Dell XPS M1730 - Screen buzz+lag

Hey guys! Been recently having a problem with my M1730. On occasion my screen has been making a buzzing noise, accompanied by a major lag spike (this seems to be more frequent when I play games, but it still seldom happens when I'm not).

I don't believe that this problem happened -BEFORE- enabling SLI after installing Windows 7 (but with SLI off my FPS isn't so good).

I'm wondering if anyone knows what the problem might be? It's very troublesome, and I am desperately searching for a remedy. I have all my drivers and what not up to date. Has anyone run into this problem? Anyone know what it might be?

Oh PS: The buzzing comes from my SOUND.

 

After monitoring extra carefully again today, I can say with certainty that this massive frame rate drop + weird buzzing noise almost exclusively happens when I'm playing a computer game.

 

Check temps while gaming with HWMON, your graphics cards might be throttling.

 

Here are the results, I don't think it happened in this session, but I suppose its worth showing anyhow. The CPU went up to a max of 80º celsius

Hardware Monitors
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hardware monitor Dell Hardware Monitor
Temperature 0 61°C (141°F) [0x3D] (CPU)
Temperature 1 62°C (143°F) [0x3E] (DIMM)
Temperature 2 56°C (132°F) [0x38] (Aux)
Temperature 3 62°C (143°F) [0x3E] (Chipset)
Fan 0 3487 RPM [0xD9F] (CPU)
Fan 1 3487 RPM [0xD9F] (Fan 1)
Fan 2 3538 RPM [0xDD2] (Fan 2)
Fan PWM 0 100 pc [0x2] (CPU)
Fan PWM 1 100 pc [0x2] (Fan 1)
Fan PWM 2 100 pc [0x2] (Fan 2)

Hardware monitor ACPI
Temperature 0 62°C (142°F) [0xD13] (THM_)

Hardware monitor Intel Core 2 Extreme X9000
Temperature 0 53°C (127°F) [0x2F] (Core #0)
Temperature 1 53°C (127°F) [0x2F] (Core #1)

Hardware monitor NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT
Temperature 0 84°C (183°F) (GPU Core)

Hardware monitor NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT
Temperature 0 83°C (181°F) (GPU Core)

Hardware monitor ST950042 0ASG
Temperature 0 35°C (95°F) [0x23] (Assembly)
Temperature 2 35°C (95°F) [0x23] (Air Flow)

Hardware monitor Battery 1
Voltage 0 12.49 Volts [0x30CE] (Current Voltage)
Capacity 0 86580 mWh [0x15234] (Designed Capacity)
Capacity 1 86580 mWh [0x15234] (Full Charge Capacity)
Capacity 2 86580 mWh [0x15234] (Current Capacity)
Level 0 n.a. [0x64] (Wear Level)
Level 1 100 pc [0x64] (Charge Level)

 

You might be experiencing CPU throttling. Try using ThrottleStop to monitor for that. It's only accurate on the Xtreme Core 2 CPUs when using the default multiplier but if you post a log file I should be able to figure out what it's telling you. Post a log file when gaming or in any situation where you notice a slow down. Gaming is one activity when both the CPU and GPU are being loaded and is typically when you will see throttling.

When you first download and run ThrottleStop it will be in monitoring mode only. As long as you don't check the top 4 boxes, it won't change how your laptop operates so you don't have to worry about the scary message when you first run it.

http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/3/3/1794507/ThrottleStop.zip

 

Attached is my throttlestop log. Thank you so much for helping me out, I greatly appreciated.

One thing to note is that I didn't notice the buzzing/lagging issue in this session; however, I will continue to run throttlestop in an effort to catch it. Hopefully this log shows that something weird is going on.

 

Achelion: Your X9000 appears to be throttling like crazy. It should mostly be running with a 14 times multiplier when your CPU is loaded but it goes through regular cycles where it drops down to 12 then 10 then 8 then 6 and sometimes as low as 4. 800 MHz is a joke compared to the 2800 MHz it is supposed to be running at. A bad joke actually.

Your log file is huge. It's difficult for me to come in after the fact and figure out the mystery of what you were actually doing while collecting this data. How about add a few notes next time?

You can try running the standard test. Run 2 threads of Prime95 Small FFTs and see how your computer handles that for about 5 minutes. Try the same with Furmark. Then if you want to see your laptop throttle like crazy, run both of them at the same time. Dell should be ashamed for doing this to what is supposed to be an Extreme processor.

 

Ahh! That's no good. I hope this is a problem that's fixable. I know a bit about computers but I'm not exactly the savviest, and throttling is an area where my knowledge falls short.

At the time I was playing World of Warcraft, just running group dungeons and what not. The major spikes tend to happen in dungeons where there is a lot happening on screen (more people, more spells, more throttling!). This didn't used to happen though, I know my computer can handle the chaos in game.

Ah! You lost me. What exactly is the standard test? Also, I'm not sure what you mean by two threads of Prime95 Small FFTs and Furmark. If you could break that down a little bit I'll get right on it!

EDIT: I googled Prime95 Small FFT and piece that together, so I'll run that stat!

 

Furmark 1.80
http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/fur/

Prime95
http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft/

Go down to Step 3 and download for Windows.

Yes, Google is your friend.

Furmark is a 3D test to check for stability and Prime95 searches for Prime numbers. Both tests can create a lot of heat so be careful and don't test for too long. It's always interesting to see how a computer responds to this test. You can run each test within a window on your desktop so you can keep an eye on the multiplier that ThrottleStop reports as the test is running.

When this test and Prime95 are run at the same time, it's almost guaranteed that your laptop will slow down to a crawl. HP can make a laptop that can run this same test at full speed so I'm not sure why Dell can't.

 

I ran my first Prime95 Small FFT and after about 5 minutes on the dot (and I believe test #3) my computer just shut down. Funny thing, when I booted back up I didn't get an error saying "your system shutdown abnormally". Gonna run another one and see what happens!

Also: Should I run throttlestop and log while I run Prime95?

 

Second Prime95 did the same thing, except this time when I turned my PC back on it stated that the source of the shutdown was overheating. I attached another ThrottleStop log if necessary. What should I do next?

Thank you so much for your help, I greatly appreciate your assistance!

 

What your second Prime95 test tells me is the cooling system in your laptop is not adequate to run both cores of your Xtreme CPU at full speed. I'm not sure whose decision it is to shut your computer down. The Intel thermal shut down temperature for their CPUs is still 25C beyond the temperature you got up to so I guess it is the Dell bios that made the decision to shut things down.

The way Intel designs their CPUs is that 25C before they reach the thermal shutdown temperature, they start to slow down and throttle which allows them to run cooler. This prevents them from ever reaching the shutdown temperature unless something very serious has happened like the heatsink has become loose. The Intel thermal throttling and temperature control methods are excellent. On a desktop CPU you can have a fan failure while running Prime95 and the CPU will manage the performance level and temperatures for hours without the computer ever shutting down. Dell's thermal control methods used on your laptop aren't quite as flexible.

You could try running the Furmark stability test now. Only test for 5 minutes max and monitor with ThrottleStop. If the DTS reading hits 10 then stop testing to prevent another shutdown.

If you're worried that you might hurt your computer with these tests then don't bother. You're gaming test already makes it very clear that throttling happens while gaming and it slows things down significantly. If you want, you can play another game and post a new log for that. A large log file like your original one is fine as long as you are gaming the whole time. Just let me know what time you started playing and what time you finished so I can correlate that with the log file.

 

I did the FurMark test and I think I can see clearly where the throttling occurs. My computer heats up and then it drops performance to cool down (visibly seen in the test where temps would go from 96º to 90º instantaneously, accompanied by a performance drop). Attached is the ThrottleStop log.

 

The log file you posted above doesn't show any high temperature testing.

I guess you'll have to go buy a laptop cooler or move to the Arctic so you can enjoy your laptop at full speed.

Have you tried both Furmark + Prime95 at the same time? See if it can run that for a minute without having a meltdown.

 

I know the log file doesn't quite do justice to the temperatures, but I'm going by what Furmark said. When I ran the Furmark stability test there was a temperature display that showed the temperatures slowly go up from 80ºc to about 97º and then they dipped to 90, then back up, then back down.

So the final end-all-be-all solution is to get a better cooling system so that my system throttles less to drop heat?

PS. I'm pretty sure a Furmark and Prime95 test would make my computer explode!

 

The temperatures reported in the Furmark test are for the graphics card. The GPU was getting red hot but the CPU was running nice and cool during that test according to your log file. That makes sense now.

If you find a way to cool your laptop some more then that won't hurt but it won't cure all the throttling issues that are built into this system. When you design something like this you have to start with the cooling system and then go from there. Not great design to slap any old heatsink on the fastest CPU and GPU you can find and hope that it all works out somehow in the end.

As your original log file shows, this laptop struggles with the games of today so it's going to need some help with the multi-threaded games of tomorrow.

 

So I'm screwed ?

The silly thing is, I don't remember having performance issues related to throttling before Windows 7 and enabling SLI, so I feel like...the issue should be fixable. I'm probably wrong though, because I don't entirely understand everything that's going on with my laptop.

Thanks for all your help Unclewebb! If there's anything else you need me to do, or anything you want me to try to help resolve this, let me know -- I'll check in periodically.

 

Other users have also noticed more problems since switching to Windows 7. One theory I have is that W7 is better at taking advantage of multi core processors which would be great unless that creates more heat and throttling issues.

These stress tests are overkill. If you are gaming, the amount of throttling will be reduced and since I think your laptop comes with a decent power supply, you should be able to use ThrottleStop to maximize your multiplier and keep it running at full speed for the majority of the time.

Try running a game with the top 4 boxes in ThrottleStop checked and run a log file. How is game play when set like this? You might be able to drop the core voltage a little to help reduce power consumption and heat. Hopefully I have some time this weekend to improve these features in ThrottleStop.