Precision M4500 throttling issue

Hi, I have had my laptop for about a week now and it has the 920xm processor and quadro fx 1800m. I ran through furmark xtreme burning (1920*1080, 16x FSAA, Post Fx, Stability test mode and prime95 (small fft's maximum fpu stress, 8 threads) simultaneously. I monitored the multiplier with the i7 turbo utility, I logged stuff with GPU-Z in the background and used argus monitor the check cpu temperature. The multiplier on the processor drops to about 9 or 10 then up to 15 and back again despite it being constantly at full load and the load filter in i7 turbo being set at 95. The gpu exhibits no throttling and continues to function correctly at full clock speeds. There is not heat issue since the cpu goes to a maximum of 82 degrees which is well within the 100 degree Celsius Tjunction limit. The gpu never gets hotter then 77 degrees during furmark, the screen was also at full brightness during this testing and any background stuff such as anti-virus was turned off completely. I also tested two adapters, one was the new a03 that came with my e-port plus and the other where I first spotted the throttling was the original a01 which shipped with my laptop. All testing was done on ac power without the battery inserted. Can someone enlighten me about this please.

 

bump......

 

Under normal usage, have you experienced any throttling outside of extreme stress testing?

Dell is known for being very control freak with their BIOS induced throttling based on power consumption levels.

You could always give throttlestop a try and force the CPU to maintain its load multipliers and see if that does the trick and/or manifests any other problems.

 

Thanks for your response, Under normal circumstances my laptop seems to be stable and even when I stress the individual cpu or gpu there is no throttling. However stressing both results in the cpu throttling I mentioned so you are probably right about the bios based power consumption throttling. If I attempt to override it with throttle-stop can I potentially damage things from maxing out the 130 watt adapter since I have the most power hungry configuration. The reson I am doing this stress testing is because this is a powerful configuration and I feel that a mobile workstation for this much money should always perform as long as it doesn't overheat.

Is there any software program that can monitor my power consumption so this does not occur or do I require special hardware?

I'm off to university soon so I will check back in a couple of hours when I have time.

 

There are various programs that can tell you the power consumption when running off battery (I use RMClock's battery info page) but none can measure the power when running off the mains. For the latter you need a power meter that you can put between the mains socket and the PSU. It's a useful device to use around the house to find out what each device contributes towards your electricity bill.

John

 

There are almost no applications that will stress both the CPU and GPU at the sametime. Almost all applications will stress one at a time. With that said, do have have the power profile set to Ultra Performance? This might help.

 

I will try the above solutions and post back when I am done.

In the mean time Thanks for all the above help.

 

Ok, so I used Throttlestop and checked off the Clock Modulation and the Chipset Clock Modulation check boxes with the values of 100.0% and turned Throttlestop on.

Guess what, it solved the cpu throttling and now it runs correctly while stressing both with furmark and prime95 (2000 Mhz across all cores, prime95 set to 8 threads, small fft's).

But now the problem is with the gpu, it starts to throttle back and forth. So my problem is actually the exact opposite of what it used to be with Throttlestop.

The only thing left to try is BD PROCHOT in Throttlestop. Can someone please explain exactly what it does and if it's safe to use. Based on the above results what do you think may be wrong? Do I have a hardware problem or a different form of throttling then the clock modulation?

 

Unfortunately there is no improvement. I read the Throttlestop instructions and used all the features together including the unlocked bi-directional PROCHOT and now the gpu throttles after things heat up to about 86 degress celsius on the cpu.

No matter what I do I cannot bypass this and one component or the other has to throttle. I'm perfectly sure the ac adapter is big enough. What could be causing this? Is it the bios, the motherboard, the cpu?

 

Are you using the 130W power adapter that shipped with the system? Have you put the system power manager in Ultra Performance?