M17x Stutter

[Elkay]

I notice it quite a bit in Dragon Age (more-so in Awakening now that my toons have soooo many uber buff effects). Out of all of my games, Crysis and Just Cause 2 show it the most, though. JC2 I can see all the cores >90% utilization at times. Now that's thread optimization!

[Elkay]

I'm not surprised, but the Dell tech I'm in communication with said that engineering has not come up with anything, yet. Think I caught them with their pants down.

"I certainly am embarrassed with this delay, it seems It is still under review by our engineers, I have put all my pressure and involved a resolution expert in the case as well, and have asked (yet again) for an update from them, I appreciate the patience you have had with me on this matter and I assure you that as soon as I get an answer from them I will be in touch with you, if not the resolutions expert who I involved on the case."

This is his last day of the week (he works Sat-Weds). I asked for the contact information of the resolution expert, which he hasn't responded with, yet. He may be on another call, though, I only received that email from him about 20 minutes ago.

EDIT: He got back to me.

"I check my work email from home since it’s a roaming outlook server, no worries I will know the response."

Not typical, but I'm somewhat pleasantly surprised. I think they're actually taking this matter a little bit more seriously than an isolated incident.

[trikster]

I had gaming issues with TF2, DoD Source, and Command and Conquer (all of them). Those all seem to be more CPU dependent as maxing or mining out the games settings didn't make a difference to the stuttering on my particular system.

[unclewebb]

It was easier to try and brush off other Dell owners with similar problems by telling them that the laptop they bought is not a gaming laptop so they shouldn't expect top gaming performance. Even though they advertised that the XPS 1645 would be able to do some 3D gaming, when it started to throttle, they changed their website to hide that claim.

With the Alienware line, this lame excuse is no longer valid.

The recent bios for the XPS 1645 seems to have eliminated about 95% of the CPU throttling and maybe 100% of the GPU throttling. It looks like 6 months of complaining has finally paid off with Dell taking their throttling laptop issues a lot more serious.

Elkay: Things seem to be progressing very well. Hopefully for you this is resolved in the next few days.

[Elkay]

The 1645 wasn't simply a BIOS fix, though. They also replaced the 90W power adapter with a 130W power adapter that they were already making for other laptop models. Dell doesn't have that option this time around, since right now 240W is the largest laptop power adapter that they manufacture. Turn-around on manufacturing a 350W power adapter (my best guestimate to *completely* eliminate the throttling) will be very long. That's also dependent on a BIOS update to support it, as well as the motherboard itself supporting that much power incoming at a hardware level. Dell has a real mess on their hands this time.

I'm probably going to give them through the weekend to get their plan of action together. A week's time is more than reasonable for them to confirm my findings and start a resolution plan.

[trikster]

I'm probably going to give them through the weekend to get their plan of action together. A week's time is more than reasonable for them to confirm my findings and start a resolution plan.

It took my "resolution team" two weeks of me constantly calling to come up with a plan. I called every other day asking for status, what was the delay, etc.

[Elkay]

My rep just got back to me. Looks like the engineers aren't going to be able to address this in a timely manner (go figure). He said that involving the resolution expert helped move things along and that he's now pushing for a system exchange as soon as possible.

[unclewebb]

One step closer to an R2. Have you found any information about whether they throttle or not? With some less power hungry GPUs you might be able to stay below the throttling power cut off point during normal use while gaming.

One type of clock modulation or another seems to be part of the Dell design. The only thing you can do is always keep under that level to avoid throttling.

[Elkay]

I'm hoping for an R2 with 5870s. That's 50W less power usage right there. Should stay under 225W except for maybe FurMark Multi-GPU & Prime95 running simultaneously, which doesn't bother me because no games are going to put the system into the same situation.

They made no mention of their own findings, but based on the fact that they're now saying on their own end that they're going to issue a rapid replacement, I think they're silently admitting the fault and are going to sweep this one under the rug, for now at least.

[unclewebb]

I think they're silently admitting the fault and are going to sweep this one under the rug...

That must be one big rug. You might find tinkerdude and his Latitude E6500 friends hiding under there too or some XPS 1640 users or XPS 1645 users, etc., etc. I thought they had the XPS 1645 just about fixed but the growing thread about the just released bios update says otherwise. For the Latitude, the last bios update didn't fix anything so that one was permanently swept under the carpet.

The solution: They decided it would be easier (cheaper) to tell users that they shouldn't expect to be able to play a game on a Latitude laptop. That's a business laptop after all so no silly games. It's kind of funny how well they play games if you give them enough power and can eliminate or significantly reduce the throttling.

I'm looking forward to some more of your thorough testing when an R2 shows up.