPU cycles left over for ThrottleStop to battle against the throttling. When gaming when the CPU is not so overloaded, there is some hope for ThrottleStop but I don't think there is anything I can do to improve things when applications are fully loading the CPU at 100%.

There might be a few more users heading back to A03.

 

I find it odd that some people have CPU death while others, like myself, have expected results with 720 / RGB / A09. I just did another Prime+Furmark and with no modulation, the multiplier averaged 10.7 during this run. With Prime running before and after, it is 12.

Furmark started at 10:08:23 and ended 10:15:13 (those are the instances where stable Multi changes).

You can see I didn't use TS as after stopping Furmark, Prime would have tried to go to Multi of 13 with CPU showing 55W. The only time where I can get Multi of 7 (or anything below 10) is when I'm running on Battery.

I still want Dell to give us the full power from the 130W adapter so I can get a stable Multi for Furmark+Prime.

 

How would you define "cpu death"? Am I experiencing it?

I went ahead and did another Furmark+prime 95 test as well and ive got no modulation...started furmark at 21:25:42 and stopped it at 21:27:37, then i stopped prime shortyly after

 

No. I don't know what to call it besides CPU death. There are some who have shown their Multi drops to 7 (or anything below 10) with some showing modulation also.

Yours pretty much matches mine and because of the 130W adapter limitation, so do the guys with 820 when they run Furmark+Prime (though I've only seen one log).

 

I just noticed the hibernate/sleep problem has NOT been fixed on A09.
I played some tf2 and the multi stays at 10x 1300mhz.
Ran Superpi and yep, multi @ 10.

Reboot..fixed

 

I dunno whats happening. I went back to A03 Bios and when using TS I get bit of throttling when playing GTA:EFLC but not like severe but a bit of it. I dont understand whats happening. Wish this was a stable machine

 

What's to understand? The XPS 1645 has always had throttling problems.

ThrottleStop has always been a band aid solution. It can reduce the amount of throttling but it can't eliminate it. It's up to Dell to write a bios that doesn't have these problems but 6+ months after the XPS 1645 was first released, some users still have major throttling problems.

These problems are not likely to go away because even the 130 watt adapter, when limited by Dell, still isn't enough to fully power this laptop at full CPU+GPU load so it is designed to throttle.

Sadly, your XPS 1645 is working as designed but that is far less than what the specs on the sales page promised. Contact Dell and tell them they can have it and you want your money back because of their inability to deliver a product that actually works.

You could ask them to exchange it for an Alienware. The Alienware gaming laptops also have some throttling issues but if you order one with a single GPU and not SLI or CrossFire, you might be OK, if you get lucky.

 

i still throttle during bfbc .

 

Unclewebb,

do you think the HD5730 will make a significant difference in regaurds to throttling/heat issues? I realize the gpu throttling has been fixed for the most part, but since the 5730 will be using 10 less watts will that give the cpu extra power to perform under load?

 

If the 5730 consumes 10 less watts at full load then in theory, that should reduce the amount of CPU throttling. The published TDP numbers are not always suitable for accurate power consumption comparisons. The CPU throttling is due to lack of available power so anything you can do to reduce power consumption should reduce the amount of throttling. Even something simple like reducing your screen brightness can make a difference.

Two years ago, running Prime95 + Furmark didn't exceed the ability of the power adapters that Dell was shipping with their laptops. Now it does. Maximum power consumption has doubled but Dell didn't bother doubling the power output of their power adapters so the result is throttling. Dell thought the majority of their customers would prefer a small adapter to one that can actually deliver the goods.

 

Whooohoooo

 

How come your Core i7 is so sick and stuck with the minimum 7.0 multiplier when loaded?

I had to castrate my T8100 and lock it at 997 MHz to make it run Super PI that slow.



Is this another feature of bios A09? How to make an expensive, powerful laptop run like a netbook. Thanks Dell.