M570TU: Is it meant to be this bad, or is something broken?

Thanks for the reply,

Unfortunately it doesnt seem to be a driver problem - I've tried every Wifi driver I could find easily available, including the Clevo supplied and supported ones, and the problem still remains

-

Thanks a lot to the help from Blacky, I tried to compare the hardware in my system to his - apart from a few minor diferences, everything else seems to be the same, which is most odd!

 

Since your thinking it is a gpu and wi-fi conflict, I was wondering how your wi-fi is running. Are you using just the driver but windows to manage the connection or did you install the intel software and use that to connect?

Thought of this cause I know with my old dell I would always have really sluggish system performance cause the intel software would always be using most of the CPU. So now I only use the driver.

 

Thanks for the reply and suggestion,

Unfortunately I tried both the basic driver and out of desperation the Intel software. The problem occurs regardless, and the problem occurs even when I'm not connected to any wireless networks, just when thee Wifi is active

 

Not sure then. We have similar systems and I must say the my DPC Latency is yellow a lot of the time and I can cut down the red spikes by turning powermizer off. I never get low all green like sethlan's image on page 2 but he has a different processor, ram etc. so maybe thats why.

I don't notice any sluggishness in loading windows or programs, games or sound and have been happy with the overall performance of this system. Play a fair bit of different games and they run great from the get go. I used to get a little bit of stutter in audio early on if I opened a program etc. but as I think I said before that hasn't happened lately.

We have the same video card (608), processor and type of memory.

The difference in systems is mine has:

Vista 32bit Sp1
Different DVD drive
Different Hard Drive
Bios 1.00.09
Intel 5300 Wi-Fi

 

There's no good reason why the DPC latency should ever be anything but nice and green all along - the processor and RAM shouldnt make a difference, the key point is that its an indication of how well the system is behaving and if any hardware is perhaps having problems.

However, mostly yellow is definitely better than the massive reds I'm getting at the moment, which go around 100 * off the top of the chart!

You may want to have a play disabling/enabling a few things in device manager though and see if you can get your DPCs down to all greens - could be that some piece of hardware in your system may not be playing as nicely as it should, or an indication of having a bad driver somewhere, which is usually worth sorting out.

 

Yeah I played around with disabling stuff yesterday and couldn't really get it any better as far as getting more green. Also all my drivers are up to date. Could update my bios but it seems it probably won't help since you are having issues with the 1.00.10. Maybe the final Vista SP2 update due shortly will sort things out but who knows .

Thanks though and good luck with getting your system to perform better!

 

Hi Tandrum,

Try disabling all of the extra devices and install them one by one and test each time, maybe you can narrow down the culprit

 

Thanks for the reply,

Unfortunately it doesnt help - if I start off with a nice fresh install, the system is fine, but there are no drivers. I can install the drivers in any order I want - the catch being that as soon as the drivers for both the graphics and the wifi have been installed, the problem starts

At least this seems to narrow it down to the wifi and graphics card, the odd thing is, other people with the same card and wireless are perfectly fine. Furthermore, they're both fine on battery...

 

Try installing only the drive for the graphics and see how it reacts. If you have no issues then try installing only the WIFI. check for drivers for WIFI from Intel website and for the card from Nvidia and try those. If nothing changes try changing IRQ's for each device. Also check out your power option properties in Windows when on battery and when on AC and see what the differences are.Let us know how it goes.

 

Thanks for the reply,

With only either the graphics or wifi driver installed, everything is fine (but obviously the other device doesnt work). I've tried going straight to the latest drivers for both the wifi and the graphics with no luck. I've also tried messing around with all the power option properties I could find, again, without any luck

 

Did you try changing IRQ's Here is how to do this

1. Right click on the device in the list (see above) and then select properties.
2. Click the Resources tab.
3. Remove the tick from the Use automatic settings option.
4. Select a non-conflicting configuration from the pull down box.
5. Click OK

You may find you cannot manually change your IRQ settings (the Use automatic settings will be greyed out), this is usually related to the ACPI function used by Win XP.

To resolve conflicts with PCI or ISA cards try manually setting them in your motherboard's BIOS or try a different slot for the newly installed device, you will usually find that by changing the slot you will change the IRQ channel as well.

Well the cheapest way to test your problem (if the above does not work) would be to buy a simple wifi card should be around 40-50 usd and swap it out with the one in there. Worse case scenario you will have an extra card on your hands. But if it persists send it off to service.

 

Some new intel wi-fi drivers just came out so you could give those a try.
http://laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=23633

 

Thanks for the reply,

Unfortunately again no luck - as soon as the drivers were installed and the wifi became active again, the system returned to stuttering and lagging

 

Also here, installed newest sound driver, wi-fi driver and dox video driver.
Still the same problems and Dox video driver started to freeze my computer in windows so i had to remove it.
And i installed only after taking out old drivers with Drive Sweeper as suggested here.

I contacted yesterday a Clevo reseller here and he told me that he can take it for repairs. Software only any replacement i would have to buy.
But he mentioned that '' those 7200 RPM drivers sometimes have problems with the cache memory''. I think is bs but is there a chance of happening

Thx.

 

Alexka,

The bios dosen't alow me to change IRQ settings, or at least i couldnt find it. Is there a way to change ir inside Vista?

Thx

 

masfb, I dont believe you can change IRQ settings on a system with ACPI. I believe you can install XP and press a particular function key at install to install without ACPI support, then you can set your own IRQ - however, I am not optimistic, given there are no visible IRQ conflicts on the system - and if it was an IRQ problem, it should stay a problem whether on the mains or on battery.

Seems your experience remains the same as mine. I doubt its a software problem though. If you find out what is wrong, or if a replacement has helped, please do share your findings!

-

I tried using Kernrate and xperf to see if they could shed any light on what is at fault, but not much luck. It seems it's not a particular driver or anything like that causing the problem, more its the hardware interrupts that are outside the OS that are causing the problem (KiDispatchInterrupt in ntkrnlpa)

Some of the main bits from the kernrate log (Full log attached)

Code:

 /==============================\
<         KERNRATE LOG           >
 \==============================/
...
------------Overall Summary:--------------

P0     K 0:00:02.012 ( 7.4%)  U 0:00:00.390 ( 1.4%)  I 0:00:24.788 (91.2%)  DPC 0:00:00.873 ( 3.2%)  Interrupt 0:00:00.171 ( 0.6%)
       Interrupts= 35224, Interrupt Rate= 1295/sec.

P1     K 0:00:02.558 ( 9.4%)  U 0:00:00.702 ( 2.6%)  I 0:00:23.930 (88.0%)  DPC 0:00:01.248 ( 4.6%)  Interrupt 0:00:00.358 ( 1.3%)
       Interrupts= 35218, Interrupt Rate= 1295/sec.

TOTAL  K 0:00:04.570 ( 8.4%)  U 0:00:01.092 ( 2.0%)  I 0:00:48.719 (89.6%)  DPC 0:00:02.121 ( 3.9%)  Interrupt 0:00:00.530 ( 1.0%)
       Total Interrupts= 70442, Total Interrupt Rate= 2591/sec.


Total Profile Time = 27190 msec
...
                                  Total      Avg. Rate
    Context Switches     ,        49835,         1833/sec.
    System Calls         ,       277829,         10218/sec.
    Page Faults          ,        71059,         2613/sec.
    I/O Read Operations  ,          718,         26/sec.
    I/O Write Operations ,         1190,         44/sec.
    I/O Other Operations ,         4750,         175/sec.
    I/O Read Bytes       ,      1255081,         1748/ I/O
    I/O Write Bytes      ,      4621266,         3883/ I/O
    I/O Other Bytes      ,        27456,         6/ I/O

-----------------------------

Results for Kernel Mode:
-----------------------------

OutputResults: KernelModuleCount = 145
Percentage in the following table is based on the Total Hits for the Kernel

Time   8861 hits, 25000 events per hit --------
 Module                                Hits   msec  %Total  Events/Sec
ntkrnlpa                               7691      27224    86 %     7062702
hal                                     729      27224     8 %      669446
win32k                                  171      27224     1 %      157030
nvlddmkm                                107      27224     1 %       98258
dxgkrnl                                  77      27224     0 %       70709
tcpip                                    17      27224     0 %       15611
...

----- Zoomed module ntkrnlpa.exe (Bucket size = 16 bytes, Rounding Down) --------
Percentage in the following table is based on the Total Hits for this Zoom Module

Time   7691 hits, 25000 events per hit --------
 Module                                Hits   msec  %Total  Events/Sec
KiDispatchInterrupt                    6653      27224    82 %     6109498
READ_REGISTER_ULONG                     365      27224     4 %      335182
READ_REGISTER_BUFFER_UCHAR              363      27224     4 %      333345
memmove                                  88      27224     1 %       80811
NtSetInformationThread                   65      27224     0 %       59689
MmUnsecureVirtualMemory                  39      27224     0 %       35813
KeI386Call16BitCStyleFunction            34      27224     0 %       31222
...
================================= END OF RUN ==================================

 

OK this is very weird.
All of sudden without any new updates since yesterday, using the basic windows video driver the machine is working without DPC spikes or lag.
I m testing with the same video Mkv as before.
I opened GPU-Z and guess what, the video card is not changing the clock every second, neigher the memory clock. Temp stable at 49.

So what the hell happened??

Thx
---------------
Update 15 minutes later

So i rebooted the computer to see if it was a final fix.
No final fix :/ Still nasty lags.

Without any load there was a lot of spikes and with the MKV file almost all red bars.
The clock of the video card was higher then the last time.

I already have noticed that somehow the GPU clock is linked with the DPC red bars and the lag. What i dont know if it is the cause or only of the effects of the bad behavior of the system.
If the GPU clock is stable no red bars. If if fluctuates or go over 275 Mhz = red bars.

Thx
When i play the MKV file it starts with 500 Mhz and goes dropping till it settled at 383, memory clock stays at 301.

When the computer was working very well the GPU clock was at 275.

 

This is exactly the behaviour that I have noticed as well. The thing is, it's not the actual clock speed that seems to make it unstable, but more the continual changing of clockspeed. On battery, or with Wifi disabled, it can go all the way up to 500 and stop there and be happy. On AC and with Wifi on, it just wont settle, but goes all over the place, causing the spiking.

See my picture from earlier: .

I'm just wondering whether this is a side effect, or perhaps the actual problem?

But if it is the problemm, why does the clock go mad ONLY when on AC and with the Wifi on?

 

On batteries the GPU clock dosent go over 275, and the CPU dosent change as well, solid 1.6 Ghz.
Is there a way to measure the amount of power that is beeing consumed by a component at the PC. What if is a lack of power when the CPU, GPU and fans are working at full speed?
Wifi on the power requirements of the pc are higher also.
I tried to modify the power consuption of the wifi, made a lot of changes at the driver properties and disabling enebling the device everytime. Sadly it made few or no difference, and i cant rely on it since it could had been the system that settle down while i was testing.

----------
Even with powermizer disbling the gpu clock frequency changes can still see drops at the GPU core clock.

 

I am not sure, but maybe this will help you somehow. http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=372990

 

Try this as this is only happening on AC, measure the voltage of the power supply. What voltage reading are you getting? (Measure the DC voltage going into laptop. )

 

Even that is a bit above normal...

On mine even with some apps running:

 

OT: Audigy, I see at least 4 icon places FREE!! Fill them! come on..

 

OT: Wish granted!

Even on my PC I'm a mess... I've organization issues... my wife hates it, this week no s.e.x for me

 

Hey all,

I'm sorry to post back to an old topic, but thought it'd be good to finish off the story, for anyone else with the same or similar problem.

I sent my laptop back to Novatech, the company I purchased from, and they were able to identify the problem as the graphics card and replace it. I've received my laptop back, and all is now perfect!

I can enjoy the machine as the wonderful machine it is, and be happy

So it seems the culprit was definitely the graphics card hardware (the 9800M GTX), and the replacement has fixed it all

Also, a positive word for Novatech in being able to get it all sorted out

A happy end!

 

glad that everything is working good now.

if you want me to close this thread, just tell me.

 

Thats cool. What does the DPC latency tool look like now? As I said before I get quite a bit of yellow and some red spikes here and there but as far as perfomance in games and windows things run great.

 

Thanks Gophn

brownstonemr, the DPC latency checker looks a lot happier now (like theriko's above).

With WIFI off, it's all green. With Wifi on and the CPU downclocked (as Windows does automatically when not under load), there's a yellow bar every 10 seconds or so, but its minimal. With Wifi on and the CPU at its usual speed, it's all green again (the wifi DPC completes faster, thus is no longer yellow).

The higher wifi bar is unfortunately unavoidable when ujsing Intel wireless - it occurs on XP, Vista, Win7, no matter what drivers you use. It seems its something Intel does and isnt going to fix. However, although its a little longer DPC than it should, it's fine (and only goes yellow when the CPU is running slowly)

There is the ever so occasional red, but that's to be expected - and if it happens occasionally and quickly, it doesnt impact performance.

So all in all, everything is pretty much perfect

 

Thx for the reply Tandrum. Well maybe its a window7 thing that alllows you to get all low green bars. I have attached a pic of how DPC checker has always looked on my system. I have same specs as you other than I am using Vista32. Also with powermizer and wifi off.

3dmark06 scores the same as other people with this system which must mean my cpu and gpu are fine but dpc does make me wonder why everyone else seems to have green below 500.

 

Hahaha, for curiosity I took a look at my DPC latency for the first time:

This doesn't look good but I never noticed any problems. I've tried disabling the Wifi and the bluetooth but the DPC graph remains the same. Hell knows what it's causing the regular spike.

 

For the red spikes maybe try disabling powermizer and see if that helps.

 

So the problem was the graphics card? Hmm...I thought DPC latency only had to do with audio stuttering, but I guess there's more to it...

 

No, that makes perfect sense. If the GPU is malfunctioning, then it's either going to be taking an abnormal amount of time on the FSB, delaying everything else, and causing DPC latency problems, or else it will not be responding properly to its own driver, which will therefore be spending an undue amount of time waiting for a response back from the hardware, also causing DPC latency.

 

The audio stuttering is a symptom, rather than a cause. In my case, the graphics card was conflicting with the wireless for some unkown reason, and thus causing horrible DPC latency. The result being that many things stuttered and lag - most noticable is audio because it really requires real time delivery, but also things like the mouse started lagging.

brownstonemr, one of the sets of drivers I tried when trying to sort out my system before I repaired gave a usage like that. Try updating network, wireless, graphics drivers, and it might help. However, the latency there while not perfect shouldn't be noticable enough to give problems - they're all completing quick enough that it shouldn't make too much difference.

Blacky, that's quite interesting - my only guess would be a slightly grumpy driver of some kind perhaps. The regular spikes seem to be caused by networking - either wired or wireless, but I'm not certain. Either way, it's occasional and shouldnt cause much of a problem as it completes quickly.

The biggest cause of concern seems to be when you get lots of red in a row - that's when you start getting horrible lag and latency and it all goes down hill from there

 

Tandrum, yes, it doesn't cause any problems at all as I have never noticed it before and there is no fps drop in games.

It's once every 10 sec. and surprisingly, the more I use the CPU the smaller the spike becomes.

Strange. And it's not the wireless card cause I've disabled for a while and still appeared.

 

Hi all! I have same problem of you Tandrum. I have already change my wireless card, gpu card, motherboard, hdd, memory, my AC power by the same model. I try all OS and driver I get nothing. I don't try other model or change other things ( smart drive, battery, processor, TV card... etc ) And my resselers don't know where is the problem. Very strange But when I disable wireless I got an amelioration so obligatory to use an USB module WiFi... damn it
I'll go try to change my battery and wifi module by 5100.
A suggestion : processor model P bugg on Clevo M570TU ? lol

 

Hi Kanja, sorry for the late reply,

I'm just wondering - could you check the hardware IDs for your 9800M GTX card in Device Manager (start -> run -> devmgmt.msc -> Display adapters -> 9800M GTX -> Details -> Hardware IDs)

 

Hi Tandrum!

Finally they changed my motherboard and everything seems back in order.

Hardware IDs? PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0617&SUBSYS_04811558&REV_A2?

 

Well, that knocked out that idea - I was wondering if it might have been a problem with the earlier 9800M's (DEV_0607) with the newer Clevo hardware, but it seems not.

Glad you got it fixed and hope it stays that way for you - is a curious problem indeed

 

I've also mentioned earlier I had spikes in my latencies. Well, with the new Nvidia drivers they are all gone.

 

Sometimes, in rare moment, I have a big red bar. It's very varied.
And during many times I did nothing. This program is really good run on a laptop? DPC Latency Checker V1.1.0

 

In case this works for someone else having this problem, I also had the stutter problem as well. Smooth gaming performance (what we paid a ton of money for) broken up by repeating 5 second intervals of single digit frames per second performance. I run CoD4, CoD5, and Dawn of War II and it happened in all of them. I have Sager's NP5797 with 280M, x9100 and Intel GM45 Express chipset running Vista32. Streaming movies would also skip and stutter. I tried completely formatting and installing clean, installing updated drivers, disabling NIC's, removing the battery, and yet the stuttering remained. But only in games with netcode. Single-player-only games like Dead Space and Bioshock never stuttered, ever.

It turned out to be the Intel Wireless NIC. I bought and installed a D-Link USB wireless NIC, the DWA-130. I then uninstalled (NOT disabled, completely uninstalled with the check box for delete drivers from the HD so the device can't auto-re-install itself) the Intel 5300 and connected with the D-link. I then connected to a CoD 4 server for some team deathmatch. Guess what? Stutter was 100% eliminated, just like that. I played for an hour with not a single stutter. Funny thing is I re-installed the Intel 5300 (not with the drivers off the driver CD but with the latest ones from Intel's website), disabled the D-link, connected with the 5300, reloaded CoD 4, and the stutter is still gone, so far. Same for DoW II. I don't get why a HD format wouldn't have any effect yet bringing it back after installing an alternate NIC does. I think Vista formats must not be getting rid of everything. Could be the "Delete the driver software for this device" checkbox that made the difference.

 

sorry for bumping this but i was wondering if red spikes once every blue moon are fine. im trying to track down some freezing problems and im down to the wifi and GPU. turning the wifi off with fn+f11 doesnt eliminate the small spikes (exactly like blacky above), but disabling it from the device manager does.

on to the GPU now, i have no idea if thats what causes the big spikes, but after disabling the wifi drivers they are very rare. however, im still testing the system. i hope someone had a 280m i could test around here. when i was running XP the GPU driver was crashing, but i didnt disable the wifi to test whether that was the reason or not.

 

Are you using win7 ?

 

yes. i had the same symptoms in vista aswell, and gpu drivers crashing in xp

im just trying to find out how to interpret the latency meter. for example, could the lack of ram (only 2gb for now) cause these occasional spikes when theres a high utilization of the page file?

 

I have no idea, I only started to have spikes in the past 2-3 weeks and i think it's a windows bug. Besides that all is working fine and always did.

 

another question

would running the gpu with no drivers (vga mode) acurately rule out the gpu? its still in use be it vga mode or not right?

 

no drivers means that it is by the BIOS on the card itself just able to provide you with video. That's it. It's not going to provide any sort of power on it, it just has a basic, simple, generic driver which lets you see what you're doing before installation of drivers. I don't see anything wrong with using it per se, but games and anything remotely HD in video are ruled out 100%. I'm not even sure if you can watch regular video on it.

 

well been playing wow for about 30 mins with about 5 crackling sound occasions (all registered in dpc latency as sky high). disabled wifi, plugged it in (ethernet), and havnt had a single one in another 30 mins

i hate being optimistic because it always bites me in the , but its looking like a bad wifi card so far.

will update

 

Eagerly awaiting future results, maybe you be able to fix it, it has been a well known problem in the M570TU