MSI Vector GP68HX i9 12900HX - How to increase battery life?

[Specht77]

Hello! I need some help with power consumption on my MSI Vector GP68 with an i9 12900HX

I used to get awesome battery life out of it (up to 9 hours)

I had a BIOS from 2023 with the following settings modified from defaults:

• OverClocking Feature: Enabled
• Undervolt Protection: Disabled
• CFG Lock: Disabled
• Overclocking Lock: Disabled
• P-Core Voltage Offset: -70mv

I used ThrottleStop with the following settings:

On Windows 11 my settings were and still are:

My MSI Center Settings were:

• User Scenario used to be "Save Battery", sadly this option vanished some months ago, I'm currently using "ECO-Silent", not sure if it's worse or not
• GPU Switch: Integrated Graphics Mode

With all these settings above I used to get quite satisfactory results up until some months ago

But recently my battery life plummeted, I'm getting 3-4 hours nowadays and I don't know what caused it

My mind might be tricking me, but I'm almost sure that my pkg power used to Hover around 1.7w, and nowadays it almost never dips below 3w

While trying to lower the pkg power to try to bring back the battery life, I changed the following settings, without any measurable improvements:

Updated bios to the latest on MSI website (E15M1IMS.512, 25/09/2024)

Changed bios settings to:

• Changed "Boot Performance Mode" to "Max Battery"
• VF Configuration Scope: Per core
• All P-Core Voltage Offset: -100mv
• All Cluster Voltage Offset: -200mv
• E-Core L2 Voltage Offset: -70mv

Changed some ThrottleStop settings

In the end nothing that I do seems to help...

I tried looking if something was using CPU on task manager, but it doesn't seem so:

One thing that got me curious is that even with that much undervolt in the Bios, it doesn't seem to be able to go below 0.7000v, is this some limitation from Intel?

Other thing that I noticed is that SpeedShift EPP doesn't seem to be the same effect as it used to, it seems to make some effect, but not even close to how much it used to, not sure when this behavior started, maybe it was after I updated bios?


Hopefully I was able to give enough info, if anything is missing that could aid with troubleshooting, feel free to ask and I'll provide asap

 

[unclewebb]

Depending on what Windows power plan you are using, Windows 11 can be writing values to the Speed Shift EPP register multiple times per second. If you check the ThrottleStop Speed Shift EPP box, you might end up with Windows and ThrottleStop both writing different EPP values to the same CPU register. This kind of tug of war should be avoided.

Using the Windows High Performance power plan might create less Speed Shift EPP interference between Windows and ThrottleStop. I recommend not checking the Speed Shift EPP box in ThrottleStop. This will allow Windows 11 to control the Speed Shift EPP register however it likes without any interference from ThrottleStop.

In the TPL window you can set both Speed Shift Min and Speed Shift Max to 4. This seems to be a reliable way to slow all of the P cores and E cores down to a crawl. A slow CPU is an inefficient CPU. I do not know if you will see any power savings during normal use. A slow CPU takes more time to complete tasks so cores will end up being active in the C0 state longer. Sometimes the best way to save power is to simply let the CPU manage itself.

In the end nothing that I do seems to help...

The default Windows Balanced or Windows Power Saver power plans are a good compromise. Checking Disable Turbo may or may not make much of a difference beyond that. A fast CPU gets tasks done quickly. This allows cores with no tasks to complete to enter the low power C7 state. In this state the inactive cores are disconnected from the internal clock and they are disconnected from the voltage rail. Inactive cores are basically sitting idle at 0 MHz and 0 Volts. It is difficult to get less power consumption than that.

When using the Windows High Performance power plan and running the CPU at full speed, cores can be spending 99% of the time in C7. Whatever speed the rest of the CPU is running at the other 1% of the time does not seem to make a huge difference. Maximizing C7 residency percentage can help improve battery run time.

Getting rid of the Windows Lock Screen might help the cause.

 

[Specht77]

Ok, I got what you said about SpeedShift EPP, I'll not use it anymore


About slow CPU being inefficient, when I'm working on battery, I'm usually doing extremely light tasks like using chrome with power saver in very light websites and notepad++, nothing else, the CPU shouldn't be needing to do many tasks

In my mind using windows high performance while on battery doing extreme lightweight tasks would make it use a ton more energy for no reason at all, or am I wrong?


The power consumption between your screenshot and mine gets me concerned, your CPU is using 1.8w at idle, while mine is using 3.1w with nothing open on task manager any suggestions on how to lower my PKG Power at idle?


And sorry for my ignorance, I couldn't understand the relation about Windows Lock Screen and power consumption / battery life

 

[Specht77]

Things just get weirder and weirder...

Last night I updated Windows 11 to 24H2 to see if it would make things any better, it didn't.

I tried messing some more with Windows Processor Power Management, and it's behaving bizarrely

Limiting Maximum Processor State via windows is only limiting E-Cores, it's having absolutely no effect on P-Cores for some reason, I'm 100% sure that it used to have effect com P-Cores in the past

Ironically, because it's only limiting E-Cores, lowering maximum processor state is actually increasing power consumption instead of decreasing it...

Maximum Processor State = 100%

Maximum Processor State = 90%

Maximum Processor State = 7%

It doesn't appear to be ThrottleStop's fault, I have deleted all TS files, restarted the CPU and the behavior is the same...

In these screenshots I had just extracted a new install of TS, didn't mess with any settings, just used it for the benchmark feature

Any suggestions on how to improve things are welcome

 

[Specht77]

Sorry for triple posting, but I have some good news!

I asked a friend with a 12700KF to do the same thing as I did above in the Power Options screen and and he got the same behavior, so apparently it's not my system that is going crazy, apparently Maximum Processor State under Power Options actually only affects E-Cores and I was remembering incorrectly...


With that I started looking for different solutions and I found the following commands during my research online:

powercfg /setACvalueindex scheme_current SUB_PROCESSOR PROCFREQMAX1 XXX
powercfg /setDCvalueindex scheme_current SUB_PROCESSOR PROCFREQMAX1 XXX

powercfg /setactive scheme_current

With this commands it's possible to set the maximum frequency the P-Cores will be able to reach in the current active power plan (XXX = maximum frequency)

The best part is that it does not have any impact on other power plans, since I only use Power Saving while on battery, and Balanced/High Performance while on charger, it's possible to get the best of both worlds


I have changed my settings on Power Options to allow 99% of Maximum Processor State on E-Cores (I'm using 99% instead of 100% so it won't use turbo boost on battery)

And with the commands above, I was able to limit P-Cores to 400mhz while on battery


With the changes mentioned above, I was able to bring my PKG Power back to 1.7w on idle, and my battery life went from 3~4h to 5~6h

I still feel that it could be better, but I'm happy with the improvements

Currently I'm doing research on disabling and parking cores, to see if I can force all P-Cores to be disabled or at least parked while on battery