S-XPS 1645 Throttling Info. and Updates

Aside from famx, there has been some good discussion here still and contributions have been made. No offense, but noone appointed you as the forum police. If anything, posts complaining and asking for threads to be closed down is far more counterproductive than anything else.

The vent issue has been opened up as another thread already. As for the GPU throttling, I'm planning on doing some more testing tonight and posting results. However, I believe the consensus seems to be at 84C the GPU throttles. Perhaps another thread could be made for that.

 

Asherek,

I've started a GPU thread here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=462786

If anyone else would like to post, that would be great.

 

This thread is already about throttling, why does there need to be another thread about GPU throttling?

I come here to see if the system I drooled over for so many months has been improved. Sad to say not much has been done other then A07 and Bill communicating. But it's just not enough as the system does still throttle when pushed hard. The one I had did throttle at 84C on the GPU. taking it back to 300mhz. Turn powerplay off and the GPU wouldn't go past 400mhz according to GPU-Z.

 

edited: no reason to keep the CPU+GPU post as I had the first answer already in my own post - PowerPlay disabled it still happens at 66% brightness so removing this question, removes any need to check WLED/External monitors as it can't be the culprit. Owning an RGB I don't really care if WLED/External would fix it anyway.

 

back in january for 3 days - there was an XPS signature event in Canada and the 1647 came with the 5XXX series - don't remember exact number 5830 perhaps.... she has still yet to receive her laptop though -without any explanation from dell - perhaps it is the 5XXX series video card....

 

A while back someone said that the gpu throttling was implemented on BIOS A07.
I can confirm that this is not true. I tested my 1647 and once the GPU temp reached the 84C, it started throttling.

 

I recieved my PA-13 power supply today. I turned my computer running on the battery, opened to the BIOS the power supply said none, plugged my 90watt adapter in, power supply said 90w. Plugged the new 130watt power supply in, power supply said 150w. Is it ment to be like this or do i maybe have a PA-15 in a PA-13 housing?

 

Still no love for us 1640 users with the SAME EXACT issue?

 

From what I understand it was accidentally leaked and they weren't supposed to be offering the 5XXX series. . . yet. . .

No doubt. I don't think the fact it throttles at 84C is as much the issue, because the temps shouldn't really be getting that high (ideally) as previously stated better thermal paste + a redesign of the vent + cooling pads offer the best solution. Obviously we don't want to do this ourselves and would like to see DELL step-up and take care of it. (At least utilizing the first two.)

 

I can't believe what I have predicted it happened to me first

This evening after powering on my XPS 1645 screen turned green, for the moment I thought my background settings has changed but after checking it they didn't so I booted laptop again. To my dismay everything was displayed in green again. I tried to boot numerous times and but even so everything still was in green. I even tried to boot with battery alone and I saw green color again. So I decided wait an hour or so and tried once again now display does not power on at all

Now I wonder if DELL will replace RGB for RGB or it will inform me that it might not be safe to use RGB screen on XPS 1645 due insufficient power.

 

although I am sure dell with exact a repair for whatever your issue - it seems highly unlikely this is the case but wtvr....

As Bill stated a while ago in the forum - RGB will be replaced for RGB..... they aren't going to give you your money back in the repair - so you will for sure get another RGB - assuming what you said is true.... I don't know why the screen being green - would then lead to the screen not turning on - did you maybe open up the laptop and accidentally dislodge the connector? I don't see how power consumption would have anything to do with this issue.

and stop being so dramatic.....

 

I dont believe you.

 

Although I have ordered thermal paste it did not arrived yet. So I did not open this laptop before.

I will try to connect laptop to external monitor just to see if it will work and if I can run any tests.

 

Laptop works fine with external monitor so it is not a video card, I don't see any image on the screen anymore so hopefully it's just a inverter.

Have to check if my DELL warranty comes with on site repair on this laptop. so it can be fixed right away.

 

I would try taking out the battery, then holding the power button down for 15-20 seconds. Then put it all back together and reboot. This has been shown to work in a few other cases.

/good luck.

 

Hi Bill. Italian support is still denying my 130W adapter. Any news?

Finally they're sending me. Thanks.

 

hi,i am planning to buy studio xps 1645.i want to know that if the wled screen
also requires the 130w adapter or the model with wled screen is not greatly affected by the throttling issue as with rgb screen.

 

The WLED doesn't throttle as much as the RGB but still requires the 130 watt adapter to eliminate throttling.

 

Hey that actually worked today even though I tried this procedure numerous times yesterday when troubleshooting. I only wonder what caused for the screen to start showing everything in green and why shortly after that screen stopped working all together. I also noticed today that laptop had to reboot three times before loading windows completely and then it rebooted again by itself after 20 minutes of use, and then again after an hour or so.

Later on today and over the weekend I will run some intensive graphics application just to see if I can pin point what caused or might be causing this screen failure.

 

Have you tried contacting Dell regarding your issue? Maybe they can send you a new generation of screens that have no issues.

 

when will dell begin to ship sxps 1645 with 130w adapter
or do we have to ask for the adapter once we get the laptop.
also can we ask them to ship the 130w adapter while ordering the laptop on phone...

 

How would I know if they will install new generation RGB panel or even if they replace with a new one. Is there a specific serial number for new RGB panels.


Perhaps Dell-Bill can comment on that...are there new generation RGB panels out there and how would I know if I getting the right one.

 

As Bill said on page 348....March 8th.

 

Glad that it worked out. I've been lucky in that my screen had turned all red, and I had to run through the same procedure myself. It appeared that the RED backlamp became stuck on at full brightness, and the other colors were turned off. Very strange. Only happened once, knock on wood. My guess is power issue as I had just resumed from standby.

 

I've had the screen issue about 3 times now. Once green, once red and one all black. I've had to remove the battery and hold the power button for 10 seconds and each time that worked...not that I like it all that much.

 

I had this issue once with my WLED screen. The screen had a green tint and after rebooting it was fine.

 

I will try to disable as many components as I can, then run it laptop at max or close max performance just to see if screen stops working again.
If it does then it is definitely underpowered and then we all might need eventually to use 150w power adapter with new bios revision.

Manufacturer Date on my RGB panel is 2008

 

Earlier today I was working on battery, when the system started throttling down to 7x. A few seconds later my screen went all magenta. Fiddling about with the screen brightness, the screen switched between normal and yellow or magenta.

Before I had enough time to look into it, the system shut itself down without warning. Couldn't restart on battery only. As I didn't have a power adapter with me (was with a client for a quick job that wasn't supposed to take more than an hour and a half) I had to go back home.

Once at home the system still wouldn't boot on battery, it only boots on the wire. The battery is recognized and stated to have about 40% power left. This is confirmed by the two lights that appear after pressing the button on the battery. The battery doesn't seem to be charged either.

So unless the battery wakes up over night (I will leave it out of the system) my battery has dies today. I was did not have TS enabled, but did run it for logging purposes.

How can you tell this date? I would like to figure out the date on my new panel.

 

You can check it out using Everest. You have a tab called Monitor which displays the Manufacturer Date.

 

Did anyone here played Crysis Warhead with A07 and 130w. I bought the game yesterday, but I could only run it smoothly on 1024*720. if I run it on 1920*1080 with gamer (high but not max) setting, I get crazy lags...really can't play the game. Throttlestop shows about 15 multi. When I enable throttlestop, there is no significant difference...I guess the poor performance is not really caused by throttling. Does this mean that the 1645 is not powerful enough for Crysis?

 

Run a log file with GPU-Z while playing and make sure the GPU isn't throttling.

 

Just ordered one in canada. Curious if it ships with the 130watt. Anyone get one recently?

 

I had almost the same problem too this afternoon (lucky that my laptop will be returned on next tuesday because of huge backlight bleeding)

I wanted to reinstall a fresh windows 7 so I started the laptop on battery (the battery was for about 80% full). After booting the dvd and loading for about 2 minutes, the laptop goes off. The power button didn't work for about 30 seconds. After 30 seconds it goes on again with the power button.

The same reappeared until I plugged in the adapter.

Lucky me that I've already choosen to take another laptop instead of the xps 1645, after 4 new screens which were not correct (first had dirt inside the glass, the 3 after that had huge backlight bleeding on the left).

I hope for everyone that the problems which are left will be solved soon. At least the tech support helped me very well.

 

I thought that the lights on the battery when pressing the button were a representation of battery health not charge. You may have a dud battery...

 

No its charge.

 

Sorry u are right.

However, it is possible to do this:

Checking the Health of the Battery
To check the battery health using the charge gauge, press and hold the status button on the battery charge gauge for at least 3 seconds.

If no lights appear, the battery is in good condition, and more than 80 percent of its original charge capacity remains. Each light represents incremental degradation.

If five lights appear, less than 60 percent of the charge capacity remains, and you should consider replacing the battery.

From here

 

I use SIW - System Information for Windows their site below

http://www.gtopala.com/

 

Christ this thread depresses me. Thank GOD I bought a 1640 with the WLED. No issues ever *knock on wood*. On one hand I am happy Dell is "fixing" this, on the other I'm upset with Dell as I bet if it wasn't for this forum and thread Dell would have never fixed it.

Unclewebb has been a God-send to XPS 1645 users on this forum as well as a few others.

I just hope Dell helps the people with the 1640 and RBG LED screens. Anyone confirm if the 1647 has this issue?

 

Thanks MrSpock2002.

I added improved ATI GPU reporting to my other project, RealTemp so you can keep track of GPU core and memory MHz while monitoring.

Head here to read all about it.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=4261324&postcount=4022

or you can just download it from here.
http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/3/3/1794507/RealTempBeta.zip

If you have a laptop with an ATI GPU just add this to the RealTemp.ini file

GPU=2

 

I run today computer on power adapter alone then in the evening I decided switch to battery. Once I did so another screen failure, this time screen did not show any tint colors it was all black like it did not power on at all.

So once again I followed the procedure to reset the screen while holding power button and laptop works again.

Any of you have tried to run laptop on power adapter alone for some time then switch to battery alone or battery with power adapter and see if the same thing will happen

I never had this issue with 90w power adapter and previous bios

Now I begin to wonder if this was the exact issue that the other manager was aware of... when my co-worker made request for 130w adapter few weeks back and his request was denied.

 

You know I wonder if during the BIOS flash if it glitched out or something. Either way that just doesn't sound normal, it sounds of of a GPU issue, then again you say this only happened with the BIOS update.

I doubt very much that the 130watt adapter is the cause as many people bought and used that adapter way before the new BIOS update.

Your system should be under full warranty. Call Dell and have them fix it. They will most likely just replace the motherboard as I don't think Dell replaces just BIOS chips (which I think they should... would saved money and hassle). Report back after contacting Dell and let us know what they are going to do about it.

 

I have RGBLED + 820QM processor - A07. My new 130W adapter fits a little "sloppy" and so it often accidentally falls out of the side of the lap top when I pick it up or shift it around on my lap. So I often go back and forth between adapter and battery many times in an evening even though I don't want to.

No issues with "crazy screen colours" here. I am rarely running a huge cpu or gpu load when I switch though.

 

Same here with the cord disconnecting from the laptop a little bit easily. Though I was thankful for it at one point otherwise the laptop would have gone down as well. I haven't had any issues with the screen so far and I'm running RGBLED and 720qm. I've never had the laptop unplugged with both the graphics and cpu maxed though.

On another note, just in terms of throttling I never really planned to game on the laptop but maybe I'll add a few games and test out this weekend. I did run through the synthetic benchmarks prime+furmark just to see for myself. I get clock modulation doing that test with brightness at maximum, but when I lower the brightness on the RGBLED the clock modulation starts to vanish though not completely. It's not going to affect me much, but at the same time it would be nice to see just a few more watts added to the power draw for RGB users.

This is with A07 and 130w

 

I did that test, and it's 2 lights for single press (so ~40% remaining), and no lights for a longer press. So the battery should be fine, but it really isn't. Or my mainboard is messed up. The Dell Batterymater reports the battery as in good health, and 39% remaining, and charging.

Thanks, I downloaded it and mine also says 2008. It also says the battery is being charged at 1mW

But I will not pollute this thread with my battery issues any more. Will take this up with tech support and see what happens.

 

If its a bios problem, they will replace the motherboard. I had mine replaced after a bad bios flash. They don't replace BIOS chips cause it's not PLCC socket type on this system. So, instead of removing and re soldering the chip, dell prefers to change the MB.

 

what is the model number of the replacement 130-watt adapter that they are sending, and is there a 150 -watt model? also how much bigger is that 130-watt compared to the original 90-watt

 

Thanks UW the color scheme for the gpu readout in the tray is fixed. It would always go to the default white color making it invisible in the last beta and I would always have to adjust it manually.

 

Hm. So. . . these experiences have been having (with the RGB screen) mainly AFTER the A07 BIOS or would we say its been going on long before that? And it will be nice once we've fully identified whether the performance lag is the GPU throttling or not. . . And, yeah, Famx, have you considered simply calling DELL on these issues? If something is wrong with your hardware the only way to fix it is by replacing it with new hardware. Anyway, it would be nice if we could organize/coordinate/identify some tests on these various issues that have cropped up. Yeah, I'm rambling. . . .

 

At this point I trying to decide if I should return laptop back to DELL or let them troubleshoot for the last time. I will call DELL early next week...


DELL-Bill any updates on vent issue. Thanks.

 

Famx. Probably the best thing you can do is, yeah, contact DELL and see if they can't do a diagnosis of your system. Then if there is no real fix, and its not worth the trouble to you, I suppose you best send it back.