Voltage Offset not applied on Thinkpad P53 / Windows 11

[vha]

Hi, I'm not that satisfied with my work laptop, a Lenovo P53 with Intel Core i7-9850H and tried to "tune" it a bit. It's using latest BIOS update v1.39. I'm running Windows 11 Enterprise v10.0.22000 Build 22000 so i've already lost some hope going through this thread. Hyper-V, VM Plattform, Hypervisor Plattform and WLS are not installed. System Information Tool says that VBS is still running even if it's deactivated in windows settings. I can not turn off CPU Virtualization Features as I'm using VMWare on this Laptop.

What does work so far:

I noticed that I I get those PL 1 and PL 2 limiting often and early during normal usage, there were quite low turbo power limits set. CPU temperature is about 60 °C (140 °F) during normal use but I need to run tpfancontrol to achieve these low temps.

It is possible to remove settings in mimo and change PL1/PL2 limits. Using a PL higher than 50 heats up CPU to more than 80 °C (176 °F), I've already changed thermal paste and cleaned all fans which is quite a pain on the P53.

What does not work:

Trying to set any amount of offset voltage ("static" is grayed out) does not have any effect, I've tried multiple values on all different modules but none is applied. I've pressed "apply" and used turn on/off button in main window but that does not change anything.

I was reading in a different thread that those offset values on the top right table actually show what is in CPU and are 100% reliable. However, those Turbo Ratio Limits seem to be good, this was mentioned in windows 11 thread. I have no option in bios to change or lock voltages, i've just deactivated dma protection.

Using Intel XTU does not work and i've installed it after trying throttlestop. It's not even starting, first it refused according to core isolation setting but after deactivating it it's still not starting at all.

VBS is still active and forced using group policy, could this be the issue here?

Any help is appreciated. But I am already very happy to be able to set the turbo power limit settings which gave me dramativ speed increase

 

[unclewebb]

VBS is still active and forced using group policy, could this be the issue here?

VBS is the issue. ThrottleStop cannot access the voltage control register when VBS is enabled. The column of 0.3799 values in the voltage column of the FIVR monitoring table confirms that VBS being enabled is the problem. Disable core isolation memory integrity, reboot and delete the ThrottleStop.INI configuration file.

How to Disable Virtualization-Based Security (VBS) in Windows 11 to Improve Gaming

Getting frame drops while playing games in Windows 11? VBS might be the reason and here's how you can disable VBS in Windows 11.

beebom.com

Edit - The 9850H is a 6 core 12 thread CPU. Did you disable hyper threading on purpose? Some people do this to control the heat output. Some have done this accidentally without realizing what they did.

 

[vha]

VBS is the issue. ThrottleStop cannot access the voltage control register when VBS is enabled. The column of 0.3799 values in the voltage column of the FIVR monitoring table confirms that VBS being enabled is the problem. Disable core isolation memory integrity, reboot and delete the ThrottleStop.INI configuration file.

Thanks, I will try to ask our admin to allow me to change it, I can't override the group policy as this computer is part of a domain. I will report progress then. System Information Tool still tells me VBS is on even after regedit and local group policy.

Edit - The 9850H is a 6 core 12 thread CPU. Did you disable hyper threading on purpose? Some people do this to control the heat output. Some have done this accidentally without realizing what they did.

It was on purpose first, I'm running a software which is only using a single core inside a virutal machine most of the time. I've done some benchmarks with a simple stop watch on this software and also did benchmarks using super Pi and could not measure any difference, turning HT on or off does not have any effect. Also I could not notice any effect on heat output. However, due to bitlocker enforcement later on I can't change the setting now without bothering our IT guys, so now it is accidentially

== Update ==

Hi, we got the VBS disabled and everything works, I can confirm that this is the issue as you expected. Also, for this Lenovo P53 I can now confirm that it is working under Windows 11

Turbo Ratio Readings look different now as well as it is also possible to select "Static" Voltage:

I played around with the settings and made some benchmarks, I've run the benchmark multiple times to make sure we do not have advantages of cold cooling unit and tried to read CPU speed which was used most of the time. Temperature is the max temp occured.

Starting without any changes and PL1=25, PL2=45:
24.2 s, 2.74 GHz, 70 °C

Raising power limit to PL1 60, PL2 70 (these values seem to work to avoid temperature overshoot due to slow fan speedup):
16.8 s, 3.88 GHz, 93 °C

Now starting to undervolt, just CPU Core & Cache, nothing else:
-50 mV: 16,4 s, 4.09 GHz, 86 °C
-85 mV: 16,4 s, 4.09 GHz, 80 °C
-100 mV: 16,3 s, 4.09 GHz, 78 °C
None of these bench runs hit the set Power Limit

Turbo Ratio Limit was set to 41 for 6 Cores so I played with these settings
42: 16,0 s, 4.19 GHz, 82 °C
43: 15.7 s, 4.29 GHz, 86 °C
44: 15.5 s, 4,34 GHz, 90 °C - now triggering PL2 also

It still runs with -110 mV so I think I'll leave it on -100 mV with 43 ratio limit, this looks stable and does not heat up too much. Quite impressive to go from 2.74 GHz to 4.3 GHz, thanks a lot for your work and support!