Does the Overclockable Dell XPS M1710 Deliver?

You can also get a nice program like RMclock the force the P-States to whatever you want, whenever you want... also lets you play with the voltage and get some temp readings and stuff.. Very cool application..

As the Dell guy said... Turn speedstep back on before doing this.

 

This exactly confirms my findings - that your BIOS is forcibly throttling the CPU, whilst not reducing the voltage for the reduced core speeds.

Can we have a fixed BIOS which will reduce voltage properly for the reduced core speeds? You've just confirmed this to be a fatal bug with your BIOS.

When you're feeding the full voltage for 3.0 GHz at a 1.0 GHz clock, it doesn't help much with the cooling!

If your BIOS is fixed, this could really help with the cool-off cycle, and we won't be going down to 266 MHz anymore.

 

Unfortunately, RMClock is unable to force the P-States. The BIOS overrides, as confirmed by the Dell rep.

Speedstep was on for all of the tests, as already explained in the review-

 

Hi,

first timer on this forum...


I'd like to join in as a recent (1 month) user of the M1710 with 7600G processor.

First of all, it is a piece of HARDware! Meaning: Dell gives you a hard time actually buying it. I'm a Belgian customer and the only way we can get it is by actually calling Customer-Services and asking for it. You can not choose it online...

Now, performance. (I'm running a 7600G, 2 Gig RAM, Geforce 7950 GTX)

After checking how my CPU did in factory settings, I gradually overclocked it.
Now I'm at 2,86 Ghz, playing demanding games as Oblivion (all visual bells maxed out, and better textures by modding community), Battlefield 2142 and Medieval 2 Total War (huge army settings!), and I've had no issues so far.
I have to say I use a (cheap!) 15' cooling pad (Dell should put one out there especially for the M1710; its like a Bull ridin' a piglet...) with 3 fans in it to protect my precious portable gaming gem. I'm not really sure if it makes a difference, but I'm a little scared to try.

All in all, I am able to play my games how and where I want them, with no performance glitches and with a comfortably cool and still whisper-silent system.

In my opinion, the 7600G delivers! At least in the M1710, with cooler pad.
I'm not inclined to overclock further to full 3 Ghz, because the system does it for me on 2,86 Ghz and I think a 23% boost for a stable overclock seems a good deal to me...
Wish it was easier to get it though...

 

Annnnnnnnnnnnd this is why I decided to just go with the regular T7600 2.33GHz...

Actually, I just couldn't afford the T7600G, but now I'm glad I didn't spend the extra $$$....

Good thread.

 

While BIOS revisions happen all of the time, I can't say for certain if this is a direction they will go. From my understanding, SpeedStep is the mechanism they are using to overclock and throttle the processor. Saying that this needs "fixing" completely ignores the fact that the system delivers what it promises to deliver, and that in the review the system is being overclocked with a stock cooling system far more than most OEM products can handle. It isn't really "broke".

 

The BIOS of the T7600G equipped XPS laptop has a serious issue, as confirmed by Dell:

"Our BIOS is written in a slightly different manner than indicated in Intel related online documentation...Engineering has told me that at 80C our BIOS is designed to throttle the processor for 8 seconds in an attempt to bring the core temperature back down to safer levels, and the throttling continues if safer levels aren't reached. Having your CPU run at temperatures higher than 80C could result in some very disheartening STOP errors."

While the BIOS has been designed to reduce temperatures in good will, it is not lowering the CPU voltages during throttling, which effectively prevents cooling efforts. Intel's regular SpeedStep and other throttling mechanisms (AMD) not only lower the clock speed of the processor, but they also reduce the voltage to the appropriate level for the new reduced clock speed, as a seamless and integral part of the throttling process. This is also how SpeedStep saves battery life, for instance. You would not save any battery life if you were feeding your processor the full voltage while running at a reduced clock. Lowering the clock in and of itself does little to reduce temperatures, save battery life, and so on.

I also want to emphasize that I am not trying to get you to break the CPU's thermal envelope here. I don't have a problem with the fact that the CPU needs to be throttled when it gets too hot. I am not assuming that the cooling on the XPS laptop, no matter how powerful, can sustain overclocked speeds. But did you wonder why your BIOS is throttling all the way down to 266 MHz (yes, Megahertz), when the CPU is fully capable of running at 2.33 GHz by design? If your BIOS throttling worked properly, it would scale back to 2.33 GHz, and stop there - since that is the design spec of the CPU and the laptop's cooling mechanism.

My problem is that your throttling mechanism has a serious issue - it continues to feed the full voltage to the processor, preventing the benefits of throttling in the first place. This is how a processor whose native speed is 2.33 GHz gets throttled down to 266 MHz. This is the bug that I am requesting a fix for, so we can all enjoy the true benefits of this XPS system.

 

Any news about the BIOS updates?!

Is this problem solved?

Thanks,

AleX

 

I have the exact same throttling problem under stock clock speeds, with my 7600G in my XPS1710.

When I called dell, and demonstrated the problem to them, they simply said, it's normal.

It's normal for your $3000+ laptop to turn into a brick of a worthless machine!

Anything over 5 minutes of constant load on both cores ie. Sony Vega
s encoding, Sound Forge, a dual core stress test, anything that drives the processor at 90%+ fore more then 4+ minutes will cause throttling!!!! Down to 1000mhz as reported by CPUz!

An encoding at 70fps will slow down to 15fps, yes slower then real time!!!

Dell had me run all sorts of test, which ofcourse come out normal, and the monkey at customer support was useless as all they can do is read what their manual states.

I originaly though that maybe it was my fans, so I had a dell tech replace those along with the CPU heatsink. No results!

I called Dell back, and customer support said, that my laptop is functioning normaly!! When I asked, why is it, that I can encode video faster on a $400 Wallmart POS! they said that it's quite possible that on some applications that is true!!! A superviser said this!!

Moreover, they siad, that unless VISTA! yes Windows reports heating faults with the CPU etc, then there is no problem. When I asked how the hell Vista could possibly monitor the CPU/BIOS relationship and throttling due to heat, I was told that nothing could be done.

I swear, they have MORONS!! in their tech depratment that know nothing other then how to help users with Internet Explorer!

I asked to have my CPU replaced to see it it was simply a fault CPU, but they said, unless I can provide a fault, nothing would be done.

There you have it! If anybody wants to do a conference call, etc with me and call Dell together on the issue, I'm full available. Just PM me.

Also, check out this thread by me here on the same issue.

http://www.notebookforums.com/thread215274.html