Dragon Center 2.0 (What is the problem?)

There seems to be contradictory information about the Dragon Center and every thread about it in the forum seems outdated.

Concerns: It has been mentioned on many threads that this softwares interferes with undervolt settings or applies an overvolt, or causes inconsistent performance.
On the other hand many people claim that they experienced no performance difference with this software, and it is a good tool to have.

What is the bottom line on this? What does this software do to your computer?


The other question is, although the Dragon Center allows you to overclock your GPU, afterburner has the option to set custom voltage curves which gives you more control. Both software seem to run simultaneously without issues, but which one is in control of the GPU?

 

Dragon Center has been know to mess with overclocks and undervolts with UTX and Throttlestop as it changes values in the system bios, also MSI Afterburner gets messed with when dealing with GPU overclocks using Dragon center at the same time. Not only that there is some bloat inside the installer for dragon center as well.

It's one of them things that if you want to volt curve your GPU or even overclock/undervolt it's best to uninstall dragon center. This is from personal experience too.

Sent from my LLD-L31 using Tapatalk

 

Dragon Center interferes with Throttlestop, MSI Afterburner etc because you can also set clocks, and it writes values to BIOS (or used to). So if you set up your MSI Afterburner clocks and your Throttlestop settings, when rebooting, Dragon Center can overwrite them, effectively undoing them.

I believe it also keeps an overvolt on the CPU but I am not sure.

Regardless of all of this, it is not recommended to run multiple programs that do the same thing. Meaning, don't run multiple overclocking tools, each one overclocking differently/settings. The best idea would be to use only one, whichever is best for you. I personally don't use it, so I uninstalled it.

Dragon Center is a good all around software, but it lacks customization that other software provide. and in the case of undervolting, I prefer going directly with BIOS once you have the correct values.

 

I really like Throttlestop and Afterburner and am comfortable using them, but I wish I could use Dragon Center and just not have it mess with just CPU/GPU voltage or clocking. I'd like the fan profiles and other things built into it I guess. Oh well.

 

The biggest problem with the Dragon Center is once you reboot, it will reset whatever voltage and VR Current limits you have set either in the BIOS or XTU back to default. As we know, the default VR Current limit that MSI sets in the BIOS is not enough and causes CPU Throttling so one needs to up the VR Current limit to prevent this but Dragon Center keeps resetting it back to default.

 

I remember with my GT73 when it first happened, it drove me nuts. I was testing with Intel XTU, Throsttlestop and I had dragon center running on the background, and I didn't know what was causing the issue at first.

 

Also for them that are sticking with Dragon Center there is an issue where its currently crashing, due to the updater program trying to download something and killing the install.

If you have Dragon Center not loading up, uninstall it then disconnect from the internet, reinstall the application and head to the application install directory and rename the update executable to something else then reconnect to the internet, i have been dealing with this on Reddit pages all day today.

 

Since I don't use XTU nor BIOS tweaks, do you think I could get by with dragon center, plus using TS for undervolt? I'm itching to try it and see but don't want to create new problems for myself. Since I haven't voted (since I don't know) I can't see results of the poll in this thread either to see what folks are thinking about performance.

 

you certainly can. Would I? Never

 

I installed dragon center and stopped it from running with the program 'autoruns'. This way I have access to stuff like the usb leds and battery settings. It runs perfectly fine with throttlestop, but bypasses MSI afterburner by applying its own profile. (This is the only thing that I dont like about it)

If you want access to fan curves, you can use MSI Silent Option app. It works perfectly fine on the GE75, and I even perfer it. Technicly you really dont need Dragon Center.

 

So msi afterburner just doesn't work if there is dragon center?

 

it works but you need to reapply the clock settings after each restart, so it's not that big deal.

 

Ok, so as long as I uninstall it before I restart it shouldn't meddle with any settings right?

 

Yes, Im using dragon center with throttlestop and afterburner, and every thing is working perfectly, but the only missing setting is the battery Master, dunno how to enable it)

 

Where can I redownload dragon Centre 2.0 after I reinstalled windows on my GS75?

 

@seanwee @kill4l You have to reapply your afterburner, everytime your dragoncenter switches its power profiles, as this is when it reapplies its own profiles.

all drivers and utilities for your laptop can be found at the MSI support website;

https://www.msi.com/Laptop/support/GS75-Stealth-8SF

 

Thanks

 

Alright, so I've done two benchmarks with dragon Centre installed (turbo, maxed fans)

And the results I'm getting are actually HIGHER.

Far cry 5
113.3 -> 114.3

Heaven 4.0
131.16 -> 133.63

Tested on a GS75, i7 9750h (power limit removed, repasted with Conductonaut), RTX2080 Max-q (90w version, repasted with Conductonaut, +140mhz core, +800mhz memory).

Very interesting result to say the least. It's a very small difference, but it contradicts the general stereotype that dragon Centre worsens performance. That alone makes it noteworthy.

The question remains, how is dragon Centre squeezing out that extra little bit of performance? Fans are maxed, power limit is removed, gpu is already overclocked to the point that +5 mhz will crash.

 

Ran Firestrike, cinebench R15 and R20

Firestrike
Overall 18201 -> 18393
Gpu 20979 -> 21574
CPU 17820 -> 17867
Combined 9282 -> 8922

R15
1317 -> 1316 (margin of error)

R20
3229 -> 3229 (identical)

So cpu performance stays the same while gpu performance goes up.

Edit:
Just finished timespy
Overall 8328 -> 8397
Gpu 8508 -> 8577
CPU 7443 -> 7505