DELL Studio XPS 16 Has Persistent, Intermittent Lag Spikes (Even while offline)

Hi-

If you have this stuttering lag problem only when you game and not during regular non-3d programs,

 I can suggest several things for you to try.

 Disable your virus protection, not wise but sometime this will cause the lag as your AV 'checks' the game. Newer AV programs usually have a 'silent mode' that hibernates the program when a game is running.

 Disable Indexing service for that particular program. Again, indexing will cause lag like that.

 What I suspect is the problem is your system is getting hot and throttling down to to protect the hardware. That is a lot of ram in a little bitty case and a lot of heat generated by 7gigs of ram plus the discrete graphics card plus a dual core processor and a high speed hdd. If your system doesn't lag when doing non intensive duties. it's probably just a minor overheating issue.

 If the first to suggestions don't work, then look at overheating as a possibility.

 Take a can of compressed air and blow into the fan vents that are located on the side of your laptop or the bottom back portion. Place your fingers over the vents and ascertain that there is warm/hot air being exhausted from those vents. If there is no warm air exiting those vents, the vents are clogged with dust bunnies or the fans aren't working. You can also take a small penlight and peer into those vents and look for signs of blockage. If those vents are blocked, there is no way for the hot air inside to escape; and that's a bad thing. The hot air will build inside your case and as the interior temperature rises so will the temperature of your computer parts. Once the processor reaches a certain temperature, it will throttle back the power to protect itself from heat damage, and you will 'feel' that throttling in the form of lag. I've had this happen several times on my laptop and desktops.

 If you the vents are open and the fans are running and your can feel air coming out of the vents, it might be time to invest in a laptop cooler. These coolers will help you manage your temps while gaming and doing other stuff. Here is a link to a popular one; I'm sure Dell sells them as well, too.  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834998492

Make sure you game on a flat surface where the exhaust vents are not blocked.

You can also direct a small oscillating fan at your laptop and that will help cool it, too.

good luck

Hi, thanks a lot for your thorough reply - I appreciate you taking the time to help me!

I already own a laptop cooling pad (Targus) which I find is quite good. I very rarely game without it. If the problem is overheating, then I am VERY worried about my system's performance in the future. I have been using this laptop for only 2 months, and it has been on the cooling pad the whole time. If its performance is suffering from overheating now, it can only get worse down the road.

Part of this problem must be due to what appears to be fundamentally poor engineering in the design of this laptop. The only exhaust vent is located in such a way so that when the screen is up (i.e. when I am using the computer) the bottom of the screen covers about 90% of the vent. I don't know how to remedy this, and if it is essentially going to break my system in short order, I feel DELL should recall this model.

I plan to try to compressed air tomorrow, but I am not optimistic.

On another note, the computer's lag issue seems to decrease the longer I play the game; it's as if the computer needs to "get used to" the game. I would think that if heating were the issue, then increased time playing would only make it worse - I have found that the lag spikes are most common when the game is newly booted. What could be causing this?

I was just looking for general info on the studio xps 16 because I'm thinking of buying one.. I noticed your post first and then elsewhere I noticed someone say the following, which made me think of your post so here goes, it may help, may not:

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well one of my friend has same config xps studio 16 where the config come with i7 920 with 4 gb ddr3 500 gb , full hd with ati 4670 that he bought it last year 2009 December  

pros:- the laptop is faster loading windows 7 less 15-19 sec, and apps is quite faster good with all feature and improve software security and can do multitasking and light games and nice back-light and soft keyboard with good feature control 

cons :- the laptop need more power and not enough for 90 watt adpator due to bottleneck of fps rate for any games so u should update to 110-130 watt adapter i recommend, and the i7 need more hunger power more than 90-100 watt and it heating up while gaming and heavy multitasking at 70-80 *c, and bit heavy and need bios update for undercloking cpu and gpu power rating and fix heating issue and more bug etc....

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Are you suggesting that the AC adapter included with the laptop is not strong enough to adequately supply power to the hardware? If so, how can I get a more powerful adapter? Also, if this IS the case, should DELL not include the appropriate adapter with the laptop from the outset?

One note however: my laptop uses an i5 dual core, not an i7 quad core. Might my power requirements and heat generation be less because of this?

I'm pretty frustrated at this point - this computer cost me upwards of $1500 CDN, and is great in all respects (or WAS great) until this issue arose. Now it's becoming unusable. If I can't figure out how to fix this soon, there's no doubt in my mind that this will be the last DELL I ever purchase, and likely the last DELL anyone who KNOWS me will purchase.

Turns out, yes.. that's what I'm saying.

Just found this, does this apply to you?

http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/dell-finally-fixes-studio-xps-1645-cpu-throttling-issues-20100726/

This is the text dates July 26 2010:

If you own a Dell Studio XPS 1645 notebook and if you’ve noticed your laptop tends to throttle its own performance when running CPU-intensive apps, your long wait for support is over: after admitting a problem way back in February, Dell has finally issued a fix.

According to Dell, the problem is related to the 90 watt power adapter that shipped with the XPS 1645 line. Dell’s now replacing those power adapters with beefier 130 watt adapters, as well as issuing a BIOS update for the notebook to help fix the problem, which is available for download now.

Supposedly, both the adapter and the BIOS, in tandem, solve the problems that have plagued XPS 1645 owners for so long.

It’s long past time. A quick site search reveals that we were writing about the Dell Studio XPS 1645 line’s issues with power management way back in December, but it’s apparently taken the last seven months to come up with a fix. We’re glad to see a solution, but this is not the way to keep your customers loyal, Dell.

The replacement site is uat. dellpowersupplyp rogram. com , which seems to be down at the moment but if you google that site, the cached copy holds more info.

I hope this helps you out. Let me know if it does.

If that fixes the problem, I'll be very happy. Unfortunately the link you included doesn't seem to work. How would I go about getting a replacement? I assume that I won't be charged for it, since the fault was DELL's for shipping the wrong adapter with the system. I checked mine and it is indeed only 90W.