S-XPS 1645 AC Power Throttle Issue Investigation

I've mirrored ThrottleStop.zip on my website (Yahoo! Small Business backed servers w/ unlimited bandwidth).

http://strags.com/download/ThrottleStop.zip

Hopefully it's useful for someone.

 

I know what you mean, sometimes I think i'm imagining it but I do alot of work in low light and using excel and word so I need to turn the brightness down or the white background burns the eyes! That's when I notice it most, gives me a headache!!

If it's just the screen in general then i'd rather downgrade to the normal one 1080p screen!

 

It's a special number (base multiplier +1) to indicate you'd like to have the highest multiplier that is allowed according to Intels turbo-boost calculations.

apparently you can down-shift the i7, but you canot force an upshift beyond the base multiplier (12x for a 720). You can however request an upshift. In the end the logic inside the i7 determines if and by how much it will boost the multiplier.

 

That makes sense. Thanks.

 

Have to commend uncle webb on his work, hope the donations are pouring in

 

Here's the full accounting for 2010.

Days 11
Donations 2
Total $30

So much for my XPS 1645 fund.

I'd be making more money if I spent my time collecting bottles.

 

lol, I donated in 2009! That should still be part of the XPS 1645 fund.

~Ibrahim~

 

Yea, I'm hiding the mega loot I pulled in during 2009. If the wife finds that she'll go out and buy a couple of pair of shoes and I'll be in the red!

No worries ikjadoon. Anyone that has donated to project ThrottleStop will be guaranteed to get a key for the final version. Everyone else will have to head to their favorite pirate site for a key generator.

 

Are you serious? So all these people using and benefiting from Throttlestop have not donated jack? Talk about ungrateful.

Maybe everyone is in a holding pattern waiting for the supposed fix before they decide to donate or not. Either way, 5 bucks won't break the bank right? Hopefully things will pick up, Unclewebb.

 

I'm waiting for a paycheck lol I want to donate a decent amount since it works so well, rather than a little. My bank is currently broken lol my money has one of those weird (-) signs in front of it

 

Can someone shoot me the donation link?

 

Right click on the TS tray icon.

 

I hope that Dell does the right thing and fixes this properly with a bios update for when you're using a 130 watt adapter. If not, ThrottleStop will be available to help out. For a night and day difference when gaming, I don't think $5 bucks is too much to ask for ThrottleStop.

Quality software depends on user support. Great programs like RM Clock have stopped development because of lack of $$$$$.

 

I'll donate more than 5 bucks. I have not really used TS much (because there is not much time to game with two sons and a heavy work schedule), but I have appreciated Unclewebb's many patient explanations of the problems. I am not an engineer, and he has presented the issues in a way that I can (mostly) understand them.

 

yeah, if dell doesn't come up with some kind of fix, and if i notice any difference when running cubase 5 and other music applications with throttlestop, i will be happy to pay you for the work you've put into this. cheers

 

This issue has officially pissed me off. It's been two months with this machine and I'm tired of trouble shooting and waiting each day. lol Dell needs to get their act together and give notice of what they have really found to be the problem.

 

gaah: Imagine being a Latitude E6400/E6500 owner. They've been waiting for almost 18 months for a Dell solution to their throttling issues and still nothing but empty promises.

 

I own a E6400, and I am still suffering right now...Thank god for that RightMark CPU clock utility... I hardly notice it now! The only thing crappy about these work arounds is that they are all memory resident, but with 8GB in the system, I guess it really is a small pebble in a proverbial ocean.

 

Dell is in a rock and a hard place right now with this issue. If they change something in the BIOS to pull more than 90W, there's going to be a lot of people out there with the system and a blown AC adapter. I think the only way for them to do this, is an AC adapter recall PLUS a BIOS upgrade after the AC Adapter reacall is finalized...(may ship a CD with the bios along with the adapter). Either way, it's big bucks that they would probably like to spend somewhere else.

 

I don't think the situation is quite as desperate as you make out...the bios as it stands already detects the 130W adapter for those that are already using it with TS. If Dell were to re write the bios so that a different (non-throttling) code was used when a higher rating adapter was detected but kept to the current code when the 90W adapter was detected they could get away without having to recall all the 90W units. This is surely technically possible and the only cost sensitive and sensible solution Dell could come up with....

Supply those who complain with a 130W adapter to go with the new bios and continue to supply the underpowred 90W adapter with the unit so those that aren't techinically minded or into high load applications never know the difference....

I hope Dell are reading this....

 

I don't think the A/C adapters will explode regardless of what you do. The idea that software (BIOS included) can cause your hardware to fail is pretty silly. Worst case the system will shut off, or it'll start discharging the battery to supplement power demand. Remember that Dell laptops and A/C adapters are SUPPOSED to be cross-compatible with each other, Dell had some initiative awhile back to make this work because of customer feedback. You can even use a 65 watt adapter on your 1645 if that's all you have lying around, and the performance will scale accordingly.

 

So did they pull the i5 xps from their website? I cant see it anymore. Plz link to US if you can see it.

 

I know...people will fork over money for just about anything, but dare ask them to donate for a free program. Whoa. Whoa. You cross a line. This is freeware. I'm allowed to use it all I want without paying a penny.

Out of no solicitation, unclewebb made TS for us. You'd think a developer willing to lend his time to help you would get some rewads

Haha, thank you, Unclewebb, I highly appreciate it.

~Ibrahim~

 

http://configure.dell.com/dellstore...&l=en&s=dhs&cs=cadhs1&kc=laptop-studio-xps-16

The XPS with an i5 is still listed. They also listed a Core i7-620 mobile the other day but that option isn't available today.
Time to place your bets. How long will it take for a new thread to start up showing the throttling XPS i5 issues?

ikjadoon: You're most welcome.

 

It is not on the USA site, also i have a order in for the i5, (the reason i didnt get the i7 is the throttle)

 

Huh, interesting. They did a similar thing with the i7-920XM on the XPS 1645: it was there in the very beginning, but in a matter of days it disappeared.

Haha, yeah. I wonder.....

~Ibrahim~

 

I remember the Inspiron E1705 - it had a GeForce Go 7800 / 7900 GS in the beginning, then it was gone and they only had a Mobility Radeon X1400.

 

Okay, unclewebb, donation made.=)

 

Yup they are gone. They are trying to figure out how to make them throttle alright.

 

Thanks jbartlettjr. Every donation helps keep me motivated and encourages me to add additional features to ThrottleStop which benefits everyone. It's just a hobby but it's always nice to be appreciated.

 

any new info on the Dell bios update? I talked to two dell reps today and they essentially did not aknowledge the problem. One of them said that info. on blogs is not accurate many times and that it doesn't need more than 90W power. If Dell is so satisfied and chilled out with their 1645's, I wonder if they would ever fix the throttling issue.

 

I think one possibility may be that not all 1645s are affected by throttling issue, and that only handful are. Many have reported pretty good benchmarks on this laptop. Also many haven't had any trouble playing demanding games and/or running demanding applications. So it may as well be that just some laptops were defective. This just my opinion though.

 

It depends on the game. It also depends on the configuration, some configs require less power so you can get away with performance tasks, to an extent.

 

But, in the end, every XPS 1645 will throttle with: P95 + FurMark + full brightness.

~Ibrahim~

 

I just found this on the dell's forum. I figured it may be helpful.

'Thanks to each of you who submitted your configuration. I talked to an Intel engineer at CES. He had two Dell Alienware laptops with the i-7 processor set up side by side. The only difference was one had the traditional hard drive and the other had a solid state drive. When he ran the powerful new games the unit with the standard hard drive would pause and at times the game graphics were choppy. The unit with the solid state drive was flawless. This wasn't a little difference it was very noticeable and consistent. Boot time was also twice as fast on the unit with the solid state drive.

I thought the Hard drive might be the source of the problems this string of comments is trying to solve. Clearly the drive is not the source of the problem since several people are experiencing the problem with the solid state drive. For those of you who want to do processor intensive work or play the most advanced games that use the full power of the i-7 processor I would definitely recommend ordering the solid state drive and use of an external drive for added storage. The final comment from the Intel engineer was " In my opinion dell shouldn't sell a laptop with an i-7 processor and a traditional hard drive without giving the user a disclaimer that the hard drive is going to slow down the system." '

 

To me, i see more loads of total BS Intel rep probably doesn't know that Dell is software-choking his chips.

 

lmao no way a traditional HDD would kill performance like that. Also he may have been trying to get you to buy an intel SSD. lol

 

Yeah thats probably it. He is comparing an SSD to a HDD and wanting to warn people that the HDD is slower.

HEY GUYS WARNING: DRIVING 30MPH IS SLOWER THEN DRIVING 60MPH!!!!111

 

oh no! Really?!?! Guess I better throw my money into the intel fire and get myself a SSD!

 

In the Dell Alienware comparison at CES, it would have been interesting to see what laptop was running ThrottleStop. Probably the one with the SSD.

The Alienware M15x also has throttling issues which is an embarrassment for something that is marketed as a gaming laptop. If you head over to the M15x thread on NoteBookReview you will discover that those laptops need ThrottleStop combined with RivaTuner since both the CPU and GPU can throttle when pushed hard.

Dell is losing credibility every time one of their reps opens their mouth.

 

Thats what i like about nVidia... the way their chips work makes them very tweakable... even if Dell tried to throttle the m11x thats coming out, you could VERY easily avoid it by using a non-dell driver as a worst case scenario...

 

Hi all

Just got my new Studio XPS 16 last night (specs in sig). Beautiful thing, isn't it?

I was extremely apprehensive about the throttling issue occurring on it. However, I couldn't resist Modern Warfare 2 on it just to check things out. Here's what happened.

1. On first run things worked fine for a while but then stuff got stuttery and audio garbled. I assumed this was the well known throttling issue.
2. I had to come back to my room from a friends (where we opened the laptop). I decided to give MW2 another go. And played it for about half an hour or so. Buttery smooth, no stuttering.
3. Played again today, perfectly fine.

Was playing at native res 1920x1080, 2xAA, shadows and depth of field on, getting an average of about 35-40FPS. As far as I can tell, it wouldn't be doing that if it was in fact throttling. By the way, I have the WLED screen, not RBGLED.

Thing is, Dell shipped my system with the old A01 BIOS. And things seem to be working alright for now. I suppose it does throttle at times, but works most of the time. Haven't tried WPrime and CoreTemp yet, but will to know exactly whats on.

So my question to y'all is
1. Should I stick with the A01 BIOS or upgrade to A03 immediately?
2. What's your experience with the default installed Dell OEM image? Recommend reinstalling? Not too much bloatware that I can see on the comp. Got rid of McAfee and stupid Facial Recognition.

What do you guys make of my scenario? Is there any way to be sure if it is throttling or not? Should I run Furmark simulatenously to see what happens?

UPDATE:
Tried Prime95. Also tried i7Turbo to see what happens to the multipliers. On MW2, the multiplier went upto 14. Stayed on 12 while running Prime95. Max CPU temp was 75. Not sure what to make of that, but no stuttering. Still can't decide. To update or to not update BIOS. Help people.

 

I was just wondering if anyone thinks its a good idea to start a thread so that we can test throttling on all laptops and post the results so we know which ones throttle.

It seems that this throttling issue is common and thus an important test.

What standard set of testing tools should be used and what procedure?

I think this would be of great help to everybody.

 

You mean like other laptops?

I mean, if users haven't noticed a problem.......technically, the tests we run are hugely stressful and it would be pretty hard to reproduce those exact conditions ever in a real environment.

The issue with the XPS 1645 is with gaming, mostly. It throttles then and the best way to scientifically research that is with some stress-testing tools that admittedly push the systems to a limit that is arguably too far, at least in real usage.

But, whatever, to test if a laptop throttles:

Prime 95, small FFTs, torture test.
FurMark, whatever you want.
i7 Turbo (for i7's).
Full brightness is usually included or other power-consuming parts.

Not sure what you could use for C2Ds, though.

Remember, though: just because it throttles with P95/Furmark doesn't mean it will throttle in normal usage, whether that be Office or encoding HD or editing RAW xxGB files.

This is just a procedure to *prove* it throttles but isn't the standard that I think anyone wants met. We just want all regular applications (even horribly stressful ones) to not throttle. If all applications work, but stress-testing tools still throttle, whatever, mostly everyone will be happy.

~Ibrahim~

 

Hi guys
The A04 bios for 1747 is realeased
http://support.dell.com/support/dow...ID=STUDIO1747&hidos=W732&hidlang=en&TabIndex=

 

"Features Enhancements" Sighhhhhhh

 

Installed A04 BIOS. Tested with 130W power supply. Furmark and Prime95, CPU clock still alternates between 930 and 1060 MHz. Fan speed is unchanged, too. No fan control software until today. I am very disappointed.

 

Yeah I was wondering about C2Ds too.
And dont forget data from gpu.

I think though that if a processor and gpu is rated for a certain speed we should expect it to reach that speed.

It a consumer/advertising legal issue if companies dont state that you cannot expect advertised performance.

I mean why buy an i7 820 that can only perform the same as a i7 720, and both of these are only as good as an average C2D when the price differences are huge.

 

throttlestop?

 

Can someone here run both Prime95 and FurMark as Administrator?

When I disabled my the turbo boost, my CPU speeds and temp were actually going down with FurMark running - which would be consistent with throttling. I ran CPU-Z and sure enough the CPU was lowering the multiplier to 7x.

BUT - and this is a big deal - when I ran both Prime95 and FurMark as Administrator, the CPU load stayed up. The GPU was around 85c and the CPU was around 73c.

CPU-Z held steady at 15x. So - No throttling.

No throttling after 10 minutes.