GTX560M throttling

Hola Everyone, more and more people are reporting throttling with 560m at stock clocks - thats why I open up this new post.

Some benching apps in example Furmark 1.91 you can clearly see it throttles at stock clocks. Below are my findings - that I shared with another m15x 560m user on email:

1/Open up NVidia inspector and click in the bottom overclocking, this will open up a second screen. In this 2nd screen - you see the performance levels in drop down menu. These are the levels of performance and inside 560m vbios (that’s the video bios in short vbios of 560m) (do not confuse with A09 bios of m15x)

Performance level 0 = P12 state
Performance level 1 = P8 state
Performance level 2 = P0 state

If you select each of these performance levels you can also see also at what core/mem and voltage they are: So I write that here down too:

Perf 0 = P12 state = 50 core / 135 mem / 101 shader at 0,820 Volt
Perf 1 = P8 state = 202 core / 324 mem / 405 shader at 0,820 Volt
Perf 2 = P0 state = default clocks (or what you put in to OC) at 1,000 Volt.

2/ Interestingly when running Furmark 1.91 test (at stock clocks) you see that 560m jumps back and forth between P0 and P8 state !!!
Clearly you can see it jumps from 1,000V to 0,820V and memory goes down to 324 !!!
Thus our 560m is throttling.

NOW
I don’t know why it is throttling exactly cause with both CPU and GPU on stock clocks it should not throttle!
I myself use a lot of 3dmarkvantage as a test(as a bit more reliable test) where throttling does not happen so easy.
But its fact that 560m and also it bigger brother 580m are throttling. (see forum m17x section for 580m)
Some people call it a NVidia disease..

NOW
I do have a plan. I want to raise voltage of P8 and P12 state from 0.820 Volt to be 1,000 Volt.
And than set at least the P8 state to have same settings as P0, thus when it shifts to P8 it will actually NOT throttle
I have made a request for custom vbios here :
http://www.mvktech.net/component/option,com_joomlaboard/Itemid,34/func,view/catid,13/id,61989/#61989

Dell released also a new vbios for 560m but that does not eliminate throttling, it just adds intermediate P states, thus throttling is LESS abrupt, but it still happens !
For now I decided not yet to use this vbios. (Edit: jan 2012: just ran the bios update, works great with eurocom card

 

what you getting for temps? you shouldn't have throttleing unless your hitting around 78C with the gfx card, and i haven't even breached 65C with my 460 yet. Is the cooling that bad on the m15x?

 

Well temps are faily low 60-70 Celsius. And on 285.62 drivers at this moment.

When I lower the multiplier of my cpu to 16 it doesnt throttle - until it reaches 78-79C indeed - but I guess at that point another type of throttling kicks in : thermal throttling

 

And here is a picture showing it.
The throttling kicks in at 63C celsius to be exact !

Happens right in the beginning and repeats all the time...
As you can see from the yellow line in the picture...

Another user with 720qm is rapporting the same behaviour.
I suspect some sort of power throttling ?

Pls comment.

 

i went on notebookcheck.com and found the following:"the power consumption of the GeForce GTX 560M should be about 75 Watt (TDP including the MXM board and memory), which is about the level of the Mobility Radeon HD 5850 - 5870" i assume the power shouldn't be an issue because the 5850 is supported in this system?

 

Might be the "GPU Load" has something to do with it ?!
From the picture you can see its reaching above 99% when it throttles.

I am just guessing and wonder - somebody - can shine some light on this.

 

i don't think that has much to do with it. look at my furmark and u will see
bleh won't let me upload, guess ill try later.

 

Well it isn't thermal throttling, temps are too low; the power draw isn't a problem either, people run cards with a higher power draw in their M15x; and I highly doubt that it has anything to do with the GPU load.
Is the throttling consistent across different gpu intensive applications? Make a gpu-z or HWiNFO sensor log while gaming or running benchmarks so that we can get some more information.

 

Sure Find the logs attached for GPU-Z and HWiNFO64(.CSV extension renamed to .TXT to be able to upload here) while benching in Furmark 1.91

Everything is set at stock clocks for both GPU and CPU.
I can see that Furmark 1.91 runs single threaded.

If I lower multiplier of my CPU to 16x (which is 1 step down for my turbo in T-stop) 560m will not throttle but, instead temp go up al the way, untill thermal throttling kick in around 78-79C. (system shut down)

 

Oher GPU intensive applications that I use are the 3Dmarks, and it does happen there also sometimes, but certainly not constantly like Furmark shows us here.

I wonder what triggers this behaviour..
is it in bios ?
or rather the driver ?
or is that 560m (GF116 power-optimised chip) is morely designed for a SB system and it expects at some point a 2nd intregrated graphics gpu which is not present in m15x ?
Just my 2 cents ..

 

Found This:
Are you Ok with Power Limiter (GPU throttling) On Recent Graphics Cards? - 3D Tech News and Pixel Hacking - Geeks3D.com

It seems that this no-name power limiter is application specific ! HOPPA !
That explains at least why is so heavily throttlng with Furmark! They probably have that app blacklisted

And This :
GPU-Z 0.5.1 adds a new way to disable the power draw limiter available on GeForce GTX 500 Series. In the previous versions of GPU-Z, the command line option to disable GTX 500 OC was called /gtx580ocp. But now to uniformize a bit, this option is now called /gtx500ocp. Anyway it’s there and that’s the most important.

Wil test it when I get home in few hours..

 

Great find! +rep

 

does it work ? i intend to upgrade to a 560M

 

good job hope it works for you. If you have any other issues let us know and we can try to help

 

Well I cant seem to get it to work yet. As far as I understand now, the powermanagement system is designed different so it will work for the 5xx series allright .. but not for 560m. Will do more investigation..

But dont let that misguide you in any way, 560m is a great card!
I edited my signature so you will see some scores

Hopefully MVK will provide the modded bios soon so we can push it even further!

 

Starting with the ForceWare 257 series drivers, NVIDIA is now using OCP(over current protection) at all times, meaning OCP now protects against any possible program that would generate an excessive load (as defined by NVIDIA), and not just FurMark and OCCT. At this time there’s definitely still a driver component involved as NVIDIA still throttles FurMark and OCCT right off the bat, but everything else seems to be covered by their generic detection methods.

At this point biggest complaint is that OCP’s operation is still not transparent to the end user.

If you trigger it you have no way of knowing unless you know how the game/application should already be performing.
NVIDIA tells us that at some point this will be exposed through NVIDIA’s driver API, but today is not that day.

 

I doubt you can help

 

hmm i at a loss at what to do at this point. Would people be better off upgrading to the 460m as it can achieve similar speeds and not throttle like the 560m?

 

We just dont know all bits and bites about throttling (being under pressure) yet but will get there.. eventually soon.. thats is my goal.

My post is not about positioning what is the best.. There are a 100 cards that are better.

But to explore new frontiers for 560m

 

I am sorry but 460m has the same sort of throttling. You can find out if you stress it. We are hoping to solve that too

 

interesting, i don't have any throttling problems with my 460m unless in overclock it wayy past stock 560m clocks. I can Furmark for a very long time with no throttling

ill run another furmark bench once i get my 460m repasted later tonight. Had to take it out to try to use my dud of a 6990m

 

way past ?? how much is that in numbers ?? I also dont like euros since the crisis: just dollars

Highest oc 560m is 910/850/1820 - P11187

 

that vantage?

gotta redownload and install vantage and ill see what what scores i can get. Wonder how your 940xm compares to my 2630

 

Yes pls try and highest CPU score I got sofar Vantage performance (disable ppu) = 19190

Settings 860/825/1720 for 560m and 22-21-24-24 93W/75A for 940xm

Can push 940xm up to 28-28-27-27 stable but if I do this, the power limiter of 560m will kick in fast & furious I am afraid.. killing my GPU score,
so I never (can) push both cpu and gpu to the max at the same time. Its always one or the other.

The ultimate challenge is to find the sweet spot in between..

 

keep up the good work dutchess. Your effort makes it much easier for late adopters like myself to upgrade with ease and confidence of the expected gains =D hehe

 

dang i only got P10252 3DMarks

9092 on the graphics and 16608 on the CPU wonder why you can get so much higher

 

What settings did you use ? gpu speeds/cpu multipliers ..

I always use T-stop and Nvidia Inspector when overclocking ..

And make sure to disconnect from any fancy external screen if you have that, in my case 120Hz 3D 1080p,
benching on builtin 900p gives the best results

 

my CPU multipliers are unlocked, but the GPU clocks where 830/1600/1500

not gonna run it that high again because i was getting artifact for some reason. i believe 800 on the core clock equals a stock 560m so i might go and run that and see what i get.

 

560m stocks 775/1250/1550

560m highest oc 910/1700/1820 - 11187 3dmv

560m most stable when gaming(10+ hours) 900/1625/1800 - max 78C / ambient 20C

 

sounds about right to me

 

I take is everything is running stable at this point since you haven't posted in a few days?

 

Well you have the 460m

 

Tell uss ur story.

 

story of what?

 

nice story here:

Driver 285.62 & Win7 problems [GTX 560 ti] - NVIDIA Forums

 

^^ nice link.. checked it out.

 

Hey everyone. So I have an M15X with an 820QM and a Geforce 460M. To my surprise, the damn thing throttles terribly when doing Prime95 and Furmark using the A09 bios. I thought this stuff was fixed?

If I force Prime95 to only use 4 CPUs using Taskmanager Affinity, things are generally stable. Otherwise both the CPU and GPU tend to downclock every few seconds in a cyclical fashion, and my screen blinks black when it occurs.

Throttlestop appears to make it worse, actually. Probably because the GPU steps down further than the CPU and has a bigger impact. Does a way exist to prevent the GPU from downclocking?

Just thought I'd share my experience, and ask if anyone else has seen this and what I can do to prevent it from happening in games. Thanks!

 

what size PSU do you have? that could be part of the problem

 

Really, the PSU? That never appeared to fix peoples' problems of downclocking during past testng as I was led to believe the wall brick would be sufficient until such a point as it "tripped", and would cease to function until you unplugged/replugged it in. I guess it is something I can give a whirl

 

Same problem here with GTX 460M and 740QM (A09). Otherwise, it seems to work fine in games and whatnot.

 

I posted on the M15x 560m forum earlier, Im using this with a 940xm at stock clocks but deus ex and dead island throttle every few mins. Has anyone found a solution? iv updated bios and drives.