GTX 1060 in Lenovo Y720 laptop Stuck at Low Core Clocks (500–600MHz) – "Performance Limit: Power" Always Active

[starlord96]

Hi everyone,

I'm having an issue with my Lenovo Legion Y720 gaming laptop. The GTX 1060 6GB (Mobile) GPU is consistently running at very low core clock speeds — typically around 500–600MHz, only occasionally jumping to around 1200MHz under load. This is severely impacting gaming and performance across the board.

System Specs:​

• Laptop: Lenovo Legion Y720 (Model 80VR)
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB (Mobile)
• CPU: Intel Core i7-7700HQ
• RAM: 16GB DDR4
• Storage: 256GB SSD + 1TB HDD
• OS: Windows 11 using TPM bypass method
• Drivers: NVIDIA 576.02
• BIOS Version: rolled back to 4GCN31WW

Diagnostics:​

Using HWiNFO, I noticed that "Performance Limit - Power" is stuck on "Yes", even at idle, and only occasionally flickers to "No". Other performance limiters (thermal, voltage, utilization) are mostly off. GPU temperatures are staying in the mid-40s to mid-50s °C at idle and go up to mid-60s to max 70°C under load, so I don’t think this is thermal throttling. The battery is quite worn out at 63% of design capacity.

Steps I’ve Tried:​

• Clean reinstall of GPU drivers using DDU
• Rolled back BIOS since I read the latest bios version had issues
• Switched power plan to "High Performance" in Windows
• Verified NVIDIA Control Panel is set to "Prefer maximum performance"
• Cleaned laptop internals and fans.
• Changed thermal pads and paste
• Checked for any Lenovo Vantage power-saving settings (none found affecting GPU)

Questions:​

• Could this be a power delivery issue with the internal VRM or motherboard?
• Is this a known issue with this model or GTX 1060 laptops in general?
• Is this a power supply / battery issue issue?
• Any suggestions for further troubleshooting?

Any help or insight is much appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

 

[StViolenceDay]

Expand "GPU rail powers" and "GPU Rail voltages" in Hwinfo64. Maybe there is some strange value present. Optimally those should be compared with values from similar laptop to say if they are normal or not, but even without such reference sometimes a strange thing may be noticed there

 

[eidairaman1]

Hi everyone,

I'm having an issue with my Lenovo Legion Y720 gaming laptop. The GTX 1060 6GB (Mobile) GPU is consistently running at very low core clock speeds — typically around 500–600MHz, only occasionally jumping to around 1200MHz under load. This is severely impacting gaming and performance across the board.

System Specs:​

• Laptop: Lenovo Legion Y720 (Model 80VR)
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB (Mobile)
• CPU: Intel Core i7-7700HQ
• RAM: 16GB DDR4
• Storage: 256GB SSD + 1TB HDD
• OS: Windows 11 using TPM bypass method
• Drivers: NVIDIA 576.02
• BIOS Version: rolled back to 4GCN31WW

Diagnostics:​

Using HWiNFO, I noticed that "Performance Limit - Power" is stuck on "Yes", even at idle, and only occasionally flickers to "No". Other performance limiters (thermal, voltage, utilization) are mostly off. GPU temperatures are staying in the mid-40s to mid-50s °C at idle and go up to mid-60s to max 70°C under load, so I don’t think this is thermal throttling. The battery is quite worn out at 63% of design capacity.

View attachment 397440

View attachment 397441

Steps I’ve Tried:​

• Clean reinstall of GPU drivers using DDU
• Rolled back BIOS since I read the latest bios version had issues
• Switched power plan to "High Performance" in Windows
• Verified NVIDIA Control Panel is set to "Prefer maximum performance"
• Cleaned laptop internals and fans.
• Changed thermal pads and paste
• Checked for any Lenovo Vantage power-saving settings (none found affecting GPU)

Questions:​

• Could this be a power delivery issue with the internal VRM or motherboard?
• Is this a known issue with this model or GTX 1060 laptops in general?
• Is this a power supply / battery issue issue?
• Any suggestions for further troubleshooting?

Any help or insight is much appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

Mobiles in general will go into a stuck mode like this when a gpu is failing, under fresh os install ofc.

Have you used the drivers from Lenovo directly?

Also keep in mind sometimes bricks fail too

 

[starlord96]

Expand "GPU rail powers" and "GPU Rail voltages" in Hwinfo64. Maybe there is some strange value present. Optimally those should be compared with values from similar laptop to say if they are normal or not, but even without such reference sometimes a strange thing may be noticed there

Sorry I'm not very familiar with this, so can't make sense if there is something abnormal. Any help is appreciated

 

[starlord96]

Mobiles in general will go into a stuck mode like this when a gpu is failing, under fresh os install ofc.

Have you used the drivers from Lenovo directly?

Also keep in mind sometimes bricks fail too

Drivers were auto installed by w11. I'll try reinstalling these from the Lenovo website. What drivers should I look for exactly? Will test the brick with a multimeter to see if that's the issue.

 

[StViolenceDay]

View attachment 397601

Core input power looks unrealistically wrong (too big compared to real value). It either firmware/driver problem or hardware problem. Actually this problem is more common on newer Turing+ GPUs, so don't know what exactly is most common reason for Pascal GPUs

Do you know how problem started? Did it suddenly appear from nowhere or there were some firmware updates/etc?

 

[starlord96]

Core input power looks unrealistically wrong (too big compared to real value). It either firmware/driver problem or hardware problem. Actually this problem is more common on newer Turing+ GPUs, so don't know what exactly is most common reason for Pascal GPUs

Do you know how problem started? Did it suddenly appear from nowhere or there were some firmware updates/etc?

Not really sure when this started but I installed w11 recently through the tpm bypass method and tried gaming that's when I noticed this. I am going to revert to w10 and if it still persists will try a new brick and battery