I7-9850H throttling nonstop when playing games (0.8Ghz)

[PajamaKing]

Hello everyone.

My Dell Latitude 5501 doesn't stop throttling, and i've tried everything.

I've tried undervolting, overvolting, disabling turbo, disabling TPL limits and time, Disable turbo limits, Limiting turbo ratio limits, uninstalling Intel Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework, and this is still happening. I'm getting desperate.

Here's my throttlestop setup (i messed heavly with it, and this setup seems to delay the throttle when playing games, but it still happens in around 10 to 20 minutes, dropping FID to 8.00).

Throttlestop log included.

Does it seem like some kind of hardware failure?

 

[unclewebb]

some kind of hardware failure?

You have discovered a common problem with some Dell laptops. Your log file makes it easy to see what is going on.

   DATE       TIME    MULTI   C0%   CKMOD  BAT_mW  TEMP   NVIDIA GPU     VID   POWER
2021-04-06  00:53:45  25.57   46.3  100.0       0   75     747    70   0.7406   12.1   PL2
2021-04-06  00:53:46  25.86   42.3  100.0       0   76     696    70   0.7401   11.6   PL2
2021-04-06  00:53:47  25.95   40.1  100.0       0   74     696    70   0.7427   11.4   PL2
2021-04-06  00:53:48  25.97   40.5  100.0       0   74     696    70   0.7500   11.5   PL2
2021-04-06  00:53:49  25.90   41.4  100.0       0   74     696    70   0.7567   11.5   PL2
2021-04-06  00:53:50  25.87   40.7  100.0       0   74     696    70   0.7393   11.5   PL2
2021-04-06  00:53:51  25.99   41.1  100.0       0   74     696    70   0.7468   11.5
2021-04-06  00:53:52  25.27   48.4  100.0       0   74     696    70   0.7102   12.2   PL2
2021-04-06  00:53:53  25.92   41.7  100.0       0   74     696    70   0.7076   11.7
2021-04-06  00:53:54  25.97   40.0  100.0       0   75     696    70   0.7487   11.4   PL2
2021-04-06  00:53:55  25.37   42.7  100.0       0   73     696    70   0.6526   11.5   PL1
2021-04-06  00:53:56   9.57   61.1  100.0       0   72     139    70   0.5385    7.5   PL1
2021-04-06  00:53:57   8.00   51.6  100.0       0   72     139    70   0.5376   10.4   PL1
2021-04-06  00:53:58   8.00   53.9  100.0       0   71     139    69   0.5424    8.9   PL1
2021-04-06  00:53:59   8.00   47.4  100.0       0   72     139    69   0.5393   10.4   PL1
2021-04-06  00:54:00   8.00   45.8  100.0       0   71     696    69   0.5334   10.2   PL1
2021-04-06  00:54:01   8.00   81.8  100.0       0   72     696    69   0.5376    8.5   PL1
2021-04-06  00:54:02   8.00   67.1  100.0       0   72     139    69   0.5409    8.5   PL1
2021-04-06  00:54:03   8.00   56.2  100.0       0   71     139    69   0.5326   10.8   PL1
2021-04-06  00:54:04   8.00   52.1  100.0       0   71     139    69   0.5366    9.4   PL1
2021-04-06  00:54:05   8.00   51.6  100.0       0   72     139    69   0.5349    9.0   PL1

There is nothing wrong with your CPU or GPU temperatures and power consumption is well under the 45W TDP rating. In competitor's laptops, I have seen this same CPU easily run at 60W without any throttling.

Your Dell laptop starts out by power limit throttling (PL2) your 45W CPU down to 11.5W. There appears to be no legitimate reason to be doing this. Of course it gets worse. After that, PL1 power limit throttling starts. My best guess is that Dell is setting the PL1 power limit to 5W or maybe they really screwed up and set PL1 to 0W. Whatever the PL1 limit is set to, it forces the CPU to run at its slowest possible speed, 800 MHz. This goes on for over 2 minutes in your log file which makes your laptop unusable. It goes back up to a mildly throttled speed and then goes back into another severe throttling episode at 800 MHz. It likely repeats this cycle over and over again.

Intel CPUs have at least three unique sets of turbo power limits. ThrottleStop and Intel XTU only give you access to two sets of these turbo power limits. The third set of power limits is usually fed power limit information from an embedded controller (EC). I believe Dell started including this throttling method with many of their 8th Gen laptops. The log file tells me what is going on but I have no idea why any engineer thinks it is OK to slow a laptop down to 800 MHz for extended periods of time. No idea if your laptop had this problem when it was brand new. It was probably part of the original design. Perhaps the slow down was not as severe back then. Perhaps a sensor feeding info into the EC has failed. None of this is publicly documented. It will be difficult to find someone at the Dell call center that fully understands this problem let alone admits to what is going on.

All of the various power limits that you have tried to Lock by using ThrottleStop are being ignored. The lowest power limit managed by the EC always wins. ThrottleStop has no access to that power limit.

If your warranty has ended then you will need to start replacing parts like the power adapter, the battery and the motherboard. A used motherboard might have the exact same problem or it might develop the exact same problem soon after you buy it. Your Dell laptop is definitely not the first Dell laptop that I have seen with this severe throttling problem. There is no simple solution.

 

[PajamaKing]

Hmmm, so basically it has a hardset power limit.
If i take the power usage of the computer down, it should theoretically stop the throttling? (undervolt did delay the throttle, but it came back)

If so, do you have any tips around taking the power usage of the computer down? (i just really want to run some basic games without lagging after reading what you typed, i already gave up on running cpu-intensive games)

also, a little more info on the case, when i undervolted the CPU past -150 it would always bluescreen (so -125 was the limit i set), and after bluescreening, the PL1 would go to 7W on XTU, and i would have to change it back up again. As you said, that's probably being ignored, and the hardset power limit should be around 7W.

 

[unclewebb]

power usage of the computer down

This does not matter. You might be able to delay the inevitable slightly but that is about it. You are still going to have a laptop that throttles down to 800 MHz for more than 2 minutes at a time. You cannot use it to run any intensive task if it is being limited to 800 MHz. As soon as PL1 throttling starts, that is all the performance you get.

the hardset power limit should be around 7W

The power limit should never be set to anything less than 45W. It is likely being set, incorrectly, to 0 Watts. This is what forces the CPU down to its slowest speed. It keeps slowing down to get power consumption down to 0 Watts. This is impossible so that is why it is stuck at 800 MHz.

I would contact Dell and try to get this elevated way higher than the person that answers the phone. That will probably end up being a waste of your time but I do not know what else you can do. There is no fix for the mess that Dell has created. Piles of different Dell laptop models have this exact same problem.

 

[Zonde]

@PajamaKing .
This is caused by the DPTF driver, Apparently dell decided that the temperature limits of the CPU or it's vrms (I forget which one) have to be set like really low. You can find how to disable this just try googling like DPTF dell disable or something.
I dont really know what the DPTF exactly does in laptops so Read up on that too, just giving you a heads up on what the problem might be.


Edit: here's one such tutorial https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/a27e1l