ATT: unclewebb - 12th Gen i7 Advice please

[witblitz]

Hi @unclewebb

First off, thanks for your invaluable software and support. If you charged for it, I would gladly pay for it.

I'll try keep this brief as possible.

I have a new Dell XPS 15 9520 laptop. Specs below:

12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-12700H 2.30 GHz
16GB RAM
Nvidia RTX 3050 Ti GPU
Win 11 Pro

I've bought this 90% for work and audio (DAW) stuff and 10% for gaming. This post is in relation to gaming performance only.

From a tutorial I found online I've disabled both of these from device manager - "Nvidia platform controllers and framework" as well as "Intel integrated sensor solution"

I've gleaned as much as I can from your replies to other posts. I realise that its not possible to undervolt my CPU and so TPL settings are my only hope so I've left out any FIVR stuff. I was initially getting terrible FPS playing the only game I really play atm - COD warzone. After some adjustments I've gotten a pretty reasonable FPS which is all I'm really after.

That said, I've been made aware that the build quality in terms of thermals on these laptops is not great and so I'm after a balance of performance without pushing this thing to its limits indefinitely, although I know these CPUs are designed to run close to 100 celsius without issue. I'm a bit of a n00b with this stuff so I'm not sure if my paranoia is warranted or not.

I've attached a log - this goes from Idle to a full game of COD and then back to idle.

Below are my Throttlestop settings:

It seems to thermal throttle a bit going into the game and coming out of it - not sure if this is normal. I see it doesn't hit PL2 too often.

Is there anything you recommend I tweak to perhaps get a bit more performance without pushing the limits too much?

Thanks in advance!
W

 

[unclewebb]

Product Specifications

quick reference guide including specifications, features, pricing, compatibility, design documentation, ordering codes, spec codes and more.

ark.intel.com

Intel says the 12700H has a Maximum Power Rating of 115W but the cooling solution that Dell is using is barely good enough for 45W without the CPU reaching 100°C. Dell really needs to up their game and improve the cooling solution for these laptops. Maybe they need to shoot a little higher than barely adequate.

Your decision to set the long term PL1 power limit to 40W is about right. You might be able to get away with 45W on a cool day but that is about it. Lowering the power limits does sacrifice some performance but there is not much else you can do. You should also consider lowering the turbo time limit. If your CPU cannot run at the 60W PL2 limit for 28 seconds without overheating, try lowering the turbo time limit from 28 seconds to about 8 seconds. That is about all your cooling system can handle.

You can run Intel CPUs up to 100°C and you should not have any log term issues. Intel has been setting the thermal throttling temperature to 100°C for the vast majority of Core i CPUs that they have produced since 2008. If this was a problem, Intel would have lowered this spec years ago. Thermal throttling works great. The CPU will look after itself and slow down automatically if any core reaches 100°C. No need for users to worry about the CPU temperature. Use whatever settings provide the smoothest game play.

 

[witblitz]

Thank you for or the quick reply.

Your sentiment RE Dells cooling seems to be common. Quite annoyed tbh but I need a thin laptop for travel and there doesnt seem to be much choice out there.

I'll change the turbo time limit to 8s

Does a PL2 of 60 make sense? I had it at 65 for a bit. I'm pretty much taking shots in the dark so far

As for speedshift settings - does 4 / 58 make sense for this CPU?

Thanks again!
W

 

[unclewebb]

Does a PL2 of 60 make sense?

60W or 65W sounds about right for PL2. You are limited by your cooling.

I have never had my hands on a Dell XP with a 12700H for testing purposes. Your Speed Shift settings sound about right. I do not have any magic numbers that you should plug into ThrottleStop for 12th Gen mobile CPUs.

 

[witblitz]

Thanks again

 

[ADTS001]

Have you disable virtualization? Try this command : bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off
Then reboot.
It will disable hypervisor which blocks MSR access. If you still can’t modify FIVR after doing it, maybe your motherboard has been plundervolted.

 

[unclewebb]

If you still can’t modify FIVR

He can access the MSR registers including the FIVR voltage control register. Starting with 12th Gen mobile H series processors, Intel allows reading voltage information from the FIVR register but Intel has blocked writing voltage information to this register. Intel might claim that this was done to prevent Plundervolt attacks but it was mostly just a cash grab. Users will need to spend a lot more money for a 12900HK. The HK series is fully unlocked. Both the CPU multiplier and voltage are unlocked.

 

[witblitz]

Right - so I'm correct in assuming there is absolutely no way to undervolt this chip?

 

[GreiverBlade]

That said, I've been made aware that the build quality in terms of thermals on these laptops is not great

technically all laptop are like that unless very specific laptops.

Right - so I'm correct in assuming there is absolutely no way to undervolt this chip?

it would seems so, at least i never was able to undervolt any of my Intel laptops i had till today (never had a HK mobile, not worth it in my oppinion )

optional.

Spoiler: nonetheless, i would inquire why you did settle for a laptop with an i7 12th gen

rather than, let say a R9 5900/6900HX 45W?

that i7 12700H in my regard amount to a gimped desktop i5 (not bad per se, the 5900/6900HX are also R7 5800/6800 in disguise )

for gaming and DAW i suspect that AMD powered laptop offering would be more relevant (and also on the thermal and autonomy side)

for example, at the same price as the Dell XPS 15 9520, but ~500gr heavier the Lenovo 5 Pro pack a R7 6800H, 32gb RAM and a RTX 3070Ti

​

 

[witblitz]

technically all laptop are like that unless very specific laptops.


it would seems so, at least i never was able to undervolt any of my Intel laptops i had till today (never had a HK mobile, not worth it in my oppinion )

optional.

Spoiler: nonetheless, i would inquire why you did settle for a laptop with an i7 12th gen

rather than, let say a R9 5900/6900HX 45W?

that i7 12700H in my regard amount to a gimped desktop i5 (not bad per se, the 5900/6900HX are also R7 5800/6800 in desguise )

for gaming and DAW i suspect that AMD powered laptop offering would be more relevant (and also on the thermal and autonomy side)

for example, at the same price as the Dell XPS 15 9520, but ~500gr heavier the Lenovo 5 Pro pack a R7 6800H, 32gb RAM and a RTX 3070Ti

​

I had various reasons to go for another XPS (have had an XPS 13 for 5 years that served me very well). If you read my initial post I mention that I need a thin and light laptop as I travel a lot and the majority of my time on it is for work which is not that CPU intensive. I agree that Dell are absolute jokers for charging what they do, shoving these laptops full of components that you can barely utilize to their potential. Anyways, had my previous XPS not served me so well in terms of size/weight, longevity and reliability (and Dell warranty services) I would not have gone for another one

Had Dell offered a Ryzen option I Would have gone for it but sadly not the case

As for now, I can play COD on med-low settings at 100FPS on average which on my 60Hz display is good enough

Also, that Lenovo laptop is a whole half a kg heavier (this is a lot) and is your typical plastic feeling thiccc boi gaming laptop. Not for me, sir!

 

[GreiverBlade]

I had various reasons to go for another XPS (have had an XPS 13 for 5 years that served me very well). If you read my initial post I mention that I need a thin and light laptop as I travel a lot and the majority of my time on it is for work which is not that CPU intensive. I agree that Dell are absolute jokers for charging what they do, shoving these laptops full of components that you can barely utilize to their potential. Anyways, had my previous XPS not served me so well in terms of size/weight, longevity and reliability (and Dell warranty services) I would not have gone for another one

Had Dell offered a Ryzen option I Would have gone for it but sadly not the case

As for now, I can play COD on med-low settings at 100FPS on average which on my 60Hz display is good enough

Also, that Lenovo laptop is a whole half a kg heavier (this is a lot) and is your typical plastic feeling thiccc boi gaming laptop. Not for me, sir!

valids reason as any others,
well, "to my defense" , my own laptop (an old dog from Lenovo a G50-70 ) is heavy indeed, which is why i did not think a 2.4~kg lappy is not heavy compared to a 1.96kg, and also thick, although usually thickness on a laptop is linked to better cooling.

the Legion 7 is among the few "gaming" laptops that do not look like a "gaming" device to me ... (but i agree on the plastic feeling)

as long as you are happy with your gears and performances, it's all right
100deg C is not that much of a problem on a thin laptop (as long as it's not resting on your lap while gaming ) as unclewebb mentioned.

 

[witblitz]

yea its certainly not ideal and I'm a bit peeved with Dell about these consistently poor design decisions, but its been cruising so far and no BSODs are any other nonsense as yet. 2 hour gaming sessions with fans going absolutely ape sh*t are just part of the trade off here if you want a super thin laptop I guess!

Anyways thanks for your help guys

I have 2 more n00b questions while you guys are here and I'll leave you alone!

1. does it make sense to just leave throttlestop running all the time? At the moment I only launch it before gaming, as my daily work tasks barely ever get the fans spinning. but it would be much easier to have it run on startup
2. Does the power plan drop down menu in the main window (Performance) override the Windows settings? My TS profile is currently set to High performance. If I close TS - does it revert back to whatever power plan was on beforehand? I also have Dell's "My Dell" software preinstalled which is where I set power plans.

Thanks in advance

 

[unclewebb]

ThrottleStop does not do anything as soon as it exits. It will not change whatever Windows power plan you are in when it exits.

The ThrottleStop High Performance selection tells Windows to use its built in High Performance power plan. On many laptops, this power plan is now hidden so I thought it would be a useful feature to allow users to still be able to access this if needed.

If you are going to use Dell's software to control your Windows power plan, I would not use the power plan option in ThrottleStop. Avoid conflicts. Always try to minimize the number of different programs that are all fighting against each other over control of your CPU.

I recommend leaving ThrottleStop running all of the time. It takes a bare minimum of memory and CPU resources and is useful to show temperatures in the system tray.

 

[ADTS001]

He can access the MSR registers including the FIVR voltage control register. Starting with 12th Gen mobile H series processors, Intel allows reading voltage information from the FIVR register but Intel has blocked writing voltage information to this register. Intel might claim that this was done to prevent Plundervolt attacks but it was mostly just a cash grab. Users will need to spend a lot more money for a 12900HK. The HK series is fully unlocked. Both the CPU multiplier and voltage are unlocked.

I see. Luckily I’m using 6th Gen Intel. Could still undervolt. My laptop has a new firmware which blocks undervolt but thankfully users could still downgrade. My laptop gets so hot without undervolt. It could reach 69 degrees. With undervolt under very heavy load, it was 64 degrees max.

 

[(00)]

On many laptops, this power plan is now hidden so I thought it would be a useful feature to allow users to still be able to access this if needed.

@unclewebb
Yes. And, thank you very much.

m(_ _)m

 

[witblitz]

ThrottleStop does not do anything as soon as it exits. It will not change whatever Windows power plan you are in when it exits.

The ThrottleStop High Performance selection tells Windows to use its built in High Performance power plan. On many laptops, this power plan is now hidden so I thought it would be a useful feature to allow users to still be able to access this if needed.

If you are going to use Dell's software to control your Windows power plan, I would not use the power plan option in ThrottleStop. Avoid conflicts. Always try to minimize the number of different programs that are all fighting against each other over control of your CPU.

I recommend leaving ThrottleStop running all of the time. It takes a bare minimum of memory and CPU resources and is useful to show temperatures in the system tray.

Just a note on this for anyone who might be interested - changing Dell's power plan appears to have no impact on the Windows power plan

Below is the My Dell app thermal settings page and below that my powercfg result which shows Windows is in high Performance mode

I've disabled anything to do with power plans in Throttlestop in any case

 

[witblitz]

Hi @unclewebb - apologies if this is not the right place to post this query - happy to repost in appropriate forum if necessary.

In a nutshell, I've got Throttlestop running on startup via a scheduled task and lives in my system tray with only CPU temp showing, however it seems to close randomly.

I'm on the latest build of Windows 11. This morning my laptop went on around 10.39am and by 11.39am it disappeared from the system tray. I had TS logs running for this reason, and they stop suddenly at this time - almost exactly an hour had passed which seems suspicious

There is nothing in any Event viewer logs either.

TS is running purely for convenience and my TPL settings probably don't kick in unless I'm playing games.

Any ideas?

UPDATE:

OK Im an idiot. My scheduled task was set to "stop the task if it runs longer than 1 hour"

That must be the culprit

That said, any idea why this task stays on "running" even after its successfully met the conditions?

i.e. on Logon - run Throttlestop.exe

Even running it on demand does the same - shows running permanently

How do I get this task to know that its actually completed

Sorry for my ignorance

 

[unclewebb]

Here is an example of how a Task Scheduler task should look.

Effective clock speed

Hi, I have a problem with my CPU (8700K), which is that my effective core clock speeds decrease after a while. I have an all core OC set to 4.7GHz and initially when starting the PC, the effective core clocks are 4.7GHz as well when CPU is under load. These are later (like 10 mins later after...

www.techpowerup.com

shows running permanently

If ThrottleStop is running in the background then I guess the task is never complete. Not sure. All I know is that the above method to create a task works to start ThrottleStop when Windows 10 starts. It likely works exactly the same in Windows 11.

When a task is properly setup, ThrottleStop should never close or shut down randomly. If you move the mouse over top of the ThrottleStop system tray icons and they just disappear, that is a good sign that the task was not created correctly. Some setting in the task is telling Windows to kill ThrottleStop.exe

 

[witblitz]

Hi @unclewebb

hope youre well.

Hope you don't mind me revisiting this post but not much has changed on my end except for the latest version of TS, however I was having strange issues just prior to upgrading.

Current "performance" Settings below, Anything I should change?

I also just noticed that I needed to disable VBS as per your readme which it appears I never did before. Does this mean TS had no effect in the past?!

I've also attached a log file from some gameplay and hoping you could take a quick look.

In a nutshell, up until 15:41 (not sure of seconds) everything was fine performance-wise. After this time, my framerate dropped IMMEDIATELY from 70 (which normally holds easily) down to around 30 and would not budge. This has happened 2 or 3 times in the past few days only. I've had no real issues prior to that... It is however extremely hot where I am at the moment so wondering if this could be heat related.

If you recall, the XPS I have is terribly designed:

In your words:

Intel says the 12700H has a Maximum Power Rating of 115W but the cooling solution that Dell is using is barely good enough for 45W without the CPU reaching 100°C. Dell really needs to up their game and improve the cooling solution for these laptops. Maybe they need to shoot a little higher than barely adequate.

Your decision to set the long term PL1 power limit to 40W is about right. You might be able to get away with 45W on a cool day but that is about it. Lowering the power limits does sacrifice some performance but there is not much else you can do. You should also consider lowering the turbo time limit. If your CPU cannot run at the 60W PL2 limit for 28 seconds without overheating, try lowering the turbo time limit from 28 seconds to about 8 seconds. That is about all your cooling system can handle.

Any advice would be greatly appreciate as I'm really lost here.

One last thing I noticed - my event logs are flooded with these errors from Intel thermal management policy every single second of the day with error:

"Failed to set power limits PL1 is disabled"

Is this normal? It makes the event viewer quite useless as one cant find anything else in there so I would love to get rid of these.

I also wonder who c:\jenkins is because thats not a user on my machine!

Any advice welcome! Sorry for all the questions!

Many thanks,
WB

 

[unclewebb]

Locking the MSR PL1 power limit to 35W reduces heat and power consumption but it also kills performance.

the XPS I have is terribly designed

The Dell XPS line has had various issues for the last 15 years. It is the sole reason that I originally wrote ThrottleStop. Their typically beautiful screens are not worth all of the aggravation that is included with many XPS laptops.

The Intel IPF driver is not very happy with you locking both power limits. If it was my laptop, I would prevent that driver from installing or running on my computer. If you do not want to see constant errors in the Event Viewer then you have to either remove that driver or do not lock your power limits. I am not sure if the locked MMIO power limits or the locked MSR power limits are causing the driver to complain to Windows. Probably both.

up until 15:41

I do not see any significant change at 15:41. Your CPU is struggling to stay under 90°C even though you reduced power consumption to a measly 35W. I do not have any suggestions to improve a laptop that is defective because of a poorly engineered cooling solution. In the old days when people used to contact Dell to complain, they were informed that if you want to play games on a laptop, you should have bought an Alienware laptop. I have been shopping elsewhere ever since hearing that nonsense.

 

[PHVM_BR]

Just a note on this for anyone who might be interested - changing Dell's power plan appears to have no impact on the Windows power plan

Below is the My Dell app thermal settings page and below that my powercfg result which shows Windows is in high Performance mode

View attachment 266490

View attachment 266491

I've disabled anything to do with power plans in Throttlestop in any case

I believe that if you select Ultra Performance on My Dell you can get slightly better and more stable results in more demanding tasks like games...

I already had contact with XPS 9500/9510 that are basically the same as yours, but with older hardware, and in both cases the performance gain with the change of thermal compound was quite large.

In most models Dell uses poor quality thermal paste, in addition to the chance of the factory application being poorly done.

You would have a good gain in thermal headroom with the repast well done...

 

[witblitz]

Thanks both. I did in fact do a re-paste but honestly haven't had much improvement in thermals overall.

During a game of MW2 (capped at 60ish FPS) my CPU temps are hitting between 90 and 100 and my GPU (3050Ti) is hitting 74 degrees (max temp) pretty much all the time.

I might do another re-paste soon and actually replace those terrible thermal pads Dell use as well

Overall, pathetic I have to go to this much effort to game on a top-end laptop!!

 

[WLF]

Thanks both. I did in fact do a re-paste but honestly haven't had much improvement in thermals overall.

During a game of MW2 (capped at 60ish FPS) my CPU temps are hitting between 90 and 100 and my GPU (3050Ti) is hitting 74 degrees (max temp) pretty much all the time.

I might do another re-paste soon and actually replace those terrible thermal pads Dell use as well

Overall, pathetic I have to go to this much effort to game on a top-end laptop!!

I'd recommend getting one of those cheap havit cooling pads, they are light and greatly reduce temps from my experience (although it varies depending on the laptop). You don't even really need to plug it in, it's just the fact that the laptop is raised off an impermeable surface a few inches so the heat can't collect on the bottom. Also, the 3050 Ti is nowhere near top end, so I wouldn't expect the best performance. All Dell XPS laptops are criminally overpriced for the components you get. I consider the XPS lineup a scam when you take into account the ASUS Zephyrus lineup (especially the G14), which is better than the XPS lineup in virtually every way.

 

[witblitz]

Hi @unclewebb and co

I'd just like to revisit this one thing as it is still occurring and clearly as a result of TS setting TPL limits.

This error is flooding my event logs every single second of the day (literally), making it impossible to troubleshoot any other issues...

My questions are:

1. What is throwing this error - TS or some other service (Dell, intel, microsoft etc)
2. Who is "c:\jenkins" ? - this not a profile or path on my machine...
3. Is TS actually doing its job in setting TPL?
4. Most importantly, how do I stop this from happening!?

Any insights would be much appreciated!

Many thanks
WB

 

[unclewebb]

Post a screenshot of the TPL window so I can see how your power limits are set up.

Windows is not complaining about ThrottleStop. It is complaining about the not so intelligent DPTF driver. If you checked the MMIO Lock box in ThrottleStop, the DPTF driver does not like it that it no longer has control of the MMIO power limits. I would get rid of the DPTF driver and I would block Windows from re-installing it.

Who is "c:\jenkins" ? - this not a profile or path on my machine

The driver might be creating a temporary or hidden directory on your computer. This is definitely a path on your machine. It has nothing to do with ThrottleStop.