AW M15x Throttling Issue Investigation - Stock clocks and overclocked.

Joker, this argument is getting nowhere, so I don't really see the use in responding to your specifics.

Until someone produces any evidence that this is causing problems in real world scenarios, you guys are giving me nothing to give to our engineers. They've tested it extensively, and are contuing to test.

On that note, they aren't your adversaries. If there's something people will see while using this system for something other than extreme testing that doesn't reflect real world usage, you bet they'd be the first to start changing things, but this isn't something they'll readily change without a very compelling reason. Throttling on a benchmark designed to drive systems into the dirt isn't compelling to them.

As I said before... this system is performing. Theoretical scenarios don't seem to be panning out. If someone has a scenario that's real world, please let me know. If there are real performance issues, they need to be addressed.

 

I think your missing the point Joker. When an issue like this is brought before a major computer manufacturer that has already sold thousands of systems the only logical "business" choice is "Plausible Deniability". Could you imagine the cost of the mass recalls? Or sending techs out to fix every system? It would be insane not to deny there being an issue.
However with that being said it wouldn't be without reason to allow people with a M15x to be able to later send in their systems when the next one comes out for a "substantial discount".

 

Joker, someone mentioned that you still recommend the M15x over Asus' G51J. Is that the case? The G51J is cheaper, but it apparently has stability issues, making it even worse than the (depending on situation) poor performance of the M15x.

I know the screen is worse on the G51j, but I don't really care about that much as I use it with an external monitor most of the time.

Anandtech's review unit was stable, so I don't know what's going on.

 

I cant say that I would recommend the G51-J because of the on going BSOD issue. The display they use is also another reason I'd avoid it. If you want a stable system that will not buckle under load and has a decent (not as nice as the LG used in the M15x) display, take a look at the Sager 8690 or 8760. Both are very nice systems.

 

Thanks Joker. That's what I was afraid of :-(

Sager's out for me because LED backlighting is a must-have for me...

Which leaves me with a throttling but at least stable M15x, or a Core 2 quad based older Asus (if I can figure out what type of spare power supply it needs...)

 

I think this issue is being blown out of proportion. The only time this is being proven to occur is when benchmarking is taking place. These tools are meant to put more stress than usual on these components. I feel like once it starts becoming a real world occurrence then Dell will address the issue. They are not going to worry about it if it can only be proved through stress tests. Prove it using a modern game. No one has reported any issues of this occurring while gaming.

 

I've read several instances in this thread (Crisis, WOW), and despite claims to the contrary it's virtually impossible Folding @ Home wouldn't cause it if the system is fully utilized (2 SMP + 1 GPU) (not to mention any time you encode video for your iPod or the like).

 

I will be testing with Chess analysis over the weekend to see what happens (real world Gaming application), I'm starting to think that even if throttling of the GPU does occur in this particular case it's a non-issue as Chess does not care too much about the video card, I'll use a "3D" Chess Table & Pieces either way and report back as to if the issue does manifest itself and if there's a noticeable impact "In Game". I can say no issues so far in-game with LOTRO, CODMW2, L4D2, TF2.

 

Eh, for me its more a matter of the unknown. I tend to own laptops for 4-5 years at a time. I'd hate to see my investment wasted when a new cutting edge game is released that fully utilizes the CPU, or when a new graphics card comes out that won't work due to the interaction of this bug.

I hope folks can relate to that.

 

I agree if there is another similar model that doesnt exibit this problem then it should be for sure fixed. It doesnt matter if this happens in real world situations right now .. It could.. Depends on the software. . . I hope someone cares enough to take a look at this.

 

The Dell rep does have a point. Until the system can be pushed far enough with the new games to result in throttling, then i don't see Dell making any changes soon. Its good to know that at least there is a representative who is aware of the issue, so when the problem becomes severe it will hopefully be fixed right away.

 

YEA, I really doubt dell is gonna fix the problem when in 1 year there IS a game that stresses it enough where it will start trottling..

After 1year they will have made they're majority of the sales and people won't be able to return it anymore...

 

Has anyone tried Dragon Age yet?

My C2D is at a constant 100% load, and I've heard it does the same to Quads and i7s.

 

Yeah.

I run Dragon Age all the time, everything maxed minus AA at native 1600x900 and have no issues, or throttling for that matter, well, that I can tell. Frames hover around 45 consistently.

 

Anyone run Age of Conan? That's optimized for quad-core.

 

runs just fine

 

i feell the same way he does

if and when mine does stutter i will be the first one to get a new system

 

I'm pretty much reading "A year or two down the line if your cpu is being pushed and system ultimately throttles, it's time to upgrade because you shouldn't be running your system that way." Doesn't seem like an issue they will deal with in the future should it occur.

 

Check your CPU load for me. Does it max out?

 

Hell, I maxed out all 4 cores of my QX9770 (admittedly not an i7, but a hell of a lot more powerful than any of these i7 mobile chips) in EXCEL doing a 1000000 line computations. I never knew Excel was multithreaded (2007 version, obvi) but it easily maxed out all four cores.
So how's doing some "light" office work while folding on your GPU for a real world scenario?

 

I just received my M15x, which is my first Alienware and my first high performance PC, and this issue is a concern for me. I paid for all of the CPU/GPU upgrades because I wanted this laptop to last me a long time. Nothing would bother me more than to spend $2500 of my hard earned money, to know that my product isn't capable of running at its advertised specifications. I don't know when, but the way game design is progressing, its safe to assume programmers/designers have no problems putting out games that tax even the highest spec'd future systems that come out. Crysis has been out for years and can still make some high end gaming systems sweat. I understand what you're saying about it being synthetic, but if similarly spec'd systems from competitor's aren't experiencing this (supposedly) "synthetic" issue, then that tells me something isn't right. Waiting for customers, to actively search for a "real-world" issue to act isn't a great answer. Like the Dell rep said, they "engineers" with their far superior equipment, should be the ones actively trying to punish this system to see what is causing it. Is it software or hardware related? Was it put in place to protect a weak component of the system? I'm not mad at the Dell rep's response, he doesn't make these decisions. As we all know, most big companies like to sweep stuff like this under the rug, since it usually costs money to fix the issue. But one thing that will stop me from being a loyal repeat customer is for the company to wait it out until my warranty runs out and then acknowledge there is a problem. Which is when they will inform me that my "1st Gen" M15x has a legit problem that I have to pay for to fix. Even though all of the new M15x's being built will have the "problem" fixed.

Saying that using 4 cores at 100% isn't realistic really leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Take this for instance, I have a car that's advertised to have 414 brake horsepower. Someone puts the car on a dyno (real-world?) and the ecu cuts power to 207 bhp under 100 % throttle. Whether this action was a design or an error, its a false advertisement, and something should be done to either re-word the claims of the power output or fix the issue. If BMW told me that 414 bhp isn't really useable in the real world because its wreckless driving, it would really diminish the company's credibility and a serious class-action lawsuit would ensue. Here's similar scenerio with Mazda ( http://consumeraffairs.com/news03/mazda_buyback.html). Mazda did what was right, as would any company that took care of it's high-end customers and so would any company that took pride in their product and their image. Alienware might be a small percentage of their clientele but who do you think the savvy consumer will turn to when they want some help on what to buy? The prosumer is usually who they turn to first for buyer advice, because they are the ones that know how the product will perform even in "synthetic" situations.

 

Thank you, QFT.

 

This is Dell's real problem. I give technology purchasing advice to friends, relatives, and acquaintances all the time. Based on what I've seen from Dell so far, I would not recommend an Alienware. Which is sad, because it used to be a great brand. That, along with Voodoo were the staples of the super-high-end OEM PC market. Now they've gotten worse. I think I'll probably end up recommending Falcon Northwest to the same type of person who I would have recommended an AW before. If Dell wants any business from me or people who listen to me, it is incumbent upon them to fix the issue.
And I'm not particularly unique, either. There are many others who do the same thing I do in recommending technology they believe to be good/reliable. The "prosumer", as Irb says. Even if I didn't believe that someone would do tasks demanding enough to produce throttling, I would still point them towards something that I knew would not disappoint, under ANY circumstances, whether that's gaming, folding, or benchmarking.

 

thank you will check

 

I'm starting to think that this isn't a simple bios fix.. the engineers probably had a look at it and found out that the mainboard needs to be replaced due to limitations, this would cost dell allot of money so they came up with this lame excuse..

kind of regrettting my purchase at this point..

 

So basically everything boils down to:

Current M15x owners - not having to worry about performance now (I am sure there are some rare exceptions) but having to keep and eye out for future games or other software that might induce throttling.

Prospective M15x owners - again generally not having to worry about current game performance, but nevertheless to look at other laptops that do not have this issue. I mean who would buy a laptop knowing that in the future it could have performance issues? It may be resolved quickly and hassle free by Dell or it could be a complete nightmare. Why risk it? It would be better off buying a stable laptop.

If you think of any prospective M15x owner as a company, why would they buy a product with performance issues? It would only increase your future business risk. You could think of the laptop as working capital to produce a product. You wouldn't buy capital if in the future, when you increase production (ie more extensive games, software), productivity falls (ie the performance). No rational consumer, whether an individual or firm would do this (unless you get a more than average utility from the M15x looks). I hope this paragraph is not confusing (I'm studying Economics with a minor in Business and Finance).

As for me I am looking for a gaming laptop to last me 2 to 3 years and was thinking of buying a M15x or a Clevo. Here is my thread on the "What Notebook Should I Buy?" forum: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=443460

Before reading this thread I was leaning towards the M15x due to its looks and build. The performance would have gone to the Clevo with its GTX 280. However at this point I will buy the Clevo unless the M15x throttling issue is resolved. I am sure there are many people with similar or maybe even the same situation as I am in.

So Dell, I do hope that the throttling issue is resolved soon. I hope this post will make things clearer for people to understand what this thread (may) mean to you.

 

Even knowing what we know now, having finally had a chance to use a 8690, I would never, ever, ever switch from the M15x to the Sager.

The build quality is great
The system runs very, very cool even on the lap
The system is insanely quiet and even quiet while gaming
It games like a champ and runs WoW great
The keyboard is top notch
The LG screen is absolutely gorgeous
Dell service and support trumps Sager IMHO

 

Your sports car analogy is perfect. The way I see it, no one expects, nor should expect, that Dodge Viper to perform in the redline constantly, nor are they engineered to. If it did, that car wouldn't last for 10,000 miles.

Regardless of this, if all 4 cores on this system are at sustained 95-99% load, also an unrealistic scenario, this system will still perform. Only when all 4 cores are redlined at 100% do you see any throttling of the GPU, and that throttling subsides as soon as the CPU load is less that a full 100%.

Do other systems not throttle? I'm not certain. What effect would this have on the lifespan of those units? I'm not certain of that either. I'm not an engineer, and neither is anyone else in this thread that I know of. My engineers tell me that they aren't engineering a system to sustain redline, and I have it on good authority that this is for good reason.

From personal experience, when your CPU is at 100% utilization cranking out big numbers, your system performance diminishes rapidly, throttling or no. A perfect example of this is the CPU benchmark on 3DMark. My XPS 730X gets a good 3-5 frames a second during that test with full blown stutters, and the graphics are extremely low poly and low texture. My desktop has dual HD4870 X2s and a quad core i7, a real beast. The CPU load is hitting performance. It's understandable, and I'm sure you can guess that the CPU benchmarks on that system are phenomenal.

Once again, if anyone has an example of a real world scenario where this is causing issues, please let me know. If it really is causing a problem, I can present that scenario to our engineering teams, and in fact, would be delighted to.

 

Actually I would expect my Viper to perform flawlessly up to the rated redline. At no point would I accept a vehicle to cut its output while functioning within its intended performance range as dictated by the manufacture. I also don't expect Dell to re-engineer the entire system and lose tons of money. If they chose to avoid a fix, my suggestion was that they re-word how they market and advertise for this system. As far as how reliable the system is with or without the throttling issue, doesn't make a difference. If this issue is a designed safety mechanism, then I expect Dell to enlighten everyone on the situation, and again......re-word how they advertise for the M15x. Now you say "My engineers tell me that they aren't engineeering a system to sustain redline". No one plans on letting the four cores sit at 100% work for hours at a time, but I don't think its asking for too much for the system to be able to handle occasional 100% situations, or at least 1 (100% situation) for that matter. You're post also implies that the engineers designed this feature in to extend the life of the system......which would lead me to believe that Dell Engineers feel the Intel i7 is the weak link that can't handle any instance of 100% load. I'm glad that you are looking for more real-world issues, but that doesn't address my (and many others) concerns about Dell waiting this out until my warranty is up, at which point I expect many games/software to be able to stress these systems out. Consumers need to be doing their homework, I agree, but Dell is the ones with the money, equipment, software, and the ability to tell us if it was designed or if this was unintended. Hopefully you aren't taking me the wrong way. I'm not blaming you and I appreciate you taking the time to answer some of the tough questions and keep us updated, I just feel that we deserve better answers from Dell on the whole situation. Thinking that none of us will ever have the ability to occasionally max out this system is absurd. I guess no one is going to overclock/upgrade this system either, because nothing will ever be able to make this system breath hard.

 

I stopped considering AW for any of my purchases as soon as the D/HELL affilliation became public. Its verry sad as the M9750 is built like a tank, and has an overall good feel to it, I'm verry happy with mine. I was hoping for a simmilar experince with the m15X, and just overlook the fact that its dell-ish. Thankyou guys for making this info availible, saved me $800.00 from the refurb store.

 

By reading this I really start to believe that no one should ever buy the newest things that come out. Especially Dell laptops always appear to have significant errors. If I recall correct the previous alienware m15x (area 51 I think) laptops just cracked for no reason.
If this is the future of our capitalist economy, i'm not to happy about it. When you pay more money you expect good quality (sony for example tests their BZ series very thoroughly), clearly this is not the matter with Dell/alienware.

 

well then we have it: the future of the world as we know it is going to collapse because of a laptop!

wow! at this point we have reached an impasse. Those who like the M15 will buy it, use it and be happy. Those who think another system is better should go buy that system.

p.s. perfect doesn't exist.

 

Hi

i'm a interactive visual designer for theatre/installation and i run some very complex realtime system using touch designer
www.touch077.com

it is not a well threaded application so it is common practice to have multiple instances running and shunting data around to achieve output

i have run into a throttle even when i'm not at 100% across all 4 cores, in fact i'm at 63% according to task manager and at 72% GPU load
4 intances running

its a longer throttle cycle than on the synthetic benchmarks posted, but the drop in performance is certainly noticeable and imho, unacceptable for performance. i'm getting rough 88msec rendering time per frame at 550mhz, dropping to 224 at 383
a 2/3 drop in performance

(sorry i was working on some other phtos and accidently layered the waterfall. but the details were as above)


also while a synthetic measure, of note i'm running into the throttling problem with intelBurn running with only 2 threads and furmark



it also throttles in assassins creed

(please note that it was run in full screen, not windowed, i just did that to get a piccy of both assasins creed and GPU-Z)

i think that it is reasonable to expect that a notebook of this calibre could handle this without throttling
if the laptop can't even run at stock settings then i guess anyhopes that hte extreme edition chip and its unlocked overclockability is gone?


i'm running an m15x with the i920xm chip and 8gb of RAM
latest nvidia drivers with 'prefer performance' selected
195.62 and the A02 drivers, windows 7 64bit, 256gb SSD

-John, can we expect a fix for this or is it a design feature as seems to be the official line?
i do love my machine, and it is very fast for a laptop. BUUUT, for the $7400AUD i paid for it, and the fact that i rely on it for realtime performance and work, i'm very disappointed to find that it falters when pushed even moderately hard...
and i for one certinaly do not accept that computers aren't designed to run at 100%
they damn well are - thats what they're good for: render farms, number crunching, servers i dont accept that anyone would design a cpu that is only design for occasional bursts of speed.

 

Yeah, or encoding video on one or the other while doing something else. And like I said, I've seen a TON of games and programs that peg one or more CPUs at 100%, even when the hardware is WAY overclassed for the program. I bet I could find plenty of games from the 90s that will peg out a single core, and as stuff goes multicore you'll end up with more stuff pegging out multiple cores.

I'm really surprised they're not just fixing this if it's fixable through a BIOS update of all things.

I would have ordered one yesterday most likely if it didn't do this (the only other thing concerning me is the PM55's apparent USB problems).

 

Fantastic post Mr. Zombie! Well there it is...RIGHT THERE. It's clearly throttling with a game from two years back.

Others have reported Crysis doing it, WoW doing it, etc. This needs to be fixed.

 

I've had a bunch of Dells in the past, including one I reviewed here on NBR (The XPS M2010). They were all fairly good systems, but there would be always be some issues present.

One thing that has always irked me is their outsourced support. Back when I had an XPS, I could get an American on the phone who I didn't have to spend an hour on (with an Indian tech) to diagnose and solve a problem. Most of that hour involved repeating the same words over and over, and reading the scripts slowly and painfully.

 

Don't even where to begin to respond... 3Dmarks CPU test???? A CPU is not designed to render graphics, that's why you're getting 3-5FPS. It's a multipurpose processor, unlike a GPU, which only handles few types of calculations well.

Let's just get this straight: When a CPU is at 100% - it means it's doing its job. It does not mean your system is chugging, choking, or otherwise slowing down. Properly coded, ALL calculation intensive and performance intensive applications should drive the CPU to 100% for the best performance.

As for the Sports Car example... a A Viper should DEFINITELY be sustaining Redline. It's called a race track. If you buy a Viper or Corvette and never track the car, it is a damn waste of its power and engineering. It's like buying an M15x and only surfing the web on it. In fact, most high performance vehicles (German mostly, GT-R and LFA) are TESTED for stability and performance by logging thousands of hours pushing redline at the Nurburgring.

 

Oki John now there is proof it happens in real world situations. Now what? Im going to my self recreate this.. to add to it.
I have :
i7 920
6gb ram
260M

 

Any idea how their new U.S. support is? In the warrenty section they let you add complete care, or "your tech team" I think it's called, that's supposedly U.S. based support, or both.

I was planning on probably getting a 4 year warranty with both...until I learned this throttling thing wasn't getting fixed at least

 

That blows...

 

Thank you, MrZombiBunny. That is exactly what I needed.

 

It was an example of a graphics performance decrease when a monster system is at max CPU load.

Why are you confused? I'm not trying to be confrontational, I'm just trying to be illustrative.

 

Hopefully with that, Dell will finally do something about it . Especially if he is getting throttling with a fully maxed out M15x (920 and even 256 SSD :O), imagine those with 720 and normal HDD.

 

Well their Tech Support sucks. I don't know about on-site support, but thankfully, you're at least going to get someone who hopefully speaks fluent English fixing your system in person - whether or not they know what they're doing is luck of the draw.

Customer Care has been satisfactory. They gave me a Return Authorization quickly and credited my account for the refund as soon as UPS dropped off my returned M15x.

 

I think you need to take some Engineering or Computer science classes then. The CPU test in 3Dmarks is exactly that. It takes your CPU only to render a graphical test. CPUs are NEVER designed to run graphically intensive code. 10 years ago, 3Dmarks 01 gave 1-2FPS in CPU test. In each subsequent 3Dmarks revision and the evolution of high end CPUs (Pentium 4, Athlon 64, Pentium D, X2, Core, Phenom, Phenom II, Core 2, i7 etc), the best you'll ever get in a CPU test is 4-5FPS.

The fact that you were getting 3-5FPS is normal and phenomenal for a CPU. It does not at all indicate your CPU was being brought to its knees.

 

Also, as people should know, I have no stake in the M15x, as I do not own one anymore.

I am just telling you what is logical and reasonable to expect from a system like the M15x. I work in Law, and I enjoy a good argument, especially when in this case, the consumer is clearly in the right.

 

Thanks for the info. I've never read up on it, but that makes sense.

Your first sentence is a bit combative though. I'm here to help if I can, not get into an argument or be derided for not being an engineer. If we could please keep this civil, I'd appreciate it. A simple explanation of why my example was incorrect would have sufficed.

EDIT: I was apparently under the mistaken impression that the CPU test worked a little differently. I apologize.

EDIT 2: I just read the whitepaper on the CPU test. The test is fixed framerate, so it was a doubly bad example on my part.

 

I do apologize if it came off that way... but hopefully you can imagine how some people might get heated in this matter because they dished out a large amount of their own hard earned cash in this type economic environment only to find that it does not perform up to par or with the basic expectation that it behaves and performs like its competitors.

The other thing is that while I am less of a computer guy than a car guy, I always assume people coming from a brand like Alienware vs a Dell for example should simply not have any of these issues, no matter how small or large, like someone coming from a Luxury car to a mainstream car.

Lexus for example would spare no expense to fix big and small problems (recently, large spread issues on the Lexus LS for wind noise for example). Toyotas on the other hand, you can just expect issues as their quality has gone down the crapper in recent years.

 

I understand how this conversation can be very heated... do know that I've devoted an extreme amount of time to it. I'm supposed to be on vacation today

I've been talking with the gentleman who's doing the actual testing this morning. He assured me that he's still digging into this, and has been all week. If there really IS something here, which there just may be, he's assured me that he is dedicated to finding it.

As to why he isn't here talking himself? Well... I'm sure you all can agree that you want the engineers busy... well... engineering. I'm a communicator... so I'm busy... well... communicating (or attempting to anyway)

 

Oh no, sounds like you do vacation like I do sometimes :lol:

I really appreciate that you're posting here, but I really really want to have the problem fixed so I can order. Even if they just new they WERE going to release an update that fixes it (assuming that's possible).