EDP OTHER throttling only in games

[imaginaryThrottling]

Hi I have an HP Pavillion Power 15-cb0xx which is about 4 years old now. It has an Intel i5-7300HQ which worked great for the first few years but ever since about 2 years ago it would start throttling the CPU. I have since replaced the hard disk with a 1 TB Samsung 860 QVO SSD and also a fan that broke with an OEM part from newegg. I recently repasted the CPU with Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut and undervolted the CPU core to -130 mV and the CPU cache to -120 mV with Throttlestop because I thought it was thermal throttling, but now whenever I play games like Battlefield 1 I get EDP OTHER flashing red in the limit reasons and the cpu throttles to about ~ 2.8 or less GHz. The computer came with overclocking that was advertised to reach 3.5 GHz but now I can rarely, if ever, maintain that for more than a few seconds. The weird thing is that it doesnt throttle at all during benchmarks like Cinebench R20, prime95 (though I haven't run that for more than 20 minutes), or TS bench, and the max power usage never exceeds ~22.6 W even though TDP is 45W. I have tried changing AC adaptors from the stock 150 W to a 200 W and that did nothing. I have tried a few of the settings in the TPL and FIVR windows in ThrottleStop and they did not seem to have much of an effect. Further, HWiNFO states "No" under all the throttling reasons across the board. Can someone please help me diagnose and/or fix what is going wrong and why my CPU can't handle demanding tasks? It overclocks perfectly well when I'm using the internet or doing nothing. I have attached the Throttlestop and HWiNFO readouts after a game of Battlefield, the EDP OTHER keeps flashing red even after I close the game.

 

[unclewebb]

In the TPL window set Power Limit 4 to a value of 0. In the FIVR window set IccMax for both the core and the cache to the maximum, 255.75. This usually fixes most EDP throttling problems.

The MMIO Lock box should be checked. There is hardly ever a need to check the MSR Lock box and there is never a need to use the PP0 Power Limit. Set the PP0 Power Limit back to 0, clear the Lock box for this and clear the check mark in the PP0 Power Limit box. You will need to reboot to reset the CPU. Do not check boxes randomly.

When making any adjustments in ThrottleStop, if something does not solve your problem, set it back to the way it was. The rest of your settings look OK.

Exit HWiNFO and turn on the Log File option in ThrottleStop. Go play a game for 15 minutes and then exit the game and exit ThrottleStop so it can finalize your log file. It should be in your ThrottleStop / Logs folder. Attach a log to your next post.

Your CPU does not support any overclocking. It uses Intel turbo boost. This is not the same as an overclock. The 35 multiplier is only available when 1 core is active. When playing a game, that will never happen.

the max power usage never exceeds ~22.6 W even though TDP is 45W

Intel 7th Gen mobile CPUs were not very power hungry. They tend to run at max speed well under the rated TDP, especially if you have reduced the voltage. Hopefully a Power Limit 4 and IccMax adjustment will get your 7300HQ running at its full rated speed.

 

[imaginaryThrottling]

I had some trouble finding the log files so I had to run the game a few times but here is the log file. The game seemed a little more choppy than before but I am not sure what to make of that. I have also attached the ThrottleStop settings I have now, in case I did not follow your directions correctly (I am not sure how to unlock the MSR setting as there is no lock box next to it). I noticed it is now PL1 Throttling as well.

 

[unclewebb]

You can clear the MSR lock box in the Power Limit Controls section.

Your log file shows a constant EDP throttling problem. There are a few different settings that can cause this. On newer CPUs, setting Power Limit 4 to a value of 0 might help. You can also try setting Power Limit 4 to the maximum value which is usually 1023.

I can see that you set IccMax to 255.75 for the core. That is good. Did you also set IccMax for the cache to 255.75?

There is another setting that can cause EDP throttling that ThrottleStop does not yet have access to. Maybe there will be a new ThrottleStop version next year to fix this problem.

 

[imaginaryThrottling]

I did set the IccMax for Cash to 255.75 as well. I also tried setting Power Limit 4 to 0 and to 1023 and neither one worked. I have attached my log from both Power Limit 4 settings below and the edp throttling remains pretty much constant ( I alt+tabbed to ThrottleStop at and set Powe Limit 4 to 1023 at around 02:23:00 ish). I found that other people with this laptop have had issues with edp throttling too so it might be a hardware problem.