SXPS 1645 BIOS A11 available now

Yeah, but you have the 4670, which runs hotter than his 5730. I think the general idea is if you have the 5730, then you shouldn't have throttling problems, and the upgrade to A11 is recommended.

If you have the 4670, then you should probably stick with A09.

 

The description on Dell's website about this BIOS update mentions few fixes that are minor and not related to performance issues/enhancements. Did you see performance improvements after the upgrade?

 

I didn't really notice any differences at all from A09 to A11. If anything, my recommendation is based on "it's newer, and it didn't make anything worse, so it's good by default".

 

I didn't get what you wanted to convey

Do u mean my lappy suffers extreme GPU throttling and instead of getting hot, it becomes cold ??

 

Sorry friend, I don't play the type of games mentioned by you. I play games like NFS SHIFT, GiRD 2, Blur, FIFA 10, Test Drive Unlimited, ASHES 09, etc. If u can tell me any of these games to test and tell you the report, sure I would.

 

What he means is that once throttling starts, the GPU underclocks itself to less than half capacity (650 Mhz down to 300). This causes reduced load on the GPU, which causes it to cool off. That's what the whole point of throttling is, to keep your GPU/CPU from overheating.

After the GPU cools off enough, it should un-throttle itself, and start heating up again.

 

That's what I was trying to say.

And IMHO it's not worth taking a 50%+ performance hit (which cycles on and off) to go from 'darn hot' under load to just 'pretty darn hot.'

 

hmmm...I got it.

Can u tell me any (safe) software which can verify for me whether or not my lappy throttles or not ?

 

Throttlestop..

 

I played NFS SHIFT for 3 hours while THROTTLTSTOP was monitoring, no sign of throttling.

Where else I need to look ?

Some people show reults from GPU-z, is it same as THROTTLESTOP ?

 

Throttlestop shows if your CPU is throttling. GPU-Z will show if your GPU is throttling. Although it should be obvious if/when your GPU is throttling, since your framerate will be dropped by 50%+ in the cases I've seen.

 

As my fps doesn't drop... does that finally means that my lappy doesn't throttle with the amount of load I put on it ???

I don't want to test or know if it would throttle under severe testing conditions and heavy load. Just want to check it in daily use.

 

I just got my SXPS 1645 in a few weeks ago, with the 5730 and i7. I updated to A11 a day or two after I received the laptop. I can play SCII on Very High-Ultra settings at high resolution for at least 4 hours, with no throttling in the GPU. That's the only game I have for the PC at the moment, so I don't know about throttling with others. I do have one question though, even when this thing is idle the fan is kind of loud. Not vacuum cleaner loud, but I'd say about as loud as my Xbox 360 runs. It doesn't bother me at home, but I get some looks from people in the library on campus. Is there any way to turn it down or tell it to turn itself off when its not running hot?

 

In the 'power options' in the control panel, you can go into advanced options, and change the settings. I forget what it's called, but there's a setting where you can have it downclock itself instead of increasing fan speed to reduce heat. It'll destroy your performance, but it should be enough to browse the net quietly in a library.

 

The rumor is the "system cooling policy" setting as well as a few other power options do nothing on most laptops, including the XPS 1645. I know I personally can't feel/hear any difference between "Passive" and "Active."

 

Another big thing is to adjust the power policy your computer is currently using. "High Performance" vs "Power Saving" makes a huge difference to heat output, and hence fan speed.

 

Ok thanks for the help everyone.