UPDATE: Reports from readers who have applied this patch suggests that this update doesn't actually fix the problems that readers are experiencing. I'm in communication with Dell now to see what the company has to say.
Seems that Dell's Alienware M17x notebooks have been suffering from a DPC latency issue that's been hitting audio performance. Today, Dell offers customers a fix.
DPC (Deferred Procedure Call) latency issues manifests itself with symptoms such as:
- Audio stutters, clicks, pops, and drops
- Frame drops while watching videos
- Audio/Video desync during video playback
Fortunately, there's a solution:
I’m very happy to share that engineering has discovered a solution for the DPC latency issues on the M17x. This process will resolve the DPC latency problem on all machines with a Dell factory image. Dell can’t guarantee that this solution will resolve issues on machines that have been modified by their owners.
And here's the 3-step fix:
- Make sure you have BIOS revision A03 installed. If not, upgrade to BIOS revision A03. Click on the previous link to download it.
- Run the mass storage controller utility. This will completely uninstall the existing mass storage control driver and install the Windows native mass storage controller driver.
- Make sure to install the Alienware wireless card driver, found here for the AW1397 WLAN or AW1510 WLAN, or here for the AW1520 WLAN.