M17x DPC Latency

[mortaldyke]

Ok, so after reading about 200 pages, ( Sorry couldn´t read them all ) I see that for some people the latest drivers have worked.

1 ) The problem I have is that I run the m17x with an external display for gaming purposes meaning, i have to disable integrated graphics or nothing will come up on the external display. In the other hand we have bill here saying that both integrated and hybrid have to be turned on in order to get rid of the stutters.
2) I see in the dell support site a new version 197.01 i believe it was that has been uploaded today? Is that a fix? A new version? what´s up.

Thankss!

[roymathieu]

I've had enough of this brand for now. I'm selling mine and won't trust Dell to fix a problem next time until it PROVES otherwise.

The "screw this brand I'll buy from a different company" attitude is pointless... all notebooks, regardless of the reseller, have similar parts inside.

All parts come from a few suppliers and while there are dozens of resellers the truth is that our choice is very limited at the end of the day. It's either AMD vs. Intel CPU, Nvidia vs. ATI GPU, and so on. Those of you who think this mess is Dell's fault are mistaken, take a look on other forums around (especially this one) and you'll see that people have been having the same issues with other resellers. Actually Dell is the only company I'm aware of that actually acknowledged the problem and made some efforts to solve it, other companies have just been ignoring the issue.

Face it, we are customers in an oligopoly market and we're not getting our money's worth because there is no competition to turn to. What are you gonna do after you boycott Dell? Get an Acer? Get an Asus? Get a Clevo? They all include the faulty Nvidia GPUs with the bad powermizer drivers, so you're not going to achieve anything... actually you'll take a step backwards because you wont have the great community of enthusiasts that the Alienware users on these boards represent to back you up anymore.

Anyways... my points are, 1) it is OK for you guys to be angry and to demand solutions, 2) you actually achieved quite a lot in putting that much pressure on Dell and make them move their huge corporate a*s towards finding solutions, 3) unfortunately that's pretty much as far as you'll ever get because we are customers in an oligopoly market and we have nowhere to turn to if we are not satisfied with the products we're getting

[Aikimox]

Roymathieu
+1 True as the True can be.

[trikster]

The "screw this brand I'll buy from a different company" attitude is pointless... all notebooks, regardless of the reseller, have similar parts inside.

All parts come from a few suppliers and while there are dozens of resellers the truth is that our choice is very limited at the end of the day. It's either AMD vs. Intel CPU, Nvidia vs. ATI GPU, and so on. Those of you who think this mess is Dell's fault are mistaken, take a look on other forums around (especially this one) and you'll see that people have been having the same issues with other resellers. Actually Dell is the only company I'm aware of that actually acknowledged the problem and made some efforts to solve it, other companies have just been ignoring the issue.

Face it, we are customers in an oligopoly market and we're not getting our money's worth because there is no competition to turn to. What are you gonna do after you boycott Dell? Get an Acer? Get an Asus? Get a Clevo? They all include the faulty Nvidia GPUs with the bad powermizer drivers, so you're not going to achieve anything... actually you'll take a step backwards because you wont have the great community of enthusiasts that the Alienware users on these boards represent to back you up anymore.

Anyways... my points are, 1) it is OK for you guys to be angry and to demand solutions, 2) you actually achieved quite a lot in putting that much pressure on Dell and make them move their huge corporate a*s towards finding solutions, 3) unfortunately that's pretty much as far as you'll ever get because we are customers in an oligopoly market and we have nowhere to turn to if we are not satisfied with the products we're getting

+1 Rep... Sad, but very true. I just realised that my warranty goes through most of 2014, so I am going to be one of those that sticks it out. The laptop will keep breaking, they will keep replacing it. One thing that Dell has done for me is forced me to keep a better timeline for backing up my data and using more than one medium for the important ones. You cannot beat the build quality of almost all of the AW units I have seen (the M11x, I saw one with the screen issue). The Dell plastics are not so great (anyone here have an M1730? You could flex the heck out of it), so I will accept a heavier unit that I know isn't going to break if I look at it wrong. Roymathieu is right, Dell is actually doing "something" for us when I cannot say the same for many other manufacturers. I have worked for both Apple and HP...Apple kind of does, but its because they "make" their own hardware and don't change it up all that much, so its a progression, but HP...their business machines are great, home...not so much.

[stamatisx]

@roymathieu

I agree.
One more thing, companies should test their products more extensively before they hit the market, otherwise they have to be willing to pay the price.
The only thing that makes me wonder is that nobody from all those engineers (from all those companies) did notice the audio stuttering with the NVIDIAS?

[jimpwo]

When I installed the new 197.01 powermizer seemed to not function and the cards were running at full. Tried driver cleaners , uninstall and reinstalls... same thing.... of course dpc latency is great, but the fans crank up even on idle w/ cards hovering at 52C where normally they are at 39C. Installed the old 196.86 beta and back to normal.

[trikster]

When I installed the new 197.01 powermizer seemed to not function and the cards were running at full. Tried driver cleaners , uninstall and reinstalls... same thing.... of course dpc latency is great, but the fans crank up even on idle w/ cards hovering at 52C where normally they are at 39C. Installed the old 196.86 beta and back to normal.

That's cute! Good job Dell, break something while fixing something else. Sounds like a lot of their outsourced techs...

[tsurashi]

So the last word we got from Dell was claiming they can't reproduce the ATI issues in their test lab? Isn't this exactly the same as when they originally tried to reproduce the issues with the nVidia cards (unable to duplicate)?

I'd like a magical test lab where everything runs perfect also.

So am I also getting it right that they consider the DPC issue to be completely resolved? I'm not liking their "fixes" for these issues... don't install Alienware-specific software (AlienFX, OSD), edit windows registry to remove CPU reserve, disable hybrid SLI, don't install nVidia chipset drivers, and finally (as seen above) completely disable powermizer in the 197.01 drivers.

I don't exactly consider shortcuts fixes, or disabling software/features we paid for, fixes. My faith in Alienware went right out the window with all this.

[Mattk]

The "screw this brand I'll buy from a different company" attitude is pointless... all notebooks, regardless of the reseller, have similar parts inside.

All parts come from a few suppliers and while there are dozens of resellers the truth is that our choice is very limited at the end of the day. It's either AMD vs. Intel CPU, Nvidia vs. ATI GPU, and so on. Those of you who think this mess is Dell's fault are mistaken, take a look on other forums around (especially this one) and you'll see that people have been having the same issues with other resellers. Actually Dell is the only company I'm aware of that actually acknowledged the problem and made some efforts to solve it, other companies have just been ignoring the issue.

Face it, we are customers in an oligopoly market and we're not getting our money's worth because there is no competition to turn to. What are you gonna do after you boycott Dell? Get an Acer? Get an Asus? Get a Clevo? They all include the faulty Nvidia GPUs with the bad powermizer drivers, so you're not going to achieve anything... actually you'll take a step backwards because you wont have the great community of enthusiasts that the Alienware users on these boards represent to back you up anymore.

Anyways... my points are, 1) it is OK for you guys to be angry and to demand solutions, 2) you actually achieved quite a lot in putting that much pressure on Dell and make them move their huge corporate a*s towards finding solutions, 3) unfortunately that's pretty much as far as you'll ever get because we are customers in an oligopoly market and we have nowhere to turn to if we are not satisfied with the products we're getting

I find it interesting that you skip over the content of what I wrote, took the last line and totally changed the context by paraphrasing it in a provocative way. You'd make a good politician.

Even more interesting is how many people agree with you - and probably never read my post. They make good constituents for incumbent politicians.

Did you ever stop and think that this sort of reaction is exactly what perpetuates the problem? You've accepted the reality as you perceive it, I have not.

Everyone involved in this should have returned their laptops when they noticed the problem if they were still within the return period, but they didn't because they trusted Dell. Dell themselves should not have continued to sell the laptop with an issue that they ignored, but they did. They also kept throwing out false hope via "fixes". I'm admitting I didn't return mine because I trusted Dell and the premium line. Now I no longer trust them so I'd rather not keep my laptop. I'm flabbergasted that anyone gives Dell kudos because at least they did something after 6 months and the start of bad press for a PREMIUM notebook. They should be working for our money the next time from the start but the community response after the fix made it easy for them and lowered the bar. They learned a lot about their customer pool and I'm not sure it is in the favor of the community. Give them some attention, throw them a few bones and then they'll forget about everything.

I'll do my own paraphrasing; the "we all get screwed but at least you got them to throw you some scraps after whining" attitude is self defeating. It's not a realist attitude, it's just pessimistic and resigned. The realist approach means not having brand loyalty, not trusting companies to fix things in the future, delaying gratification and researching more and despite my aversion to the phrase, "voting with your dollars". I didn't do that this time.

Maybe I take away a sale from Dell by selling my laptop to someone who would have bought from Dell directly. Maybe I don't. Either way I will take the money and buy from a competitor since it's all I got. It may have Nvidia graphics and chipset, it may have ATI graphics, it may have intel chipset, whatever. But this time I'll do my best to make sure it works before I commit and Dell has dropped off the 1st choice list until they prove otherwise. If they do, I'll reconsider.

[roymathieu]

I find it interesting that you skip over the content of what I wrote, took the last line and totally changed the context by paraphrasing it in a provocative way. You'd make a good politician.

ouch! that hurts. it's pretty much the worst insult you could've thrown at me, i hate politicians

Even more interesting is how many people agree with you - and probably never read my post. They make good constituents for incumbent politicians.

Did you ever stop and think that this sort of reaction is exactly what perpetuates the problem? You've accepted the reality as you perceive it, I have not.

Everyone involved in this should have returned their laptops when they noticed the problem if they were still within the return period, but they didn't because they trusted Dell. Dell themselves should not have continued to sell the laptop with an issue that they ignored, but they did. They also kept throwing out false hope via "fixes". I'm admitting I didn't return mine because I trusted Dell and the premium line. Now I no longer trust them so I'd rather not keep my laptop. I'm flabbergasted that anyone gives Dell kudos because at least they did something after 6 months and the start of bad press for a PREMIUM notebook. They should be working for our money the next time from the start but the community response after the fix made it easy for them and lowered the bar. They learned a lot about their customer pool and I'm not sure it is in the favor of the community. Give them some attention, throw them a few bones and then they'll forget about everything.

I'll do my own paraphrasing; the "we all get screwed but at least you got them to throw you some scraps after whining" attitude is self defeating. It's not a realist attitude, it's just pessimistic and resigned. The realist approach means not having brand loyalty, not trusting companies to fix things in the future, delaying gratification and researching more and despite my aversion to the phrase, "voting with your dollars". I didn't do that this time.

Maybe I take away a sale from Dell by selling my laptop to someone who would have bought from Dell directly. Maybe I don't. Either way I will take the money and buy from a competitor since it's all I got. It may have Nvidia graphics and chipset, it may have ATI graphics, it may have intel chipset, whatever. But this time I'll do my best to make sure it works before I commit and Dell has dropped off the 1st choice list until they prove otherwise. If they do, I'll reconsider.

I have to agree with most of your points here, except the "vote with your dollars" part. That's the point I was trying to make. It's sad but you cant vote with your dollars in a non-competitive market. Ditching one company and switching to a competitor is not going to solve anything because of the limited supplier situation (you're still buying parts from the same bad supplier).

The best way to have influence as customers in this non-competitive market is to do exactly what this Alienware community has done. Try to better understand the problem, gather evidence, stick together and put pressure on the reseller (with menaces of en-masse returns or lawsuits), in other words "lobby" the reseller until it takes action. Then you can only hope that the reseller will turn around and put pressure on the bad suppliers until they improve their faulty parts.

I'm not trying to defend Dell in any way here, I'm just saying that if you think the grass is greener at another company you're mistaken (I know, I've been there). Simply returning your Dell machine and buying from another company is not going to achieve anything, but making them understand what's wrong with the machine and why you want to return it (you'll never get this message across on your own, you need a large community to do so) may get the problem solved.