Dell releases BIOS updates to fix underperforming/overthrottling notebooks
Dell has released a raft of BIOS updates which should solve the underperformance/overthrottling issues that some users have been experiencing.
The BIOS updates are for E4200/E4300/E5400/E5500/E6400 (including ATG and XFR models)/E6500/ Latitude and Precision M2400/M4400/M6400 notebooks and incorporate changed algorithms for thermal tables to accommodate a broader usage models. This should alleviate the issues that a small number of users were experiencing.
Some owners of Dell notebooks using the above processors were experiencing severe underperformance and overthrottling, so much so that performance was being cut to a fraction of what it should be even when the systems were running at normal temperatures. According to a Dell spokesperson this issue only affected a small number of customers.
Users can find BIOS updates for their systems over on Dell's support site. New BIOSes can easily be identified because they are dated from the past few days (many of the updates seem to be dated yesterday, 12/1/2009).
Here is a full list of updated BIOSes:
Dell offical response can be found here.
Throttling is a power management methodology used throughout the industry to balance system performance, component temperature and user experience. Throttling optimizes performance, regulates component temperatures and skin temperature (the amount of heat you feel at external touch points) while using a laptop.
Under normal conditions and use (i.e. a typical office environment and running a typical set of applications), customers won't see any issue at all. At this point, we've only heard from a small number of customers who have reported issues related to throttling. Those issues arose under more extreme thermal and usage models. These customers report more throttling than expected, plus they tend to experience a prolonged recovery time that sometimes requires a reboot to recover from the throttled state. In those scenarios, users may see slower system performance.
What we learned from the customers we've talked to is that we could improve thermal algorithms that dictate throttling thresholds on our mainstream business-class product line. Previous BIOS revisions for some platforms were not optimized for certain extreme operating conditions.
Two other points I think that are worth emphasizing:
- It has been widely reported that a Dell forum member going by the name of tinkerdude who produced a PDF document detailing this issue was banned off the Dell support forum. This is inaccurate. This user was not banned.
- It has also been widely reported that Dell has been censoring user comments by deleting posts. This is also inaccurate (but see update below).
It's good to see Dell taking these kinds of issues seriously. This throttling issue even caught the attention of Dell CEO Michael Dell himself, who was actively engaged with the technical team.
I've worked through tinkerdude's (real name Randall Cotton) detailed 59 page PDF file (available here) and believe that while the document does demonstrate a problem, the case being presented is an edge case at best. The test that are carried out put a fair bit of stress on the system and they are hardly the sort of thing a Dell Latitude notebook should be expected to handle effortlessly.
Also, it should be pointed out that throttling of hardware when it's under load is a necessary fact of life, and doubly so when you're talking about notebooks. If this wasn't the case, components would fail and then people would be complaining about that. Swings and roundabouts.
[UPDATE: It appears that one post relating to tinkerdude (Randall Cotton) was deleted, but that this was an issue relating to terms of service on the Dell forum (specifically the use of what tinkerdude calls "colorful language") rather than an attempt at covering up a problem. tinkerdude has writeup of what happen here, which also clarifies the issue relating to his account being banned. Extending to tinkerdude/Randall Cotton the right to reply, I now repost his comments on the Dell forum verbatim below:
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Regarding censorship and banishment for this thread in particular and the forum in general:
In recent days, Dell has been criticized on news sites and blogs for reported censorship and/or banishment regarding my posts on the ongoing throttling issue (the topic of this thread).
Some of you may remember that all three of my attempts to post a detailed report about this issue were censored by Dell when I first started looking into this back in July.
A short summary of that effort is here:
The stated reason for the first rejection was: "Your post contains language that we believe reveals non-public information about Dell or another company or person", though the specific offending text was not cited. I replied to the rejection notice, saying "Please specify which prohibited item of information I included so that I may avoid this in the future". I received no response.
For the second rejection, the stated reason was different: "Prohibited words and phrases include those in which certain letters have been replaced with alternate characters", though again, the offending text was not identified.
Now, it's true I used mildly colorful language that was slightly altered (for example, something like "blasted" with a "*" instead of the "a" - I can't use the real examples since this message would probably get censored 8-), so I replaced all those instances that might remotely be prohibited to read "<censored>" instead and resubmitted for the third time. This time, I never even got a rejection notice - it just never appeared in the forum (though everyone subscribed to receive posts by email apparently got a copy). If you want to see what I really said, see this PDF - it's all pretty tame.
After that, I gave up trying to post critical technical reports to this forum - why would I waste the substantial time required with an outcome like that?
So yes, those postings were censored in their entirety with only vague boilerplate justifications (or none at all), and my request for an identification of offending text was apparently ignored.
Now, this is consistent with and can provide the appearance of a deliberate attempt by Dell to prevent that critical and embarrassing information from appearing on their own site. It doesn't prove any such thing, of course, but it certainly leaves the door open to speculation that Dell decided to use vague, subjective criteria as an excuse to censor the information in its entirety and when faced with a request for explanation and persistent attempts to repost, to just ignore me until I gave up (which I did, posting the information elsewhere).
So that's a bad appearance.
Now, somewhere along the line it seems that based on what happened, someone jumped to the conclusion (and it was reported in multiple places) that I was banned from posting in this forum, which is not true. It is true that in both of the 2 rejection notices I received, I was threatened with this (by boilerplate text, probably, which said "Please keep in mind that continued violations of the Terms of Service may cause you to lose your posting privileges"). However, I was not banned.
With all the criticism in the blogosphere, Dell is jumping into action. They are rightly concerned about their reputation and they don't like this bad appearance (and the false accusation of banishment). I know this because I received a conference call this afternoon from several Dell folks who, it's fair to say, were bending over backwards to address this matter of censorship/banishment. They attempted to provide more specific, convincing justifications for my censored posts. Here they are:
1. Claim: the first post attempt was rejected because I included my own service request number (for the support case I filed with Dell). That was the "non-public information about Dell or another company or person" that was prohibited. This would carry a lot more weight if I had been revealing someone *else's* service request number. I don't find this justification to be compelling.
2. Claim: the second post attempt (which did NOT include my service request number) was rejected because of the "prohibited words" that I softened with "alternate characters". This is more compelling. It's tough to comply when you're not told what it was you wrote that's "prohibited", but other than that, I have no argument with this.
3. Claim: the third post attempt (which did NOT include either my service request number or "alternate character" "prohibited words") was rejected because I had substituted for the "alternate character" "prohibited words" with "<censored>". They valiantly tried to equate <censored> (yes, the word "censored" in brackets) as just another form of an "alternate character" "prohibited word". I found that premise exceedingly tenuous and, well, unconvincing. And I think I'm being charitable there.
They were eager to convince me that deliberate censorship due to the critical and embarrassing content of my post did not take place at all. Well, as they say, the horse is already out of the barn on that one - this all happened 5 months ago and the appearance is what it is - I don't see how we'll ever know whether there was any deliberate action (or convenient inaction) to censor this due to its embarrassing content.
But at least they agreed to finally post the thing. I asked them to post my last (third) attempt as it would have appeared (with a date of July 2nd, way back in the record), had it not been censored (with minor editing they wanted to take out the string "<censored>" wherever it appeared.) So, yes, it's now finally on this site at:
http://en.community.dell.com/forums/p/19247293/19512317.aspx#19512317
Now, keep in mind that this first report is dated and has since been superseded by my much more comprehensive 59-page report, now hosted at a high-speed mirror.
Regardless, finally posting this does help Dell's image as they try to recover from this.
Finally, I offered some counsel to the Dell folks I talked to. I told them that if they want to avoid this bad appearance in the future:
1. Why not just remove or substitute for "prohibited words" and send posts on through.
AND/OR
2. If they're going to reject posts in their entirety, at least they should identify what the specific offending text was.
Time will tell if they take that to heart.
Randall Cotton (aka tinkerdude)]