Guide/Help to using ThrottleStop

I am very new to this and was hoping someone could point me to the right direction towards using and explaining the various settings in the latest version of throttlestop. i tried searching and googling but still i could not really understand what are the settings for and what does it do.

If im able to collect enough info and understand thoroughly the various settings in throttlestop, i might be able to write a guide to using throttlestop here for the benefit of other new users. thanks

 

alexnvidia

I take it you have read the Throttlestop docs which is contained in the rar?.

 

yeah, but it doesnt explain some of the added features like EIST, Turbo Power/Ratio Limit etc and some settings in MISC like ati/nvidia GPU (what does it do when you tick the box) etc..

basically, these are my list of questions.

what happens when i set the clock/chipset modulation to 100%? what does 100% mean?

when ticking the box for clock/chipset modulation, does it mean enable or disable because according to the guide (see link i posted below), it says disable but logically, ticking should be enable right?

does 100% also mean the cpu will no longer downclock to save power when no load is applied and that u have to manually set profile according to your needs everytime you run this tool?

turbo power limit, when i open, default is set to 62W and 62A. from what i understand, cpu like 940xm has 55W TDP. does it mean i now get more manual OC headroom or more system auto turbo OC headroom?

what is the limit/dangers of setting TDP/TDC too high (other than heat)?

what does the ati/nvidia gpu in MISC do? from the readme file, it says taking temperature readings, but when i click on ati, nothing happens. it just grey out.

does throttling apply to GPU as well? and does throttlestop stop gpu throttling if the answer is yes? (im thinking no, but no harm asking)

im also looking at this
http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-studio-xps/446193-s-xps-1645-throttling-info-updates.html
however, the guide seemed out of date as most of the fuctionality has been updated by uncleweb.

 

what happens when i set the clock/chipset modulation to 100%? what does 100% mean?It means that it stops this from happening.What you do is run some tests ie Prime 95 while in monitoring only in Throttlestop & look @ the clock modulation & chipset modulation then you will see if the values drop from 100%,If they do it's showing Throttling then do same tests and tick boxes & turn on Throttlestop then look to see if its dropping from 100% it shouldn't now.Ticking the boxes enables them. For ThrottletStop to work correctly in Vista and Windows 7 you need to go into the Control Panel - Power Options and select the High peformance setting. Open up Change plan settings then select Change advanced power settings. After this click on Processor power management and finally Minimum processor state. Set this to 100%. This will allow ThrottleStop to control your power settings at idle and at full load instead of Windows.
So you will be on High performance so intel speedstep will not be downclocking. limit/dangers of setting TDP/TDC too high other than heat & your powerbrick thats all i know off.As far as gpu settings i have not played around with that.Throttlestop does not take care of GPU throttling to my knowledge.unclewebb will hopefully correct my reply if i am wrong.I have not asked anyone just been noobing around with Throttlestop myself.

 

thanks for the reply. answered a lot of my questions. will look into it and test it out.

 

I agree that the ThrottleStop documentation is over due for an update. I put more time into adding features than I do into explaining the features.

ThrottleStop asks the ATI or Nvidia driver for temperature information. If you click on the ATI box and it grays out, that means that the driver does not support this feature. Nvidia temperature reading seems to work equally well on desktop or laptop GPUs. ATI temperature reading through the driver works close to 100% on desktop GPUs but is a crap shoot on mobile GPUs. I wish I had more hardware to test this feature on or got some more feedback from the community about what works and what doesn't but I get virtually zero feedback. Tools like this are only as good as the feedback I get since I don't own 101 laptops to test on. For ATI, I would suggest trying to update your drivers and see if that helps. Sometimes the temperature monitoring option is available in the ATI drivers but not in the Dell drivers.

A clock modulation reading of 100.0% means that the CPU is being allowed to perform at 100.0% of its capability and is not being throttled with this method. If the log file never shows that your CPU is using clock modulation then there is no need to check either of these boxes. On laptops that do use clock modulation, all of the ones that I've seen use one type of modulation or the other but not both at the same time. The two are separate so it's possible to use both at the same time but laptop manufacturers haven't been this cruel, yet.

To understand the affect on performance, run a simple benchmark like wPrime 32M. Now run the same benchmark again with clock modulation set to 75% with a check mark in that box. Do you see a difference in performance? Do the same test again at 50%. By doing a couple of tests like that you are going to be able to quickly find out what a good clock modulation setting is and what a bad setting is. 100% is good, 12.5% is insanely bad but that is how bad Dell's throttling scheme for the XPS 1645 was.

Clock modulation is a feature that in normal use should never be used. Intel designed this to control the CPU when the heatsink falls off. I have no idea why Dell thought it would be a good idea to use this during normal use but they have turned to clock modulation, mostly to control power consumption, on a wide variety of their laptops over the last 2 years which is brutal on performance.

ThrottleStop is only for CPU throttling and doesn't do anything about GPU throttling. RivaTuner might be useful if your GPU is supported.

The TDP/TDC settings allow turbo boost to be fully engaged for a longer period of time as the CPU load and power consumption goes up. A TDP setting of say 60 W will cause the CPU to reduce the amount of turbo boost to maintain power consumption at 60 watts. If you put a more demanding load on your CPU, the amount of turbo boost will decrease to as little as zero which will leave you at your default multiplier. I wish I knew more about this feature but I don't have any hardware to test on. The majority of feedback I get is based on hunting around the NBR forums looking for scraps of info like any other user does.

Increasing the TDP/TDC (power/current) is going to allow your CPU to consume more power which will allow it to run faster and will cause it to run hotter. Don't get too carried away because I've seen some users up over 100 watts. I have no idea what the long term issues might be. Similar desktop CPUs are set by Intel to 130W / 110A but a laptop motherboard that is not designed for that can go ka-boom. One Clevo user has already reported that. You can also damage a power adapter if it is not capable of delivering that kind of power to your CPU. Once again, I don't have any hardware or any books telling me how much is too much so all you can do is search through the forums and see what other users are up to.

The Core i7 mobile CPUs seem to go into a low power state at idle regardless of any ThrottleStop settings. You can try the power saver option to lower the multiplier at idle but I doubt it will save you any power. Newer CPUs seem to do a great job saving power at idle all by themselves.

If you have any questions just send me a PM and ask. Any test results are also appreciated. Imagine how good ThrottleStop could be if I had access to some of the hidden Intel and Dell documentation and some new hardware would help too.

 

thanks for clarifying everything unclewebb! im currently running tests with your latest throttlestop 2.81. one thing i noticed is, the multiplier cannot be set past 17. i have an unlocked 940XM cpu and the multiplier should be able to go way past 17. is there something i did wrong or didnt set right?

I tried running cpu stability stress test from everest ultimate while monitoring throttlestop without turning it on, and i have not seen yet my Cmod% and Chip% drop. it's always on 100% despite temperature sored to 96C! for your info, the only overclocking i did right now is the 5% overclock from the BIOS so max Turbo is 3.5GHz. does this mean the system cpu does not throttle? i am actually expecting my cpu to throttle because Joker highly recommended using your throttlestop to prevent this from happening.

and what is EIST?

 

The default multiplier in a Core i7-940XM is 16. To request full turbo boost from a Core i CPU you need to set the multiplier request register to the default multiplier plus 1 so that's why the ThrottleStop multiplier adjuster only goes up to 17. The amount of turbo boost you end up with is up to the CPU. It can constantly adjust this based on CPU load and your TDP/TDC settings. To control the amount of turbo booost you get you need to right click on ThrottleStop and adjust the turbo multipliers and turbo TDP/TDC settings separately.

It's a good thing that your M17x-R2 is not using either type of clock modulation throttling. A CPU should only use this when the temperature goes beyond 100C and is out of control due to a heatsink or fan failure. Before this is ever used, the CPU is designed to automatically throttle itself by reducing the multiplier and the core voltage which is usually enough to control the maximum core temperature very nicely without it ever running away out of control. If your computer does not use either type of clock modulation then there is no need to put check marks in either of these boxes.

EIST stands for Enhanced Intel SpeedStep. I think that needs to be enabled for turbo boost to function correctly.

Right click on ThrottleStop and let me know what your turbo multipliers are set to. When you run a stress test and load all 8 threads, post a screen shot of ThrottleStop during the test so I can have a look at the reported multipliers.

If you start overclocking this CPU, you will find the settings that ThrottleStop lets you adjust very useful. If you are not overclocking then you might not need these settings.

Edit: Here's an excellent example from 5150Joker.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/6620179-post4771.html

At the default TDP setting, it is easy to see the multiplier throttling at full load. Look at the reported multipliers on each thread in the FID column. Increasing the TDP/TDC can increase the average multiplier from less than 19 at full load to 24 when you are not overclocking and even higher to 25 or 26 if you are overclocking and if you can find a way to keep your CPU cool.

Here's his example when TDP has been increased to 105W. Quite a bit more CPU speed and performance now.

 

After much explaination and examples, i finally understand how your excellent tool works. Now i can see why throttlestop can fully function as a overclocking tool and at the same time control throttling issues. THANK YOU uncleweb. +1rep

here are my screenshots. first one is for default TDP settings without throttlestop on. i monitored the entire wPrime run and never seen any throttling.

second screenshot is with TDP set to 75W and TDC to 65. noticed throttling happening to chipset mod and it's 25%. temperature is also close to 98C when that happened. system throttling must have kicked in to prevent any meltdown. the wierd thing though, when chipset mod kicked in, the FID goes all the way up to 25 and speed increased rather than decreased (as reported by throttlestop) but i can see that wPrime slowed down considerably.

for all tests, turbo ratio is set to 25, which is the default. also, i tried not to increase the TDC too much. too much current means more heat and more power draw.

 

I don't understand why you keep saying this. Look at the FID column in your first screen shot. That is your multiplier. An average multiplier of 17.74 shows that you are not getting anywhere near full turbo boost. Full turbo boost means all 8 threads should be reporting a 25.00 multiplier. The default TDP/TDC settings in these CPUs prevent that from happening. The term I use is turbo throttling. Intel Core i based CPUs are designed to rapidly cycle turbo boost on and off a hundred times a second. What makes ThrottleStop a good monitoring tool is that it uses high performance timers within the CPU and follows the method documented by Intel to accurately and very efficiently measure the average multiplier. It clearly shows the exact performance level of each thread of your CPU.

Chipset clock modulation is being used to internally slow your CPU down. As mentioned before, it should never be used on a CPU unless the heatsink falls off and the core temperature is out of control and has gone beyond 100C and is approaching the 125C to 130C thermal shutdown temperature that Intel sets for their CPUs. When the bios uses clock modulation, the load instantly decreases and that signals to the CPU that it can now use more turbo boost. What happens? The average multiplier goes up. Before clock modulation was being reported, users might look and see their multiplier maxed out like that and think, wow, isn't this great. My CPU is running at full speed on all threads but obviously that isn't true.

A clock modulation reading of 25.0% is an approximation. For every 4 clock pulses, the CPU should be working each and every clock pulse but instead the CPU decides to work for one clock pulse and then go into an idle mode for the other 3 clock pulses and do nothing when it should be working. If you are gaming and this happens, that's when you will see the frame rates instantly drop from say 50 fps down to a slide show at 10 fps or less and your laptop will not provide you with any notification of what just happened. Many users will then endlessly chase their tails trying different bios versions and different drivers and etc. until they go completely crazy. A high dollar, top of the line gaming laptop should not be using clock modulation.

It's just poor design on Dell's part. These CPUs are more than capable of looking after themselves. Intel sets the thermal throttling limit at 100C because they obviously have confidence in their CPUs ability to run 100% reliably at up to 100C. If they were concerned that the CPU was going to be damaged by this temperature, it would be easy for them to set a lower thermal throttling temperature but they don't.

Some Dell engineer that doesn't understand how an Intel CPU is designed to operate took it upon himself to introduce clock modulation into the design and there's no reason for that, not even at 98C. If Dell would let the CPU look after itself, then it would be able to gradually slow down while doing its best to maintain full speed at all times by reducing turbo boost and automatically adjusting the multiplier lower if need be. Intel designs their CPUs so they can automatically vary the performance level hundreds of times a second to precisely balance performance vs CPU temperature. Dell comes along and decides not to use this incredibly well engineered piece of technology. Dell's technique of thermal management by using clock modulation is the equivalent of driving along and then slamming the breaks on with both feet because the temperature gauge is getting a little warm and then limping along in the slow lane even though the engine is back to normal operating temperature.

That's what your second screen shot shows. A core temperature of 86C is well within the Intel specification so there is no reason for clock modulation to be used at this temperature. That's just a poorly engineered bios doing that.

You would probably be better off not raising the BCLK by 5%. You can better control your CPU's performance by adjusting the turbo multipliers and turbo TDP/TDC values. You never ever want to trigger clock modulation because it is too severe and makes a laptop instantly unusable. Adjust your laptop so a ThrottleStop log file always shows 100.0% for both types of clock modulation.

Another problem with adjusting the BCLK is that it can sometimes screw up timers within your CPU so some Windows functions won't be able to accurately measure elapsed time anymore. You can use my WinTimerTester tool to check for this.

WinTimerTester.zip

If the two clocks monitored by this tool are not running at the same rate, any software that uses the high performance timer in Windows and does not correct for this error will give you inaccurate results. There are more than one or two gaming benchmark programs and frame rate monitoring tools that can lose accuracy on some computers when you adjust the BCLK. It's always a good idea to test for and to be aware of this bug.

 

Now i get it. thanks for correcting me Unclewebb. before you explained it further, i was under the impression that as long as CMod and ChipMod stays at 100%, it means no throttling is happening.

ok, all clear now, i should change the way i understand corei7 cpu. using throttlestop prevents clock and chipset modulation, and raising the TDP/TDC increases the FID multiplier so the cpu can perform at higher than rated base speed when all 4 cores are stressed. i can see that the higher the TDP, the higher the FID can go, and so does the temperature.

In my system, i have not attempted to go all the way to 25x FID. at 70W TDP full load, im getting about 21x FID and the temperature is close to 100C. speed is at 21x140~3GHz. i might need to do some mod before attempting higher TDP. and thanks for the tips on BClock 5%.

 

I feel so guilty

I've seen the power adaptor trip numerous times a night. It's all a balancing act when overclocking the CPU, increasing TDP, overvolting the GPUs, disabling various functions. Walking the PSU limits becomes challenging and often frustrating, but hey, I still have all CPU's up and running strong. Though I don't push them that hard for long. Using throttle stop I did manage a 22,3xx CPU score in Vantage. Definately a great program.
Wonder what I'll hit with some crazy cooling.

 

get some crazy cooling and find out id like to see the results

 

I'm working on it. Should be home in two months or so, and when I get home, I'm going to bench it using dry ice. Just gotta find a dice cup now. Should be insteresting with -70*C temps.

 

unclewebb, quick question about TDC. how do i know what's the minimum TDC for 940XM and how much TDC is needed? right now im setting my TDC to 45A and i dont see any difference compared to the default 62A. no system instability,no lockups or any issues due to cpu not receiving enough juice to keep it running.

im trying find a good balance for TDC and TDP, in other words, the minimum TDC to achieve the maximum TDP.

 

Power = Current x voltage

or

TDP = TDC x Voltage

If you know the voltage your CPU is running at and you know the TDP that you'd like to run at then it should be easy to find an appropriate TDC setting.

I like testing with Prime95 Small FFTs because it is a very consistent load but 8 threads of wPrime might be OK too. You could try setting TDP sky high so it doesn't limit the CPU and then reduce TDC and use that to control the maximum turbo multiplier. 5150Joker was finding the same sort of results where TDC did not seem to be a limiting factor. Turbo boost was being limited more by TDP than by TDC. I haven't seen any real world testing of this.

I'm not sure what the exact formula the CPU uses or whether the Extreme CPUs might partially ignore the TDC data from these CPUs. If the load is consistent then you should be able to do some benches at different TDP/TDC settings and keep an eye on the average multiplier. Your results might be a little different than what the formula above implies. ThrottleStop lets you adjust the turbo TDP/TDC lower but the CPU might be designed to ignore any values less than the default values so maybe those adjusters are useless in that situation. I've had to do some guessing because Intel hides their full documentation from individual programmers. All I know is that they definitely work when you use them to increase TDP/TDC.

DR650SE: Ever since a Clevo owner toasted his board when playing with TDP/TDC, I try to encourage a little bit of restraint. Anyone shopping for a DICE cup need not worry about stuff like this. You fully understand that world records are never set by playing it safe and a little collateral damage can sometimes happen.

 

quick question unclewebb i was doing a video encode today and my cores were movign around between 20x and 24x for the multiplier. I also noticed that some core temps would show temps in the upper 90's range. Is that a thermal throttle bringing the cores down from 24x or something else?

 

You might be hitting the TDP/TDC turbo limits for your CPU. When full load power consumption goes above the TDP/TDC limits for your CPU, turbo boost will start to rapidly cycle on and off so your average multiplier will decrease to less than 24.00. With an Extreme CPU, you can right click on ThrottleStop and adjust the TDP/TDC values higher and this will increase your average full load multiplier but obviously more power going into your CPU is going to result in more heat coming out of your CPU.

These CPUs usually don't start to thermal throttle until the core temperature gets right up to 100C but turbo throttling can happen anytime the power consumption goes over the TDP/TDC limit.

You can also try running RealTemp. In the thermal status area it will show you anytime thermal throttling is triggered. When it says OK, that means that no thermal throttling has occurred since you last booted up. If this changes to LOG, that means at least one thermal throttling episode happened and it will show you on which core. If this changes to HOT, that's a sign that thermal throttling is in progress. When thermal throttling initially happens, it usually cycles on and off rapidly so it will just show LOG at first when there is a problem and unless it is really severe, you might not ever see the word HOT appear.

RealTemp 3.59.5
RealTempBeta.zip - [email protected]

 

Hello Unclewebb

Sorry if this question has been asked before, but will ThrottleStop give me any performance benifits, as I am using a Core i7 740Qm processore?

I've enabled it and run bench marks but I don't get any performance increase?

Thanks

 

I think you answered your own question.

It can significantly increase the performance of the 920XM and 940XM Extreme CPUs or the Core i5/i7 UM CPUs in the M11x laptops but it can't do much of anything with a Core i7-740QM.

The Extremes have unlocked multipliers and unlocked turbo TDP/TDC settings. This stuff is all locked on the i7-740QM so there isn't much it can do. The M17x R2 with this processor doesn't have any known throttling issues either so ThrottleStop is only going to be useful as a monitoring tool on your laptop.

 

I gues I did. But I wasn't sure if I was doing something wrong.

Thanks for the explination.

 

UNCLWEBB: I5 520m has unlocked TDP/TDC any benefit to that combined with BCLK OC can we use some m11x tricks with tdp/tdc