TDP Throttling XPS 15 9550

It seems like my XPS 15 9550 is TDP throttling after updating to the newest BIOS (1.2.00)
Looking on Intel XTU/Task Manger, my CPU frequency is erratic despite being on the high performance power plan. The core frequency frequently drops to around 1.6 GHz, as shown on Intel XTU. However, no thermal throttling is reported. The temperatures are high, but not that high (around the 80 Celsius range while under load.
Throttlestop reports TDP throttling when I am playing a game, which leads me to believe that there is TDP throttling occurring.
Any fixes?
I've tried a variety of Throttlestop settings to no avail, along with trying various power plans.
I've seen a recommendation online to unplug the battery, however, I don't possess a Torx 5 screwdriver nor do I want to really get one.

EDIT: It seems like I've found a temporary solution. I disabled Turbo Boost Short Power Max in Intel XTU, and while TDP throttling is still occurring, it isn't as severe. It throttles down to around 2.4-2.6 GHz, which is perfectly acceptable.

 

Of course it will TDP throttle, it is designed to do so at 45W and is more than capable of doing a lot more (56w for a second I think) but considering it is locked by the chip and motherboard then the answer is realistically no. Even if you could you would be going beyond the thermal capabilities of the heatsink. I expect the GPU also accounts towards the TDP throttle.

No idea where you saw unplugging the battery but I can't see how that will work, as always a quality repaste of the CPU/GPU will help the thermal side.

 

Are you using an old throttlestop.ini from another computer? I had that cause TDP throttling, as TS had set the power limits lower than they should have been. Are you using Dell power manager, set to ultra performance? I've never seen TDP throttling on an XPS 15 outside of that bug I had with TS.

 

Mine will sit at 2.6ghz under aida64's FPU test, throw in a GPU test and it jumps from 45w to 54 and throttles to 1.6ghz to keep within the max total limit.

This is the BIOS/CPU doing the throttle.

 

OP: Is this during heavy use of the iGPU?

 

Nope, I did a fresh download.

This is during heavy use of the 960m, not the iGPU.

I don't know if it's an issue on the thermal side...
As I said in my post, the temps are high, but not high enough to cause throttling. Furthermore, Intel XTU reports no thermal throttling at all.
This issue also only arose when I updated the BIOS to 1.2.00. Before, the core frequency would stay at a steady frequency, leading to no FPS drops.

 

I would just upgrade to the previous bios. I had lots of issues with the 1.2.00 BIOS with TB3 and throttling as well.

 

Just uninstall "Intel Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework" in device driver like explained here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/4k46ls/cpu_throttling_xps_15_9550/

It worked perfectly for me.

 

I havent seen consistent results with the "Intel Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework" "fix" and windows will also reinstall on most cases. Im more interested on the BIOS version, anyone has a link to any BIOS older than 1.2? because i dont remember having a throttle to 0.8 before that BIOS, maybe they changed something, i would like to verify.

 

While a bit unrelated to your issue, once you get that fixed, You may also want to replace the thermal paste on cpu and gpu, as well as place a thermal pad on the voltage regulator *use non-conductive paste). I have not tried this yet myself, but a few you tube videos people are getting great results. Also underclocking the cpu around 100 to 130 mv (look on you tube), people are getting much less thermal issues, while not loosing performance.