Can I underclock my gpu to prevent thermal throttling?

Hi, sorry for my bad English, I speak French. I have this laptop: A10-4600m, 6gb of ram, 7670, 1gb + 7660g.
My laptop is 2 years old and is starting to overheat when playing games for more than 15 minutes. I think it is called thermal throttling? (When the laptop is too hot, it lower its gpu speed, right?)
Example: I'm playing a game at 40 fps and my gpu is at full speed, but after 10 minutes it starts overheating and lower its speed to 50% and I only get 20 fps. Is it possible to manually set my gpu to 75% speed (30 fps)? I prefer it to stay at 75%/30fps instead of going from 100%/40fps to 50%/20fps every 10 minutes.
Sorry if its hard to understand, my English is not very good and its hard to explain.
Thanks!

 

Before even seeking to underclock your GPU I suggest cleaning your fans, heatsink and maybe even repaste the GPU.

 

Totally agree with Plur... get some decent thermal paste, clean the vents and it will be good as new...

 

I really don't want to open my laptop. Is it possible to underclock it?
Thanks!

 

It's not going to help much if the cooling systems are clogged with dust.

 

You can do it with MSI Afterburner.

That said, reducing CPU speed with Throttlestop will likely have a larger impact on temperatures than GPU underclocking.

I'd also like to point out the typical lifecycle of a consumer laptop while I'm at it, as used by most people.

1. Laptop is purchased, trial antivirus may or not be replaced.

2. Trial runs out, user installs crapware inadvertently, items build up on the startup list making it take minutes to boot, possible malware accumilates.

3. Dust builds up, and most people don't know that just like a desktop PC, laptops do need to be periodically cleared of the dust that builds up. I've cleaned out several laptops that have never had their fans cleaned before and every single one has been choked with dust. If you've never opened your laptop to clean the fan it probably looks like this, here's one of them I cleaned out for the first time:



4. Dust, crapware, and malware make the laptop slow, it easily overheats, and instead of actually addressing the problems the user gets tired of it and buys a new one.

Repeat every 3-5 years.

 

Thanks, I'll follow the tutorial on this site to slow down my cpu using Throttlestop, but are you sure that it is my cpu overheating, and my cpu's heat makes my gpu overheats?
As for number 1, as soon as I got my pc I did a fresh install of windows 7, then 8, then 8.1. I keep my laptop clean (software-side), don't worry.
2: I use microsoft's Autorun software to manually set which process starts at startup and I do malwarebytes scans every week. (I haven't had a virus since a long long time)
3. Yea, I know, my laptop must be full of dust. The problem is, I need to completly disassemble it to access the fan, and I find it to risky. I've never done that before, and I really need my laptop for school, so I really don't wanna break it. I could take it to a repair center to have them clear it up, but I don't have the money for that.
4. I can't do anything about dust, I don't have crapwares, I don't have malwares, and I won't buy a new one soon because I don't have the money for that!

That's why I'm looking for a software-way to make my laptop cooler.

 

U can download HWmonitor to monitoring the gpu & cpu temperature. I love this program. It give you the max and the min temp while I'm running other programs or running burn test like intel burntest or furmark.


HWMonitor CPUID - System & hardware benchmark, monitoring, reporting

I have a Toshiba tecra r850. Few months ago,the cpu temperature was started to reach over 55C at idle few months ago and it can't go turbo speed because of overheating. I was also afraid to disassemble the laptop because I don't want to break it. What I did was I bought two laptops (one was defect and other was functional but 7 year old ) for very cheap. I learned how to dissemble these laptops and watch lot of laptop disassembly video in youtube

The way how laptops were assembled is pretty the same. Once you know the principle, you will figure out very easily what this screw is for or what this cable is for. Now I can take apart my tecra in 20min or less and I also fixed the defect laptop for only $15.

 

Just take a can of compressed air, blow bursts into the fan vents at a minimum.

It really isn't that difficult for most laptops (unless it's a thin an light) to open the bottom and clean it out. Takes all of 10 minutes, and in most cases, takes another 10-15 minutes to remove the heatsinks, clean off the existing paste with alcohol and repaste. Results will be amazing.

You're looking for a software solution where there really is none, it's just an impending doom for your laptop unless you go to clean it out.

 

Trexiic

By underclocking your cpu or gpu, you will not be solving the underlying problem that causes thermal throttling... actually, you will effectively lower the performance of the system as well.

The best thing you can do is to open the laptop and physically clean the insides from the dust (especially the fan and the area between the fan and the air vents), and also repaste the thermal grease onto the gpu and cpu dies.

That in combination with removing bloatware that came pre-installed with the computer will effectively make it even better than new.

It is also possible that a lot of the AMD APU's suffering from throttling issues are not just victims of bad cooling designs (which is quite common), but also poor application of the thermal compound by the manufacturers (this happens a lot more than people suspect).

So your best option is to clean out the dust physically, reapply the thermal paste and remove any and all bloatware from your system.

Underclocking the system might delay throttling, but you will also reduce its performance like that.

 

I would suggest blowing compressed air when the fans are at a high speed in games.. That will really make the dust come out..

 

As I said, I WON'T open up my laptop.

I'll try blowing compressed air when the fans are at a high speed. For the gpu underclocking, I read somewhere on another forum that I could undervolt my cpu instead?
I tried using HWmonitor, but it told me my cpu was at 130c at idle.... So I tried two other software that both told me it was at 45c (HWmonitor is probably incompatible with my cpu? Because the gpu temps were right). Anyway, the cpu temps were higher than the gpu temps, and I read somewhere that the cpu and the gpu might share the same heatsink. I'll try undervolting it, the tutorial was long and complex, but people says it works and there are no performance loss.
Thanks!

 

For the APU, the cpu & the gpu are in the same die, thus the temperature should be the same. The defect laptop that I fixed has an APU in it (acer aspire 5253, C-50) and there is only one temperature. Your Idle temperature is pretty good. I doubt your throttling problem is caused by overheating. U can run prime95 & furemark at the same time to find jout the full load temperatue. If the temperature doesn't exceed 85C, maybe the problem is caused from elsewhere.

 

When I run prime95, my cpu goes up to 95c, then goes down and stays at 85-90.
I haven't tried furemark yet.

 

Raise the laptop off the ground using some books/bottlecaps and that should help a bit too.. Also look at getting a notebook cooler like Notepal U3 however it might make your laptop be at a steep angle and you might not like it..

 

I already have a laptop cooler, and i changed its fans for better one. I tried undervolting it and it works AMAZINGLY!
At idle I'm getting 2-5 more degrees, which is weird, but at load, my computer stays at 75c instead of 95c+. There are no more thermal throttling! I'll also try to clean the fans with compressed air as soon as I find the bottle of compressed air.

 

Yeah, you can get compressed air anywhere in a hardware store.. They sell it on ebay too.. You want a air duster which is what they usually call it