S-XPS 1645 AC Power Throttle Issue Investigation

PA-7E - it's the one marketed as the Alienware M15x adapter.

 

Oh, I thought that was the 210w adapter

 

Your right it is. The PA-15 is the 150W, i think...

 

So what's the part number for 210W?

 

Yes, and that's the other thing wrong with the car analogy - what Dell seem to understand by 'Full Throttle' is exactly the opposite of what GM would understand by it

 

PA-7E.....

 

lol..
.....

 

I put Bioshock on my 1645 yesterday. No idea what framerates I was getting, and it's no fun on keyboard and trackpad (not even a mouse!).

But the sound was awful - stuttering and screeching half the time I was stationary, and all the time I was moving. Just enough good sound from time to time to give me an idea of what it should be.

So tonight I thought I'd better look at the documentation, make sure I had all the latest drivers, etc., to be sure this was really throttling, and not some other issue.

In the black documentation pack you get, is a black book called 'Setup Guide'. On page 26 it says 'you can use your Studio XPS to watch videos, play games, create your own CDs....' (my emphasis).

Dell might be able to change their website to soft-pedal gaming on the 1645; but if you guys in the US have the same book, or a similar one (do you?), I'd like to see Dell reach out and snopake them all

Anyway, there don't seem to be any new audio drivers for my 1645. I got my X-Box 360 controller in the post today, so I'll try it with that tomorrow, and with Throttlestop, but just monitoring for throttling as I don't have the 130w adaptor.

BTW, how do I tell what framerates I'm getting? I'm new to the intricacies of gaming....:confused2:

 

Hi,

I now have a 130W PA-4E 130W adapter.

Which are the options that needs to be checked in throttlestop 1.7 to have good performance while gaming?

Thanks for your help!

 

Just download, install and launch Fraps:

http://www.fraps.com/

 

Look what I found today walking in my local bestbuy. The guy wouldn't let me turn it on but I managed to convince him to open the box so I can take a look at it. It looks exactly the same as the 1645 I was hopping to see a redesigned venting or at least to move the vent from under the lid.The cpu offered is the i5-430 (could it be any worse?) and battery is 6 cell( weird) and its selling for $999. They wont be up for sale until the 17th, at least that's what the sales guy said.

 

Remember that running fraps decreases your framerates. Tested on a SXPS1640 with GTA IV.

 

I wish the Studio XPS 13 would come out with i5 CPUs in it

 

whats your source on this update "definitely" being released?

 

i think he was being sarcastic.....

according to the rep I spoke to - he said dell was worried about rushing the bios and potentially really trashing people's computers so, I would be really surprised (pleasently so) to see it on Monday.

 

lol well the computer is already trashed, at least thats what it is to me. thats why im sending it back.

 

I agree I think a realistic time frame would be no time frame @ all.

 

Most games have a built in "show frame rate" command.
Google your game for instructions on how to enable/disable frame rate.

 

So, on my new replacement machine.....I was running a BIOS update (for some reason, it had A01 on). It motherfudging BSOD'd on me during the motherfudging BIOS update. Yeah, I was almost screwed. It didn't turn off: I had to physically remove the battery. Turned it on, about a gazillion errors spewed during POST, but it booted. I ran the update again. I called Dell during the mean time and they want to replace the motherboard to be sure.



The manager wanted to speak to me and asked me if I had anything to tell Dell, so I gave him a whole rant about the entire issue, starting from the failed hard drive on my XPS 1640 like in August '09 and all the problems since then. He asked what he could do and mentioned upgrades. I said SSD and he said yes. But, I told him regardless of he could actually do it (he was able to) that Dell needs to include some sort of imaging system with any hard drive/system replacements that weren't due to a corrupted hard drive/software issue because it is a PITA to reinstall everything. With this replacement, it's the 4th time. Office 2007 wouldn't activate over the internet because I installed it too many times, had to call MS and get it done manually. I mentioned this whole imaging solution, incidentally, even before he got on the topic of upgrades.

Do I feel better? Barely. But I'm hella gonna ask this tech who's got the SSD and the replacement motherboard to bring a huge hard drive to backup an image to.

~Ibrahim~

 

The new Lenovo W510 with i7 720QM Quad core comes with 135W AC.

This explains somethings

 

First off, thanks for taking the time to create and upload a video of your performance issues. The next time you do this, how about putting your monitoring tools on the right hand side of the screen and point the camera at that and the upper corner of the game so that it's easier to see the tools and the FPS at the same time. I enjoyed seeing some shooting but I need to see the numbers.

The problem that your video shows is not that your CPU is throttling. GPU-Z measures the speed of your ATI 4670 GPU. It's your GPU that is throttling on AC power.

The Alienware M15x users also had problems with both the CPU and GPU throttling. ThrottleStop is designed to help only with CPU throttling issues. Those laptops have an Nvidia GPU so users turned to Rivatuner and have been able to solve their GPU throttling issues with that.

Your testing is the first that I can remember which clearly shows the GPU throttling on the XPS 1645. More users need to log their GPU performance while gaming and see how wide spread this issue is. I don't know if your ATI Powerplay settings are screwed up or if this is one more bug. When a GPU starts using its 2D clock speeds while gaming, the FPS are going to go into the toilet as your video clearly shows.

As for your CPU, send me a ThrottleStop log file from the latest version while gaming. Don't have either of the clock modulation boxes or the Set Multiplier box checked so we can see what your CPU is up to while gaming. I made some significant improvements to the log file option yesterday but no one has sent me a log or posted one so I could have a look and explain it further. Your throttling GPU seems like your biggest problem at the moment. What happens when you are full screen and not gaming within a window?

Are you serious gaah? This is the warning you get when you download and run ThrottleStop for the first time.



You can go down to the local store and pick up a gun and a grenade and get less of a warning than that. After ikjadoon posted the "void your warranty" quote, Dell saw that and decided that it was OK to run ThrottleStop on your computer. Here's the quote.

"I've clarified with Bill. ThrottleStop itself isn't a problem."

Dell knows about this program but no one from Dell has contacted me yet about any problems. I'll wait until hearing from Dell or seeing something on their website that specifically addresses this issue before adding the "void your warranty" rumor to the warning message. RM Clock lets users adjust the exact same registers on Core 2 CPUs and there's no warning whatsoever on that program. If a user doesn't understand what they're getting themselves into after reading the ThrottleStop warning then there's not much I can do about that.

I disagree with your quote that ThrottleStop, "doesn't seem to fix the problem". It may not fix your problem or all of the issues that these laptops have like the GPU throttling issue or the keyboard / mouse driver issues but it can make a significant difference in gaming performance for many users and with many different games. Increases in FPS of 100% to 200% or more is nothing short of a miracle and has made many users extremely happy with their crippled Dell XPS 1645. My overflowing PM box here and e-mails from around the world are proof of that.

If you're not a gamer then I agree that ThrottleStop might not be the program for you but you can't argue with the fact that it can make a huge improvement in the performance of your CPU. A multiplier increase from 7 to 14 is a 100% improvement in CPU performance and that doesn't even include a huge performance increase because of clock modulation being disabled. Pretty hard to argue with that especially when you consider that ThrottleStop is free.

One last thing. When using ThrottleStop, the Intel protection of your CPU is still 100% enabled. If it ever overheats, it will slow down just like any other Intel CPU does and if that can't control the temperature of your CPU then it will shut down. Intel does a great job designing their CPUs and no user program like ThrottleStop can get in the way of the thermal protection mechanism built into these CPUs.

 

Is there a way to prevent the GPU from throttling on the 1645 Unclewebb?

 

I have been watching this board for over two months in anticipation of ordering a 1645. Beliving in my 10 years experience with Dell products that they would make good on any software/hardware issues.

Now I can't wait to get it so I can return it. Due for delivery on the 9th.

The new Sony "F" comes with a 150W power supply, identically equipped and according to their tech support, does not have the Iphone syncing issue with the P55 chipset. Oh, by the way, it is about 2-400$ USD less than the Dell, with identical configuration with the exception of the video card.

•Battery Type : Standard Capacity Lithium-ion Battery
•Estimated Battery Life : Up to 4 hours Standard Capacity Battery, Up to 6 hours Large Capacity Battery
•Power Requirements : 150W+10%

I guess its the 16.4" screen thats sucking up all the "extra" power! (tounge firmly in cheek)

RETURNING AS SOON AS IT'S DELIVERED:
1645
i7 720
6G RAM
500 Gig 7200
15.6 Wled HD 1080

 

Another question to the experts: would it be possible for Dell to raise the throttling treshold to 115W (the last value we know that doesn't harm batteries) for the PC components (CPU, GPU, screen, etc.) and leave the rest (15W with 130W PSU or 35W for 150W PSU) to charge the battery? It seems a reasonable solution to my non-technical eyes.

 

I'm gonna do it better, even if what i wanted to show (gpu throttling) is showed well enough.

Yes, i already said my gpu throttles on that video, i precisely said that, i didn't mention cpu throttling.

I said "assuming that on this video cpu is throttling too, the interesting thing to notice is gpu behaviour".

I did tell you that the very strange thing to see in that video was that gpu throttling instead of cpu, even if i'm sure cpu was throttling too.

It's not a matter of Powerplay, on the video you can see the gpu stays at 675 MHz, it's just a matter of low load, gpuz shows exactly gpu switching among perf levels, and you clearly see it goes on showing 3D perf level (675 MHz).

On full screen i had the same issue until the day before yesterday.

Well, gpu throttled, for sure.

Now, and this is definitely strange, with AC (90W) i get the same fps you see on battery in that video.

I can say my vga doesn't throttle anymore with 90W, neither on AC nor on battery.

It (gpu) just gave up throttling two days ago.

And don't ask me why, i repeat i didn't change any setting.

But now the problem i said is another one, and it's about cpu.

With the 130W adapter (with or without TS) i get the same cpu results i had before (with the 90W).

I get a score of 10000 on 3dmark vantage cpu test, il should be about 28000.

I get about 20 GFLOPS on Lynx:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=201670

I get about 32 GFLOPS on Sandra:

http://www.sisoftware.net/index.html?dir=dload&location=sware_dl_3264&langx=en&a=

Is it possible to have your cpu benchmark scores with 130W + TS enabled?

Just to know how many GFLOPS your FPU can do, with or without TS, with 130W.

I repeat that i get the same results enabling or disabling TS (with 130W), actually i get the same results with 90W (obvioulsy without TS).

I don't see benchmark scores posted by 130W + TS users in this thread, i think they would be very useful.

Thanks again.

P.S.: i'll send you a TS log.

 

Do you guys think the new BIOS update is coming on Monday?

 

Honestly? No. I'd point the finger to the end of January.

However, the real question is whether the throttling will be just softened, or if the bios will allow greater power supplies. This is the only key question imho.

 

I was researching whether they resolved the Latitude Throttling issue and came across a website called electronista which had an article about it, saying it had been fixed. But the last paragraph caught my eye:

"A fix for the under-performing Studio XPS 1645 is not yet out, but neither will it be coming via a software update. Its issue is apparently related to an underrated 90W power supply, and Dell will reportedly ship a free replacement 130W power supply to owners who call for help."

P.S the article is dated the 3rd Dec 09

 

I'll believe it when I see it.

 

This is right, Dell has sent to some users 130W suppliers. But they need to unlock it via bios, since even if you use a 130W PSU on actual bios only 90W will be used.

 

Yeah that's true. Someone mentioned it in another thread that they new update is coming on the 15th and there considering the 130w PSU's. Just have to wait and see tbh.

mines coming on the 13th, going to hang on to it for a couple days and see what comes out. Otherwise I'm throwing it out the window... i mean return it

 

Yep I decide to look at new Sony F11(150W) or Lenovo W510 (135W). These quality brands should tell you that i7 Quad core needs more than 90W adapter.

 

Why should your Vantage CPU score be 28,000? Can you post some results from a Core i7 mobile CPU that is able to get that score?

Here's a test from my friend loonym that has his Core i7-920 overclocked to 4087 MHz. With Physx turned off, his CPU score is 24,897.

http://forums.pcper.com/showpost.php?p=4349630&postcount=6

If it is not throttling, a Core i7-720QM is only running at 1600 MHz when fully loaded so there is no way it should score better than a well overclocked desktop CPU.

The ATI 4670 does not have Physx so make sure to post some data from a comparable system. I have a friend whose wife's computer has a Core i7-940 and I think this computer has an ATI 4670 desktop GPU. If he locks his multiplier to 12X then his computer will run at 1600 MHz and he should be able to come up with some numbers for a fair comparison to the i7-720QM. I'll put in a request to him and wait for him to get his hands on his wife's computer without getting caught.

I think it was posted before in this forum that when the CPU was very lightly loaded, sometimes that would cause the GPU to get stuck in 2D mode and not ramp the clocks up to the correct 3D settings. I think you might have been seeing that during your testing.

In the RealTemp download is a program called LoadTester. It lets you load a single thread in increments of 10% from 0% to 100%. With the Task Manager Set Affinity... function, you can lock multiple instances of this program to different threads. This might help you create a load in a controlled manner so that you can see if extra CPU load can snap your GPU into using the correct 3D settings while gaming.

Maybe a new bios will fix this issue.

The majority of throttling on the XPS 1645 is only when both the CPU and GPU are being worked hard. When testing with 8 threads of Prime95 Small FFTs, that may or may not cause any throttling. It's usually close to the tipping point where depending on your system components and power supply will determine whether it throttles or not.

Here's an example from the LynX thread:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=4176711&postcount=624

With a 4000 MHz Core i7 Desktop CPU he scores about 58 GFlops. If your laptop is only running at 40% of the speed then you would expect to see a number no greater than 40% of 58 which is about 23 GFlops. Your results don't seem to be way out to lunch.

Some more benchmark scores from users is a great idea.

 

mistake sorry

 

nm its not working for me

 

Here are some of my benchmarks so far


ps: sorry bout the two above posts

 

does anyone know if this throttle issue also exapands to the 15" model, Dell Studio 1557?
I hope i just didnt fail at searching the forum, but it doesnt seem like no one has mentioned my 1557 model in this throttle issue.

 

hahaha not like rep means to much. But since I can't give you any: Thanks for all your work on this issue. You have been most helpful in educating me on this subject!

 

My friend rge over on XtremeSystems ran a Vantage test on his Desktop computer. He locked the multiplier to 12, the same as a Core i7-720QM does during this test so the CPU score should be reasonably fair.

http://service.futuremark.com/home.action?resultId=1773052&resultType=19



His Vantage CPU score was 10249 with the ATI 4670 GPU clocked at 750 MHz / 850 MHz.

With the multiplier locked to 21X, he still only had a CPU score of 17569.



A laptop without an Nvidia card and without PhysX doesn't have a chance of scoring anywhere near 28,000 in the Vantage CPU test.

havokxz: Throttling can be a problem for any Dell laptop when pushed really hard with Furmark + Prime95. You'll have to do your own testing when your Studio 1557 arrives. At least we've got some tools now that can clearly show if throttling is causing a problem. If your laptop uses a Core i7 and an ATI 4670 card and if it only comes with a 90 watt power adapter then I don't think you even need to open the box. When pushed hard, it will throttle. There's a reason why other manufacturers are using 120 watt or greater adapters on their Core i7 laptops.

 

I'm curious to know if the new Dell Studio 17 with i7 are affected.

You can buy this 17p with a i7 720/820, 2 hdd, an ATI 4650, and a rgb full HD display. And for this configuration, the laptop is dispatched with a small 90W adaptator !!

The risk that this problem persists seems me very high!

 

Granted that i've never had a nehalem cpu and that performance improvement could even not grow proportionally to clock, that score seems too much to me too, but look at these:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Intel-Core-i7-Processor-Clarksfield.21684.0.html

http://video.aol.co.uk/video-detail/asus-g51j-a1-3dmark-vantage-run/2746216930 at 7:05

And i found some other tests like these.

I had to write about 23000, not 28000, sorry.

I did see that a i7 overclocked to 4,6 GHz could reach 32000, and 23000 sounds strange to me too at 1,6 GHz clock, but, i repeat, i don't know what is the clock limit in these cpus, where improvement starts to grow up slowly or stops at all.

I've seen i7 overclocked to 4,4 GHz reach 68 gflops, i'm looking for some i7 920 with default clock (clock is higher than 720QM, but it would be a better comparison).

The matter is the same as above, i saw those reviews and i was wondering how much higher clock improves performance in Nehalem, considering that last architecture i've seen is Core.

 

damn.. i was afraid of that. im afraid it will still arrive with a 90watt regardless of how well dell knows about the problem. while waiting for it to arrive ive already tried to keep an eye out of a 120+watt power adapter that is compatible with my dell 1557 but so far no luck =[.

 

Hi everyone,

After reading much about the throttling issue, I decided to go ahead and place my order for a Dell 1645 on Friday. There was really nothing else I could find that appealed to me, and at least I know the issue *can* be fixed.

After spending more than $2000, I am really looking for Dell to send me a replacement adapter free of charge. I know everything is scattered in this thread, but: how would I go about doing this? What would I say, who would I talk to? It seems finding the right rep is key.

My computer arrives February 4th. If anyone has experience in this, please post your tips! Thanks.

 

@Unclewebb:

I downloaded ThrottleStop 1.77 onto my 1645 with its standard 90w adaptor. My intention was just to monitor with it for the moment.

However, it came up 'ThrottleStop Enabled'. I think this doesn't make any difference if I haven't checked any of the settings; is that the case?

But nonetheless, I quickly set 'Disabled', just in case. Which I think is effectively the same when no settings are chosen.

However, on closing and re-opening ThrottleStop, it came back 'Enabled' again. And I can't see a setting in the .ini which would hold this Enabled/Disabled State.

Am I right in thinking that (a) there isn't one and (b) having one would be a good idea?

And come to that, am I right in thinking that ThrottleStop, with no options checked, is a good way of monitoring throttling on my 1645?

Or is there something you would recommend as better, perhaps, just for monitoring the 1645 in its 'as-delivered' state??

 

Here is the latest response from the Dell Tech Center:
Dear Customer,

This is to inform you that we could not release the BIOS update on 7th January due to reliability & testing reasons. We are quite hopeful of an update on the 11th or the 16th of January and shall keep you posted on the developments accordingly.

We will touch base with you once the BIOS update is released on the web.

 

Typical DELL.

 

Midnight_Voice: No worries. If the two clock modulation boxes are not checked and Set Multiplier is not checked then all ThrottleStop can do is monitor your computer whether ThrottleStop is enabled or disabled. I'll think about adding an INI option to keep track of whether ThrottleStop was previously enabled or not.

I'm a little biased but for Core i7, I don't know of any application that can accurately monitor for the 3 main types of throttling the way ThrottleStop can. I was working with a user today who has a Core 2 motherboard and he's still using RM Clock but that great program can't handle the 0.5 half multipliers for Core 2 and it also gave him no way to counter act chipset modulation. No other program lets you monitor and correct for the 3 types of throttling that are used on Dell's laptop computers.

danello: I also saw that Clevo review with the big Vantage CPU numbers and then I also noticed that it uses an Nvidia GPU which has PhysX built in. This causes a night and day difference in the Vantage CPU score so you can't compare the Vantage CPU performance between two laptops that use GPUs from the two different manufacturers. The ~10,000 Vantage CPU score that the desktop Core i7 - 1600 MHz / ATI 4670 combo scored sounds about right for a Core i7-720 mobile CPU when combined with an ATI 4670 mobile GPU. Same thing with the Asus G51J. It's using an Nvidia GPU with PhysX. ATI does not.

I've read through the LinX site on XtremeSystems and there seems to be a lot of variation in the reported GFlops with different CPUs and overclocking amounts and even different versions of the Linpack libraries that it uses. It's not a consistent enough benchmark for it to really prove anything. I don't think 20 GFlops on a Core i7 mobile CPU is way outside the range of normal.

yotsumi: I think I've already heard from a Studio 17 owner who is using ThrottleStop. I don't have the PM message handy so don't quote me on that. The bottom line is that 90 watts just isn't enough.

 

Yes, maybe that PhysX unit makes that difference.

And thanks for posting those tests on i7 locked to 12x, they do clarify the situation.

 

Dont know if it have been brought up but now they are offering the 1645 with a i5 processor ....

"NEW! Now featuring Intel® CoreTM i5 processors up to optional"

http://www1.euro.dell.com/se/sv/hem...d=laptop-studio-xps-16&s=dhs&cs=sedhs1&~ck=mn
(swedish page)

 

Something else I noticed while benchmarking, my clock modulation goes down to about 50% during prime 95 + Furmark, but once furmark finishes and just prime 95 is running the clock modulation will stay at 87.5%. I have to use throttlestop and check the cMod box to fix it!