XPS 8950, "hiccups" with audio and video, #2

Refresh our (my) limited memory... Are you streaming audio, playing audio files stored on an internal drive, on a CD or DVD?

Question about the BIOS update problem has been addressed in your other thread.

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@mixmkr wrote:

This has never been resolved and my solutions have been to run latency monitor(?}, etc...all of which are beyond my computer abilites.  How do I solve this problem?  I had an old thread about this last winter....problem went away breifly during the spring...but has been back again for quite awhile

At this point I'd pay for online or whatever help that could link into my computer or whatever via zoom.  Getting to the end of my rope on this $3k computer.

 

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Your audio thread is here:

https://www.dell.com/community/XPS-Desktops/XPS-8950-quot-hiccups-quot-with-audio-and-video/td-p/8169744

Looks like you stopped posting in your own thread. However, we kept using it and help others with a similar problems. IIRC, uninstalling Dell Support-Assist helped some people. I think uninstalling all the Intel Killer Networking nonsense helped the others.

Just upload your Latency-Mon screen-shot and we will take a look.

Let me figure how to do the screen shot.

Hiccups with audio/video on M.2 ssd or watching youtubes, etc.  ...also zooms.

Did you check to see if any Killer and/or xTend services got re-enabled in services.msc?

Killer software updates (aka: Intel Software Extensions) get installed via Windows Update. And all Killer and xTend services magically get re-enabled in services.msc after every one of these updates. So you have to keep on top of, IMO, these unnecessary updates...

I'm hoping a bios update will work...as it did last spring...I think.   But having issues as noted on my other thread with the upgrade 

Fairness to say, Killer app does an excellent job in managing network traffic and noticeably reducing latency in games, providing users a better experience.  That was why Intel paid a hefty price to acquire Rivet Network.  Leaving it alone would be better than trying to block services or editing the registries because not all average users can be savvy enough and an incomplete disablement can cause the processes to get corrupted, leading to a worsen performance.

Hiccups in audio and video could also caused by drivers, power management of the devices, or the apps settings.  It probably costs Dell a couple dollar for the audio chip and Waves app but it works very well.  It can reproduce decent sounds for most PC speaker setups.  But don't expect too much and comparing it to Hi-Fidelity audio systems or home theaters.

Also, think about what kind of changes you've made during the time that the problem went away and the time that it came back. It could be something as simple as a monitor (gsync issues) or a faulty wire.

HI mixmkr, 

I read through all of your threads about this. The first thought that comes to mind that no one seemed to mention was G-sync. Are your monitors G-sync enabled? If so, go into the Nvidia control panel and disable G-sync to see if the issue goes away. From my experience, if you have an Nvidia card and a G-sync compatible monitor, it is best to disable G-sync when you're not gaming, because it causes all types of weird non-related issues.

Let me know if it helped, we can continue troubleshooting this issue. 

Let me try the g sync.  Thx for helping!

The nviidia Geoforce ap has nothing to be found with gsync or similar.  I'm trying...but it's like a scavenger hunt.

Looking in the wrong place?

It should be in the Nvidia control panel.

Are you using the driver from the Nvidia site or the one from the Dell site? If you are using the one from the Dell site, I suggest trying the studio driver from the Nvidia site. I second @RoHe on disabling all the killer services. I did and uninstalled the Killer control panel and everything works fine. 

Yeah, I have to go and disable it again after certain updates too. It is quite annoying. 

I had ethernet speed issues on my XPS 8930 from the beginning...

I had an open trouble ticket directly with Killer for a long time (before Intel took over) but they never could solve the problem. I eventually disabled all Killer and xTend services on mine own, and the problem went away.

At end of Aug'22, Windows Update installed Intel SoftwareComponent - 3.1222.608.4 and Intel Extension - 3.1222.608.4 on this PC. (Version numbers and installation date may be different for XPS 8950.)  I started noticing ethernet speed issues shortly afterwards. Turns out the Intel update was to fix a bug in the Killer Control Panel software. When I checked services.msc, all those Killer and xTend services were re-enabled. Disabling them made the ethernet issue go away.

Obviously, YRMV, but I'd test simple/easy things first, especially since the problem was resolved for a while...