S-XPS 1645 Throttling Info. and Updates

Hi,

Wanted to let you know we had a small update that we could publish today.

Here is the statement that we were given.

 

It not being that simple might be why I wrote three further paragraphs that you snipped.

But I agree the publicity aspect needs to be considered, though I restricted myself to the raw cost-benefits, and not the reputational damage.

But which headline do you think Dell would rather see - 'Dell hears of problem with 1645 adaptors, ships out beefed-up ones', or 'Dell ignores beefs with 1645s as customer returns grow'?

 

The first possible outcome is verifiable. The 2nd is not, unless some dell insider leaks such information.

 

If my 1645 has to go back, this outsider is sure as hell going to disseminate that information. And maybe those ten pages of 1645s in the Dell Outlet tell their own story?

 

Thanks for that! I actually already have the PA-4E (ordered off eBay), because the prospect of using ThrottleStop is the only reason I bought the machine (that, and the slight chance that Dell might fix it themselves). I'm not sure if video editing is intensive enough, but there was no way I would buy it if I couldn't fix the throttling in some way.

I'm going to put this out there once more: has anyone received a 1645 recently?

 

I really, really feel as though we are going in circles. 90W has been proven several times over to be insufficient, and yes, a 130W adapter only helps with either ThrottleStop or a proper BIOS fix (the latter yet to be seen). However, an update of any sort is appreciated.

 

I take issue with them saying they are trying to "verify" the issue, man the issue is verified.

It's offensive, It's like they don't want to admit there is a problem. There is a problem, the sales guy lied straight up when he said there wasn't and to make matters worse dell continues its trend of dishonesty to it's customers.

With that kind of dishonesty how can we trust Dell to come out with a fix that suits us.

Yes I appreciate you posting here, however as unreasonable, or whatever his name is said. This is on going for some people for 2 years on different systems. They don't feel you fixed the problem right, what makes us think you will be any different with us.

You need to stop the PR lines and the bureaucratic nonsense. People see right through it and it is offensive when you have 1,500$ on the line.

When I get my replacement, if it doesn't work as advertised and Dell doesn't speak about its problems more honestly. Its going back.

 

That was my point.. Measured from the wall with a kill-a-watt the cpu alone running prime95 will pull up to the bios throttling limit of 90w at the wall. when the system idles around 30 some watts, it was measured about 58-60w just for the cpu to spin up. This is a power issue not a thermal issue.


@response do dells statement.
HP admits the i7's need around 110w to run properly. We can measure with throttlestop and see the same thing from the wall with the xps 1645's. Fact pretty much all other i7 laptops power adapters are bigger then 90w says somethin too.

Translation to dells statement. Its going to throttle, just not as bad. Highly doubt thats what people buying the i7's paid for. They should try running throttlestop i think

 

@ Todd S,

Nothing against you but this is really not an update as this is what we have been told for the past 6-8 weeks:

1. Working on a Bios update.
2. Not updating the 90W adapter, at least at this time.

That is all that has been stated by Dell for the past 2 months.

Dell, do you have any new information that you can provide us with.

 

My interpretation of your remarks is that you're acknowledging that the larger wattage power supply needs to be tweaked to draw more power without users using ThrottleStop as a temporary solution. I think that you are telling us that you are going to have the bios differentiate the power supply and pull as needed.

At least that's what I want to think.

 

However, let's look the bright side. At least now a "130W+official bios" solution is mentioned from Dell as a possible solution. Weeks ago it was only a dream born in our mind. I still do have hope that this will be the final outcome, since it's the only acceptable one.

 

I would certainly take from that update that they are planning to release a BIOS update that allows you to use the extra power from a 130W adapter. At least this is an admission that if given the chance - the laptop will use the extra power of the 130w therefore they are effectivly saying they shipped the wrong adapter.

It's better than the silence we were getting lately. Here's hoping that update is not just to keep people quiet for another few weeks.


Edit...

Just read the update on Dell forum and he clarifies that he did not mean that the 1645 needs to use the extra power of the 130W adapter. He claims he was just stating that the BIOS would need to be updated to actually have access to the extra power.

It seems a strange thing to comment on when according to him it does not need the extra power. It sounds like they know (as we all do) that the 1645 does need the 130w adapter but they are doing their best to make sure they don't have to admit it.

 

Ok I did that, and found them. Im confused tho, I can build a new one for cheaper than a refurb?! Cheapest one was 1309 and cheapest build for new is 1249. I need some of what Dell is smokin,

 

I think its a way of them justifying why theyre not sending 130w adapters anymore.. We knew that info already, guess they havnt figured out we're countering the bios with throttlestop to make use of the 130w.

The line where he says the engineers are still verifying the problem, and still think they can use 90w is the troubling one. It cant be this hard to verify a problem after this long. When every other manufacturer knows whats up, and we ourselves found this out very quickly. If they insist on 90w adapter, expect throttling but probably less of it from the bios it would seem.

 

Looking at it from Dell's point of view, I'd guess there are some engineers who feel that the 130w adaptor is the only option, while some (maybe only one?) thinks he can get a quart out of a pint pot. And if so, he will save Dell a lot of grief, so they are letting him try. Meanwhile (I hope) another team is contingency planning for if he fails, and they have to use a 130w adaptor to stop the throttling, with a BIOS that must necessarily have two power profiles depending on which adaptor is in use.

The interesting questions are then:- (i) for those of us with a 1645 already, will Dell do a public recall of 90w adaptors, or just offer the 130w by stealth to those who have noticed the throttling? and (ii) if the latter, what will they do in the future?

Expect a 1646, or something, just subtly different enough from the 1645 that Dell can offer it with a 130w adaptor as standard without ever having to fess up that the 1645 came with an underpowered one.

 

At what point should XPS owners start feeling insulted? I think it would be better if they just said "we aren't going to fix the problem, deal with it or kick rocks" At this point I would be more comfortable with TS and a PA-15 than any bios update from Dell. What next are they going to screw up to try and force 90 watt adapters to work. I have no faith that dell is going to fix this problem. They should be paying Uncleweb for making this turd palatable. Hmmmmm are they?

 

But throttle stop will force the computer to run at a 13x/1600mhz multiplier will it not? Under many of the games and apps its throttling on that use dual threaded apps it should be running closer to 2.4ghz, and on single threaded apps 2.8ghz.

Unless I don't understand something about how throttle stop works then it simply forces it to run at 13 and no higher right?

 

I asked the question before and if I remember correctly 13 is a special multiplier or something like that and simply tells the processor to run at the highest possible multiplier. I might be wrong though.

 

Thats correct it sets it to its max multipliers (like 13) which allows turboboost to kick in and reach its max multipliers that it will allow. Where as if ya lock it to 11x etc it will stay there.

Throttlestop works really good, just ya shouldnt have to run a 3rd party app :-/. Its also not a 100% as it fights a bit with the bios.

 

TRANSLATION:

"HEY GUYS WE STILL THINK THAT WE CAN WRITE A MAGICAL SOFTWARE PROGRAM THAT WILL ALLOW US TO TURN 90 WATTS INTO 130 WATTS. YOU MAY THINK THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE BUT WE ARE ENGINEERS AT DELL WE CAN DO THIS"

 

This seems like an amazingly accurate translation.

I guess tomorrow will be another day of them trying to replace my 1645 with a 1647?

Also, does anyone know if it is true that the blu-ray players were removed because of a shortage? I read somewhere that there was some kind of incompatibility issues. I hope that is not the case - as mine came with a bluray player.....

anyways, maybe I'll just finally by a 130W adapter, dl throttlestop, and send uncie webb some bux....

have a good weekend all.

We all know dell engineers don't work weekends!

 

Well, Friday has come and gone, and I never heard back from anyone at Dell about that internal testing BIOS they told me about.

As promised, I'm composing my email right now. An email that has one of two alternatives:
1. Show me the BIOS that I was told about.
2. Give me my money back, and take this underperforming machine, because you're not going to jerk me around.

I'll be sure to post back any updates.

 

keep us posted, the update they posted on the forums etc i think is starting to rub a few people in the wrong way as well it looks like.

Zlog, Great translation lol

 

I got my 130W adapter today and am so glad I did. I had previously donated to Unclewebb and man, it makes gaming so much more enjoyable. Now I actually don't suck in COD:MW2! Throttlestop may be a bad thing in the sense that I'll probably quiet down about the issue and not read these threads as often; Dell should be thanking Kevin for his work otherwise they'd probably have a whole mass of people down their throats, though the issue wouldn't have been brought to light as well as it has.

Looking forward to the permanent fix but happy in the meantime with my 130W that isn't burning hot and the awesomeness that is Throttlestop.

Thanks,

John

 

Did you lappy run hot with the 90W adapter ? mine runs a little hot atm .

 

Thanks John for the thumbs up. Always nice to hear from a happy ThrottleStop user. I've heard it's not too hard to notice a difference when gaming.

Maybe that's why the magic bios keeps getting delayed. All the Dell bios guys are too damn busy "testing" ThrottleStop and finally getting a chance to enjoy the XPS 1645 at close to the performance level that it was originally designed to have. When management looks in they're all too busy gaming. Sorry boss, just a few more days and we'll have this issue figured out. We've still got some more testing to do.

 

fluffyuk: If your 90W power adaptor is hot - call dell and ask for replacement.

They give me one for free and the new one is not so hot (looks the same but the last digits of S/N is 003 - the hot one had 001 so maybye it's a new version ot the supply)

 

I'm STILL waiting to hear back from the supervisor from Dell who is handling my return for refund request... Making me nervous. I was one of the people told that they would extend my return window and I was told that despite me promised an extended window it still has to be requested and approved... sigh.

Also, on another note, if anyone wants to read the latest pathetic horror story of Dell in-house tech support, and how they rendered my wife's S-XPS 13 completely broken and unable to turn on, check here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5801975&postcount=23

Long story short, now we're waiting for approval to return her laptop for a refund, too. Dell, you still had a chance with me. I was going to purchase an XPS 13 like my wife has, but this is the last straw. You have lost me as a customer for the rest of my life on anything with a Dell brand on it... You've also severely impacted the likelihood that I'll be purchasing the Alienware M11x thats coming out. There is still a shred of hope for that, but it certainly will not be my main computer. I just can not be without reliability and good service.

 

hello,

yesterday ive recieved my 1645...

ive updated the bios to A03, installed battlefield bad company 2 beta and got TS running like shown on the first page of this huge thread.

somehow it doesnt work for me at all, the game is incredible laggy and totally unplayable. unfortunatelly the performance wont improve when playing on battery-mode (just the same).
i also installed the game on my desktop and there are no problems at all (so its not due to the beta-version).
also the sound gets messed up and it takes ~2 min to get the game started
resolution@1920x1080

pls help me, im of course also willed to donate for the work of uncleweb...

 

check the ATI Power-play settings in the Catalyst Control Center. Make sure its set to max performance. Also if you're using a 90 watt adapter, it isn't going to supply enough power to the laptop to run it on full (and its a safety hazard to try). You have to get both a 130watt adapter AND Throttlestop. No exceptions.

Better option: send the laptop back and make sure they know you're sending it back because of the throttle issues. There is no fix in sight, and there is probably never going to be a fix.

 

thx for the quick reply.. the settings in ccc are maxed to "high performance". atm im using a 150w adapter.
has TS been working at all (ive attached a log on the post before)??

theres no doubt that i will send it back if its not even working with TS. this notebook is only for my personal use. actually its not meant to be a gaming NB, but still bothers me spending such amount of money on a device without getting the performance.

thx

 

It's showing that your multiplier (MULTI) is definitely too low at times... If I remember right, with the multiplier going down to 7 you are essentially running your CPU at 900MHz... You shouldn't be below 13x (which is 1.8GHz base speed no turbo boost) ever unless the computer is idle. Basically your computer is running half as fast as it should. double check that you have TS enabled and that it says it is on, and that you have the appropriate items checked:

[X] Clock Modulation @ 100%
[X] Chipset Clock Mod @ 100% (doesn't do anything IIRC on our i7 systems, but may as well)
[X] Set Multiplier @ 13.0

"ThrottleStop Is Enabled" in the status bar above the button.

 

Hey Unclewebb, a possible nice addition to the logs (if its not too much trouble) would be the settings when the log is started... so maybe have it type "Throttle stop enabled with Clock Modulation @ 100%, etc etc etc"

If its anything more then a quick addition then it't not that big of a deal, but if its simple it would be nice for when people post their logs

 

thx again.. these three boxes were checked and also "auto turn off"

ive updated the ATI driver and now the game wont start anymore

>?<

 

Are there any patches that need to be installed on the game?

 

try this. Enable throttlestop, and then close the lid of your laptop so that it goes into standby. wait until it is IN STANDBY mode (corner lights pulsing slowly).

Open lid up and log into windows and try your game again. Theres a weird effect of throttlestop running that actually nukes performance if you havn't put the computer to standby mode before running a game, we haven't the damnedest idea why it works, but it does.

with AC adapter plugged in:
turn TS on
put pc to sleep
wake pc up
verify that TS is still enabled and running
launch game

 

thank you zlog.. i really appreciate ur help, i already did that yesterday but ill try again as soon as i can get the game running

ill post a short message if its working or not

 

i put the lid down and up again didnt work either

a screenshot after doing this is attached below

 

another screenshot while in the game

im not an expert like others but i guess the multi's are still 2 low but dont know why (SS made after closing lid)

thx for the help

 

I received my XPS 1645 on Dec 14 2009. The BIOS version is A01.
Im experiencing throttling in GTA 4 (brightness minimized, wireless switched off, backlighting off) avg 15 fps.
I used CPU Z in the background and when I used alt tab, multiplier was locked to 8, 1 ghz.
I experienced no throttling in X Plane 9.44 and Microsoft Flight Sim X Acceleration.
Should I update to A03?
I get a crackling noise from my 90 watt adpater despite using a spike strip.

 

What will you say about the RGBLED screen. I am actually asking, do your eyes hurt ?

Nikolay

 

I just simply would not use it. That sounds pretty bad. I've never heard of one making noise, that could be a sign of a short.

 

Ok, thanks for telling us what we already knew weeks ago! So again, you come out with a crappy little statement, just trying to buy more time and waste the time of everyone else just so that they don't start sending their laptops back.

So you've acknowledged switching to a 130w adaptor ALONE will not solve the issue. Does this mean you're going to ship 130w adaptors to everyone when you have the BIOS update too?

And this time, please just answer the questions directly instead of just repeating what Dell have already said. You're seriously losing credit on this forum now - the last time you posted many people actually thought you'd come back with something concrete - but you've just come back with the BS you've posted above. I mean, is there anything new you've just told us?

As for eveyone else, guys it doesn't look like there is much hope at all. I said it last time there was an update from Dell about 2/3 weeeks ago. They're running round in circles and wasting your time. Seriously just start asking for refunds. Some of you have started saying "well at least i have a 130w adaptor now plus TS, so i'm happy". You should not have to accept this as a solution. You have just shelled out so much money on a performance machine - and Dell have screwed you over!!! Do not accept it.

This is just a sign of things to come - why can't you see that?

 

Careful what you say on the dell forums.. you might get banned like me it seems the people at DELL hq aka the kremlin are actively filtering posts if your too critical.

 

Yeh i know, hence why i posted in a democratic domain.
There's no point reading he Dell forum - they'll only allow you to read and post what they want.

 

I once asked a question to this new dell guy that appeared on this forum I believe his name was Bill or todd.... I asked him " will dell release the bios fix before or after the machine gets discontinued" implying that dell will never fix it. I remember hell broke loose on me from a couple of people here. We should know that dell is playing us. I mean they engineered the throttling on purpose and placed it in the bios, what is it so hard for them to retract that limit knowing that reason and the exact code that placed?? How come they are able to create a new bios and introduce a new machine which is basically identical (1647) without the throttling issue. yet they cant create one for the 1645!!!
I believe the the only thing that is keeping them from fixing it properly is the fact that they will NEVER replace the AC adapters. PERIOD. The bios fix is not the problem here.

 

Is it confirmed the 1647 has no throttling issues?

 

Edit:

Todd just works for the blog, there is no way he has information that we don't have, either. He's not the person who would even have information that is relevant. He is the middle-man when we don't need one. :/

 

I was talking to sales a few times today and none of them said that they were aware of any issues with the 1645 and were happy to make sale.
Its really a depressing situation at this stage.
I think it really leaves no other option other than to return your laptops for a refund.
This also applies to all other laptops by Dell that have this throttling "feature".

Please send Dell a message that they cant ignore and return your laptop.

Pass this around, tell as many people as you know.
Its really the only thing that could change things barring a legal action.

Send back those laptops.

 

Your C0 percent isnt high enough to keep the multipliers up in those pictures. Do you have an 820qm?! you may need to set the multiplier box to 14 then in throttlestop, or as high as it will go.

hit the logging button and run your game.. and post that log. hopefully there will be higher multipliers

@zlog, i would be worried too. The return process was relatively quick for me. Although dell said they would call to schedule a pickup or send a shipping label for the pickup in a few days. Yes they said both at 2 instances times. The next day the ups guy is there for a pickup and i was like uhh not ready. Things just isnt together over there at dell.