Cache Ratio stuck at 600hz lower than Turbo Cores with Ring Down Bin on

[ccamfps]

Hello,

I have a 13980hx Asus ROG strix G18 in dGPU only mode (dont buy this laptop) and my cache ratio is stuck 600hz lower than turbo frequency with RDB on. If I turn RDB off I can get the cache ratio right at my turbo frequency and it holds there while not under serious load at least and no throttling happening. I was under the impression with RDB on, cache ratio would be held to at least 300hz less than turbo boost frequency and not 600hz. So why is this happening? Is it related to ecores? I have an all core boost set to 46x that will hold under most loads and ecores set to 36x. My temps never get hot.


As an aside, I am new to tuning hardware to this level and have been dealing with crazy performance issues on this laptop. This forum has been a godsend while I've been learning. Thank you!

 

[unclewebb]

So why is this happening?

I do not know. My 14900HX does the same thing. I have the Turbo Groups all set to 52 and the max cache ratio when Ring Down Bin is enabled is 46.

For my 100850K, having Ring Down Bin enabled would force the cache to always run 300 MHz slower compared to the core. Perhaps with Intel 13th and 14th Gen mobile HX processors, 300 MHz has now become 600 MHz slower. I do not have any documentation from Intel that shows when this might have changed. I am also not sure if this only applies to the mobile HX processors or if it applies to both desktop and mobile processors. I am guessing that it probably applies to both.

For 10th Gen, the overall CPU voltage would need to go way up to maintain stability when trying to run the cache 200 MHz or 100 MHz slower than the core. The extra voltage was just not worth it so leaving Ring Down Bin enabled was usually a good thing. The cache does not seem to be quite as sensitive on 14th Gen HX. I have not yet done any extensive testing to prove this theory.

Are you using the V/F Point feature? I set V/F Point 1 to 150 and I set the CPU Core and P Cache to -150. I just tried adding a little bit of additional voltage at the higher V/F points today and so far that has worked out quite well.

dont buy this laptop

All high performance laptops are junk. You have to spend way too much time trying to work through the bugs that manufacturers create.

My temps never get hot.

That means you should increase the turbo ratios and voltage some more. Consuming lots of power and creating heat are what Intel mobile CPUs are all about.

 

[ccamfps]

I do not know. My 14900HX does the same thing. I have the Turbo Groups all set to 52 and the max cache ratio when Ring Down Bin is enabled is 46.

For my 100850K, having Ring Down Bin enabled would force the cache to always run 300 MHz slower compared to the core. Perhaps with Intel 13th and 14th Gen mobile HX processors, 300 MHz has now become 600 MHz slower. I do not have any documentation from Intel that shows when this might have changed. I am also not sure if this only applies to the mobile HX processors or if it applies to both desktop and mobile processors. I am guessing that it probably applies to both.

For 10th Gen, the overall CPU voltage would need to go way up to maintain stability when trying to run the cache 200 MHz or 100 MHz slower than the core. The extra voltage was just not worth it so leaving Ring Down Bin enabled was usually a good thing. The cache does not seem to be quite as sensitive on 14th Gen HX. I have not yet done any extensive testing to prove this theory.

Are you using the V/F Point feature? I set V/F Point 1 to 150 and I set the CPU Core and P Cache to -150. I just tried adding a little bit of additional voltage at the higher V/F points today and so far that has worked out quite well.


All high performance laptops are junk. You have to spend way too much time trying to work through the bugs that manufacturers create.


That means you should increase the turbo ratios and voltage some more. Consuming lots of power and creating heat are what Intel mobile CPUs are all about.

I wish I could increase my turbo ratios and voltage but I'm constantly power limited from BIOS EDP Other on ring and core that I don't think I can change, though if you have any guidance I am all ears. Maybe I've done something very wrong. AFAIK Asus limited power draw significantly in their BIOS during games and since the most recent BIOS update 331, you can no longer revert to an older BIOS. I have tried no undervolt to see, but that didn't help either. However, when running benchmarks I can draw crazy power even with the dGPU under some load. Maybe there's a way to trick the bios into thinking an app is not a game? I have no clue how that BIOS mechanism works. While the laptop is sleeping it is allowed to draw insane power, so much so that at first I turned my fans to max while it was sleeping because of temps but ended up just turning off sleep all together. I was having an issue after some restarts (not clean shutdown) or coming back from sleep where my power would be insanely limited and TDP wouldn't go over 10-15, turbo ratios stuck at around 30, even with changing and forcing a bunch of power settings in TS.

I play Tarkov, which is extremely poorly optimized CPU limited, and is sensitive to clock changes and gets stutters whenever it changes, either from power throttling or even from just Speedshift when you go into a menu and then back to game or respawn in the Arenas mode and load drops. I force it to run on p cores, have turned off half of my e cores, and am considering turning off some p cores at this point. Dynamic boost is turned off per NVCP but I do also have it set to the lowest it can go in Ghelper/ArmouryCrate. I'm going to try taking out the battery too and see if that changes anything. My power supply is 330W so shouldn't be an issue, it doesn't get hot.

Are you using the V/F Point feature? I set V/F Point 1 to 150 and I set the CPU Core and P Cache to -150. I just tried adding a little bit of additional voltage at the higher V/F points today and so far that has worked out quite well.

I am using it for 800 Mhz and it seems to be working well.

All high performance laptops are junk. You have to spend way too much time trying to work through the bugs that manufacturers create.

That seems to be the case now. I bought an Asus ROG laptop back in 2013 and had no issues with that laptop and never even tuned it, used it all throughout college and it was actually so fast that for a programming assignment once to write a custom TCP-like protocol, my laptop was so fast it got me in trouble from my code running under the time limit on my laptop but not fast enough on the time limit when run on the college servers. One of the drives crapped out in it a couple of years ago, otherwise it still works great. Coming back to my current laptop, yeah gaming on laptops with a primary dual monitor seems broken nowadays. Gsync was completely broken with 200-500ms variable input lag (I now know how to fix this), usb-c alt DP is bad with DSC so can't use DLSS4 which means can't use DSR and games look bad from DSC, Windows 11 power plan/mode issues, Intel chip issues, BIOS issues, etc. Worst purchase of my life. I have a Lambo with the governor set at 3k RPMs.

 

[ccamfps]

I was having an issue after some restarts (not clean shutdown) or coming back from sleep where my power would be insanely limited and TDP wouldn't go over 10-15, turbo ratios stuck at around 30, even with changing and forcing a bunch of power settings in TS.

This happened with both sleep defaults on and off. As far as general TDP, I can never go over 60-65TDP

 

[ccamfps]

This laptop is absolute trash DO NOT BUY. There is some buffoonery going on with respect to Windows 11, power plans, power modes, Asus BIOS, Asus perf modes, ArmouryCrate, GHelper, display brightness with the root cause of the issues being Asus BIOS I believe (and by extension, AC and GHelper) interacting with Win 11 powerplans/modes. I've spent well over 100hrs on this thing in the last 4 weeks trying to make it run consistently, not even trying to max it out, just to make it run consistently. My temps never get hot while using it and am constantly CPU throttled from EDP Other even after removing a bunch of throttles in Throttlestop. Apart from TS, documentation on all of these things is god awful; for a consumer based software, the documentation is appalling. As a distributed systems software engineer, never in my life have I worked with more obtuse software and technology.

I have reset to defaults everywhere numerous times. Cleared CMOS, reset BIOS, reinstalled drivers, etc. I have done the troubleshooting on Ghelper and read many a thread. This laptop has barely been used. I bought it at the very end of 2023 for some travelling and light gaming, then didn't use it for over a year as I had a different machine. CMOS battery is fine. It had maybe 20hrs of usage on it before I started it up again last month. I wish I would've used it more heavily last year as I would've sent it right the hell back while it was under warranty.

List of issues per my understanding
- Most recent BIOS 331 has issues and can't be reverted once you have 331. There is no warning or notice about this.
- BIOS is locked down harder than Fort Knox. Can't change anything of importance.
- Laptop will get stuck at 45w, 55w, and max power CPU will draw is 65W, even while boosting, while doing anything other than benchmarks. If it gets stuck at 45w or 55w, only fix I've found is reset BIOS again but maybe there's something easier. While doing benchmarks it can draw high power (?????). Using GHelper alone I don't believe I ever got it back to 65W once my PC was limited to 45/55. Only Armoury Crate let me get back there after a BIOS reset.
- After restarting or sleeping, power is significantly limited to even lower than 45W sometimes and cache/trubo ratios will get stuck at around 30. A hard shutdown is required. Hilariously, the laptop can draw insane power while it's sleeping and get very hot unless you setup the fans for it, but once it comes out of sleep it can't draw that same power.
- None of the specified custom PL1 and PL2 limits in Armoury Crate, GHelper, or Throttlestop seem to ever actually get applied because BIOS seems to have ultimate say. HWInfo, XTU, etc all read from intel and are misleading on this Asus BIOS.
- Cant tune fans on ArmouryCrate except for Manual Mode but Manual Mode seems to have issues being stuck at some random power limit at boot.
- No setting values, display, or documentation in Armoury Crate on any power limits, PL1, PL2, etc for each of the Asus perf modes.
- If you do manage to get it to 65W, simply opening GHelper and trying to change the fans for any Asus perf mode, GHelper will change power mode regardless of if you have apply power limits checked or not (these only apply to pl1 and pl2 I guess) and then laptop will be stuck at 45W/55W again. If you try to change power plan/mode back to what it was prior, doesnt matter, still stuck at 45W/55W. <- this just happened to me again a few minutes ago. You can custom set some power plan GUIDs for each Asus Perf mode in GHelper config but this seemed to cause other issues. Either way, regardless if there's a json config fix, by default, GHelper should not overwrite the Power Mode just when changing fans. Oh and again, can't tune fans in Armoury Crate for any mode that's not Manual Mode.
- GHelper and Armoury Crate have different Windows power plans for the same Asus Perf Mode.
- While I appreciate the GHelper devs for their efforts, the majority of settings in GHelper config have 0 documentation even in the Power Users page on GHelper Github. Every setting should have documentation, especially for consumer facing software.
- The most bewildering thing of all, primary and secondary display brightness will get slightly brighter after every reboot and the only controls when dGPU is on, are through Nvidia but you end up running out of slider to tone down the display brightness. I think this is related to power plan/mode at boot changing when windows comes up but am not sure. It gets bad enough to hurt my eyes and gives me a headache.

I'm not sure all of the problems are Asus' fault, however, if the BIOS wasn't so locked down and opaque in setting power limits/values, power plans, and power modes from AC/GH, I believe win 11 power issues could get worked around. Things are so opaque, and I can't even see any of the actual power limits being applied from BIOS and AC, it's hard to get a certain understanding of what's going on. What I am certain of, is that this laptop is a POS.

Throttlestop has been great to work with though. It has helped me a bunch with this PC but unfortunately it's just limited in what it can do in this PC from the BIOS. The Nvidia GPU has also been good despite a really bad issue with GSync that I think is related to it being a laptop and Win11 while using a second monitor.