The ThrottleStop Guide

Oops. I meant to put .6

I dont know why the voltages wont save for me, but they wont in v8.70.6

 

Use Intelligent standby list cleaner from Wagnard(Creator of DDU) to startup automatically. That reduced my stuttering in gaming or compute intensive loads wherein win 10 caches all RAM and hold it until the machine starts to stutter.

I did see two different Timer res in TS on AC and battery. On AC its 5ms and in battery its set to 15.565ms

 

@pete962 - Did you follow the Task Scheduler guide that is in the second post of this thread?
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/the-throttlestop-guide.531329/#post-6865107

There are a few options in the Task Scheduler that many users assume are not being used when actually, they are being used. The guide shows that you have to be specific and make sure none of the grayed out options are on accidentally. ThrottleStop should never die in the system tray. If this is happening it is because Windows is doing a taskkill on ThrottleStop. The reason this happens is almost always because the task in the Task Scheduler is not setup properly. Follow the guide exactly.

The default timer resolution value for Windows is 15.625 ms whether on AC or battery power. Some programs like Google Chrome like to reduce this for smoother video playback. At the moment, I have 4 tabs open in Google Chrome, none of them are video related, and Google Chrome is responsible for setting my timer resolution to 1 ms while plugged in. People should complain to Google about this "feature" / bug but most people are unaware of who is to blame.

In theory, reducing the timer resolution can interfere with the CPU spending the maximum amount of time in the low power C states like C7. A lower timer resolution when on battery power would likely reduce battery run time.

 

https://imgur.com/yoArbRI
https://imgur.com/Sthg71c

Throttlestop doesn't seem to be working in my situation any idea why??
There are 2 screenshots with ts bench running and Hwinfo on the second one

 

In your first screenshot, ThrottleStop Limit Reasons shows THERMAL in red.



Intel sets the maximum temperature for the 8750H at 100°C but they allow individual manufacturers to lower the thermal throttling temperature. The manufacturer of your laptop has set the thermal throttling temperature to 96°C. ThrottleStop reports that your CPU is running at 96°C so it is thermal throttling and slowing down.

ThrottleStop has no ability to let a user to go beyond this limitation. You cannot use ThrottleStop to run your CPU at an unsafe temperature.

Your results are showing that the heatsink and fan used in your laptop is either completely inadequate or it was not installed correctly. You can try to replace the thermal paste but it is likely that the heatsink is simply inadequate. @Papusan knows that this is a common problem with many modern laptops.

Using ThrottleStop to reduce the CPU core and CPU cache voltage can help reduce your maximum CPU temperature but there is only so much you can do when bad design is the real problem.

Edit - ThrottleStop Limit Reasons and HWiNFO are not compatible. You need to exit HWiNFO for accurate results in Limit Reasons. HWiNFO automatically clears the throttling data stored within the CPU.

 

Some info for you
How Dell cripple performance explained by...

Yes Unclewebb. And @Mashreef Ahmed should be very happy the manufacturer of his notebook didn't cripple it further down and put throttling temperature to 90C as MSI did for their GS65 Stealth models. Or even lower.


Edit. See also NBC.net recommendation regarding the unlocked Coffee lake Core i9 BGA models

 

@Papusan - Reducing the PROCHOT thermal throttling temperature to only 90°C is crippling indeed!

 

@unclewebb - If we would be able to use the ThrottleStop for GPU purpose It would be great

 

is there a way to have separate turbo power limit profiles like the FIVR? TPL setting applies to all the profiles. So while stress testing on battery the laptop crashes because it uses the AC power profile turbo limits. is there a way?

 

@unclewebb is there a way to have TPL attached to the profiles? currently, the TPL settings is an override for all profiles. Also, how can I see if throttle stop is actually bypassing the systems settings, My laptops OEM software uses some sort of XTU service and I think it's not optimized for battery and there is a lot of throttling on battery.

stats on battery idling
Stats on battery below 40% idling

thank you

 

https://imgur.com/QJogyYd
2 more new limit reasons

 

You have touched the cpu's power limits PL1 and PL2. Your cpu is an locked down cpu.
Core i7-8750H - Intel - WikiChip

Not much you can do outside undervolt as much you can. + swap to better thermal paste.

 

Hey guys,

My TDP level control is not sticking after resume from sleep. Is that normal behavior?
In HWiNFO It goes back to "Nominal" instead of "2" that I set in Throttlestop before sleep. Is there a way to permanently lock this?
Btw, I do check the "Lock" checkbox everytime.

 

Not yet. Maybe someday. Maybe not.
If you need to reduce power consumption for individual profiles, lower the IccMax value for that profile.

Are you using the Disable and lock Turbo Power Limits feature?



If this setting is enabled and your CPU is still PL1 throttling then there is nothing you can do. Your laptop manufacturer has decided that they want your laptop to run like a slug while on battery power. This helps protect the under designed battery they are using so they can avoid any battery fire lawsuits.

Your laptop CPU runs too hot. You will not be able to maintain maximum performance if your CPU is overheating. What are your options? You can pull your laptop apart and become a thermal paste engineer or you can put your laptop back in the box and sell it on EBay or return it.

There are 2 or 3 completely separate TDP Level control variables and ThrottleStop only has access to one of these. Without documentation or access to any recent hardware that uses TDP Level control, I stopped working on this feature. Does using ThrottleStop to lock TDP Level to 2 provide any benefit for you? On most laptops, the setting that ThrottleStop changed was usually overridden by one of the other TDP Level control variables so changing this in ThrottleStop did not accomplish anything. Can you post a picture or two and show me why this setting is important to you? I need some motivation to do some more ThrottleStop programming.

 

I can't really say there's any benefit, I need to run some tests.
My configurable TDP down (1) and up (2) are respectively 10W and 25W. Nominal (0) is 15W.
If I don't set anything in throttlestop it's stays in "Nominal" by default. If I get this right, this level won't change no matter the CPU load, right?
I was just trying to lock this at the highest level possible, in theory this could avoid more throttling, right?

 

Locking TDP to Level 2 seemed like a good idea to me too. In practice, it didn't seem to make much difference. That is when I found out that there are duplicate sets of TDP Level registers within the CPU. Locking the TDP Level in one register does not prevent it from being set to Level 0 or Level 1 in another one of the duplicate registers. The CPU then looks at all of these registers and uses the one with the lowest watts.

That's the problem. The TDP Level can change in one of the other TDP Level registers at any time. Your laptop might use different TDP Level values when you switch to battery power or if power consumption gets too high or if the CPU or GPU reaches a certain temperature. This is why in the early days, I was not a big fan of the low power U CPUs. Intel gave way too much control to manufacturers and in some situations, there was little to nothing that user software could do about it.

What CPU do you have? Some of the 7th and 8th Gen U CPUs can run at full speed without having to worry about the TDP Level. Here is a 7500U running at almost twice its rated 15 Watt TDP without a hint of throttling.

https://i.imgur.com/8OGhZ5y.png

 

Mine is a 8550U. It's already a lot better after some tweaking, but I still suffer from throttling sometimes.
I set the max clock to 3.2ghz, -0.100 voltage offset and 45W in both PL1 and PL2. I get a max of 85°C on heavy load.
While benchmarking I noticed it reaches around 28-29W and starts to decrease to less than 25 after a few seconds, I'm not sure if PROCHOT is the culprit, even though it's disabled in throttlestop... Any tips for me?

 

On some Dell laptops, the turbo power limits will be enforced regardless of your settings in ThrottleStop or Intel XTU. Are you using the ThrottleStop - FIVR - Disable and Lock Turbo Power Limits feature? When you are benchmarking, open up the Limit Reasons window and see what is glowing in red when your CPU starts throttling. Make sure HWiNFO is not running in the background when testing with Limit Reasons.

If the above option is enabled and your power limits are set to 45W in ThrottleStop and these power limits are being ignored, that means the EC is likely throttling you down to 25W or less. The 8550U has a TDP rating of 15W so anything above this is a bonus. Some laptop manufacturers leave things wide open so you can go way beyond 15W but some other laptop manufacturers do not.

Why not post some TS screenshots while you are benchmarking so I can have a look. The main screen, the TPL and FIVR screens and Limit Reasons will show me a lot of info without me having to ask 101 questions or guess at how you might have TS setup.

 

Yes, I'm using "Disable and Lock Turbo Power Limits". Without that my cpu stick with the default values.
It usually flashes EDP OTHER in RING and THERMAL in one of the other 3 columns. I got a Thinkpad E480 btw.

My machine does run above 15W and HWiNFO shows correctly 45W in both PL1 and PL2, so I think this is working properly. Yesterday I downclocked from 3.2 to 3.0 and that was a LOT more stable while gaming. The system wasn't asking more than 23W of PKG POWER.

 

I don't think you can adjust Turbo Ratios on your ULV chip. You can safely disable C1E since its not used in modern CPUs.
You can now tweak Speedshift (Main window) and Intel Power balance values (in TPL window)

 

Yes, it's possible. It's working perfectly fine here.
EDIT: Clocks don't go higher than 3.0, exactly how I set in Turbo Ratios.

Thanks, I was really wondering about the need of C1E.
EDIT: I'm ok with speed shift 128, if set that to zero cpu will run at full speed all the time, even in idle. 128 keeps the clock at about ~800mhz and the response is pretty quick if I need more speed.

 

About Intel Power Balance, I'm not sure what values to put there...
I see this is some kind of TDP distribution between Intel CPU and GPU, but what behavior should I expect if I put CPU 31 / GPU 0?

 

Maybe that's a bug in BIOS. Usually 8xxxU series and any HQ/ULV chips can't adjust multipliers. Only HK/K series can increase/decrease multipliers. If it is indeed a bug, don't upgrade BIOS ever.
Put speedshift value of 80 for on-demand max boost. 128 takes a little time to adjust to demanding tasks.

 

Maybe that's the case, because I don't upgrade the BIOS for quite some time.
I actually downgraded it in the past because in newer versions Lenovo throttles the dGPU to the point that it's useless.
I'm running v1.13. The newest one is 1.28.

Or maybe that's just a thinkpad thing...

Thanks for the tip, I'm gonna test with 80. This parameter only affects the idle clock, right? So in consequence it takes less time to go from idle to full speed when it's needed...

 

Thinkpad T series? They do throttle dGPU after couple of BIOS updates, reduce core/memory clocks by BIOS update.

 

E series actually. Thinkpad E480.
They started to throttle dGPU on bios 1.14. So I'm stucked with 1.13, but that's ok, everything works as it should.

 

They usually do that on budget models including ideapad and Thinkpad.

 

To get rid of EDP OTHER throttling, try increasing the Core IccMax value. Your screenshot shows that this is set to 64.00 Amps. For testing, I would double this to 128.00 Amps. The only way to fix Thermal issues is to pull your laptop apart and try to improve the cooling. New thermal paste, drilling holes in the case to improve air flow, etc. Hacking up ones new laptop with a Dremel is not for everyone.

On the main ThrottleStop screen it shows PROCHOT 96°C and this has a check mark beside it. This is a record of CPU throttling due to your CPU cores reaching this temperature. Before you do any testing, you can click on this box to clear this information from the CPU. After you are finished testing, you should not see a check mark in this box. Thermal throttling is the CPU rapidly cycling between 800 MHz or less and full speed, many, many times per second. Best to avoid this. If you are not going to try to physically improve the cooling performance of your laptop, your idea to slow the CPU down a little to avoid thermal throttling is a good idea.

I think it depends on the manufacturer. On a ULV CPU you cannot overclock by adjusting the turbo ratios higher but as long as ThrottleStop shows that they are not locked, you should be able to lower these to slow the CPU down for better thermal control.

I will agree that enabling or disabling C1E does not make a huge difference but C1E is still used in modern CPUs. I usually have it disabled but Intel recommends to always leave C1E enabled. On battery power, leaving C1E enabled might be best but I do not have any test data to prove this. The difference in battery run time is probably minimal.

Your U CPU is able to run well beyond its designed 15 Watt TDP limit so using this feature to shuffle the power budget between the CPU cores and Intel GPU might not be a useful feature for you. I have rarely heard about any use for this feature but I know when I remove it, then the complaints will start. It never hurts to do some testing and play with different values. Just don't expect to see any huge changes in performance.

A Speed Shift EPP setting of 128 can interfere with maximum performance on some CPUs so I also recommend setting EPP to 80. Open up the FIVR window, look at the live data in the table at the top right and make sure your CPU is using whatever EPP value you have chosen in ThrottleStop. Windows 10 can interfere with this setting. If you set EPP to 80 in ThrottleStop but the FIVR window still shows 128, that means Windows is in charge of this setting. In that case, do not put a check mark in the Speed Shift EPP box on the main screen because it will just cause a fight between Windows and ThrottleStop over who controls EPP.

 

Changing IccMax is definitely something I will test. Thanks for the tip. But what exactly is IccMax?
EDIT: I noticed that values for IccMax for cpu core and cpu cache are quite different... for the CPU Core is 64 and CPU Cache is just 6. Should I change only for the cache or both?
This laptop is pretty new (a couple of months), so I think thermal paste is still in good shape. But I definitely gonna repaste sometime in the future.
PROCHOT 96°C always get checked even though this option is disabled. I always clear that before running benchmarks and tests, but it gets checked again from time to time.

Yeah, I'll probably gonna leave that untouched.

Gonna test that.

 

The PROCHOT box is just an indicator box. When this box shows a check mark, that tells you that your CPU has been thermal throttling. At least one core reached 96°C so the CPU was forced to slow down to protect it from damage. Manually clearing this box simply erases this information from the CPU. Next time your CPU overheats, this box will show a check mark again. I included this so that you do not have to be looking at ThrottleStop 24/7. When you are finished gaming or running a demanding task, you can open up ThrottleStop at any time and have a look to see if any thermal throttling has occurred. A yellow THERMAL box in Limit Reasons also confirms that your CPU has been thermal throttling.

Your laptop might be fairly new but that is no guarantee that the factory did a great job applying thermal paste. Laptops are mass produced and shipped half way around the world. Even flexing a laptop on your knee can loosen up a heatsink over time. There is almost always room for improvement. Read some reviews to see what thermal paste works well in laptops.

If your laptop is only thermal throttling when stress testing it to the max then this is not something you have to immediately worry about. During normal use, your laptop might rarely if ever thermal throttle. If that is the case, no worries. The Intel specified thermal throttling temperature for your CPU is 100°C. Lenovo reduced that by 4°C so you are not going to hurt your CPU. It will start thermal throttling and slowing down a little early so it should never reach, let alone exceed, the Intel maximum safe temperature.

Edit - When testing, I would crank up IccMax sky high. I think in ThrottleStop, only the primary CPU Core IccMax is important. The one that ThrottleStop lists as Cache IccMax may not be important at all. Without proper documentation, feedback or access to a wide range of modern CPUs; I am not 100% sure what this one does. It was included in case someone, somewhere with some CPU needed it.

IccMax is how much current is going to flow through your CPU. It will not force your CPU to explode. Removing this limitation just allows your CPU to reach its maximum designed speed. When stress testing, lower this value and see how your CPU reacts. See what lights up in red in Limit Reasons and see what happens to your MHz. Less IccMax is bad so more must be good!

 

Hey so I tried the IccMax, and the value of 32 gave me a max PL2 of 35, which I required! thanks. I wonder what would happen if increase it beyond 128, that is my default value for the performance profile, and max power on a -152v and 67PL2 is 66.2w. And I've never achieved more than 67.3w ever on my i78750H. Also, my RIng EDP Other is always yellow, never goes away even after clearing, what can it be?

 

Maybe Ring EDP Other would go away. You can also try increasing the PP0 Current Limit in the TPL window. One or the other often times will cure EDP Other throttling.

 

What is this PP0 Power Limit? Would that help in my case either?

 

Anyone know how to lock CPU+turbo at a static speed? ie lock at, say, 3.500ghz? Or a guide? My CPU+turbo jumps and goes down constantly. I tried clicking TPL settings, clicked both two top Clamp options and it's stable but not locked (CPU speed fluctuates within a range of 50-80mhz) and now I can't unclick Clamp check marks for some reason I tried reading this entire thread but it's so long

 

enabling high performance mode on windows 10 works for me. i am at 3.5ghz all the time on all cores ( i7 4710hq)

 

Set Speedshift EPP SST to 0 to get full turbo CPU frequency always

 

@unclewebb
Have you ever heard of Lenovo throttling the RX550 in Thinkpads on newer bios versions?
On the E series they started to throttle the dGPU since bios 1.14.
Is there a way to control/revert this using Throttlestop or changing dGPU parameters is off the table?

 

@unclewebb what is ring edp other and core edp otther? and PP0?

 

A little elbow grease, plus using google, is required.

 

Trust me I've tried.

 

@terrorific - I have to agree with @tilleroftheearth
The NBR forum has a wonderful search feature that is easy to use. Here is an easy way to find out if I have ever talked about EDP Other before.



Yes indeed. It looks like I have been saying the same stuff over and over and over again.

Try increasing it and see if it makes any difference.

I am not familiar with Lenovo's latest throttling schemes. ThrottleStop is mostly for controlling Intel CPUs.

 

Hello,

I'm getting this error after following all the steps creating new task scheduler for TS, searched on google but can't fix it. It says "One or more specified arguments are not valid".
Can someone help me?

 

Ok. Is this parameter in Watts like the other limits? Maybe I can replicate the same value from PL2 for example.

 

I could fix it by changing to SYSTEM in general tab (screenshot below). Now the problem is when computer starts the TS icon is missing in system tray. TS starts running, I can see on task manager and Undervolt is always applied when computer starts, only the Icon is missing. I need to open TS manually to get the icon visible.
If someone knows how to fix this please tell me.
Thank you.

 

On first page of Throttlestop, make sure the "Taskbar" option is checked. Otherwise, TS will be open, but without the icon.

Best,

Joe

 

Didn't solve. I would like to have the icon on Notification area only, not on Task bar. With this option checked the icon is visible both on Not. Area and Task bar, but they still don't load when PC starts, I need to open TS manually to keep them visible. Also, in TS options, I have 'Notification Area Icon' checked.

It's not a big deal since TS is working correctly, I just would like to have the icon on Not. Area when PC starts.

Btw, I don't have TS task on Task Manager > Startup. Isn't supposed to be there?

 

Do a search in this thread on how to clean the taskbar notification icons.

 

I read some posts about it and I think I don't need this software to clear icon cache. I did fresh windows install few days ago, and from what I understand this software is good to remove excessive icons, then we need to add the icons manually on Windows Settings. Am I right? The problem is I don't have my windows active, I don't have access to Task Bar settings.

Please correct me if I'm wrong and indeed I should run this software, even if windows is not activated.

 

Hi All

My first post on the forum, I have recently purchased a HP Envy 13 ah0003na, i7 8550u, 16GB Ram, 512 SSD with NVidia MX150 graphics card.

Love the laptops design and portability, but am seriously struggling with the amount of heat generated (specifically want to address an optimise for the only game I play Football Manager 2017)

I have downloaded and read the Throttlestop Extensive guide here and in other places and made changes to Throttlestop, but frankly I am a novice in this regard and despite believing I have made changes as per the guide, undervolting and setting up profiles etc, my feeling is that I am still struggling to see the potential gains I could should.

A cinebench R15 Score of anywhere between 400-600 is what I am getting after various changes

Especially, believe I am still seeing much more Throttling and Heat/Temp (90 degrees C) from the CPU specifically when playing the game, in a match (maybe GPU related also?)

Having spent a considerable amount of money and having sent 5 other bands of laptops back, I really want to get this right and I believe throttlestop from what I have read should be able to help me. However, as I said I am seriously novice in this area and I would be most grateful if someone could spend some time supporting me here or directly (I would like to offer some form of payment if my setup was optimised for my use)

Please would someone be able to support me with this? in addition I am open to be contacted specifically via direct message then email, or setup a separate thread if more suitable.

Would appreciate an experts support, very much

Thank you

 

Welcome!

You really need to post all the relevant ThrottleStop screenshots here for anyone to seriously help you.

That is a typical small/thin and light design that does what it was designed to do with an i7 CPU and discrete GPU: heat up.

ThrottleStop can alleviate some of the issues it may have, but it can't fix them completely.

What were your results before using ThrottleStop on this notebook? Did you manage to tame the heat produced even a little?

While you can keep testing with undervolting it just a little bit more each day, I would instead return this HP too.

90C after using TS is a great indication of a poor (cooling) design, just what HP is known for, ime.