Settings to use your XPS 9570 as a gaming machine- beginners guide

Hi guys,
after months and months of experimenting, I think I found the best setting to use the XPS 9570 for extended gaming. Just for your info: I have the i9. The bottleneck you will hit while playing new and demanding games such as Battlefield 5 are: the CPU and GPU will power limit and thermal throttle. The first thing to realize is that you will not nearly be able to use the CPU at its full potential (and you don't need to). However, the 1050 ti max q can be made to run at very high speeds, way above what is advertised (I got 1683 Mhz) for hours without drops, so yes, you can play games such as BF5 in 1920*1080 in low / medium settings, using pretty much the full potential of a full blown GTX 1050 ti. How to get there?

Just to say this up front: your XPS 9570 will not be remotely able to play demanding games with its stock settings (shame on Dell for this). So this is what you have to do: Since the main bottleneck in games will be your GPU, your CPU only becomes relevant in so far as you have to get it not to power limit throttle below its turbo limit speed (2.9 Ghz for the i9 and 2.2. Ghz for the i7) while you want to run your GPU as fast as possible with settings that are stable. For me, this worked with these settings (no hardware mod necessary):

- use Throttlestop / XTU to turn off turbo boost while gaming and undervolt your CPU: I got mine to run stable at -.125 mV
- use MSI Afterburner or whatever you prefer to undervolt your GPU (do not skip this, its effect is enormous). I got it to reach 1683 Mhz at .9 volt. In the voltage curve, everything should be flat after this.
- use an external cooling pad, this will cool the CPU / GPU while leading to higher VRM temperatures.

With these settings (achievable undervolt will vary for everyone's CPU and GPU, but you can use these settings as a starting guide, they are pretty conservative), you should be able to play demanding games without experiencing any throttling while using the full potential of the GPU (never goes below 1683 Mhz).

However, you will see (use Hwinfo, sensor 1, I think) that your VRM temperatures get close to 120 degrees celsius. So if you want to go one step further: Pad them! This should keep their temperatures below 90 degrees celsius. Important: padded VRMs transfer heat to the backplate, so use the cooling pad mentioned above to keep the backplate cool (around 20-30 Euro on Amazon).

Things to look out for: If your CPU or GPU undervolt is too demanding (e.g. more than -.125 V on the CPU or less .9 V at full clock speed of the GPU) then my games crashed, sometimes after hours and without any error messages. So if this happens to you: undervolt less. In my case, I could use a CPU undervolt of -.140 V on the CPU without problems for days and in all programs, except seemingly unexplicable game crashes without error message after extended playing times. So beware, you might be able to undervolt less than you think. In other words: you don't need bluescreens to indicate that an undervolt is too high. In my experience, you should also set your GPU undervolt / clock so that the GPU never reaches 74 degrees celsius. Even a constant 73 degrees are fine, but as soon as you get to 74, your GPU will throttle, which should never happen, so find your sweet spot of what your GPU is capable of, while staying just below 74 degrees.

Last thing: in my experience, your computer will be able to run games faster in the first, say, 30 mins of playing, since there has been no heat saturation etc. It is easy to get carried away by this and to set everything to more demanding settings when everything runs super smoothly in the first 30 mins. But you probably want to stay slightly below the setting in games that your XPS 9570 can achieve in the short run, to leave some wiggle room for heat saturation and to not let all components run at their absolute limit.

Anyways, just my two cents. These setting turned my computer from a crashing, overheating, throttling monster, into a computer that uses the full potential of a GTX 1050 ti without any power limit throttling and without stability issues. Even if I game for say 5 hours straight, GPU does not cross 73 degrees and CPU does not go into the 90s. Let me know if these settings work for you. I think they might be best for beginners, who do not want to repaste or even open their computer (padding VRMs will help further, but you can avoid it if you accept high VRM temperatures). Let me know if you have any more ideas!

 

What does your GPU get up to temp wise when you are gaming? When I was running Far Cry on mine, I would easily hit the 74C limitation even with an undervolted GPU/CPU. I did not downclock the CPU though. Buying an i9 and running it at 2.9GHz would be a tough pill for me to swallow...

 

"Buying an i9 and running it at 2.9GHz would be a tough pill for me to swallow..."
-> Yes, it really is. But remember that this is only for gaming, where 6 cores * 2.9 Ghz are plenty. However, it is indeed a bit annoying to turn turbo boost off before each game and having to turn it back on again after each game (I often forget).

My GPU now constantly stays (slighly) below 74 degrees so that it never has its clock speed reduced due to thermal throttling. I achieve this by giving it a maximum of .9 V for a clock of 1683 Mhz and by dialling down the graphic settings to a constant 60 fps (usually this means 1920*1080 at low/medium settings in e.g. BF5, in older games, you can probably go higher).