Undervolting and unleashing the thermal headroom in the Yoga Pro 2

The i7 best buy version (not sure about others) is very easy to tweak using Intel Extreme Tuning Utility. Much of the sliders are unlocked. I increased my Max turbo power (not just the short burst) to 25W and increased my FPS in SC2 and left4dead2 by 10 fps! I also undervolted across the board on the CPU/GPU by .1V and it seems stable so far. I will test increases in battery life later. You can also overclock the GPU and overvolt the GPU but I prefer to undervolt for better battery life.

You have to disable Intel Thermal Profiles in the bios i think or it will revert back eventually.

 

I'm not sure why nobody else has responded to you. I'm definitely going to try this later tonight.

Any reports on whether or not battery life has been increased due to your undervolting?

 

I havent done any controlled battery run downs. It "feels" like it last longer . The fans do seems to kick off less. The real awesome part is i am scoreing p1100 on 3dmark11 which is equivalent to the macbook air with intel HD 5000 with 40EU! Increasing the thermal to 25W really helps

 

Just ran 3dmark11 with my GPU overvolted by 50mV, and I got p1070! Not bad.

What're your settings for your undervolt and overvolt, if you don't mind sharing?

I tried undervolting my CPU by 0.1V but it crashed on me .

 

I dont overvolt. I have the GPU undervolted by .8V and the CPU undervolted by .8V (got a crash at .1V after some use so I dialed it back). The GPU can be overclocked and overvolted but it is not worth it. What is holding the GPU back really is the 15W TDP turbo cap. If you up it to 25W then the performance gets a huge boost. I have tried overvolting and overclocked the GPU to 1400mhz but only got 100 more points on 3dmark11 so about 1200. Id rather undervolt by .8V then overvolt by .5V (1.3V volt difference) for such a tiny performance increase. I am satisfied that I can play SC2 and L4D2 at 1080p.

 

what undervolts are you guys achieving?

 

Edit: N/M. There is a clear difference this time, ~25,500 vs 29,600 on Ice Storm 3dmark graphics score with turbo boost changed to 25W.

Is there anything detrimental to changing Intel Thermal Profiles in bios?

 

Which version of XTU are you using? When I try and use the version downloaded directly from Intel it will not install because it is not a supported platform.

Update: Nevermind, It was an old link i was using, the newest version on intel's page seems to work.

 

Can someone help me do an experiment to see if undervolting helps with battery life. Someone with stock voltage download a program called BatteryBar it is free. It tells you the discharge rate. Set your computer on the maximum brightness and close all programs. Let it sit idle on the desktop with the balance profile on but the high performance color fix ON. Wait until the battery discharges about 3% to normalize. Then check the discharge rate and report back here. I will be doing the exact same thing with about .16V total decrease to the chip to test to see the discharge rate. By my calculation the CPU should be running about 2W less power with my undervolt. Thanks!

 

I have done it and do see a different by about 10% but want to get more of a sample size.

 

Could you or someone teach me how to undervolt and increase performance? Like a quick step by step?

 

Interesting tweaks. I do have a question, Intel states the i7 max turbo speed is 3.0GHz, but on the Yoga 2 Pro under Taskbar CPU , it states max speed of 2.4GHz. Are you saying that your tweaks extends it to 3.0GHz?

I would greatly appreciate the feedback.

 

Maximum nonturbo frequency is 1.8ghz stock. With both cores it is 2.7 ghz max turbo frequency. Single core it is 3ghz.

 

Could someone please tell me how to get these undervolt settings to stick after a reboot/wake etc ?
Also, how do I access the fan's settings? There's nothing in the BIOS to change that applys to fans. Could someone please help?

 

I don't know about the fans, but in the BIOS you need to disable DPTS so that your settings stick.

 

Thanks for doing all the research on this and sorry I'm a bit late. In case it still matters, pre-tuning I got -9,429 mW drain at 100% brightness and "Balanced" profile.

 

Any idea how well these settings would work for the i5 version of the laptop? Thanks

 

Bump, seeing if anyone has gotten a better result for the i5 iteration of the laptop, thanks

 

Originally, I was able to achieve stable -80 mV on CPU, GPU, and Cache. At -100 mV it crashed soon after startup.

Unfortunately, recently I have not been able to get under -50 mV. I suspect the new Intel XTU version and Intel Graphics drivers to be the culprits, but I don't have time right now to test this hypothesis.

 

1. Install tweaking software : go to this page Intel® Extreme Tuning Utility (Intel® XTU).
1.1. Click on " Download Intel® Extreme Tuning Utility (Intel® XTU) >", choose the version you want (4.4.0.4 is the latest one at the time of writing but it seems a bit buggy, ie crashing when clicking on "Settings" at the top).

2. Install it properly, it will ask for reboot at the end, do it.

3. Start the software and click on " Manual Tuning" on the left side.
3.1. You can set the " Dynamic CPU Voltage Offset" : I suggest starting with -50 mV.
3.2. You can set the " Processor Cache Voltage Offset" : I suggest starting with -50 mV.
3.3. You can set the " Processor Graphics Voltage Offset" : I suggest starting with -50 mV.
3.4. You can set the " Turbo Boost Power Max" to 25W.

4. Once finished setting your new voltages and power output, click on " Apply" on the right side.

5. Right click on the software icon in the taskbar near the clock and click " Exit". On reboot, settings are applied for me , even if I didn't disable Intel Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework on my machine but I can't guarantee it will for you.

6. Enjoy your very nice piece of hardware !

 

Do you notice any battery life benefits?
I've installed it a week ago and undervolted -60, -60, -80 mV, but don't really notice any lower battery drain when observing it with BatteryBar, when compared to stock voltages.

Additionally, it looks like XTU is interfering with Lenovo's Energy Manager, or Windows itself, and sometimes it switches the battery status from being discharged to "charging" when I'm on battery. Even a reboot or shut down doesn't help to reset it, I have to plug in the charger and plug it out in order to get Windows to show again that I'm on battery. Few times I even found the Conservation mode in Energy Manager switched on by itself, and my battery "charged" at 60%. Something is buggy there...

I wanted to uninstall XTU but what confused me is that XTU is asking to set the computer back to "default" plan before uninstalling it. However, the "default" plan has Turbo Boost Max Power set to 25W, whereas I remember it being at 15W when I installed it.
Is it that Intel's own default for Turbo Boost Power Max for this processor is 25W, but Lenovo set it to 15W for Y2P, or what?

Would it be OK if I set voltage offsets back to 0 mV before uninstalling XTU, but set Turbo Boost Max Power to Intel's default 25W? Or is it better to set it back to Yoga's default 15W?

 

Bumping this thread to the top. I am going to run the suggested overclock and see how that works. The computer is plenty fast, but the more the merrier!

 

I answered directly inside your post.