ATTENTION! Potential Flaw with ALL XPS 15 9560 - GPU Throttling!

Pete, the 800Mhz is from my Balanced profile before. Look at the graph. CPU was at 3,4 The whole time. Otherwise I would not have posted...

 

The graph is not for 30 mins, not even close in fact
I asked for proof and that isn't proof

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I never said I let it run for 30min...

 

Last one I let it run for exactly half an hour. No proof for that, though

 

So that tells me nothing either because hwinfo tells me it's only been running 30 seconds and the min clock speed is 3.2 GHz so slight throttling already

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Why not trust the man?
BTW You didn't respond on my POST

 

...cause I can´t prove it. But its allright but I will stop w/ OCCT now Clear my records

 

You could as well test the benchmarks I posted in the link.. They are more like every day computer tasks.

 

Be nice!

 

I believe you!

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Its slightly offtopic i know: woulb somebody kind enough to test cpu and gpu temps running heroes of the storm? maybe with fps numbers at ultra?
The only game im interested in running is hots. I doesnt buy the laptop to game on it, but if it manages temps and fps well, i can sell my desktop TY!!!

 

I recently got my XPS 15 and I noticed that when playing Far cry 4 it drops in to the 20 FPS from 60 FPS for a few seconds and this is only after 4 minutes of play. Also another thing is the GPU temps reading I am getting in gpu-z, MSI afterburner, and speed-fan are very strange. When not playing a game the temp goes between 0 and whatever the actual temp is. Hear is a video demonstrating this

 

That's normal, it's because you have optimus where it's switching off the GTX1050 GPU to save power when not needed. You can configure this using Nvidia control panel and switch certain apps and default behaviour between the internal GPU and the gtx 1050.

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Ok I thought that might be it but was unsure. What about the drooping in frame rate though? The settings I run Far cry 4 at are 1080p High settings with some of the settings set to medium and v-sync on. And FPS drops from around 55 to 25 quite often. I have a log file of my gpu but not sure what to look for to see if its throttling. Also my cpu hits around 95c sometimes. Is this normal?

 

I have been running some testing and I believe that my CPU is throttling while gaming and my GPU according to GPU-Z is running at a solid 1607 MHz. When I open up a game my CPU is running at about 3400 MHz, <5 minutes in temps hit 98c and clocks drop to <2000 MHz and never go above that and temps stabilize between 70-80c, 15 minutes in it starts to drop down to 797 Mhz quite often and that is when I get major lag audio starts lagging out and games are not playable. Strange thing is when is drops to 797 MHz the temps are only around 75c for CPU and 78c for GPU so it which makes no sense for it to throttle. Can you guys tell me what your guys think is happening? Is my assumption that the CPU is throttling correct?

 

It's the FET's overheating that causes a domino effect across the board...

Use this chart to address those in the upper middle near the rear vent. If that overall region stays cool, you won't throttle.

My CPU and GPU temps are now in the 60C's even with the GPU OC'ed. The results and findings will be posted soon.

 

That's great that your have been able to fix it and be able to get such low temps but for me this is a pile of crap laptop since it cannot even play overwatch for 5 minutes without throttling from the factory. Basically dell had 1 year to change the GPU and CPU and cant make a laptop that can function correctly but you needed 1 month to fix it. Also I am wandering why all the reviews on YouTube say it can play games no problem when that is not the case at all. Anyway I will weight till you post exactly what you did and your results until I most likely return the computer and wait till a computer that does not look like a gaming laptop but can do some gaming.

 

Take these reviews with a grain of salt. All that glitters is not gold

"All that glisters is not gold—
Often have you heard that told.
Many a man his life hath sold
But my outside to behold.
Gilded tombs do worms enfold.
Had you been as wise as bold,
Young in limbs, in judgment old,
Your answer had not been inscrolled
Fare you well. Your suit is cold—
Cold, indeed, and labor lost."

 

Guys, solution is really simple, do some undervolting and underclocking with Throttlestop. I do not know Games which needs more than 2GHz with a Quad Core CPU. Temperature dropped significantly, your GPU will able to run full speed. Additionally lock FPS with Fraps or Bandicam at 40 or lower and temperature dropped drastically. Less fan noise, heat, more of enjoyment.

 

Yes your right you can do all that and get it to game but the problem is that out the box it is a very flawed product IMO. Which for me means its going back to where it came from.

 

I know but like every single reviewer small big literately all of them have said it can game no problem. This makes me think they opened up a game for 5 minutes saw the good FPS than closed it and said it can game great. BTW is it also 5 minutes for everyone else hear till it starts throttling?

 

Joe do a search. There are hundreds of posts here on Dell 9560 & 9550 thermal performance...

This stuff is very well documented

 

O I know that on these forums this stuff is well known but on YouTube which is where I get the majority of my info it is never talked about.

 

No. Mine occasionally throttles the CPU when gaming (which has no effect since the CPU is overkill), but I have not managed to get it to throttle the GPU with the games I've played so far. It depends on the game you're playing, the quality of the thermal paste application, the degree to which you've undervolted (mine is at -0.110V offset) and possibly other things such as the ambient temperature. With many games, it will work just fine out of the box. With others, it will throttle almost immediately barring hardware modification or underclocking (which is much simpler, but nobody likes to do it because it means you are not getting the performance that you technically paid for).

 

What games have you played? cuz for me playing Overwatch and Far Cry 4 both at about High setting throttles in about 5 minutes when playing Minecraft it throttles on and off in about 15 minutes. So even games that are not that demanding cause it to throttle quick.

 

For electronic gear, I try to dive into a few different sources noting all of them can have extreme biases. Typically I might view some online videos, read some on-line journals, and spend several hours scrutinizing enthusist forums (like this one).

It's difficult to do more due diligence. But there is so much garbage being sold, doing less due diligence can be expensive and time consuming...

 

I just finished Torment: Tides of Numenera which is an RPG that was released roughly a month ago. It runs fine at FHD with some CPU throttling (visible with the proper monitoring set in Intel XTU, but otherwise very hard to detect), but none on the GPU. I've also played a bit of Divinity: Original Sin which is an RPG from a few years ago. That one runs fine at UHD and Ultra settings. I've stopped monitoring the throttling, but it's certainly not visible by eye.

If everything is throttling and your CPU temperature hits 95C, chances are you've simply drawn the short straw as far as paste jobs are concerned and thus should either repaste or exchange the machine. I don't remember such CPU temperatures even prior to undervolting the machine.

 

Some good advice on these forums Joe I'm sure you'll be able to sort out the problems, @iunlock will be pasting a guide soon to help everyone get stable temps and no throttling. Right now I only have a slight CPU throttle in some games which have no impact on FPS from the mods I've made.

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Mine was throttling in high performance mode last Wedensday, then on Thrursday I accidentally left it on power saver and played ME:A. The CPU never exceeded 2.5 GHz of course (no turbo), and therefore I did not notice any throttling. I have my NV control panel set to max GPU performance otherwise I would have noticed choppiness.

Playing around with voltages, my i5-7300 barely hits 50 Celsius at full load at 2.5 GHz. On high performance under load I get 70-71 Celsius. That's a huge delta. Considering most games these days are GPU limited maybe running at the lower clocks is a good option for people not willing to undervolt, re-paste or thermal engineer their mosfets and chokes.

 

Did lot's of testing yesterday night after under volting.

I got one throttle experience but I was running Prime95 at the same time as Mass Effect by mistake. After shutting down Prime95 no issues.

I'm going to do a re-paste - if that drops temps another 5 degrees it will be worth it.

 

It looks like no one is getting the insane amount of throttling I am getting. For me all the throttling is very noticeable and makes gaming impossible to play. Also I noticed that if I am in game and the cpu is throttled and I close a game and go back to my normal tasks of web browsing it takes 5 minutes for things to actually work again. But if I close a game before throttling happens I can go back to web browsing instantly. So my conclusion is that I must have gotten a unit that had the worst paste job in the world and or some other issues. So I will be returning my unit and getting a different computer.

 

Hey guys, just saw this thread and skimmed a bit -- I just finally fixed my 9550 throttling and wrote a detailed report, you may want to read my thread and see if it works on the 9560. Cheers!
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...x-potentially-9560-overwatch-scenario.803756/

 

Cool thanks for sharing buddy. Not sure I wanna work around the problem with disabling my CPU turbo mode and DTPF as it who'll definitely impact game performance with a GTX1050 but may help others! Think I'll prefer the hardware mod from @iunlock for fixing the issue at source

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Try with these settings

Preferred graphics processor: High performance
power management mode: prefer maximum performance
shader cache: off
https://cl.ly/040z0x3Q1O0G

 

Dell has a KB for this:

http://www.dell.com/support/article...under-sustained-100-cpu-and-gpu-loads?lang=en

2. Why is this happening?


The XPS 9550 and 9560 are the latest, thinnest and lightest workstations Dell currently supports with the latest technology available.

Due to how thin and powerful these systems are, the design combines the CPU and onboard GPU cooler into one unit. If both the CPU and the GPU hit 100% load and sit there for sustained periods of time, while still capable of handling heavy CPU and GPU computations the system will throttle the CPU in order to ensure the system does not overheat.


If you require something that can sit with sustained heavy CPU and GPU loads, then you may want to look at a more specialised workstation from our Precision range.

But I love the note they mentioned:
"Note: Please be aware this article also applies to the Precision 5510 and 5520 Mobile Workstations. These systems share design features and components with the XPS 9550 and 9560 Mobile systems and behave in the same manner."

 

I just ordered this from Dell from their Outlet. I just missed the CR unit and settled for the Scratch & Dent. I thought the worst issue on this was the red/pinkish shift on the 4K display which I wanted to to see first hand and return it if it was that bad, but this just makes things worse. I planned to use this for development with vmware and some light gaming, like GTAV.Skyrim/Oblivion and BF2 which I think it would be fine with the latter games, but not so much with GTA V. I really wanted this machine because of the glossy screen, which is rare today, along with higher end components, but I'm unsure of longevity with so much heat being generated. I got the 4 year premium support for $150, thinking, I could amortize this machine at around $368 a year and have that warranty in place in case if it does break down, if I get 6-8 years out of it, I'd be happy. I currently have a M4400 that's about 8 years old (also from the outlet) and works great, just had to replace the HDD with an SSD. But it seems like the new Precisions are much more expensive with bare bone HW for under $1300 in the outlet compared to years ago + from what I read, the panels being used are not good. I also recently bought a SC17 that I gave to my son, it's a great laptop, but EVGA does not sell extra power adapters, nor batteries any more which I really want. I was surprised Dell only currently sells the power brick for the 9550, but no battery for it? Looks like you have to go to a 3rd party vendor for it?

Anyways, I'll see how this unit works out when I get. If I fire up vmware and I start to see throttling with heavy database usage in postgres, I will be returning it. Too bad they just can't make a bit thicker like my M4400 and have better thermals. Also, I'm sure they could design it where the battery pops out like older Dells. This is an unnecessary design probably borrowed from Apple. Personally, I'm not crazy about the design of the 9550 and still love the look of my M4400, I really like that slab look (except for the silly looking top lid which is wavvy.) Ugh. After writing this, I guess I really want a Precision with the same specs (Skylake so I can install Windows 8.1 without the MS mafia telling me I cant with Kaby, the 4K touch IGZO panel) AND price of the XPS 9550

 

For what it is worth, if you undervolt and repaste, your machine will most likely be able to run intensive tasks all day and night. I repasted and undervolted my CPU by -140mV, GPU by -100mV (+100MHz overclock on Core, 200MHz overclock on memory) and I can run both a 100% GPU and CPU 3D rendering load with no throttling, CPU gets up to about 85 degrees with this workload, GPU about 70-ish. High temps, but this is taxing the system to the max of course.

 

Thanks, that's what I was going to do. My concern is, it's an older used machine, and probably had turbo enabled with default auto voltage...meaning, it could require more voltage (less negative offset) than if new and starting off with a lower voltage using adaptive -- my EVGA SC17 can do -120mv easily and keeps cool. But if I taxed that system with turbo for a year, I'm not sure if I could get away with that undervolt when in idle if I never started with an negative offset voltage to begin with. I'll try though! I'll try the re-paste too just in case if the temps are not good either. I read the threads on the pads and they got mixed reviews/results/performance, so I'll just stick with a re-paste if necessary. Thanks again for your suggestions.

Also, do you have the 4K model? Do you have any reddish/pinkish color shift on the display?

 

I just got a 9560 4K and there is no red/pink tint what so ever, the colors are excellent.
an tinted panel I think you should try get replaced by Dell, I would not be able to use a machine if I would see an annoying tint all day.

 

CPUs don't degrade though, so the heat issues you had with your previous laptop stem from elsewhere. Perhaps the thermal paste dried out, which starts insulating the heat from the CPU causing higher temperatures. Dust is also a major issue in laptops. Maintenance for your laptop is very important if you want it to keep running at its max speeds.

 

Sorry, to be clear, I meant the laptop I just ordered from the Dell Outlet, it's not new, it's used and based on posts here, they run hot due to insufficient cooling on the VRMs and GPU VRAM. I have no idea how that proc was used. Not sure if LLC is exposed in the bios and they jacked it up, over volted, etc...but even if they didn't/couldn't, just having turbo enabled with auto voltage set, can cause electron migration over time (degrading the silicon) if the cpu is maxed out the majority of the time in turbo with max voltage + peak voltage with vdroop/voffset peak voltage. Like someone using handbrake encoding lots of videos almost daily, let's say the person who had this laptop was a youtuber/vimoer, when between encodes, the voltage drops, then peaks and the settles at load voltage, over time, that will cause degradation, slowly, but it will, but that will speed up when overclocked/overvolted/LLC too high.

My understanding of EM comes from:

 

Highly unlikely a used XPS was undervolted/repasted/repadded. If you disassemble your laptop you can see a repaste/repad pretty clearly.

Since the vrm throttles at about 76*c (you can see that on one of the ambient temp sensors in HWiNFO64), the CPU and GPU don't usually get the chance to run this laptop very hot in normal use.

undervolt/repaste/repad allow one to run these laptops at higher temps but that 76*c vrm limit is generally in effect for most users, except the few who disabled some Intel firmware.

There is a ton of undervolting data in these forums for the 6300HQ and 6700HQ and you can see where your max undervolt compares to those to get some view of your CPUs condition. But each chip varies so I don't think that will tell you too much unless your max stable undervolt is 100mv hahaha

 

The risks of overclocking

 

Aren't most BGA not overclockable? Are they saying Turbo boost can result in CPU failure if used extensively for longer duration?
I have no problem using a cpu/PC for 10 yrs as long as I get microcode and other fixes through UEFI BIOS that don't introduce additional lagorithms to throttle the PC and force users to switch to new PC.

 

But when a CPU 'degrades' it will simply stop working alltogether. There is not intermittent performance loss. And, for what it is worth, the CPUs performance generally is not worth it long after there may be a chance of failing (averagely speaking of course, CPUs sometimes do randomly fail). I put my old laptop through immense heavy workloads for over 7 years, and in the end, it wasn't the CPU that failed. The CPU after 7 years of rendering and whatnot was still as good as the first day I got it (while keeping the laptop free of dust and repasting every once in a while) in terms of speed / benchmarks.

In hindsight, I should have replaced the laptop way before that, as the performance jump from a i7-720QM and the current 7700HQ was immense. The pure speed increase in the generational leaps count for way more than trying to prevent any form of degradation.

 

Maybe @Freitz can share his experience with CPU failing early.

 

The low entry models of Skylake/Kaby i7 BGA is the only full locked chips. The others from same line can obtain 2-4 extra bins.

As long cooling work as normal and Voltage is within Intel’s own specs... None should have problems running them max 24/7.

 

Excellent photo showing that, thanks!

 

Thanks MrBuzzKill and Pressing,

Quick question for both of you. I just got my XPS 15 9550 Scratch and Dent from Dell today, there are some minor scratches on the bottom, but no where else, some of the standoff rubber had been worn down too. I don't mind the scratches, as like a new car stressing about with the first scratch, now that it's scratched to begin with, I don't / won't have that stress moment Anyways, on to the question: On the keyboard (which I really don't like, it's a joke compared to the Dell M4400 esp. since I paid double+ for the XPS compared to the M4400):

1. The "B" key is unusually very stiff, like something is pressing against it from the bottom up.
2 The Backspace key barely moves a fraction of a mm. Literally, there is no motion to the Backspace key, it registers with a space, but no motion to it, it feels like when you try to press it, you're pushing into fabric about 1mm inward, but that's it, no push down/up motion. Is this the issue where some tape is holding onto it that I read somewhere?
3. The other keys look off...hard to explain, like when you know something is off, but it's difficult to explain what, my impression is that the keys all look out of uniform orientation, like some are fractionally angled left/right.

Other stuff:
1. Display is near perfect, no imperfections except for when looking top down, the left side of the panel about 1/2 inch from the left, has a slight purplish tinge. But straight on, it's white (with a white screen)
2. Will setup throttlestop and push this thing during the return period. Will not let Win10 download any crap to interfere with the stability of the machine (that includes installing candy crush...) If all is well, I'll install Win 8.1/Centos.
3. Will open it up and check for anything unusual and check if the battery is part of the recall in case if they missed that.
4. Will consider buying another if all goes well and return this for a certified refurb unit if they wont send me a new keyboard and let me do it myself, just send the KB and I'll return the defective one in the same box (I don't want a tech messing with the machine as getting to the keyboard looks to be a PITA and tech may not be patient and def. wont treat it like it's his own.)
5. I miss native ethernet. This laptop could've been thicker, no reason not too, esp. to include ethernet/better cooling. This laptop from the side looks like a crappy anorexic ultrabook. If I could, I'd just replace the M4400 panel with this one and call it perfect.

 

BTW, this was the reference to the red shift panel of the XPS 9550, but it was a 2015 model, newer panels probably fixed the issue. Mine doesn't do this, except for the left side of the panel, when looking top down or top right side looking at the left side.