S-XPS 1645 Throttling Info. and Updates

No. You can fix it with Throttlestop + 130W psu.

 

Throttling is actually a very smart way to protect the notebook, all powerful notebooks have throttling in their power management software to prevent the chipsets being burnt by extreme heat. The way DELL is using it in a couple of recent models is just unbelievable.

The problem with the XPS is that the smart people at DELL deliberately used it to limit the power consumption to the 90watt limit of the power supply provided not to manage anything else. The engineers just did it on purpose.
It is sad because this is fraud, they just deceive people, they know that their recent powerful systems will never ever be able to reach its advertised limit due poor heat dissipation system and/or power shortage.

They insist on selling those systems being full aware of the problem and ignoring the customers relying on the fact that most of the users will not be able to interpret the problem when they face it.

When a regular customer faces such a problem, the user will get in touch with one of their ignorant customer support who manage to convince the user that the system is ok but the user is simply ignorant and it is his problem not them.

 

I have been having similar problems watching Hulu. I did notice that my bios was A01 and current is A03. After upgrading it, it seems like it's been more stable. I watched a whole netflix streaming movie with zero issues, but I haven't yet checked hulu again. However, even so it did lock up for me tonight while browsing in IE when I clicked a button in yahoo mail.

 

Here is a helpful (somewhat) tip. Setting the Video card to maximiz battery life in ATI's Power play on both battery and A/C stops the CPU from throttling, at least to an extent. Granted you can't put the brightness to far up.

Some gaming, at much reduced settings can be had. It might help some people hold over. I know this made SC playable and other games that seem to be CPU limited. It also made the frame rates alot more stable.Obvoisly this is not a fix. It just helps in some situations.

Let me know what you guys think.

 

I believe these are two separate issues:

1) Hulu severe slowdowns: Many of us have seen this. Try updating to A03 (as you already have) and installing the latest beta version of Adobe Flash. This worked for me.

2) System lockups: Many people here have solved these by freshly installing Windows 7. I haven't tried that yet. For more about lockups, see this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=440493

 

So are you confirming that this system is already "done" in terms of new ones being ordered, or am I misreading that?

Either way, I'll be glad to get rid of it as soon as my RMA auth comes back.

 

I doubt that. Unless Dell cannot find a solution and decides to pull them.

I think he was side stepping the question, which was obviously how long should we have to wait.

 

Thats exactly what I meant by my question" How Long...How Long" We first heard that a fix will be beginning of the month then we heard its going to be the following Monday and still today no official word. If Dell fixes this laptop I will buy it again in a heart beat and sell the envy. Its a very beautiful machine price/looks/specs wise.

 

Daraj, if you were working for Dell and tasked to do PR/damage control to disgruntled customers, would you actually give a release date? I think I won't. It's a lose-lose situation. (It's more important to get the job done then to meet a deadline and release something sub-standard, much like how the games industry often works due to pressures from the marketing department.)

The thing for Dell engineers to realise (and I'm sure a lot of them do) is that the 1645 is a wonderful, wonderful machine, but this serious throttling issue (which is ironically based on good intentions) is continually preventing *more* people from buying the machine. and it's their interest to quickly solve it even if it necessitates providing power supply exchanges. Not all will want to exchange (because for many people the issue doesn't affect them and they won't even know about it) so the monetary expenses needn't be great.

Dell has many supporters who would recommend others this laptop, and I hope that Dell Todd S and crew will continually to monitor this and other threads, and keep the lines of communication open...

 

I wonder if it also has to do with their cross pollination of their product lines, now that alienware is theirs they are having to re-brand the XPS line, which they have done by calling them studio XPS. Its clear from what i have read on this forum that answers like, "it wasn't intended to play games" from techs and sales reps, its pretty clear the old paradigm of XPS and the new one isn't working too well throughout their operations. Dell would well know that one of the biggest pit falls for companies is when they take on new products, knowing that it can be very dangerous, clearly they haven't managed it too well.

Matter of the fact is that if you look at the alienware mx15 base model its not heaps different from the xps 1645 which is a problem for a company like dell because it can potentially spilt and confuse their "target customer" which this product has so clearly done. (everyone was crapping themselves with the possibility dell would kill alienware. lucky they didn't) Its clear from what i have been reading on this forum that they think we (i'm inlcuding myself, i have one of these machines) that they think gamers are the minority, saying clearly to me that they didn't market or intend to build this for games because of alienware. However they have made the mistake of pumping a crap load of hardware into this thing and then sticking in the description that it has life like graphics in games, big mistake, especially when gamers are the type of computer users to really research what they want to buy. From a marketing/management position from what i have seen this really is a warning sign for dell that if they don't jump on it, it could and from what i'm seeing with other models of their computers, it will start to effect everything.
So if Dell corporate isn't taking this seriously they are going to get their just deserts, natural consequence will take their course.

 

I would probably wont give a date as well, that's If im really working on solving the problem. All what im saying is that its frustrating when you pay top dollar for a toy that supposedly has the top line cpu to find out it only performs less that 50% of its potential. Now if it was a cheap laptop maybe we will not bother to ask. But that's not the case here, not even the saying " You get what you pay for" applies. Some people feel that they were misinformed and fooled by Dell. Thats why some people initiated returns and other people just held on hoping to get a proper fix. Of course we all want to give credit to unclewebb for his extraordinary efforts to help. Much appreciated.
If I was in the marketing dep. i would start by posting updates on their D2D site sending a positive signal that " hey we are working on it and we acknowledge the problem" but of course thats not happening as some reps are still denying the existence of the problem.
I have always owned dell and its the first time I jump ship, but like I said I will buy this laptop again today if it gets fixed.

 

Hi everyone,

I just replied to someone on the Dell Forums so I thought it best to copy that over here.

Hi 97mg,

I honestly don't think anyone at this point knows what the specific outcome will be. I'm sure when this issue first came to light they started brainstorming root cause theories and resolution procedures and I imagine they came up with a lot of different scenarios. But in the end it will all depend on what is determined to be the true root cause and what is the best resolution for the problem.

I'm not an electrical engineer so for me to speculate on what is happening or how to fix it would be just that, pure speculation. Do I wish this were a simple fix that could be corrected over night? Sure, we all do. But true failure analysis takes time. Plus more time to test possible fixes. People want an ETA on fixes and announcements and I don't blame them. I would too. Heck, we've all been there at some point with electronics that we've purchased I think. But if I said "Saturday at 5pm" and we missed that deadline because the engineers needed to do a bit more testing wouldn't that just make the problem worse?

I'm on email threads at work (lots of them) discussing this issue so the only concrete thing I can say at this point is that it * IS* getting looked at, and looked at hard, by a lot of different Dell people.

As soon as we can release more information we will.

 

Todd, I dont mean to push buttons, but we have had our own solution to this problem for a long time now. It runs the laptop flawlessly like it should. I understand things take time to look into/research the problem, but this is practicely handing the problem to the engineers. You would think a seasoned engineer could use this solution and verify the problem extremely quickly with the proper equipment, as we have come to some pretty concrete conclusions with a simple kill-a-watt. For as long as this has been, you would think they would be well within the designing a fix phase, and i understand it takes time to choose a fix and make it work safely. Unless i mis understand your post, but sounds like problems are still be theorized.

I hope Dell makes the post soon. As most of the stuff we have to go on is mixed reports and excuses from reps etc. Ones such as 1645 isnt a gaming machine, or a bios update to fix the problem is always coming out tomorrow.

 

Now , finally got my 150w adapter an just want to ask one question. Have anyone heard about someone that accidently damage there system by using a 150w adapter with TS ?

 

So far many users have been using TS for quiet a while now, and no reports of any damage or weird for that matter. It wont matter if its a 150w or 130w the computer will draw what it draws, which under normal use is 100-110w usually. The only thing to be cautious about is not unplugging the laptop while it is severely loaded, causing big stress on the battery, as there have been some problems with that and new battery required. Most likely due to the shock, and non throttling transition.

Remember if playing games to sleep/resume your computer before playing, to avoid the severe keyboard lag.

 

Here's the thing: I don't feel any sympathy at all for anyone at Dell. This isn't something that should have even been released to the public with such glaring flaws without the due diligence in testing.

Frankly, it either means Dell didn't do enough testing to catch the issue or it deliberately released the product knowing it had issues hoping that most folks (or any) would catch the problem at all. Either way, very insidious company behaviour that shouldn't be tolerated coming out of any company.

Many companies get away with these practices on a regular basis, but that doesn't make it correct.

Dell has had more than 2 months now to identify and fix the issue. And this is with a plethora of information available from end users who are having to do Dell's job and not getting paid to do it.

Your entire post reeks of standard corporate drivel that is unnecessary and almost feels like we, the customers, should somehow feel guilty or just accept this behaviour as status quo.

 

If this was a one time deal then maybe a user would have some more sympathy for Dell and would be willing to cut them some slack. That is definitely not the case.

The Latitude E6400 has been available since August 2008 and after 17 months there is still not a solution available to cure its throttling problems. I can understand why users don't have a lot of confidence in this issue being properly fixed.

There is an ever growing list of Dell laptops that have a variety of throttling issues. If Dell can't provide solutions to the problems they've created then they need to start being upfront and more honest with their customers, before users open up their wallets, not after.

I'm not an engineer and I don't have access to any of the deep dark secrets that the Dell engineers have. Hell, I don't even own an XPS 1645 but it took me less than one day to research the problem and write a small computer program so owners could start using the majority of the performance they have paid for. Dell twiddling their thumbs for months speaks volumes.

 

E6400== pain !

 

It looks like this problem is widespread to all pc makers. New Sony, Asus, Alienware, HP all have this throttling issue. Im not sure if its the i7/i5 series issue. There has to be a common problem that is pushing every pc manufacturer to throttle their laptops.

 

Here is our latest update on Direct2Dell.

 

Now we are talking. That sounds promising

 

Kind of what i figure it was going to be. Unless they raise the wattage it will draw, it will still throttle it sounds like. With algorithms right now, currently when it hits the limit, will throttle heavily causing a cycling between 60-90w. I assume thats one thing theyre looking to improve. But if it was sufficiently powered in the first place, that would be a non-issue.

So basicly it sounds like there will be improvement, but it will still throttle. No real surprises there. Would be really nice if they added the 130w profiles.

 

i had a E6500 with same issue. They sent replacement unit with better specs.. same issue right out of the box... since then i got an HP 6530b and gave the E6500 to an END-USER... not my problem anymore. So happy with my HP .. its been up 3 weeks straight and runs every program like i just booted the machine minutes ago. The E6500 was like i had been running it for months after just turning it on.. so i dunno im just Happy that now when my boss comes over to use my computer he doesnt ask me if i have a virus or that transcoding files takes longer on MY DELL than on his 3 year old alienware.

Thats the only fix that seems to work!

 

now we wait...

 

got a call from ta dell rep. telling me the usual.
But he admitted that using a higher wattage psu helps the problem.
And the a bios update is the usual 3-4weeks away

 

Hey guys,

As an introduction: I've actually been following this throttling issue via these forums as well as the Dell community forums, because of my interest or probable purchase of this system.

I would like to point something out though: Dell is a very large company, and like a company as big as Dell you have to go through channels, some lead further along, some lead to dead-ends, some lead one completely astray. Still, even after you made it through the first circuit of channels there is always another, and another, and another before you make it to the right one. But you know what? Then it has to go back through those channels, down to us. That is what you've guys have been facing. With a company as large as Dell it can take a while for a problem to reach a solution, and this is my conclusion: The gears are moving and you've been working through those channels towards a solution. SO YES! Be patient!

Its hard to imagine, but I do believe Dell is trying to keep customer satisfaction in mind, (maybe not all the employers. . .but. . .) and no ill-will is meant. Its simply the nature of things and the massive company you are dealing with. (I mean. . . I honestly think part of the reason a company like Apple scores so much praise in its attentiveness is because they aren't selling computers in as large a share of the market as a company like Dell.)

HeHe. . .

 

The bad sentiment you see from users here, is more than what you mention. This problem is much bigger then just the studio xps 16's. Talk to the latitudes that had this problem for over a year, and still unresolved. The worst part. Fact that the 1645 throttles so blantantly is the problem dell sees, not that it throttles at all. Unless they are replacing our 90w adapters? Its the changing ways in dells reputation that is causing this, theyre going to be known for throttlegate now by many, and that will only increase as long as their throttling policy holds. Which by many is seen as fraud, as whats the point of high end hardware.

 

Obviously we can't know the full extent of WHAT is going through Dell's mind. I mean it is still made up of thousands of employees and different levels of complexities and processes I can't fully fathom. Like I said, Dell, as a whole is trying to keep customer satisfaction in mind. It doesn't mean somewhere it doesn't get bogged up, or disrupted, or simply not alerted enough to address it. Which was my main point, its just so incredibly BIG. I can't speak for those who have experienced throttling outside of Studio XPS 16, and to what extent it effects them. I would lean toward the latter that it doesn't effect them (all the purchasers) or make aware as much as the Studio XPS 16 has in its persistence to move along the 'channels'. I of course can't know for sure, just as much as I can't know for sure what Dell is doing. It seems insidious to try.

 

No offense but you sound like a PR plant.

 

Without the latitudes problem, i doubt we would know as much as we do. see tinkerdudes report, and throttlestop was origonally just for the latitudes. I suggest ya might want to look into it, as with the recent direct2dell post history looks poised to repeating itself. The latitudes had to wait a whole year for dell to acknowledge the problem, which then released a fix that didnt fix anything. Read the post, their throttling affects them under normal web browsing. now even the 1640 looks to be suffering from similar issues, along with the m15x and xps 17. Its intentionally done, i couldnt buy a dell laptop today and know it wont throttle to some degree.

The problem i have with the direct2dell post is adjusting throttling profiles can help, but if the machines were properly powered in the first place this would be unnecessary. As these profiles would never needed to be used to limit power, if the power was available. Its basicly said its going to throttle, just not as bad this time. Unless there is more to their fix like supplying new adapters etc.

 

That's the whole problem. Dell has been hanging on to this notion that a little bit of throttling here or there shouldn't be causing a problem in most applications. That notion is proving to be dead wrong.

When you can't even play a simple off the shelf game without your computer dropping down to a third of its rated speed; that's a problem. It's a problem that has been going on for far too long. That's just one game on the XPS 1640. In some games the XPS 1645 is far worse than that.

Why should end users be wasting huge amounts of time and energy just trying to get Dell to admit to the problem let alone fix it? The time has come for Dell to man up to the problem. If they can't qualify the XPS 1645 to work with a 130 watt adapter and provide both an adapter and an updated bios, then they need to offer their loyal customers a full refund for selling a product that is not capable of delivering the promised performance that a Core i7 Quad core mobile processor implies to a buyer.

That was my first thought too.

 

If you know something about big companies Perdie you would also know that when some like this escalates quite often companies as big as Dell will skip those channels and the change will be given the go ahead very quickly. Dell hasn't done that because they don't think this is a big problem so they are twiddling their thumbs.

 

Lol! Would a PR plant be 16? XD

Honestly, I'm just trying to look at things in Dell's perspective, and trying to navigate who's who. I doubt anyone in the company is out to just give us a hard time. Now, are some of them simply uncaring to our plight? Maybe. But I would like to believe, at least, a small majority (Oxymoron. ) once reached sympathize and want to help. And also, as a company on a whole it has to maintain a certain status quo, which means it can't be expected to always reach out to the minority in something (like what many of you are inclined to draw the conclusion the fix would require and replace/update a LOT of adapters or standardize or offer extra, blah, blah, blah) that only effects, yes, the minority!

I don't say that to minimize anyone's suffering, but like I said, I'm trying to keep things in perspective. (I think I seem to like saying, "like I said".) Dell is like any (albeit sadly poor, but none-the-less real) love relationship, they'll give, as long as you give something equal (keyword there) in return.

Erm. Yeah.

 

I think it effects the majority if not all but only the minority can detect it

 

Life lesson...big companies aren't interested in any love relationship. They're interested in the bottom line. Right now a bean counter is trying to figure out the least expensive cost to "fix" these laptops enough that they won't become a bad PR issue and to keep enough people relatively happy enough (or too tired to continue arguing) to either keep the laptop, or return it and no longer cause trouble. If Dell was really interested in keeping everyone happy and fixing the problem, it would have been done on the last series of laptops with the same issue (remember, not a mistake, but a planned/designed operation that Dell has implemented for this laptop) and it would have been fixed on this laptop already. Dell could swap out every power supply and send out a new BIOS and those complaining would be happy enough to move on...but that cost $$$.

 

Of course Daraj. It depends on your definition. When I said, "effect" I mean in the sense that they see a 'noticeable' difference that makes them scratch their heads and pause, "Should it be doing this? I think its defective!"

HeHe. And again, I'm flattered that you think/thought I was a PR. (I know, you must be thinking I still am a PR, or just some witty genius kid. Personally, I'd like to think I'm something of a philosophical guru.)

*pokes Bowenandarrow* I do believe I covered your argument fairly well, without reading it (because I had been typing my other response before reading it). I think as the minority who really experience and notice these problems you have been therefore treated as the minority, and thus had to go through the 'proper channels' that isn't to say some things can't get bumped up in production.

Mike07042 my analogy of a love-relationship is quite accurate! As the one side of the receiver I want a certain amount of 'love' as it were from Dell via their products. Dell on the other hand also wants a certain amount of 'love' or in this case mullah $$$. Like I said it is a representation of a poor love relationship where it isn't really love at all, but ultimately a person looking out for themselves. In this probable case, yes keeping people happy and getting them to shut up, without expending too much effort on their part.

 

It is true, it was detected long ago by tinkerdude who did the big report on it. Now we have a full utility to easily identify clock modulation, chipset modulation and multipliers. Its undeniable proof, and im sure dell isnt to happy unclewebb has developed this program, as it really blows open throttlegate and forcing the issue.

We owe nothing to dell, fact is this problem is well documented here, with a 3rd party solution no matter. Dell could make this right, but i dont think theyre about to replace everyones adapters etc. It will still throttle come this bios update just watch. It doesnt matter if a user buys this laptop and only web browses and doesnt experience severe throttling. They to need to be represented as im sure they wouldnt be to happy they couldnt use their laptop like they should if they wanted too.

 

Lol! Atlstang, you fail to see my over-all point though. Why should you expect anything more from Dell? What would your position be if you were on the other side? It is the typical nature of any large company. If something like this arose with Acer, Sony, HP, or whoever I wouldn't expect them to do much better. (Have they?) Now, I will admit, I have heard stories of Dell's surprising (perhaps sporadic) generosity which is why I'd like to think I'll stick with them.

My whole emphasize has been to show the state of the company, (as something very big and large and diverse in proceeding/dealing with) how its reasoning would be for responding, (basically being they are asking what it will cost them and is it worth it) and why they should/should't do it (as viewed from their standpoint of how it effects the company[its sales/reputation]). And perhaps I want to portray some optimism. At least I feel pretty optimistic. . . :6:

 

Dell being a large company that it is should have caught the throttling issue long ago, before these laptops ever went into mass production. Being a big company their R&D branch would most likely have a budget in the millions. To overlook something like power requirements that these higher end components need is beyond me.

It would have been fine if they were selling these for $800.00 instead of the $1,800.00+ that the majority of buyers shelled out. It seems like they just grabbed whatever adapter they could package cheaply with these systems at the time of production and just rolled with that. It's almost like putting high end components in a desktop build and then just using the 250watt power supply that came free with the case.

 

Ok, Dell post on the issue at Direct2Dell is first step. A little slow response but they are at least facing the fact that there is a problem.
We will now have to wait for the new BIOS. I will personally buy a 130 watt adapter and wait for the bios upgrade. I really doubt Dell is going to give out a more powerfull adapter.

 

I have not seen any threads about Asus throttling their laptops?

 

I don't exactly know what blunders or intent Dell had when they released XPS 1645 with the throttling, obviously it wasn't an entirely new model, but mainly a parts upgrade. I mean, I can imagine them not looking/testing things thoroughly enough the machines compatibility to get the Core i7's on the market. I think what Dell did was take a leap, and didn't gauge how far this fissure really was, now they've fallen and taking their tedious time to get back out. (Accurate enough analogy for ya'? )

 

The problem is image, Dell doesn't exactly have a good one. I was told many times to avoid Dell, and got burned. Some companies will release something that's just good enough (Xbox360) to keep people happy. Some will release something that stands the test of time (PS3). I'm not talking about how long the specs will last, I'm talking about the RROD. But at least MS didn't try to hide the problem under a veil of throttling and poor performance.

Dell needs to have this system running at or very very close to advertised specs. You know, I could forgive it not running the power virus FurMark and Prime at full speed.

As far as these tests showing us needing a bigger power adapter, that may not hold true. We need to ignore these tests using furmark.

Remember that some of these tests showing throttle stop running with furmark, screen at high brightness, and Prime running 8 threads. These tests should be ignored. If more people did a real test at say, Prime+Game, screen at full brightness I think that would at least be more realistic. It would probably lower the watts at the wall as well. AMD its self calls FurMark a power virus. Nvidia strongly recommends not using it as well.

Given that its a 90watt output, and the efficiency will probably drop a lot when it reaches that limit that 130watt draw from the wall might be possible with a 90watt PSU.

 

No, I'd say more like built a bridge over a fissure that wasn't quite long enough. And we've fallen in. They are taking their sweet time throwing us a rope that works. While HP and others have ropes & bridges that work as advertised.

 

From DELL-Brad L at Direct2Dell:

The fact that there even is a "throttling implementation" is nauseating. People are talking like this is a major design flaw, when in reality it's defective by design. The reason they did immediately fix this over a year ago appears to be because they don't actually want to! Frustrating.

 

perdire, Im not argueing with you anymore. You are ignoring the facts that are laid out and taking it on faith. Good for you. as for me being an engineer that has worked for big companies before its not as simple as you make it out to be.

Back to topic. If you think this bios update is going to solve throttling be careful. There are measurements on the main page of this thread showing the laptop needs at least 110watts for real world applications. Thats just current applications as well. Theyre adjusting their throttling profiles to be less blantant, but we all know the 90w adapter shipped just isnt to the task. This is not the solution, if its anything like the latitudes expect a big marketing scheme giving themselves a pat on the back for problem solved. The A05 bios is evidence to what they have been doing.

There is no reason to adjust throttling profiles to be less severe, if it wasnt going to throttle for power in the first place.

edit: al_bino couldnt have said it better.

 

Without a "throttling implementation" every computer that produces considerable heat would be burnt.
We need throttling, but Dell exaggerated.

 

Actually...HP's bridge reaches almost to the other side but they fell in too.

 

I don't think they mean what you mean. If they did then this wouldn't be a problem.

 

How is it different. On both Core 2 and Core i7 laptops, first the multiplier drops down as low as it can go and then clock modulation is used on top of that to slow things down further. The schemes are identical across a wide variety of laptops. It changes the exact same registers within the CPU when it is doing this which is why ThrottleStop can support both Core 2 and Core i7 with pretty much the exact same code. The Core i7 no longer has voltage information in these registers and the multiplier has been moved around a little but it's the exact same register. Clock modulation is identical in both.

fmac: Why do they need throttling? Users have proven that with a 130 watt adapter + ThrottleStop these computers can run very close to 100% and the CPU is not overheating, not even close to it. Neither is the GPU. Intel already has a throttling mechanism built into their CPUs to slow them down if they should ever start running too hot. Doing that at the hardware level is the correct way to handle this. There's no need for Dell to throttle an Intel CPU.

Throttling was implemented in the XPS 1645 design so Dell could ship them with an underpowered 90 watt adapter. It has nothing to do with heat.