DPC Latency Spikes on Lenovo Y530-4051, BIOS issue?

[jezz]

I've had my Y530 for about a year and have been basically satisfied with it. I recently started using it for listening to music and have noticed significant audio distortion and stutter through the Realtek audio device, the NVIDIA HDMI digital output, and using a USB sound card. I've tested using DirectSound, ASIO4ALL, and Wasapi. Up until now, I'd been using my desktop for listening to music, so I hadn't noticed it.

After reading the post at http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkStation/S20-Audio-Stutter-DPC-Latency-can-t-fix-it-Need-help/td-p/1... I decided to run the DPC latency checker tool and saw similar results as posted in the thread; I see a typical latency of ~250uS and spikes every 10 seconds I see a spike of ~2250uS. The spikes align with the blips, stutters, and other distortion I hear when I listen to music.

To test if the issue is my own doing, I've tried with Windows 7 64-bit and 32-bit, Vista 64-bit, and XP Pro 32-bit with basically every device driver disabled. Incidentally, even Ubuntu 10.04 has similar stutters, though I have no guarantee they align with the latency spikes. This is almost certainly a hardware or firmware issue. My suspicion is, like the issue present on S20 systems, that this is a BIOS problem.

Is there an updated BIOS present for the Y530? Has anyone else encountered this issue? Is this covered by my service plan? It disappoints me that a laptop that was marketed for multimedia basically cannot play music out of the box.

[XBrav Guru]

Honestly, I'd get the guys at the service depot to check it out.

It could be many things, but one thing is for sure: it isn't software.

If you give the folks at the call center enough details for the ticket, you won't get a machine back until the error is sorted out.

The latency spikes may be due to an issue with certain instructions in the CPU, a bridge communication issue, anything really. The pattern suggests it isn't a hard drive failure, or a memory failure, as these would be more sporatic.

Honestly, the guys at the depot usually flash your laptop up to the latest firmware for free anyways. Don't stress over figuring the cause, let them do the guessing and checking.

My repair for a faulty keyboard, with re-imaging, and a bios update was less than a week roundtrip in Canada.

Good luck!

[jezz]

I suppose that's the best option. I'd still be inclined to fix it myself if possible, just so I don't have to be down a laptop for a week.

For what it's worth, it's almost certainly not CPU instructions or the chipset itself; a configuration error perhaps but these are extraordinarily well verified parts, and a single instruction executes on the order of nanoseconds, not millseconds. Memory timing faults would manifest in a different way (memtest86 wouldn't pass, for one), and my SMART status is fine.

[XBrav Guru]

AHA A clue!

Strangely, I have the same Gigabyte board they mention in this thread:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/247210-30-audio-latency-problem-ds3r

So it seems to be a BIOS fault potentially. Now here's where it sucks.

I just looked into it, Lenovo doesn't provide a BIOS update whatsoever for your machine. That's really a pain.

If you want to do it in home, Lenovo usually has a User Repair system of some sort. This allows you to do warranty repairs in home.

Call in, and describe the issue. Find out if:

1) This is a known issue, or

2) You can get sent a flash drive or something with an updated BIOS, or

3) If it needs to be sent in.

That way, you don't have to commit to anything.

Another interesting read: http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/p/19245700/19411542.aspx

With these systems, they found the culprit to be the WLAN card. Try flipping the switch off, and see if that works.

I really hope one of these works for you. If it's a hardware defect, you'll have to send it away

[jezz]

I found that post on the Dell forums actually, and tested varying degrees of disabling the hardware (disabling the driver, disabling WLAN auto-config, etc.). I'm currently running with the up-to-date driver provided by Intel, not the one listed on the Y530 driver downloads page. In all circumstances, the issue remains.

I'll call into Lenovo support and post here if I have any success with it.