XPS 15 9560 DPC Latency (frequent popping noises, etc)

I can confirm that, at least for my device, the problem is with Killer wifi drivers. Here's what the dpclat looks like with an external USB adapter and without:

http://i.imgur.com/zihWufd.png

Now, interestingly, as you can see from the graph, at least for the last 30 minutes I haven't had one of those huge red jumps; that also means my audio hasn't skipped super hard. It's still very slightly audible, but it's much better than before. This was after installing older Killer drivers.

But there should be guaranteed solutions:

• Replace the Killer card with another one (Intel, probably)
  
  
• Constantly use a USB wifi adapter
  

Can other people try this? Disable Killer from device manager and look at your dpclat graph. It would be great if we could confirm most of not all cases arises from this or not.

dpclat link:

http://www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml

Additionally, is there anyone *without* the problems? Can they share what a dpclat graph looks like for them?

 

Try the Kill Wifi drivers from the Alienware R4.
Here are two to try.

http://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER04043064M/1/Network_Driver_X65VY_WN32_1.0.856_A00.EXE

http://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER04013799M/1/Network_Driver_RFN32_WN32_1.1.65.1335_A01.EXE

or

http://killernetworking.com/driver-downloads/item/e2200-e2400-wireless

 

Also seeing DPC latency spikes :-(. I tried disabling the Wifi card in Device manager but it does not change anything. Tried disabling many other drivers with not much change. The bars are all yellow, why not green? Using LatencyMon points at tcpip.sys, ACPI.sys, ndis.sys.
Crazy we have to go through this for such an expensive machine.

 

You ignored the readme. This tool will always display that minimum value as it is not working correctly under Windows 10. It does show spikes correctly, over that yellow ground noise, though can still be used.

 

Use latencymon

http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

Post your latencymon charts and I will let you know my charts (similar but slightly different 9550).Took some effort but got latency to be fine (still popping when changing screen brightness with f10/f11 but that is a defect that we are stuck with...

You might find some XPS tips here to reduce latency

http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/2601603/1.html

 

http://imgur.com/a/m2K1j


"Some device drivers on this machine behave bad and will probably cause drop-outs in real-time audio and/or video streams. To isolate the misbehaving driver use Device Manager and disable/re-enable various devices, one at a time. Try network and W-LAN adapters, modems, internal sound devices, USB host controllers, etc."

Mostly yellow bars with some red bars every 20s approximately (not regular). Same culprits highlighted by LatencyMon:

 

Melinda,

I think some drivers are getting updated or antivirus is running right now. Restart your computer later in the day and give it several minutes to settle down. Don't run any programs. Then run latencymon again and see if your scores improve.

I've run latencymon dozens of times with wifi enabled, Windows defender in the background, but none of my programs running (e.g firefox, games, excel...). Below is an image I took tonight and represents typical scores for my system (my 9550 is optimized for latency so out of the box latency was much worse)

The pianoworld link above provides some good latency optimization guides and tips...

 

I'd recommend you do what I did and just reinstall windows. Install drivers safely, and make sure to use the independent Killer wifi driver (so the download without the suite).

 

I think this is excellent advice. If that does not help, begin checking out alternatives

 

I am doing this now. Have we concluded that it is for sure the Killer drivers? I uninstalled them last night and there was still latency.

 

My 9550 did not have the killer unit

Out of the box latency was mediocre so there is plenty of places to optimize latency beyond wifi drivers...

 

This guy had an easy solution for some latency issues -

 

Yes, even disabling the card does not help, I wonder why reinstalling Windows would help if they are indeed the culprit (unless they still have side effects even when disabled). But there is also ACPI.sys that causes latency problems, let's not forget that.

 

The funny thing about that is I made the latency much better by removing the killer drivers and putting in an intel wifi card.
I then had an occasional DPC latency spike so I followed that guys instructions and put the the suggested intel driver and BAM! huge, constant latency spikes came back. I then put back the Dell Intel GFX drivers back and once again I am at the most minimal spikes I have gotten so far. I would say I have resolved 90% of the latency. Its now not constant, however it still happens on occasion, a spike here and there.