S-XPS 1645 Throttling Info. and Updates

The right speaker that rattles!!!

 

When we have enough posts are we supposed to pm bill now or when a07 is finished testing?

 

Here's my email address:

ikjadoon -at- gmail.com



Oh, right, the video: I'm not going to be home this weekend, next weekend looks very possible. Do you guys want the WHOLE process or just removing the heatsink? I'd rather not have to redo the thermal paste, but if you want, definitely.

@t3kno

IDK. Mine, however, was not the only one captured. I'd like to say it was instrumental, but that's a question prolly for the engineers. I know they couldn't have done with without capturing SOME laptops, but not sure if mine was the lucky one.

No problem. Wasn't a big sacrifice. I've installed Windows (Vista and then 7) about 6 times now, though, lol. Activated 7 so many times, MS wouldn't accept the code and had to call it in. That was a 45-minute call in itself.

But, I can't complain. Bill got me 7 Ultimate and 6GB of RAM and two faulty traditional hard drives got me an SSD. So, yeah, I think I'll keep the replacement.

@all

I think it'd be useless to PM Bill now. They don't have a system in place AND if you do it now, it might get lost amidst the current skuttle. It'd be best to wait until the OFFICIAL announcement and adapter replacement program starts and THEN PM Bill.

10 should be it.....weird. IDK.

Enough...must.......force.....oneself......to.....get....off....NBR.......

~Ibrahim~

 

Hate to post this again but.....
should I install A06 or just wait till A07?

 

I'm more of a desktop user than laptop, but I bought this laptop in December for a good price and because of the awesome specifications. I hadn't used it much until about 2 weeks ago, and it wasn't until then that I discovered the throttling problem. For the first time I actually played a graphics intensive game and I immediately thought "Okay, what is WRONG with this thing?!" So then I stumbled upon this forum, but only a week ago. Thank you very much to everyone who has already done so much legwork before I even got here!

 

Same, I've been following silently since I got this laptop although I bought an external monitor to workaround this issue. Being able to play games on the go would be nice though.

 

I've installed A03 and now A06. Personally, I haven't noticed any difference between the 2. Some say A06 runs hotter, but I don't know. I'd say just wait until A07 now.

 

Alemaker: If you are only using a 90 watt adapter or don't use ThrottleStop then bios A06 is probably your best bet. If you have a 130 watt adapter and are waiting for bios A07 to be tested and finalized then you will be better off using bios A03 + ThrottleStop until then. At least now we know that a 130 watt adapter combined with ThrottleStop isn't going to hurt anything. These motherboards and components can obviously handle some extra wattage.

 

thx, appreciate the input

 

yea i ran A03 and A06 as well, I don't notice the difference. But i remember hearing A06 fixed iphone issues.

 

"Can't talk, must game."

 

If you have no issues now with your current bios, I'd wait. Apparently, A06 was mainly to fix a sync issue with the iPhone. It does nothing for throttling and has some adverse effects to core temperature as reported by some people. The consensus is to stay with A03 and wait for A07 or whatever it might be if A07 fails testing and they need another one.

 

Sounds like you should install it if you need to hook your iphone up and sync with itunes. Otherwise probably best to stick with A03 or A01 (whatever you have). All of the current bios images throttle and A05/A06 run hotter than A03

 

BILL you need to yell at the guy who put that textured peice of plastic with all the little notches in it around the speaker on either side of the keyboard.

seriously gets gross in just a couple days and you have to use bluetac or something similar to get the bits of dust and whatever else out.

lol

 

and thx for your input, actually only have the 90 watt adapter now, (been outbid 6 times on eBay for the 130w)

 

Loooool, i feel you man, i know exactly what you are talking about. whats the deal with that, honestly.

 

USB to toslink to surround sound, my whole room rattles!

 

lol yea that thing gets stuff stuck in there all the time

 

its 10
lol also the minimum lengt of the posts is ten characters

"1. The message you have entered is too short. Please lengthen your message to at least 10 characters."

 

+1 on that one for sure Zlog. WTH were they thinking?

 

i still don't believe i can pm

 

Has anyone used the 720qm and 820qm? Does one of them throttle more / less than the other?

 

LOL

@ Dell peeps here: can we sign up for designing the perfect notebook ??

 

Well, obviously, it's a cheap marketing trick to make it look like the speakers are just huge. It also adds some aesthetic value, however. They lost out on the practical bit, though, LOL. Focus group must've used in a fricking vacuum, it barely takes a day or two for them to be speckled.

^^See, Bill, this is what happens when we have Dell's ear. You'd better be ready for the whirlwind of "who thought of that stupid idea?" rants, LOL.

Poor Bill. Go hire yourself some workers to help you with this ordeal; it looks like it's gonna be huge (the adapter...not the speaker dust, rofl).

 

Had a little chuckle to myself when I saw user posting this on DELL Community Forums

A long long time ago...... When IBM were mainframe kings...... They released a mainframe series IIRC, 4 models with the same CPU at the same clock speed. How did they differenciate performance? They used a busy doing nothing loop, in a task built into the OS which was protected so that only they could access it. When a customer wanted more performance, they reduced the time the loop was maxed out doing nothing! Have Dell engineers discovered something similar?

 

that sounds pretty terrible lol

 

Thank you for your reply Todd. See communication breeds understanding. It may not always breed acceptance, but understanding is a good first step. But then again I wondered, wouldn't corporate culture also dictate the proper "concealment" (for lack of a better word) of these kinds of things if they were in fact intentional. We (I of course and maybe not even you) would NOT be told of these things by the "higher-ups." Regardless though, I am very glad that you are answering all our inquiries and glad a fix coming...can't wait. Also an eta on a fix for the exhaust would be nice too? But one at a time of course...Thank You.

 

If 10 is the minimum requirement, then I am sure I can get to that by the time we get news of the A07 release. Thank you again to all you have helped this to happen.

 

Ammm ... could you do the whole process, pleeeeeease . I know this is too much, but always when I disassemble something at the end I am left with few spare parts on the table . So I would like to avoid this this time.

Thanks
Nikolay

 

@ikjadoon I was looking at your signature earlier and thinking... It seems like his specs have gotten better since he ordered the laptop. Now seeing one of your recent posts I can see that is true.

 

Just thought I would drop a quick idea on the heat generated by this laptop for those of you who want to apply your own thermal compound. If you are the DIY type I suggest this guide to make some Diamond Thermal Compound to help keep your system cooler. I use it on my Desktop currently and it does a great job.

http://www.inventgeek.com/Projects/DiamondGrease/overview.aspx

That might help to lower the 1645 temperature a bit.

 

Can anyone here comment on whether this fix would allow for XP mode to run faster?

 

Well, if your system was throttling because of the extra load from XP mode then yes you should see better performance from XP mode. If it wasn't throttling and you just don't have enough memory or because it's still a Virtual Machine then no it won't make a bit of difference.

I have an i7 Desktop machine with a 920 overclocked to near 4GHz with 6 GB of RAM and an Indilinx type SSD and Windows XP mode still doesn't run super smooth. No matter how you slice it, it's still a virtual machine and not a native program so there's going to be a performance hit. It's certainly usable, but it's not liquid smooth like running a native Windows 7 application.

 

It should, definitely, help with anything that is CPU-intensive....which I think an entire operating system will fall under just dandy,

Haha, yeah, they're a bit better than the first time.

@TIM

Haha, OK, I'll do it all. Next weekend, though.

~ibrahim~

 

Thank you. I am glad to hear that as most of my use is done in XP mode.

 

I think the biggest hindrance is the fact it only uses one core.

 

Ya, ditto, I didn't notice any difference. Hang on for 07, bios upgrades are never a zero risk activity and it would suck to have to mail back your 1645 just as they turn it into the smoker it was always supposed to be!

Min

 

What only sees one core? Windows XP inside the virtual machine or Windows 7 hosting the virtual machine?

If your system is only seeing one core instead of 4 or 8 with HT, then you have a different issue that A07 is probably not going to fix. You may have setting misconfiguration in your OS.

 

@bill

Please persuade your colleges in other regions to be as helpful as you - and get them to post here as well... Unless we'll find another bill in all the other regions, us non-USA people are basically back to 1 month ago..where a solution might be coming but there's no communication and nobody knows when/how.

Thanks

 

If you have iPhone syncing problems, install it. It won't help with the throttling, though

 

I am sorry for not being clear. Windows XP mode can only use one core. My system sees all 8 cores or 4 physical and 4 logical as it would be.

 

Perhaps this was answered earlier, but there was a lot of chatter...

If my order is still in production (due to Delivery 2/22), will it now ship with the 130W adapter, or will it ship with the 90W?

 

It will most likely ship with the 90w adapter. It will take time to do the changeover, and they won't even begin that until they confirm they've got the BIOS revisions in place to handle the larger power supplies.

 

I have not tried to use xp mode but I do use MVWare and when it is full screen I can't even tell I am in a virtual machine it is great. Plus you can also use more than 1 core with VMware.

Marc

 

Hi Todd,

Thanks for your help with this. I asked this question earlier but got lost in the shuffle. Is DELL not shipping the XPS 16's with the RGBLED screen anymore? Though indicated as a receommended upgrade, it is not an option any more? Thanks.

 

Someone asked this same question on the Dell Forums. The answer was it may be the part supply is too low to meet demand and it will have to wait until more comes in, or it may be a discontinued feature, they didn't know for sure.

 

Why don't they ship them with the 130 now, that way all that is needed is the A07 BIOS later. Seems like that would save both parties time and money.

 

Logistics, I think.

You know how inefficient a big business like Dell can be: can't grab a system off the line to test, must have a captured system from a customer; if you go past pre-production, no changing the order at all; if they cancel an order that had a discount, it's difficult to get that same discount if you order again; etc.

It would be nice, though...

 

Yea, It would be a bit of a mess, but I would start the process to ship with 130watt regardless of the A07. We know the A07 is coming and that can be DLed online.

I hope Dell has some pretty good bandwidth the day that comes out. I can't wait. I wonder how long this is going to take.

 

That's true....I know it's definitely coming (1645 shipping with 130W adapter), but I think it's still transitional.

Yeah, lol, should be massive.

I would torrent it, but I'm a bit afraid of getting a few bad bytes, haha.

~Ibrahim~