S-XPS 1645 AC Power Throttle Issue Investigation

but, if you are not gaming/video encoding. would the 1645 be any faster than a core 2 duo based XPS 1640 ....everything else being the same? I mean for day to day use, web browsing, word etc.

 

I just did the same test. On AC the CPU jumps to 2.53Ghz, according to the Intel gadget.

On battery it - at first - struggled to even get to a 12x multi, but after changing my power plan to High Performance (it was set at the default Dell profile, don't ask me why), it again jumped up towards 2.53Ghz. So double check your power settings.

But don't trust the Intel gadget. On my desktop it sometimes reports ridiculous numbers:



It sometimes even goes as high as 40+ Ghz That's probably to compensate for my 1Mhz XPS 1645

 

Yes it would be faster then the 1640 core2Duo's. The Core i7 is a completely new architecture which is much faster and more efficient than the Core 2 Duo.All the Core i7 processors are Native Quad cores (4 cores), which means that they actually have 4 cores on a single die, while the older Core 2 Duo processors like the Q6600 (2×2 = 4 cores) had two cores on a single die, and two such dies merged together. This increases the processing speed greatly. They also have 256 KB L2 cache per core and a shared 8 MB L3 cache which has proven to be much better than any cache configuration in Core 2 Duo.

I'm going to be using my 1645 which arrives tomorrow, for day to day usage any gaming i'm planning to do would be on my PS3.

 

thanks for the info on the C2D vs i7 architecture. Well, I am doing the same ps3 + 1645 solution as you. ps3 for gaming is better because I have noticed that they release more titles on ps3/xbox than on PC. ipod touch for gaming on the go. My 1645 also arrived in two days. I hope that dell issues some bios update soon to fix/reduce the throttling/

 

Yeah PS3 MW2 kills it. Im sure Dell will come out with BIOS update by the end of the month. The SXPS is a beautiful machine especially the RGBLED its a bit of a downer that it has these issues but it is something that can be resolved.

 

Join the club, mine is arriving tomorrow am...I hope their coming to my house first!!!

 

Hopefully the new batch will have an upgraded ac adapter.

 

LOL, they probably will, mines for PM Delivery

 

All that fun stuff: true quad-core, 8MB cache (6MB for i7-720QM), doesn't matter when it's running at 933MHz, nearly 2GHz slower than a C2D. i7 is fast, but I doubt it's that fast.

But, I guess, it has to be because the 3DMark '06 scores for the i7 are higher than the C2D, so even with throttling it is faster? T9550 scores 2061 @ CPU/3DMark '06 versus i7-720QM scores 2848 @ CPU/3DMark '06 on battery.

~Ibrahim~

 

but, isn't the i7 running at the regular speed before getting throttled due to gpu + cpu use.That is, for day to day stuff, it should be faster than C2D.

 

The average for the CPU score with i7 720QM is 3030+ in 3Dmark 06 and 10050+ in 3Dmark Vantage

 

It is. I used to have a 1737 with a C2D @ 2.5Ghz, and the i7, even running at 1.6Ghz is much faster. During regular day to day tasks you can definately feel the benefit of more than two threads and the newer architacture.

 

Day-to-day stuff, by definition, won't be benefited too much from an i7 versus a C2D. Define what you mean day-to-day. Like ripping CDs and extracting files? Yeah, then it will be faster. If it's just Office and Firefox, I say imperceptible from first-hand experience.

Comparing my SXPS 1640 (T9600) to my SXPS 1645 (i7-720QM), I have not noticed any difference in speed using:

Office 2007
Firefox
iTunes
Listening to music (streaming/CD)

Files are extracted far quicker, though. But, I do that like, what twice a day? I gained maybe 10 seconds, which is a a molecule in an ocean compared to the time I've wasted with this throttling issue, lol!

@fr0x

I was just quoting my own score. The CPU score could be influenced by other things, too, but with my "old" configuration (4GB is only difference, otherwise sig) I got 2848.

~Ibrahim~

EDIT: Post above....this is pretty subjective: case-in-point. And Mitchell, are you sure none of these "faster" attributes could be to your SSD, which is shown to have huge day-to-day performance benefits?

 

Your score is with TS ?

If not, I think the difference is due to TS

EDIT: Speaking of itune, anyone know if Dell will fix the problem of synchronization of iTunes with the PM55?

 

My problem is just that my daily jobs are not normal uses., I'm a software engineer.

 

I agreed with you. I have never played any games or watched any movies on my laptop since the screen is just too small for me (Even 16 inch). So I leave those tasks to my Ps3 connected to Samsung 46 FHD LED in my room (I sometimes use it for an external display for my laptop. It's nice )

However, I still need very powerful computers for my software jobs. So, TS + 130W is needed

 

In that case, you have two options. The first option is to return it if it is still feasible for you (call them up, see what you can get out of them). Second option is to just hold tight and see what Dell comes up by the end of the month.

 

Oh, duh, good point. Yeah, 2.8K is WITHOUT TS.

I know it's a verified problem with PM55 + iTunes, but my brother's and dad's iPhones (3G and 3GS) have synced no problem. But as to your question: no idea.

~Ibrahim~

 

I returned it already 2 weeks ago and I'm waiting for my refund. I had been using for 5 days before returning it.

my i7 820QM, 6GB with throttle issue could not handle my daily jobs (running mutiple powerful servers and required-powerful-computer software applications at the same time). It's still slow sometimes. (It might be ok if it could run at full capability)

It's just that bad, in my case

 

Out of curiosity, did you actually try using ThrottleStop or was this with the 90W adapter?

 

I thought it only throttles when doing graphics intensive programs, In my case, i'm able to run dragon age, and a few other games in max graphic settings without throttling, but there are some other games that do make it throttle. Unless your applications are that heavy intensive, I don't see why it should be throttling.

 

I picked up Dragon Age during the weekend, and on my machine (see sig) it does throttle. First is drops the multi to 7x, and then it starts throttling the clock to 87.5%. The multi sometims climbs back up to around 10, but still that's throttling. It should be able to run at 12x or 13x, and with 100% clocks.

I find the throttling most noticable when your group is fighting multiple enemies at once.

I was running it at 1920x1080, no AA, everything else on max. Screen was at or below 50% of brightness.

 

On the Dell UK site, go to:-

http://www1.euro.dell.com/uk/en/home/Laptops/ct.aspx?refid=notebooks&s=dhs&cs=ukdhs1&~ck=mn

Click on the third item down on the right:- 'Help me choose a processor'.
You should get a pop-up:-

http://syndication.intel.com/Distri...87110501&contentType=0&cc=GB&campaignId=18649

It should come up on the i7 processor, but if not, select this.
Then hover over 'Extreme Gaming' More Information, i.

That's 'Extreme Gaming', not just 'Gaming'.

Click on 'Learn More', if you like. More about how suitable this CPU is for gaming.

If Dell want to pull these pages, it will be very interesting to see how enthusiastic Intel are about having the i7 downrated in this way. I mean, if you can't game on an i7, then what the hell can you game on?

 

I totally agree with you, its ludicrous what some Dell reps are saying that the laptop is solely a multimedia laptop. The fact that they know of this issue and having their business acumen caps on they do not want to deal with this on a mass scale, would just cost them way too much. So what i think Dell is trying to do is to divert attention away from the fact that this machine is a gaming one. (if you go on the dell website you see that the sxps doesn't have that gaming icon as the alienware one has)

So on there site they are simply downgrading or say bringing expectations down a few notch in regards to the laptop being used for extreme gaming knowing the fact that it throttles.

Mine is coming tomorrow and iv decided to keep it rather than return it.

 

just curious, what made you decide to keep it rather than returning?

 

At first i was going to return it when i first started reading all these threads and i totally understand the problem and the potential workarounds. One thing that has stuck in my mind that it is not a problem that can not be potentially solved, it could tbh be worse. Additionally i'm not planning to literally burn the out of my cpu gpu when im using the laptop. I do understand that im paying alot of money but for a laptop that could potentially throttle when i decide to play a game once in a while.

But the one factor that made me buy it was the RGBLED screen, its looks and its specs. i mean it does have its flaw but then again so does my GF.lol.

 

haha yea not everything is perfect. I think that apart from intensive gaming, even on the 90W charger, the cpu does perform at the normal speed and also does turbo boost when needed(1.6ghz and 2.8 turbo for 720qm). What I learned is that the system works fine for CPU intensive tasks. So, it's NOT like we have bought a 933mhz quad core i7 cpu.

 

I don't know if it should be posted here it's just every one is talking about the RGB screen so here we go, the RGBLED screen is MATT I have removed the clear plastic cover on mine and was very glad to see the matt finish under so now all I have to do is trim out the clear plastic and keep the edge.

 

Do you have any pictures of this? Sounds interesting.

 

I will take one now I just have my blackberry so hope it looks ok.

 

lmfao I love the comparison to your GF. That was epic and a great point, look at all the other comparable machines from all manufacturers, they're ALL having some problem or another, and with the workaround developed by the epic Unclewebb we can at least use the machines as intended until Dell decides to get it's act together.

 

Loool, there's a Famous Quote by Sam Keen which says: "We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly" (change the person to SXPS 1645). Don't get me wrong about Dell, the have to sort this issue out its not as if they can simply ignore it or try to get away with it, but at the same time nothing is perfect. What Unclewebb has done has shown that there is a workaround and would let you use the laptop to its full potential and it does not inherently have major issues with it. I hope that Dell will respect us and release something which is acceptable to all of us.

Acer has recalled over 22,000 Aspire one notebooks http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/11/acer_recall/

At least we don't have a burning laptop on our hands.

 

I don't know if you can see I have put the removed clear plastic over half of the screen not grate I know should be able to tell buy the reflection of the light.

 

Here is an other one on a black screen.

 

That was my point lol, I hope Dell releases a fix soon. It'd be nice to have to topic of this forum be something other that throttling.

 

Thanks! I get the idea.

While the glossy screen is in some respects really nice, in others it is quite annoying. If there would be a way to re-finish the rest of the screen, this might be a nice option for me to think about...

But this is getting off-topic.

 

http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/3/3/1794507/ThrottleStop.zip
http://www.sendspace.com/file/42x3zb

I decided to add an extra column to the monitoring section which reads the data coming from the on chip digital thermal sensors. These sensors count down towards zero as the core temperature gets hotter and hotter. It basically tells you how much head room you have before the Intel CPU decides it is running too hot and will start to thermal throttle.

I thought this data would be interesting because it should clearly show that the Dell throttling scheme has nothing to do with how hot your CPU is running. When these laptops start to throttle, they are nowhere near running too hot based on the Intel specification.

If you would rather see the core temperature of your CPU in this column then just go into the ThrottleStop.ini file and add this:

TJMax=100

Set that to whatever the TJMax is for your CPU. You can look in the RealTemp Settings window if you're not sure what this value should be for your CPU.

I also added this new data to the log file and I added another INI file option that keeps track of whether you previously had ThrottleStop enabled or disabled when you last closed it.

Correcting the throttling behavior of these laptops is a top priority in my opinion so I raised the priority of ThrottleStop as high as it can go. ThrottleStop is fairly efficient so hopefully this will help to correct the throttling slow down as soon as possible even when your computer is heavily loaded.

Happy testing.

 

I notice you have RGB screen, i'm on my 2nd screen with the motherboard and screen to be replaced again this week. I've got a really bad problem with the screen flickering when under 40-50% brightness. Have you noticed this at all?

I'm beginning to think it's the design of the screen and it won't get fixed! If that's the case i'll need to get it changed to the standard 1080p screen!

 

so Dell USA just increased the price of the 1645 i7 from $1649 to $1699 same specs. What are they smoking..

 

I have the RGBLED screen and have never had that problem.

 

Yeah, its coming tomorrow though so i wouldn't be able to tell you until i get it tomorrow evening. But i will try it with the 40-50% brightness setting and will get back to you tomorrow night to see if i have the same problem, but thanks for bringing that up. I know a couple people here have the RGBLED aswell.

 

Overheated 90W adapters.

 

Maybe the extra 50 $ is for a 130W Adapter!

 

Thanks, some hope yet lol! They just changed the screen on Friday so maybe it's a problem with the ati 4670. They are changing both motherboard and screen this week!

 

Mine is fine on all settings also

 

Thats what I thought.

 

Nice update. It has been downloaded and I'm going to run it now.

I have the RGB screen, and do notice some flickering. It's not really bad. At this point it just makes mewonder if I'm really seeing it, or if it's all in my head

It flickers some times, like they turn of the backlight and then really quickly turn it back on again.

 

Where can I find the latest version of TS?

 

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

I try to also keep the latest version of ThrottleStop available at the above link.

FileDen craps out once in a while but it's usually pretty good. Version 1.80 awaits. Clear your cache if you get an old version.

 

Sweet. Thanks again.

I was wondering why is the highest you can set the multiplier 13? Is that the highest possible multiplier when all threads are being used?