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Comments: 314 +- Hardware: Dell Defect Turning 2.2GHz CPU Into 100MHz CPU? on Monday November 30, @04:04PM
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ScuttleMonkey
on Monday November 30, @04:04PM
from the making-the-pr-department-work-for-their-paycheck dept.
from the making-the-pr-department-work-for-their-paycheck dept.
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jtavares2 writes "In what is being dubbed Throttlegate, scores of users on many message boards have been complaining about nexplicably aggressive throttling policies on their Dell Latitude E6500 and E6400 laptops which cause their CPUs to be throttled to less than 5% of their theoretical maximums even while at room temperatures. In many cases, the issue can be triggered just by playing a video or performing some other trivial, but CPU intensive, task. After being banned [PDF] from the Dell Forums for revealing 'non-public information,' one user went so far as to write and publish a 59-page report [PDF] explaining and diagnosing the throttling problem in incredible detail. Dell seems to be silent on the issue, but many users are hoping for a formal recall."
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First Post (Score:5, Funny)
scours of users (Score:3, Funny)
I'd happily scour a user.
Has anyone been able to see the report? (Score:5, Funny)
MIRROR (Score:5, Informative)
I click on the link and well, I think it's being hosted by one of these Dells
At the end of one of the forums, someone links to a mirror. You can find the report here:
http://www.sigmirror.com/files/44490_iweoz/throttlegate.pdf [sigmirror.com]
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That's Nothing (Score:3, Funny)
Oh for the love of god ... Throttlegate? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh for the love of god ... Throttlegate? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Oh for the love of god ... Throttlegate? (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree...it's no longer clever when *anything* that elicits a response in the media is called ______gate.
OMG, Woodsgate, Golfgate or Tigergate (Tiger Woods Crashes)
OMG, Sungate (Oracle buys Sun)
OMG, Afghanagate (Obama gives new Afghan stragey)
OMG, Slashgate (all the dupes)
It's such a horrible trend, I dub this, GATEGATE.
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Re:Oh for the love of god ... Throttlegate? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Oh for the love of god ... Throttlegate? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Oh for the love of god ... Throttlegate? (Score:5, Funny)
Obama gives new Afghan stragey
You're saying he's gonna redecorate the Oval Office with a throw?
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Re:Oh for the love of god ... Throttlegate? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, cmon, it's exactly like Watergate. Except completely different.
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Many users are hoping for a formal recall (Score:5, Funny)
I hear Dell is planning to issue a complimentary turbo button for any user experiencing the problem.
Re:Many users are hoping for a formal recall (Score:4, Informative)
For those wondering what this is about - Turbo Button [wikipedia.org].
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Re:Many users are hoping for a formal recall (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Many users are hoping for a formal recall (Score:5, Interesting)
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FTW (Score:5, Funny)
Energy Star Compliance at it's Best.
PDF Mirror (Score:5, Informative)
Here is a mirror of the PDF: mirror [randallcotton.com]. It was put up by the guy who discovered this, I'm just copying the link.
User/password is "guest" and "guest".
Be warned, it's about 25MB.
Re:PDF Mirror (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe it shouldn't have been mirrored on an E6500.
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The E-series has been craptastic all along (Score:5, Interesting)
I had a pre-release e-series machine from Dell on my desk last year. It's like they built the thing from the outside-in. Even on a 'release' E6500, Ubuntu seems to halt and die on full-screen video, Windows AHCI drivers that work everywhere else cause BSODs, and the power management firmware seems like it was written by a roomful of meth-addicted monkeys.
I've never been more disappointed with Dell as I was with the E6500. At least when the Optiplex GX260 power supplies all failed a few years ago, it was easy enough to fix them. These things are abhorrent.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
SLOW!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"At least when the Optiplex GX260 power supplies all failed a few years ago, it was easy enough to fix them. These things are abhorrent."
When the motherboards failed on GX260s a few years ago, it was a monumental pain in the ass.
Re:The E-series has been craptastic all along (Score:4, Funny)
What amazes me is how badly Dell managed to screw up the keyboard and pointing devices on the E6500.
Random clicks when you're 6 inches away from either pointing device, random shifts, ctrls, alts while typing, and this was on hundreds of machines I configured.
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Re:The E-series has been craptastic all along (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:The E-series has been craptastic all along (Score:4, Funny)
*clickity clickity* "Ok, I've reinstalled the operating system." I think there was a Dilbert about this.
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Silver lining... (Score:5, Funny)
At least the batteries will last for 50 hours.
Re:Silver lining... (Score:5, Funny)
Which is incidently also the length of the average movie displayed on this machine.
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Bad Summary? (Score:3, Informative)
That would be "scores of users", assuming submitter meant to indicate a number equaling or greater than a multiple of twenty. Of course it's hard to say really, as the link provided (the "many message boards" link which links to a single message board) doesn't say anything remotely resembling the claims of the submitter -- it's people complaining about "freeze/lockup".
Come on dude (Score:5, Funny)
Mine just arrived (Score:5, Funny)
OMG, I brought this up with them (Score:5, Informative)
Re:OMG, I brought this up with them (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, great, except disabling SpeedStep kills battery life and otherwise sucks power.
I don't mind my laptop throttling itself when I'm not using it. My current Dell (XPS M1530) throttles itself to 800 mhz when it overheats because I'm doing something strenuous -- like, I don't know, Duke Nukem 3D.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
When you go into the BIOS, go to Performance, SpeedStep, and disable it.
My brother's E6400 fixes the speed at 1GHz when SpeedStep is disabled in the BIOS (i.e. NOT at 100% - CPU is rated for 2.0GHz), so that's not always a solution. Is the thermal design so bad that they can't actually keep the CPU at full speed all the time?
Re:OMG, I brought this up with them (Score:5, Interesting)
Almost certainly. I doubt any of the modern laptops can run Core 2 Duo CPUs at full throttle without it going supernova. Laptops are just plain too thin to dissipate that much heat through mere air cooling of CPU heat sinks. The only reason we have laptops that come anywhere close to this level of performance is because the cores are going to be in an idle state 90% of the time and they can throttle the bajeezus out of them if they get too hot when you run them too hard for too long. That said, this report suggests two things:
Of these, the second one is the more significant problem.
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Re:OMG, I brought this up with them (Score:4, Funny)
Disabling Speed Step and power management/power saving/etc in BIOS and the OS(whatever one is installed) is the very first thing I do on any machine. I want it at full power all the time. This also makes it easier to keep my fans at a constant speed as well, which makes for a quieter work environment. Similar to how a clock ticking is filtered out after a few hours or days, a constant low drone from the PC is as well.
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Post on Dell's forums (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a post on Dell's forums describing the issue [dell.com]
From the link:
Some key points from the report (keep in mind this is specifically for the E6500 with the NVIDIA graphics option, but much of this likely applies to the E6400 and/or the Intel integrated graphics option):
1. The problem is NOT an overheating problem - the system simply does not overheat. It is due to premature and overly aggressive attempts at thermal control, invoked at what are NORMAL processor operating temperatures (65-80 Celsius), possibly due to faulty ACPI "passive cooling" parameter definitions and/or control methods.
2. The problem is substantially more pronounced when the system is docked.
3. The problem is aggravated somewhat by the use of dual monitors when docked as opposed to a single monitor.
4. Since the problem is all about temperature, the higher the surrounding ambient temperature in the room, the sooner and the greater the performance loss.
5. The symptoms are much more highly correlated to elevated NVIDIA GPU temperature than elevated CPU core temperatures.
Some miscellaneous corollaries:
1. Any blockage of air inlets or outlets (including, of course, dust) will aggravate the problem.
2. The reason people report shockingly high percent CPU utilization statistics when their system slows down is that the overall capacity of their processor is degraded by the throttling mechanisms. The same processes running on a CPU that is subsequently throttled necessarily will demand a higher percentage of the processor's remaining capacity.
3. The reason some folks report persistent slowness even after installing software to prevent CPU downclocking is that more than one throttling mechanism is in play here. In particular, Software-controlled Clock Modulation (also called On-Demand Clock Modulation) occurs in an almost completely invisible manner, as opposed to performance state changes (which are usually monitored by common utilities). Another often-invisible throttling mechanism is Dynamic FSB Frequency Switching (where the FSB frequency is slashed in half), though if you prevent performance state changes, that takes care of preventing this too (since it's part of state P3).
4. The reason there aren't more complaints (though many are accumulating these days) is that users who experience this problem simply have no way of knowing what the cause is and are likely to blame the wrong thing (Windows, recently installed software, cooling hardware, etc.). Untold masses may be adversely affected by this problem, but nearly all of them wouldn't know it because there's no way for them to tell. Also, the problem is at its worst only when in a docked configuration, which may not be common.
5. The reason complaints are escalating now more than before is that this is the first summer that people have had this system (in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway). I think it's safe to say that ambient temperatures are higher for most E6400/E6500 users now.
6. The problem can be substantially mitigated by pointing an external fan at the system.
7. The problem can also be mitigated by software, such as RMClock, that can override the throttling mechanisms in question, at the expense of negating all passive thermal management (though critical temperature shutdown mechanisms may remain in place).
Not the first time Dells have underperformed (Score:3, Interesting)
So... what you say is ... (Score:5, Funny)
So do I get this right? As soon as I actually need my CPU to do some work, it starts to slow down? While it's quite able to run at full speed as long as it's idle and not doing anything sensible?
Computers get more and more human every day.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, thats correct. Intel's new SlowStep technology saves you power when you waste it most: watching youtube videos, playing games, etc. The industry, along with your parents, just want you to read a book now and again.
Non-public information? (Score:5, Interesting)
Non-public information? How can such a thing exist on a commodity good that has already been released to the public, and especially when they are trying to cover up a defect which renders their product offering as fraudulent (because it doesn't work as advertised) and not fit for sale? Did they expect this to NOT blow up publicly when they ignored user complaints?
100Mhz? (Score:3, Funny)
Recall = Firmware update (Score:5, Informative)
People get too excited about product recalls. It just means the manufacturer has to eliminate or at least mitigate the failure. In this case, Dell will issue Firmware A.02 or whatever and the problem will vanish. Not a big deal.
I've had a lot of product recalls in my life because I drive a car and I have a baby. Apart from a few rare instances from Kodak and Honda, this doesn't mean the consumer gets a full refund and all of the products wind up in a landfill.
My experience and fix. Isn't 59 pages long. (Score:5, Informative)
Dell has aggressive CPU throttling in the BIOS. I have an Inspiron 6400 w/ Core 2 Duo 1.83ghz. In XP, Vista, and 7, it would throttle way the heck down and not turn the fan all the way up. Because the fan was annoying. It would go down to around 200mhz.
I fixed it in software by installing RMClock and i8kspeedfan. But my computer was usually around 55 and went up to 65 playing HD video, and the fan would kick in, and suddenly it's really loud.
Also helped to get one of those cooling pads with a fan in it.
So I took apart my laptop. There were 1" thick sheets of dust between the processor and graphics coolers and then between them and the output duct.
Cleaning them out, put it back together, now at full speed it rarely goes over 55. The BIOS throttling that kicks in at 70C or 75C or so hasn't come on since the software fix. Don't even need the Targus cool-pad anymore.
So basically, Dell builds a system with inadequate cooling, that is disabled from maximum speed even when system policy is set that way, and instead throttles you down in the BIOS 'til you can't even move the mouse until it cools down. No option to allow the fan to go to full-speed, no way to do it except 3rd-party software, and really darned loud when it happens.
It must've sucked to have a 2.3GHz in this thing...
Recall when hell freezes over (Score:4, Interesting)
I use to own a Dell Inspiron 5150 that had to have a motherboard replaced out of warranty. (I've since given it to my wife as she is a lighter user and it'll probably last longer with her). The most likely cause is a known but never acknowledged issue where with normal use the case wears against a component on the motherboard severing it. It's not the first such issue I've heard of.
My current laptop is a Dell Inspiron 9400. I got it when they were giving away 3 years warranty for no extra cost. I'm so glad I did. I have had 2 hard disks replaced. (Issue finally fixed when I insisted on a different brand). I have had a hinge fixed after it broke (no misuse or abnormal use). I've had 2 screens replaced because they developed large dust bunnies behind the screen. I've had the CPU fan jam. It also has a habit of randomly taking 2 minutes to progress through the boot screen. No idea why. Dealing with warranty has been a hassle - worst experience was when they didn't show up for 3 appointments in a row. My wife or I had to be home to deal with it and then they wouldn't show up. The 3rd time they tried to arrange a technician that was 6 hours away at around 8pm. Well that wasn't going to work. But at least I didn't have to pay for parts for this machine. It's still my last Dell though.
Long day at Throttlegate (Score:5, Funny)
As a newly hired Dell Tech support employee starting his 2nd day at work in about 9 hours, I have a feeling tomorrow is going to be a looong day.
Re:class action (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Scours? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Business systems.
Systems intended for business use generally come with a 3 year warranty, which increases the quality of the system. If they know it will be their responsibility to fix it if it goes bing in 2.5 years, they must make a more robust system. You will have to pay a little more, but it's worth it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I have the same setup e6400 with an Nvidia Quadro NVS 160M running Ubuntu.
Here is how I detected the problem. Add a CPU frequency governor applet to one of your taskbars. If you choose the "performance" governor profile with the applet, and your CPU scales down to 800Mhz on occasion, then you are experiencing this problem. You can also use the gkrellm application to monitor CPU, mobo ambient, and GPU temperatures.
I've been monitoring the ambient temperature in my cube at work, and the temperature never go