Dell Precision M6800 Laptop Quadro M5000M GPU Power Limit throttling issue at 100W

Hello dear readers and tech enthusiasts!

I own a Dell Precision M6800. Config below:
i7 4810MQ
16 GB [8 GB x 2] Vengeance DDR3 1600Mhz Cl9
Quadro M5000M
480 GB SSD + 500 GB HDD

It is a nice workstation / gaming unit which gets my job done. The 17" display helps. I recently tumbled upon the GPU throttling I am experiencing with my M5000M Graphics card. I started checking out the details and the card is capped at just 100W power and that's limiting it's performance in heavy applications. It is not the temperature cuz it never exceeds 77C in heaven (gpu bench) or valley (gpu bench). It doesnt reach the 100W cap at its 962MHz freq too.
Only some applications seem to stress out the gpu like DoTA 2 (game with vSync off) , FurMark (gpu bench). When the GPU power consumption crossed 100W, it starts throttling to lower frequencies.

I tried to edit the VBIOS but the power targets are already too high around 1000W. Yes it is way higher for default values. I downloaded from techpowerup db and it still is the same values all the way around apart from being a higher firmware version.

Can someone help me out by pointing towards a possible solution?

 

im guessing this is a motherboard restriction, likely implemented by the vcndor. could either be that the mobo power delivery system is indeed maxxed at 100W or that the vendor implemented that limit to avoid overstressing the system in high temp / high stress situations (limiting power also limits reaching excessive temps, after all )

so in that case, ud probably need a combination of modded BIOS, EC and VBIOS to circumvent that power cap

 

thank you for your super quick response. i thought of that restiction but people are doing mods on k4100m with stupid high clocks with 135w power limits if im not wrong on the same laptop. what could possibly be stopping this m5000m?

is it possible to override using the efi commands for the dell bios?

 

@Aaron44126

 

could be different on Kepler (K4100M) and Maxwell (M5000M) though. u sure it was the exact same model from the same release year?

 

I don't think that it is a motherboard restriction. There is a motherboard restriction on power, but Pascal cards in the M6800 can draw up to around 120W before power-throttling. (Note, drawing this much power causes the CPU speed to become capped, even if a 330W power supply is connected — there is a motherboard power limit.)

I have M5000M in my Precision M6700. GPU-Z reports "idle" for the perfcap reason when the GPU is running at full load. (When I tried a P5000 it would report power throttling for the perfcap reason.) Maxwell cards don't boost as aggressively as Pascal cards. I think this is just the clock speed that it "wants" to run at. I think you'd need a modified vBIOS to get it to kick the clock speed up higher. Not something that I have experience with on this card. But I would be interested — there is plenty of thermal headroom to run the clock speed higher.

Spoiler

P5000 power throttling, see "green" in perfcap reason.

 

I wonder why pwr perfcap. i am not getting what you are referring to. exact what model? i am sorry im not so good with english

 

welcome to the thread. i done some core and mem clock freq mods to the vbios of the k4100m thats now sitting in my hp 8770w unit. similarly i have done a few tweaks to the m5000m after observing throttling. it doesnt help the card when it is stressed. in some applications even though the gpu utilization is 100% the clock sticks (1100core/2750mem) if the power consumed by that is <100W. then there are some applications that stomps on the card that insta rises the power consumed to >100W then it fast throttles to less than base frequency; from 962 stock or 1100 modded to a state where it doesn't take >100W like 710mhz or 720 mhz. refer attachment in the first post. if i could push it to 120w then it's good game

( that's a unique capture you have done. on the far right towards bottom. but hey it is what it is )

 

I'm referring to the thing in the GPU sensors tab which tells you why the card is throttling. "Perfcap reason".

I referred to two different cards.
Quadro M5000M: GPU-Z reports "idle" perfcap reason when the card is under full load and running at 962 MHz. This means that the card doesn't think that it is throttling.
Quadro P5000: GPU-Z reports "power" perfcap reason when the card is under full load. So in this case, the card wants to draw more power but it cannot so it has to clock down.

Recall that M5000M uses around 100W but P5000 uses around 120W. So the system power limitation for a MXM card is around 120W.

All this to say, I don't think that the M5000M is power-throttling in the sense that there is no more power available in the system for it to use. There is more power available, it is just choosing not to attempt to draw anymore. This is partly in response to @jaybee83 above who speculated that the motherboard cannot deliver any more power to the card. It can, as we have seen when @JEAMN put the GeForce 1070 in. I say that the Quadro M5000M itself is not trying to draw more than 100W even though the power is available.

So, either this is a vBIOS limit or maybe the card isn't capable of using more than 100W (limitation of VRMs?). I haven't tried to push it past this limit so I do not know.

 

It makes sense to think that the power cap is >=120W on the M6700. However, could you please do a furMark bench for me to see if the GPU power throttles the M5000M on M6700? I am now curious to find out if it is different with M6700 and M6800 variants.

 

We tested Pascal earlier this year (GeForce 1070 in M6800 and Quadro P5000 in M6700) and the power limit was around 120W for both. For my M5000M in M6700 I am seeing the same behavior as you. For some applications it will run close to 1100 MHz but usually I am seeing it stop at 962 MHz. GPU-Z never reports power throttle.

 

That's interesting with your M5000M in M6700. Usually these M5000M ship with 1050 Boost freq & 962 as Base freq. So if you say that even in FurMark it is not stepping below 962 then it is operating at >100W. If you can confirm then I will just buy the M6700 and shove this M5000M in there.

 

No. I tried Furmark just now (this is not a tool I usually keep on hand). It bounces between around 735-750 Mhz and GPU-Z reports power throttling — very interesting, nothing else I have put this card through reports that.

Furmark isn't representative of any sort of regular workload so it doesn't bother me if the GPU can't run it at 900+ MHz.

 

Wow. Now we disovered that it does throttle on M6700 too. I do understand that it doesn't bother a lot of us. However, to the ones that would like to extract more juice out of the M5000M, the vBIOS mods to improve clock rates can be a mess because there is almost more than 15C headroom (thermal throttling at 87C). Potential is being wasted a bit.

I was asking for FurMark because I have seen it in a few other applications like games and professional rendering workloads.

Do you think there is something we can do to about this?

 

I don't really know. I haven't spent any time trying to push the M5000M further. Back when I was on a K5000M I was able to overclock it pretty simply with a modded vBIOS and NVIDIA Inspector. I'm not sure if M5000M is as simple, it seems that it is hitting a legitimate power limit of some kind as opposed to the K5000M which was just clocked way too low for what the card is capable of. It is possible to undervolt? I seem to remember that being limited to Pascal and up.

 

See if the power limit slider is unlocked with NVIDIA Inspector, MSI Afterburner or EVGA Precision X1. If it is, try maxing out the power limit slider and the voltage offsets sliders. It could be the driver is ignoring your modded vBIOS power limits based on the hardware ID. You can also try opening an admin command prompt and pasting this command. See what NVIDIA SMI reports as the maximum watts. Then try to set that value using the same command (instead of 2000).

Code:

C:\Progra~1\NVIDIA~1\NVSMI\nvidia-smi.exe --power-limit=2000

 

furmark is a bad tool to test with, nvidia has implemented code especially for furmark, in that the gpu throttles once it detects that tool.

Sent from my Xiaomi Mi Max 2 (Oxygen) using Tapatalk

 

Agree. That could also give a false read on the power performance cap. I prefer using EVGA OC Scanner Julia test.

 

Clocking M5000M is just as simple as K5000M. Just have to adjust the right sliders. the attachment shows the undervolted m5000m running heaven load <100W. this is different with other applications as mentioned earlier.

 

Thank you. I just confirmed that it is indeed capped at 100W. ref attachment. I followed the code C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\NVSMI\ nvidia-smi.exe and it displays 100W as pwr limit.
I couln't adjust beyond 100W as it says the value of power limit must be between 0-100W.
The power limit and other sliders aren't unlocked in third party OC tools.

 

I thought that was what you would find. That's a great way to find out. I'm sorry I didn't fix the problem, but I'm glad that it gave you the correct and accurate answer.

 

Thank you. Yes you did help me confirm my doubts on the perfcap.
Could you please help me in modding the vBIOS to increase the power limit?
Edit:
vBIOS link
https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/188273/188273
I'm familiar with the maxwell bios editor and flashing. Any suggestions?

 

I have always used firmware modded by someone else, so I am not experienced with what should be changed. What I would do if I were in your shoes is look at good vBIOS mods in the Maxwell BIOS Editor to see what others changed to get good results and try to emulate that.

I have attached a modded 980M vBIOS that I had extremely great results with overclocking if you want to look at it in the Maxwell BIOS Tweaker.

 

I will cross refer this bios to see if i can find any workarounds.
Thank you.

 

I use NVIDIA SMI to manually set my modded 2080 Ti power limit to 2000W. You might want to try using that command to set your GPU to the 100W power limit and see if it helps being set to a static value.



Those that are using Windows 10 DCH drivers... I think you may find the Redmond Retards have removed NVIDIA SMI features. You'll need to use standard drivers and ditch the DCH crap. God forbid that someone might draw too much power from one of their precious tree-hugger candy-butt turdbooks.

 

Tried setting the same values as yours in my power table of the vBIOS. It doesn't help pushing the 100W limit. Sadly the smi power limit command doesn't let me push it either as it says the input must be between 0-100W as I said in my other reply

 

On a kinda related note..

I had a couple of problems when I updated my gpu drivers last week, it locked my card to 1038Mhz Boost clock, this on a 980m, overclocking did nothing, after running an handfull of versions 425.31 is working fine, besides that I can't adjust voltage, no matter if I use Afterburner or NVIDIA Inspector, core and memory OC works fine, but voltage doesn't budge from 1.075v, and I'm running a modded vBIOS by Svet, it worked in the past, but not since my last clean install of the OS, bug, or Nvidia driver capping shenanigans ?

At least I can move my TDP around, but it doesn't help if I can't change my voltage..

 

As a last-ditch effort, you might want to try using a driver from this time last year, or older, to see if the behavior is the same or better.

NVIDIA has done many dirty, rotten things with drivers... including, but not limited to, blocking memory and power adjustments, and overclocking.

 

funny u should mention that, i noticed the same! i suspect its the OS, since I was using the same j95 driver mod before my clean install and voltage/clocks/TDP worked fine. now i cant adjust anything and im stuck at base clocks, not even boost! ugh...

but very good info, that at least 425.31 is working for ya. ill try that one once my machine is up and running again

Sent from my Xiaomi Mi Max 2 (Oxygen) using Tapatalk

 

Don't know if this is the right place, but what would I need to get a M5000M from a Zbook 17 G3 to get working in a Dell M6800, just a dell VBIOS?
Edit: Or would I be better off with a 1060 for a similar price?

 

More likely than not, it does not even need a different vBIOS. As long as the GPU does not have a crappy UEFI-only firmware it should work fine in a system with Legacy or UEFI BIOS. It also depends on which Dell you have.

 

With a Dell vBIOS it should be fine. Almost all vendor cards work in the Precision with the stock vBIOS, but HP is an exception because they tend to leave part of the vBIOS in the system firmware. It may or may not work without a flash. Make sure that you have graphics switching turned on before attempting the card swap — with the Intel GPU active you won't have any trouble performing the flash. Flash from Linux if you can swing it, less chance for trouble.

1060 does not work in the M6800, at least with Windows (BSOD on boot no matter what you do). GeForce 980M does work though and performance is equal to the M5000M for games.

 

I was considering a 980M because its slightly cooler, but its a $100 more so I guess 980M?

 

Totally depends on availability and what you plan on using it for. For just entertainment and gaming purposes 980M is pretty good. If you also work on Professional applications then the Quadro helps in acceleration during certain calculations.