No Min/Max processor state in power options

Hello All,

I was having an issue when playing Battlefront where my processor would stay at max turbo until it heated to the point where it would throttle way down. I then created a power plan specifically to set the processor state to 99%, but it got annoying having to switch plan every time. I ended up going into the bios and disabling intel speedstep which seemed to work, but now that I have not been playing battlefront much anymore I turned speedstep back one. Today I played battlefront and noticed that my processor was just staying a 2.69Ghz, so I went in to double check the min/max processor states and noticed that I no longer have the option to change them.

Anyone know how to fix this?
Thanks

 

Well after a few reboots it seems to have sorted itself out....

 

So you no longer experiencing issues?

 

If you set the 99% Max, that is giving away a lot of performance, you are only running at base clock. It's like turning off SpeedStep in the BIOS, as you know.

If you set the Min/Max at 100%/100%, you stay at Max Turbo unless you power or thermal throttle.

If you set the Min/Max at 0%/100% you get the benefit of SpeedStep, MaxTurbo, and the only time it should overheat is if the application is drawing full performance all the time, then the CPU will stay mostly in MaxTurbo.

So, its the application causing the problem, and you can fix that by limiting FPS with an application like MSI Afterburner + Rivatuner - they both get installed by installing MSI Afterburner package from MSI.

Then you can set a Maximum FPS limit globally or by application in Rivatuner.

I usually select screen hz + 1, normally 61 FPS, but I also OC my Display to 100hz, so for me 101 FPS limit.

If your overheating FPS is under screen refresh, then you can try to limit to screen refresh + limit cores in use.

For some CS:GO uses too much CPU even at lower FPS, so to limit CPU usage you can disable Hyperthreading in BIOS, but if that's not available, disable the Odd cores using Windows Task Manager CPU Affinity setting.

When you start Steam, right click on each of the processes, and select Affinity, and uncheck the odd cores - 1,3,5,7 and that will keep Games started from Steam from using those cores.

That should reduce temperatures enough to play, without giving up full clock rate performance on the active cores.

You probably shouldn't be overheating like that anyway in SWBF, from your sig it looks like you have an older MSI laptop, you might need to repaste - are you still under warranty?

 

Correct I am no longer experiencing issues with the turbo boost not working, but I am still having the turbo issue in Battlefront. The processor stays at 3.7Ghz while playing until it hits mid 90s then it throttles down making my fps in the game stutter then starts the cycle over again. If I turn coolerboost on it will help the issue somewhat, but depending on the map/game mode it can still happen.

 

The Intel CPU's thermal throttle starting around around 93c, so that's what you are seeing.

You can undervolt the CPU, that's usually enough to stop the worst of the thermal throttling. You can turn off the Hyperthreaded cores, that helps if you are OC'ing too.

It's just getting a bit too hot.

Most people with these high performance laptops run them with full fan on during heavy benchmarking and gaming sessions. Cooler is better, so you want to run the fans at 100%.

The auto fan profiles react too slowly. Once they kick in and ramp up the fan speed, and the cooling, the thermal throttling should stop.

Did you notice if you keep going the fans spin up higher and the thermal throttling stops? Or are the high load peaks infrequent? If so then the fans will always lag the need, which is another reason to run the fans high all the time.

 

My issue is definitely happening under the screen refresh rate, but it really only happens in battlefront. My temps in any other games are much much lower although I did experience somewhat of the same issue when I tried the division beta. My computer is still under warranty provided MSI does not care that I broke their sticker to add the 512gb ssd. I have heard that they are ok with it depending on what region of the world you are from and I live in Canada. Do you think this is a hardware issue or software issue and would it be worth contacting MSI for warranty? Other than a repaste which I do not think will solve the issue what can be done

 

I would prefer to not have to undervolt or anything since this really only happens in a couple of games. Running the fan at full does help a bit, but the issue still happens just less frequent. I have installed MSI Silent Option which also seems to help because I have ramped the fans up more once the temperatures start to rise.

 

Fan control is good

Undervolt is good too, it gives you a cooler running CPU all the time.

It doesn't hurt anything, as all you are doing is reducing the voltage the CPU uses closer to what it actually needs. Without Undervolting the voltage is higher than it needs to be to run, and just generating waste heat.

Sounds like you have it under control, good job

 

Go to Throttlestop guide and download Throttlestop. You can make up to 4 different cpu profiles on the fly.

 

I've done the min/max to 0/99 many times just to increase my performance in games. I have never found a single game to be CPU bound, always GPU bound. So by lowering my CPU power and heat that is not needed (for any game I have played anyway) it frees up power and thermal envelope for the GPU to run faster for longer, and more overclock. Pretty much every laptop is limited on how much power it can use, and how much heat it can dissipate.

I know there are games out there that are CPU bound, I'm just saying that for many of us it won't hurt anything to try and see if it helps your situation.

It's an easy "trick" that won't hurt to try and super easy to enable and disable without anything special/fancy/extra software etc.

 

I hear that, if the CPU at base frequency doesn't drop frames, then definitely do away with the Turbo that is overheating the CPU and maybe even producing lag as the game can't deal with the sudden drop in performance, but can align itself at the start with reduced CPU performance.

I just hate dropping that much CPU performance, disabling Turbo chops the CPU off at the knees... or maybe cuts the CPU off at the neck.

Whatever works and doesn't drop FPS is good.

 

When the power supply isn't providing enough juice then performance can suffocate even when you have CPU configured to perform at max level. So EC firmware needs to decide which component receives higher priority from the power source over others.

 

This is easy to fix. All OEM's should delivered a PSU that is powerful enough so that all hardware get what they need of power. Say goodbye to a too weak psu that kill performance. Send rather a PSU which provides the necessary power.

 

That's true, but nobody makes AC adapter higher than 330W on the market right now, lol.

 

No problem Use a converter box and connect 2x330w such as Clevo. Is not worse than that. OEM's must just make sure there is no power cap on the motherboard or any Hybrid bios junk. Then everything will be fine.

 

Last time I checked, they don't make that no more.
The ones you see on the market is probably the remaining stock and is in limited quantity.

The chance of any company to employ this method is rather low.

 

Eurocom + several others advertise their Clevo P870 with this converter box + 2x330w. Have not heard anything other than that these are still on sale. This is required if you are going to OC hardware. Several advertise OC as a sales argument for this laptop model http://www.eurocom.com/ec/specs(347)ec

 

Advertised for sale is no guarantee that they are still around and manufactured. Just like that, one day, the option might be done.

That being said, the adapter for dual PSU is nothing special so we can replicate it ourselves... you don't need to buy it.

Ideally, they should bump the PSU to 400w. But as hardware becomes more power efficient, I doubt we will see much higher rated PSUs. Hopefully we will, but it is more important to remove power limits from the board and let us pair the PSUs for max power. No amount of power will be enough for the heart of the enthusiast that will overclock everything and everyone hahaha.