AW M15x Throttling Issue Investigation - Stock clocks and overclocked.

so what you are saying and excuse me if i'm wrong. I am in no way any sort of qualified hardware guy. You are saying that the throttling can be stopped via power options? Or what is being reported is normal or easily changed in the BIOS??

Thanks.

 

I ran i7 Turbo before and it yielded the same results as TMonitor. I just ran the beta you attached and it shows the exact same behavior. When Intel burn test is run alone, C0 state is pegged at 99.9% but when Intel burn test + furmark are run together, the C0 state fluctuates constantly between 99.9% and 50%. When the C0 state falls to 50%, the GPU throttles with it.

 

Don't let the throttling findings stop you from buying the notebook. These findings are confined to synthetic tests only. No game benchmark I've run has been able to reproduce it. The biggest take home message from these tests is that in the FUTURE a game could be released that pushes both the CPU and GPU to 100% and theoretically that is when the throttling will occur. In today's games, I haven't been able to accomplish that and I've tried the following:

1. GTA IV
2. Frontines Fuel of War
3. Left 4 Dead 1 and 2
4. Modern Warfare 2
5. Far Cry 2
6. Crysis Warhead

However, Dell SHOULD release a fix for this because as I mentioned, it could be a problem in the near future with a quad core title that pushes both the CPU and GPU to their limit.

 

I ran GPUz while playing GTA and did not see the same throttling when the game ran slow. Someone suggested it is having issues with the hyperthreading which seems more likely. I don't play WOW but others have said it runs great for them, sorry to hear you're not having such luck (have you checked stealth mode?).

 

Im really interested to know if anyone has tried to play Age of Conan with an M15x. According to the box it's supposed to take advantage of quad-core's. That and I'm wondering how high the specs can be pushed while still maintaining decent framerates.

 

Odd, I get excellent gameplay with WoW on my M15X including raids. This flies in the face in the wild fluctuations of GPU-Z running at the same time. The fluctuations of the GPU clock being reported do not coincide with in game play (including some 25-player raids and Dalaran).

 

I'd like to reiterate Joker's point here. These tests don't really accurately reflect today's real-world scenarios, so don't let this thread keep you from buying an M15x if you really want a high performance 15-inch gaming notebook.

At any rate, I'm not too sure you'd want to play a game on a system that's having all CPU cores and its GPU pegged to 100%... the performance would suffer regardlessly, I would think. Not to mention the fact that the thermal wear and tear on the components would be excruciating. If you're trying to play those games and it's hitting your system that hard, I'd recommend an upgrade.

EDIT: Just to let everyone know, I'm still huddling with engineering about your concerns. I'll hopefully have something to comment about soon.

 

John,

You should know that this is a serious problem with the system though. Even if it doesn't affect most games TODAY, it will pose a problem in the near future. Many games could push the CPU to 100% (e.g. heavy RTS game) and when that happens, the GPU will throttle regardless of what clock its at (stock or below). My tests are still not conclusive since I haven't tested an RTS game yet. I really hope Dell is taking this issue seriously and not dismissing it offhand because I stated that certain high profile games (not even large enough to be a valid sample size) are not affected. With that said, thanks for bringing this to the attention of the Dell engineers. I hope we hear something positive soon.

 

I'd recommend Supreme Commander or the like (whichever RTS game was it that was heavily threaded?) as a test...

Also, whether or not this affects games now is also irrelevent if you intended to max out your computer for other purposes. NVidia CUDA for instance, allows the GPU for Distributed Computing programs like SETI @ Home or Folding@ Home, which would also be able to utilize your CPUs.

One additional test you can run is Folding @ Home (high performance mode) on CUDA or all 4 cores, and SETI on the CUDA or all 4 cores (vice versa, whichever one is able to take better advantage of the either). This should simulate a real world 100% CPU usage along with 100% GPU usage, though I am not positive if SETI or Folding does max out each core as I do not use them.

 

I don't have it but if someone has a copy to test that would help. If I can find one cheap I'll get it and test.

 

I can test SupCom later tonight.

For the people suspecting the monitoring software - the GPU is most definitely throttling as witnessed indirectly via a 50% power consumption reduction with my Killawatt power meter that lined up perfectly with the GPU clock graph's peaks and valleys.

 

Well I have your answer for real-world/non-synthetic throttling issues.

I am a novice multi-boxer in WoW and just picked up this m15x i7820 4gb 1333 260m, and started noticing problems out of the box.

Of course I would love to throw in a fresh install of win7 but not if I'm going to return it... First problem was the simple one, turning off stealth mode. This yielded a single wow to go from 20fps to 240fps! After reading up about stealth mode I get the purpose.

Now I've been reading up on this thread since I got the thing and I've got to say that multi-boxing is your real world answer to the throttling issue.

Running wow with ultra settings vs min settings yields the same problem, sudden low fps and staggering frames even though fps shows a steady 40fps while running 4 wows simultaneously. Sometimes the fps meter shows the true fps ~3-11fps its just all up to what wow feels like. As far as TMonitor, it hardly even goes into boost mode. Keep in mind the program I use to multi-box sets the affinity automatically for each application, in this case I assign both the main core and virtual core (2 total per). (if you're not familiar with multi-boxing by now, its the method of playing multiple wows simultaneously for the edge, like in my case 4x the damage)

Though the issue happens while multi-boxing, it does not occur when playing borderlands or any other game on highest settings which is quite surprising since i7 is completely geared toward multi-tasking.

I am >||< close to returning this thing, its just not performing like my studio xps13...yes....the xps13 handles the 4 wows on min settings with absolutely no issues @40fps, and being a $1k laptop you can see my point to return the m15x...

But theres got to be a way to make it better, I really dont want to return it!




Edit:
Installed the new A02 bios and still the same, another thing to note is the fact running 1 wow @ 1920x1080 with same settings, it runs flawlessly above 40fps. All in all I can confirm the system works great for gaming a single app, but not for multi-boxing.

Maybe someone can post info on how to disable/correct the downclocking before I pack the thing up and ship it back.

 

Since BIOS A02 released, did you guys noticed some changes in the throttlegate issues ?

As can be read it is something related to temp throttling, but I have no idea what is it:
in the ITE EC FW
- Modify the DIMM throttling temperature from 90 to 85 degree C <- ?

Anyway, there are few very interesting other thigs as:
- Add BIOS WMI support for ECRAM 0xD9 bit2 for Stealth Mode On/Off. <- could this mean Stealth support on battery ?
and in the BIOS:
- Fix DF343719 AWCC touch capacitive button issue <- at least for me
- Support phoenix WINFLASH64 tool to update ME/GBE/KBC/BIOS under windows64 system <- as I understand at least we will be able to change BIOS from Win and no burning a CD should be needed in the future
- Fix USB speaker noise issue <- at least for me
- Support Arrandale CPU

anybody knows somethin' and can explain more ?

 

I dont have my M15x yet but: arrandale is the new dual core coming out in January.

Hi there,

Can you actually verify that this is the throttling issue? Can you monitor the clocks with GPU-Z (look at Jokers first thread) and make sure that this is your problem?

This could potentially be a different problem. Did you try using the latest drivers or drivers which were said to work best? Also, I dont think that setting the apps to run on 2 cores is a smart move. Why not let them run on 4? Hyperthreading is a "cheap" multi processor solution, which only duplicated processor state (e.g. registers) and not the actual execution parts of it. Try putting every game instance on a seperate core?


Also, Is this the new way of playing RPG's nowadays?

 

Tried the suggestions,
Tried drivers,
There are 4 cores, I run one aplication of wow per each processor's two threads. 1 physical 1 virtual per app.

While running GPU-Z....


Date, GPU Core[MHz] GPU Memory[MHz] ,GPU Shader[MHz], GPU Temp[°C], Memory[MB] , GPU Load[%] , Memory Controller Load [%] , Video

Snapshots of GPU-Z log-

With Speedstep and turbo mode disabled:
Wow in Dalaran @ 32FPS:2009-12-12 11:41:37 , 550.0, 950.0, 1350.0, 53.0, 320, 17, 4

With Speedstep and turbo mode enabled:
Windows: 2009-12-12 11:52:28 ,383.0 , 301.0, 767.0, 44.0, 71, 0, 4

Wow in Dalaran @ 6FPS:2009-12-12 11:56:30 , 383.0, 301.0, 767.0, 52.0, 121, 98, 75


In my opinion this system should run a single WOW ~100FPS with settings maxed, which are the settings I used
(FSAA disabled)

At one point I was getting 240fps with all settings on low once I figured out how to turn off stealth mode, but that isnt the case anymore. Its sticking to around 30fps and 40fps at the VERY max.

As you can tell its locked with a low clock state with speedstep and turbo mode enabled.

I'll try without speedstep and get back.


Considering the A02 was released on the 10th, and hasnt resolved the issue, I'm most likely sending it back


Also I've tried Borderlands and its a similar case there as well with both settings.

 

if you turn off speedstep, cpu frenquency will drop to about 1ghz,whatever you do...

 

Little confused A02 was dated 10/28/09 read the Readme. This was basically sent to QC for public release testing before any of this frame rate issue was found by Joker.

 

50% load on the GPU @ 24FPS....





Something else has got to be wrong...

 

told u! cpucpucpucpu!

 

Please dont tell me they're lieing to us about the release date...lol

 

That is the release date to the public. If you look at the read me you will see the true bios date is 10/28/09.

BIOS Release note:
:===========================================================
: File name : W6702M.A02
: File size : 2.29MB
: Version: A02
: CheckSum: 127A A540
: ME ROM : V1126 Production version
: GBE ROM : W670_V04.0A6
: VGA OPROM Version: none (use extended vga card)
: Phlash16 tool : Ver 1.7.0.18
: Release Date: 10/28/2009
: M/B Revision: W670 Rev. A00
: Note : Base on Phoenix V1.0.1038
:============================================================
1. Fix DF333137 Red "X" mark on boot logo when press "F2" key.
2. Fix DF343719 AWCC touch capacitive button issue .
3. Fix usb issue on PCH B3 system .
4. Support phoenix WINFLASH64 tool to update ME/GBE/KBC/BIOS under windows64 system .
5. Fix system will halt at first boot up with debug port show 98h after flash ME/GBE block .
6. Fix USB speaker noise issue .
7. Fix DELL RDVD can not boot up under DOS .
8. Fix warm boot become power off then power on issue .
9. Support Arrandale CPU .
10.Change BIOS Version from "A01" to "A02"

3. EC Release note:
Release ITE EC FW version 0.96 for W670.
File size : 131072
Checksum : 00F4 2090
Date : 2009/010/14 (Year/Mon/Day)

 

Hey guys,

as people seem to have mentioned that the problem is CPU related when the CPU goes down from 100% I was wondering if something happened to the GPU clocks when its not even been used (with the exception of aero maybe).

I wrote a little program to make the test, I cannot test myself, as my M15X arrives on Thursday. Im curious at the results. Im attaching the java.tar and the source file in the zip below.

What the program does:

The program takes as cmdl input the number of threads it creates or it uses 32 threads if no input was given. Then each thread does a lot of number crashing for 12 seconds, after which a break of idle for 4 seconds happen. This cycle is done 5 times. I wonder if anything at all happens to the GPU clocks.

How to run:

Make sure you have a JRE installed (any JRE should do the trick). Double click on the jar and it will run.

I hope this helps in any way...

 

Oh cool thanks for explaining that, gives me a teensy bit of hope then.

I've done a couple more tests and have found the issue is only with WoW now, that means a reinstall of wow is in order, I already tried the usual and misc folder deletions.... I wouldnt be surprised if the multi-boxing program created that issue.

Borderlands is running flawlessly with no throttling @ max settings and GPU runs nearly 100% load, HOWEVER when WoW is running its only @ 20% load as you can see in the snapshot.

 

Edit: forgot the zip:

 

did that bios update fix the issue then? except w/ WoW

 

Bios update did not fix the throttling.

 

Not sure what I did at this point, I've done so much. 99% sure the Bios didnt fix a thing besides maybe what it says in the notes.

Other than that, the issue now only appears to be a problem with WoW so I'm continuing to work on it, most likely need a re-install.

The issue now is the GPU is not going over 20% load, and the FPS likewise, sucks @~15fps.


....Got WoW all defaulted out and its running @ 24fps in Dalaran, something is screwed with this game. It couldnt have been the patch because I got 240fps before. Sorry maybe my issue should go to a new thread since its wow specific.

 

I tested Supreme Commander. It tops out at about 110W of power consumption with the largest of maps and 7 CPU opponents with ~200 units each. I was using max res and video settings, but no AA and getting 30fps pretty constant.

I did some testing and the throttling doesn't kick in until >140W. So, my opinion is Supreme Commander is not capable of inducing the throttling unless you have some other background activities taking place.

Still would be nice for Dell to give us some information on this issue...

 

Hah, City of Heroes took me to 135W, and then listening to an audio CD while playing it induced the throttling. So, there we have our first example of throttling in a normal environment. Let's hope for a new bios soon.

 

http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/3/3/1794507/RealTempBeta.zip



I added a feature to RealTemp so you can monitor for Clock Modulation. This is a "feature" in Intel CPUs that quite a few Dell laptops seem to be using. When the bios starts using Clock Modulation to control the thermal performance of your laptop, CPU performance can drop like a rock without your knowledge. RealTemp will help you keep an eye on this now. If you see signs of Clock Modulation then you can do a quick (or not so quick) XS Bench benchmark and you'll be able to see how much performance you have lost.

If you're playing a game and things go to sh!t, you can head back to the Desktop and try to see if Clock Modulation is being used. On the Latitude E6x00 series, it can take several minutes after a CPU returns to idle until all Clock Modulation is turned off so you can end up with a very slow and sluggish laptop long after it got a little warm. I'm not sure how the AW M15x operates.

I'm also developing a new tool that can help to disable Clock Modulation if you find that this is a problem on your laptop.



Post some feedback and send me a PM if you're interested in testing this.

 

Thanks for your effort UncleWebb. We'll run tests with these and and if they are confirmed to work with the M15X, I'd like to add them to the first page for download.

 

Hey guy new here but found this thread and just had to give some input.
Ive had my M15x since they first came out havent had any issues till i noticed some slow game performance lately. i proceeded to go thru and see what i may have changed recently.
Then i remembered i had just updated my bios to A02 that when i noticed a real change. after going nuts reinstalling and testing, mind you i do this for a living i still couldnt figure out why now the GPU was running so slow. so last night a reflashed the bios again with A02 and guess what? all of a sudden my clocks for my gpu were fine again , im still investigating why this occured but a wanted to give some imput maybe we can figure this out. i love this laptop and game a ton on it.

 

Oooh, disabling clock modulation...

Though, what side effects might this have? Obviously something might go up in smoke if the throttling is present for safety, but would disabling this also remove the turbo boost?

Please let us know when it is ready

 

Guys,

Could you think this: another issue is in correlation with throttling ?

K.

 

Side effects would include too much power consumption. You could damage a 90 watt power adapter but with a 130 watt adapter, you should be OK for most normal tasks.

I'm just beta testing right now trying to get some feedback. The M15x might not have as many throttling issues as some of the other Dell laptops. Some throttling that is being observed is simply the physical limitations of these processors. As more cores wake up and become active, the multiplier is automatically forced lower. There's no way around that limitation by Intel. A Core i7-720 for example has a maximum multiplier of 13, 13, 18 and 21 when 4, 3, 2 or 1 core is in the active state. That's the maximum. We're starting to find out that if you fully load all 8 threads then you likely won't get any turbo boost so you will be running at the default multiplier of 12 and no higher. There's nothing anyone can do about that. A bios update won't fix that either because that is part of the Intel design spec.

 

Is there any issues using my M17x powerbrick with my M15x? I get the warning when the unit boots up but it seems to run fine. I have the impression that there will not be problems but wanted to check here first.

 

I've been using an M17x brick for testing purposes and it's been fine. You can disable the warning message in the bios.

 

To reiterate, the Studio XPS 16's throttling is entirely related to their power + CPU issue that effects the entire system. For us M15x users, the issue is a bit different. The CPU active load never stays at 100% when the GPU is loaded at the same time (e.g. running P95 + furmark together) and as a result, the GPU throttles itself in a cyclical fashion.

I'm going to be testing further by running only P95 alone with RealTemp monitoring (using it's clock modulation function) to determine if anything occurs after 15 minutes of load. If not, then we can conclusively say that it's a power draw issue with the bios and not a side effect of the Intel turbo boost function.

 

Dell really needs to hire a new team of BIOS engineers.

 

What are you in school for again? if not CS I think you just found a new major or minor for yourself

 

All m15x have this issue? I never noticed :S but now I have read this im prolly gonna notice it... Where are we at with this...

Also do all studio 16s have throttling issues or just ones with a i7 processor?
I had a 1640 before and it often would seem to get taxed but I assumed it was just some bottleneck of the gfx card or something.
I notice it had heat issues as well but never really pinpointed the problem.
I would be curious about that as well.

Thx

 

It looks like Dell is using the Clock Modulation feature of Intel CPUs to control heat output on a lot of different Core 2 and Core i7 models. This has been going on for a while now and more and more users are just starting to become very aware of what's been going on since last year or longer.

There is nothing wrong with controlling heat but Dell has really dropped the ball on their implementation of this feature on some of their laptops.

I don't know how many other laptop manufacturers are doing similar throttling. I'm sure there are other manufacturers just as guilty.

Modern laptops with a good graphics card can get very hot. It's a constant balancing act for manufacturers between heat, fan noise and performance. Dell needs to give users a little more control over this balance and give them more warning when their laptop is being throttled down to the performance of an old Pentium II.

 

Hey all. I spoke with engineering last night and early this morning, and wanted to give you an update on what we have.

There's been some pretty extensive testing on this issue, and our engineering team has come to the conclusion that throttling shouldn't occur at all in any real world scenario. As a result, they aren't planning on doing any BIOS revisions in response to this, but are still investigating to see if they can discover what causes this behavior while using these testing programs. It is, however, the general consensus that changing this is too risky for the potential payoff… too much could go wrong when this really isn’t a behavior you’d see while gaming.

That being said, this system should scream when gaming, and if you have any performance issues, they probably have nothing to do with this, and you should contact tech support to troubleshoot.

I did ask about folding@home's implications on this, and was pleased to discover several people on our engineering team that use the program. They discovered that folding at home drove the cores to 90% and stopped, and only did this when the system was idle, and therefore shouldn't trigger throttling.

I know this isn't the answer many wanted to hear, but this is where we're at.

From my personal perspective, I'd like to say that if what I'm doing with my system drives my CPU cores and GPU to a sustained 100%, I'd expect performance issues there, and would probably be looking to upgrade my system. I don't see that happening with this system any time in the near future.

 

It is indeed a disappointing response from the engineering team but you have our thanks for bringing it up with them. I hope they are fully aware that even if some of the AAA title games that have been tested aren't exhibiting the problem right now, a game released tomorrow or in the next 6 months may very well force the CPU to work at or near peak load. When that happens, the GPU will throttle and Dell will have many many angry customers on its hands demanding to know why their expensive gaming system is rendered obsolete.

edit: first post has been updated.

 

Hi, This is really sad as I intended to use the system for programming games. I currently work with the Unreal 3 Engine and frequently have to test the multiplayer aspect of the game. To do this, I have to run at lest 2 (preferably 3) instances of the game + a debugger. This can potentially bring the system into throttling and I would be disappointing if I could not use the notebook as intended.

Is there any chance of this being reconsidered in the future?

 

Juason already posted a first real world example of throttling:

"
Hah, City of Heroes took me to 135W, and then listening to an audio CD while playing it induced the throttling. So, there we have our first example of throttling in a normal environment. Let's hope for a new bios soon.
"

Just because the CPU goes to 100% on all cores, doesn't mean your system is going to be on its knees. That is an impotent excuse and one that hardly takes into account all the possible usage scenarios.

The crux of the matter is simple. People do not buy high performance machines to be told their high performance machines are only high performance until their knees buckle and become a low performance donkey when the system is taxed to its limit. None of the other system manufacturers exhibit this problem, and that in itself should be reason enough to warrant a fix.

It's too bad a forum like Notebookreview.com isn't sufficient to generate the kind of publicity needed. You can bet Dell's execs would be scrambling for a fix if Gamespot.com, CNet.com, Anandtech.com, HardOCP.com, etc all posted this information akin to "Yup, Alienware's got big strong muscles, except when it needs to do the heavy lifting".

I'm just wasting my breath here, I'm not an Alienware owner after all.

 

@Panda -

No, I don't believe a 4 year old game + CD listening is going to ping all 4 cores + the GPU to 100% unless the system has a problem. That's why I suggested people in his situation need to contact support, as they likely need to have their system troubleshot.

I've got in on engineering authority that the throttling shouldn't happen even if (an unlikely scenario) all 4 cores were showing a sustained utilization of 95-98%, and that isn't even a real world scenario unless you're really trying to choke it.

To your point, the throttling as seen in your scenario won't bring the system to its knees either... but in both cases, you will see a marked performance hit.

@Joker-

See above... you'd have to be pegging all 4 cores at 100% and have the GPU running the same before you'd see this happen, from what I've been told. Under those extreme conditions, you'd be looking to upgrade hardware, as throttling or not, your system performance would take a very noticeable hit, and your system really isn't optimal for the software you're running. I don't foresee that happening with these specs anytime soon... maybe 2-3 years from now? (speculation) 2-3 Years is a long time for gaming hardware.

I suppose you could conceivably take any system and run enough software on it to bog it down to a crawl... but I'd wager that you'd have to put this system through more punishment than any other notebook in its class before you'd see it happen.

All - I wish I had the news you wanted to hear. The bottom line is that this system is designed and optimized for gaming, and does so better than any other 15inch laptop. In the end, that's what really matters, right?

 

If only that were true. The Sager 8690 is a faster 15" gaming Laptop.

 

I'm not sure where you get that when the specs are identical. 'Cept the M15x is alot prettier

 

the sager does have a slightly better GPU so it isnt exactly the same.... but our M15x's are much better looking!