Dell Studio 15/17/XPS & Other DPC spike issues - Workaround

Hello,

If you guys are seeing other models do this, please add to the discussion here...

http://en.community.dell.com/forums/p/19279703/19552516.aspx#19552516

 

Send it back!

I think the only way left do deal with the DPC issue is to return your machine to Dell asap. The more of us are doing that the sooner they might come to conclusions and work on a solution.

At the moment I think at Dell they just wait and see. I don't believe they give a lot of attention to this even if they pretend to do so.

Send it back and save your precious time and money. Try another brand. And spread the word!

 

Ok having read how many problems there are I have filled in the returns form. Really gutted as thought htis would be a great machine.

So back to the drawing board! I don't want a MAC so what laptops actually work? Sony is it?

 

@Quartz

I have had great success with lowering my latency, but for some reason when I loaded TSP on my studio 17, the computer freezes every time I disable the thread in process hacker. Once I resume the thread, it is back to normal but the spikes come back. Am I doing something wrong or is there a different issue that has already been resolved, any help would be awesome.

Also, I wanted to follow and see if you have some time to do screen shots of how to work RMclock to make everything run at max speed?

Thanks in advance,
DrG

 

@DRG

Make sure you have ACPI- BATTERY and MICROSOFT BATTERY BOTH DISABLE in the device manger and ensure you running BIOS A05 as the new version of the bios are still not fixing the issue.

 

What udem1234 said seems pretty reasonable at the moment. Cant speak for my 1555 at the moment (cause it's getting checked out at DELL's but the brand-new Alienware m17x had the exact same issues. And surprise: it contained the Ricoh Firewire Chipset.

Maybe everybody having the DPC Spikes checks his or her Firewire Chipset in the Device-Manager to see, if we found a match?

 

Thanks guys for keeping this going. I haven't been as active because I've been trying to find a house to move into since relocating back to my home city and it's been a stressful situation.

Not that it's huge news or anything, but today we got the good news that everything has been approved and the deal can be signed off and closed after a satisfactory inspection has been done and cleared.

Finally I can moved and settled so I can get back to work already.

Back to the subject, I spoke personally to a technical contact at Dell directly and the issue is being taken very seriously. They are trying to find the root cause of this issue to get it fixed.

So we will have to keep using the workaround until this gets resolved for now.

In terms of the RM Clock tweak, I will try and take some screen shots soon so you can review the settings.

 

@ quartz

Congrats on the new house...hope everything works out for ya. And again back to the issue, any thoughts on whether or not this Ricoh chipset holds any merit? I would love to run a "fully bloated" version of Vista again..sigh.

 

about the 1535's again. still no solution for it. How to disable the front panel of dell studio 1535? if i disable acpi.sys i still can brighten my screen with fn command or eject my dvd(even if it is disabled) i have a huuuge spike and how to disable bluetooth? because i can't disable it in device manager... i'm thinking about new laptop

 

What do you mean by 'fully bloated'? I keep seeing this mentioned on these forums and have no idea what it means...

Also, I'm still having trouble with Suspending ASYS within Process Hacker as there seems to be no proper way to know whether it has actually Suspended the process or not. Anyone know?

And what is regarded as an unacceptable spike? What kind of spike would interfere with TSP? I'm still yet to buy the software as I want to make sure that my system is ready for it first.

 

@ agent_trig

"Fully Bloated" meaning not having to disable Windows Aero and other display options to make Win Vista run faster (see the Vista optimization guide on Rane's website mentioned earlier in this thread). My PC looks like it's running Win 95.

As far as suspending ACPI.sys, you will be able to tell that it's disabled when running the DPC latency checker at the same time and the graph stays within yellow or green (no huge red spikes every 5 seconds).

Acceptable range for TSP, I honestly have no idea. All I know is DPC spikes in ride equalled pops and clicks while playing, disabled and pure clean audio. Hope this helps.

 

1. I don't know if this is because you're using the terms differently, but you're not meant to suspend the process (the System process), because that will suspend all system threads and your computer will probably freeze. Double-click the System process and select the Threads tab.
2. When you right-click the acpi thread and suspend it, deselect it and it should be highlighted in grey. That's how you know if a thread is suspended.

 

Thanks to consider my point of view Moswanted !

What I think is that it's not normal (and not acceptable) to have to disable so many options/system features to be able to improve the firewire port performance. On my side, with the laptop I had with the Texas Instruments firewire chipset (I sold it because I had other priority, but I'm now looking for a new one), even when the system was working very hard, and the DPC latency was increasing, there was no crackling or drop in audio signal at all. It seems that the Ricoh chipset is not reliable in handling the firewire port communication.

Also, I afterward had a clue why it was the same when I used an external PCI express card even if it had a TI chipset : I've heard that the Ricoh chipset also handled the communication of the PCI express port.

My guess is that Ricoh chipset is an all included solution for computer's manufacturer that cost them less to integrate than a didicated firewire Texas Instruments chipset. I think they should not only think of their cost, but also of the performance, reliability and of course, the customer satisfaction. And, at the end, is it really an economy for them to use it considering all the issues they now have to investigate and solve, and I'm not even counting the number of returned laptops they certainly have to deal with !

Unless the Ricoh chipset has an upgradable firmware, or that Dell could solve this issue by a "work around", I don't think we'll see a real improvement until they redesign their board using the TI chipset.

Believe me, I can't count how many whole nights I lost searching on Internet to find a solution (and my girlfriend was getting really mad at me because of that ;-) ) before discovering about the Ricoh issue. I understand you so much guys !... It's very frustrating when you don't get what you paid for !

I thought that I could send you some url that I saved in my bookmark about that and also some more recent ones (you'll see that it's not only about Dell laptop, but many other ones) :

http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=431
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=1727127
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=212514&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15&sid=25274968c3d0d37efb9b72cfb12e0f56
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=70683
http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=756
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=73829&page=48
http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=672
http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=286
http://forums.presonus.com/showthread.php?p=48527

Some posts are more than 2 years old !

I hope I convinced you...


Sincerly,

udem1234

 

@Cronparser

Much thanks man, it works perfectly latency is dropped and everything works perfectly. I even did that on my four-year-old HP dv8000 laptop and it runs like a beast. Thanks for all your help, just a trying that RMclock and it going to be beautiful.

@Quartz

Congrats on the house also, hope everything starts to settle down and not be as hectic. Thanks for your help in getting me up and running also, hope an easier fix comes soon.

 

hi there,

hope that smbdy will delete my last post ...
final conclusion: dell studio 1537 with new bios and driver is absolutely useless for ts scratch / pro. Its still affected with crackles / pops and no idea how to fix it. Probably there is no solution ... But this is interesting that after install the newest drivers it worked really fine and after few restarts the issue came back again ...

I think buying pc laptop is kind of risk ...

gonna sell my dell 1537
regards

 

Freakin Dell Putting out new version without fixing the problems in the 1st versions -- Unreal i hope these new models have the dpc problem resolved.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/23/quad-core-core-i7-720qm-slips-into-dell-studio-15-17-and-studi/

 

hi guys

sorry to hear you are still having probs. my 1537 is still running fine using xp dual boot, 6 months on and very happy.

will post a pic in a bit in case you dont believe me!

cheers
jon.

 

hi there,

maybe not every dell 1537 is affected with this problem? there is several configurations around (little differences in hardware). Could u post your computer specifications and bios settings?

regards

 

I am wondering if everyone has updated the bios for the Studio line ans the Studio XPS line? Watched the vidoe posted below, and the guy updated his bios to AO7 and then he had no DPC spikes.


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOI5U2uGBQs"]YouTube - Dell Studio XPS 1640 vs DPC Latency Checker V1.1[/ame]


Just updated my bios to the AO8 and the DPC spikes are gone. Everyone should go to www.support.dell.com, use IE and let the system search you computer for your service tag. The system will then show you what updates are needed for your system. Will test tomorrow, Wifey is giving me the stink eye, I guess my food is getting cold

I am running the Dell Studio XPS 1640, dual core P8400, 4g ddr3 ram, 500g HD, and a partridge in a pear tree (sorry the holidays are coming)

 

OK, so I have been testing TSP 1.2 with the bios upgrade (AO8) that I did last night, been playing for about two hours now without a single pop or click. I have played with the latency a bit as well. right now I am at 4ms latency at 48000Hz. Took it all the way down to 1.5ms and had a few minor pops and clicks, but nothing that the average listener would hear (sounded like I was playing vinyl). I also do not have the GUI freezing up momentarily as I did before. To top it all off, I am running 64-bit Vista Home Premium, wifi is on and I am downloading songs as well (across my wireless network). I think we may be on to something........TBC