Infuriating Power Throttling at Low Temps - XPS 13 9310

[mujjuman]

Hi, thank you for posting this. This has been super useful.
Is there a way to reverse this and put it back to stock? What are the stock values.
I still get my laptop settling down to 15W, although it takes a longer time to get there. I get a higher score in Cinebench R23 by up to 1200 points.

 

[ryan01803]

Not actually sure on uninstalling since I haven't wanted to revert back, I assume it installs a driver. For the stock values there isn't a fixed PL1/PL2 since at first the PL1 limit will be high and then as it power throttles, reduces back so it's always changing, what this program does is lock the power limit to a certain value. This doesn't mean the laptop always run at that high wattage level, it just means it won't throttle down below the limit you set. Hope this helps and shows there isn't a real reason to revert back to stock since you could set a PL1 of like 22W for example (what I use) which the laptop will happily run at when under load without getting too hot, and when not under load will still only run at 1-8W like normal. If you did want to revert you'll have to Google it, sorry.

Removing the TDP-195 folder would likely revert it after a restart since it seems to load everything from there.

Not actually sure on uninstalling since I haven't wanted to revert back, I assume it installs a driver. For the stock values there isn't a fixed PL1/PL2 since at first the PL1 limit will be high and then as it power throttles, reduces back so it's always changing, what this program does is lock the power limit to a certain value. This doesn't mean the laptop always run at that high wattage level, it just means it won't throttle down below the limit you set. Hope this helps and shows there isn't a real reason to revert back to stock since you could set a PL1 of like 22W for example (what I use) which the laptop will happily run at when under load without getting too hot, and when not under load will still only run at 1-8W like normal. If you did want to revert you'll have to Google it, sorry.

Removing the TDP-195 folder would likely revert it after a restart since it seems to load everything from there.

And for the laptop still settling down to 15W, I find a PL1 of 22W fixes this, my machine will stay all day playing games at this level, at above 22W PL1 I found after 30mins it can throttle down.

 

[RowanG337]

@unclewebb Is this tool legit or not? I consider you the authority on this matter!

 

[unclewebb]

Is this tool legit or not?

I do not own an XPS 13 or any similar laptop with an 11th Gen Tiger Lake CPU. I have no way to test whether this tool is good or bad. Some users seem to be having success with this. If you have some power limit throttling problems, give it a try.

 

[RowanG337]

I tried this tool. I didn't affect anything for me. I did add liquid metal, heat pipes, thermals pads/putty and now my temp no longer exceeds ~60 degrees even under sustained heavy load. But unfortunately I'm still power limited...

 

[unclewebb]

I tried this tool. I didn't affect anything for me.

I recently added a new feature to ThrottleStop 9.4 to help out the 11th Gen Tiger Lake CPUs. Make sure the new MMIO Lock box is checked when testing.

Can you show me a screenshot of the TPL window so I can see how you have ThrottleStop setup? If you are having power limit throttling problems, show me a screenshot of the Limit Reasons window while your CPU is loaded and power limit throttling or show me a log file while this is happening. Do some testing for 10 or 15 minutes so there is lots of data for me to look at.

Some laptops use an embedded controller (EC) to send power limits to the CPU. If the EC is sending a 15W limit or less to the CPU, there is nothing you can do about this type of throttling.

 

[RowanG337]

Holy shit @unclewebb, you madlad, that did the trick! I was able (non-turbo since I always have it disabled) to run seemingly indefinitely at 3Ghz on all cores without it ever throttling for any reason. This was at ~21 watts package power constantly. Whereas before I was limited to 13 watts. I used Throttlestop 9.4.2 beta.

Is there any way to extract all MSR writes MMIO lock stuff from throttlestop? Not that I don't want to use this tool but I run linux as my daily driver

 

[unclewebb]

that did the trick!

Good to hear. Thanks for the feedback.

extract all MSR writes MMIO lock stuff

Check your messages. I sent you a few clues so you can lock out the MMIO power limits when running Linux.

 

[jkib]

Do you keep the MIMO box checked all the time, or only when testing as you stated above?

 

[unclewebb]

checked all the time

The MMIO power limits are not necessary. The main MSR power limits are good enough to control a CPU. I would leave the MMIO Lock box checked all of the time. If you ever want to unlock this power limit, you will need to clear the box and you will need to reboot your computer.

 

[jkib]

Would like a little feedback from those who have updated their 9310's bios to the latest 3.1.0. Any issues with it?
Thanks