Studio 1737 DPC Latency

Had the problems with a

DELL Studio 1555 &

Alienware m17x

so far.

Someone at Native INstruments Forum pointed out, that he could circle in the problem to the Ricoh firewire chipset, not only within DELL but also other brands.

Maybe everybody should check their device manager and check if it's a Ricoh Firewire Chipset. Maybe we found a match to the problem.

Every laptop I have used with Ricoh Firewire Chipset has DPC problems.

Every laptop I have used with Ricoh Firewire Chipset has DPC problems.

Hi all. I think its important not to get these two issues confused. Yes, the Ricoh Firewire chipset is lame, and is on numerous laptops. It offers very  poor performance compared to the TI chipset, and causes clicks and pops for low latency firewire devices, and possibly also contributes in some way to overall DCP latency.

However, the severe DCP latency problems in The Studio are of a different nature. Even if you disable the Ricoh FIrewire (I've tried this in both xp and vista, ) the high DCP latency exists. Only stopping acpi.sys stops the problem. It is this more inherant problem that is causing the audio dropouts for ANY audio output when given something slightly taxing to do. (I've tested it for onboard, usb and firewire devices) as the audio streaming is being delayed by whatever bios or misconfiguration exists on the studio laptops.

Yesterday I tested some other laptops (looking at the HP dhx range, but also sony) in a retail outlet with DCP latency tool. Hp's and Sony were fine and the hp was using the Ricoh chipset. I imagine the Sony was too, as Ricoh are now the dominant laptop onboard firewire manufacturer. In fact I don't even think TI are supplying to any major manufacturers any more. ( I think it is still on one of the hp range, dv6?, haven't seen it myself though) Perhaps Bill could confirm whether the Dell laptops (lattitude for instance) that do not show the DCP latency problem are also using Ricoh firewire. But honestly I don't think the fact the Ricoh chipset is present is actually where the problem lies , there could be some catastrophic implementation/conflict issue, but I'd guess its elsewhere..

Off to ring Dell again to return my studios, they have failed to reply to my support email in over 48 hrs! hmmmmmmm.

Think it's already in the list, but for the sake of  totality:

DELL Vostro 1520

also with lots of yellow and red bars up to 4000µs.

Hello,

Indeed, I recently bought  a Firewire Expresscard with TI chipset and it doesn't seem to solve the DPC latency problem. I get less clicks and pops but the DPC spikes are still there.

Fons909

Yes the 2 issues should NOT be confused.
To make the description of the latency issue simpler : format your hard drive, install news OS, without installing any peripherals, everything deactivated (means RICOH controller, USB controllers and everything else disabled) red spikes in the latency tool, right from a fresh, clean install.

Means the problem is lying in the very architecture of the system and not tied to a specific peripheral. Dell are trying to fix it with a BIOS update, it doesn't mean it is fixable. And if it wasn't fixable, would Dell simply admit it ?

Any news Bill ?

On the Vostro, just to see what happens, can you run DPC Latency Checker with a USB memory key inserted?

Looks like we got it sorted out on the Studio XPS 13. Hopefully that bodes well for the other affected platforms. Stay tuned.

http://en.community.dell.com/forums/p/19260011/19553722.aspx#19553722

Sounds like Engineers have finally got on the ball!  Hopefully there will be a fix soon for the Studio 1737!

I read your post, where can I get drivers for the Studio 1737 for win XP?

FYI, going to XP does not help the DPC spikes.

Just stumbled across this thread and am a bit disheartened.  I've been a Dell fan for years and recently (within the last week) ordered a $2K Studio 1737 w/8GB of RAM (still 'In Production' at Dell and not yet shipped)  to replace my Inspiron 1505 for two reasons - run a virtual lab environment for development testing using either Hyper-V or VMWare, and more importantly, use it to record and edit live audio with Acid Pro 6, SoundForge, Reason 4.0, etc, which I'm able to do on my older E1505 machine.  Main reason for the upgrade was the inability to upgrade to 8GB RAM on the E1505.  I hope this is resolved quickly on the 1737, as the inability to create and play music on a machine that cost $2K will be a reason for promptly returning it to Dell for a refund.  I wish I would have researched this model further before ordering.  Since one model's issues have been resolved, hopefully they will be releasing a fix for the 1737 soon.

hello all, i was experiencing major high dpc issues with my dell studio 1536, always having spikes in the latency checker, i did everything on all the forums and nothing. eventually i got ahold of dell support and they are sending a box for me to send it in and get a new mobo and whatever else it  needs to resolve this, i bought the pc for recording only for a home studio, the crackles put a wrinkle in that so for months i have done nothing, dell support updataed bios and drivers and all that, finally i complained enough that they offered for me to send it in. hope this works, but anyway, i am new to forums, only after this issue did i learn of them and chose this one to join, any help using it would be great, you all seemed to be the most sensable ones. thanks for any help.  later

Hey Bill,

I have been in contact with several people i know who have studio laptops and most of them have the 1735, i noticed that on the dell drivers site there is no bios releases since 12th may 2008, in the wild i would expect most people have these laptops over the 1737, i know the guys  are working on the update to the bios for 1737 but is this also going to be for the 1735 as dell seems to have forgotton about this model, even though it fully supports windows 7 dell offer no drivers for the platform and you have to trawl the internet manually for win7 drivers ( but do include it in the windows 7 upgrade elegibility ( with no available drivers???)????) has dell forgot about 1735 owners? 

FYI dpc latency is slightly different on the 1735's i.e. green bars except for (exactly) every 4 secons spike of 3500us otherwise ~70us

DuDeX

Just stumbled across this thread and am a bit disheartened../...../..as the inability to create and play music on a machine that cost $2K will be a reason for promptly returning it to Dell for a refund.  I wish I would have researched this model further before ordering......

Not sure how Dell will deal with it,  but you may be better off cancelling your order at this stage. I've just successsfuly arranged for them to pick up and refund on two 1737's 6gb ram,  2.4ghz processors,  dual350gb HD's. It was a hard slog though, technical support can be wildly different between different agents understanding, eventually I got one who completely understood it, but it really wasn't easy, and I've spent a long time sorting it all out. Whilst the laptops were good value for the spec, the inabilty to use them for what I had actually intended, made them pretty useless, and with any potential fix still only in the pipeline, too much of a risk to wait out.

hello all, i was experiencing major high dpc issues with my dell studio 1536, always having spikes in the latency checker, i did everything on all the forums and nothing. eventually i got ahold of dell support and they are sending a box for me to send it in and get a new mobo and whatever else it  needs to resolve this....

I think this demonstrates what I mean about different technical support agents understanding, If your problems are due to DPC latency, which sounds likely, there is nothing they can do at present to fix it, so they'll be fitting a new mobo for no reason, not an easy procedure on a laptop, and not  a repair I would want undertaken needlessly, it could even end up causing problems that don't currently exist.