TONGFANG GK5CN5Z / GK5CN6Z / GK5CQ7Z / GK5CP0Z

How generic are these from one company to the next?

We're on BIOS 1.04
EC 1.33.09

 

I have the 17" and have been fiddling with it. It also seems limited to 35W max even though it has the 180W brick. Setting the turbo boost power max higher in XTU eliminated power limit throttling during stress tests and improved CPU benchmark results significantly (in Passmark). Unlike the undervolt, the wattage boost does not persist through computer restarts in XTU.

I'll try setting it to high performance mode exclusively, though I also have a game mode in gaming center which I have been using.

Is it safe to go higher than the 45W TDP recommended by Intel? I saw a couple guys online who set the short power max as high as 80W on the 8750H.

 

https://imgur.com/a/fpYKTQi

This is showing 44W under load on the same bios.

After changing the setting in the control center did you change it in the power plan too?

 

Play BFV online and see if it does the same if you are able.

 

This is from a discord user but he also had to change the power settings in the windows plan not just control center

 

My control center changes the Windows power mode, but the Windows power mode does not change control center settings. (17" version)

 

Every BIOS is a little different, since they have tools to change it. Most just change their logo in, but some open extra stuff, like Mechrevo allowing the OTP options in the BIOS whereas Eluktronics is pretty much totally bare.

However we don't know what random madness is happening inside so... if your unit works fine in stress tests like heaven/valley + aida64 CPU/FPU/Cache/RAM to 45W and in BF V it drops to 35, try repadding the VRMs with some fujipoly 11Wm/K or arctic 6Wm/K if you want it to be cheaper and see if that helps. If it does I'll need to adjust how we suggest them.

 

Look for "MyGameMode" in windows power settings.

 

I’ll take it apart tonight for sure. Others on slickdeals seem to be having similar issues.

I’m pretty familiar with this chassis having reviewed the Mech G2 so this seemed surprising.

 

Plus 44w is actually pretty low. The Mech G2 needed to be tamed to say under 50w and would happily take more if you let it go.

I’d say under cpu benchmarks mine would too run around 44w.

 

That is under a 100% CPU aida load + ultra settings settings heaven stress test

 

This has me almost convinced that it’s bios related. If so I do not like it.

Compared to the Mech G2 it’s not working correctly and who knows how competent OP will be with fixes.

Wattage beyond 45 is fine as long as you can cool it. Desktop chips have a much higher tdp and they’re practically the same.

Obviously you’ll see limitations of the VRM and overall cooling before you get anywhere near crazy. But if your cooling is solid I don’t see why 60w isn’t maintainable without compromising longevity.

 

Bob, if you click enough links the:

"- BIOS 1.16 - EC 1.33.09 - Mechrevo - GK5CN6Z ( EFI boot install"

Is the best performance, and using EFI shell is the safest way to flash that BIOS. However since you already know the mech g2 bios is good, you might want to try flashing that one instead of the mechrevo.

But in an ideal world, you would:

* First try the boot disk from the mech g2 in the op15+

* Then if you have flashed the mech g2 bios on the op15+, and see any improvements in performance. Then cross flash the wallmart bios back on the mech g2 to see if it starts to power throttle. The 35w PL. That would then doubly confirm to us that it is absolutely in the BIOS itself. Rather than the software, or your specific unit. Someone else has seen this same thing happen to them before (cannot ever go above 35w). That was with a PCS Recoil 2 laptop bought in the UK.

But I don't really recommend you do that because it might be somewhat risky operation. Without the proper de-bricking / flashing tools.

The more sensible approach would be to just flash the OP15+ with the mechrevo BIOS and then leave it that way.

 

I’m down for that but will it be in English?

 

Ok so in Aida It'll pull 64/65w on gaming mode and 35 when in office mode. It's very responsive at doing so. Therefore my software is functioning correctly. But man BF5 is just too much and something is off.

 

AIDA64 is not the test I referred to. A functioning unit does:

55W PL1, 65W PL2 under CPU-only stress
45W PL1, 53W PL2 under CPU + GPU stress
35W PL1, 45W PL2 under CPU + GPU stress when not using "high performance" or "gaming" modes in the control software

If you're getting 65W PL2, you're not stressing the GPU. When you are doing BF V you're stressing the CPU and the GPU, so you need to recreate a similar stress test. If you're getting 35W under BF V and you get it under AIDA (or OCCT or TSBench) + Heaven/Valley/Superposition/etc then your control software might not be actually functioning right, or it might be the other issue I am calling out.

 

Ugh. So disappointing.

This thing takes for ever just to setup windows. Not a good first impression!

 

Mine is supposed to arrive tomorrow (I tried canceling it last week, but its still going to show up). But at this point I am not even going to open it up. Will wait and see @Bob and others come up with solutions here. Also I am not seeing any BIOS/Drivers/etc on OP's website.

 

The wifi is so slow!

 

Just use it. I've seen multiple people get it from Walmart and have it work correctly on the suggestalaptop discord. I'd quicker say more work properly than not.

 

where do you go for updates?

 

wow. fantastic.

https://www.opowered.com/support.html

 

Updates for what?

 

Update your drivers the Wi-Fi hauls ass

I’m also in contact with their support and they’re going to have BIOS updates drivers and software stuff within a week they said.

 

Do I just go to intel for the update because OP's site is ****.

 

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/product/99446/Intel-Wireless-AC-9560

For some reason that didn't work for me. So I just went to device manager and network adapter, then selected 9560 and update driver automatically and that worked.

 

So I really like the screen. The keyboard brings me way back. I haven't used a mechanical keyboard in a very long time.

For $999 it's pretty tough to argue. As long as the support sticks around.

 

Support responds to email in 5 minutes. That’s good.

 

It runs Civ 6 terribly for the specs. Definitely power throttled.

 

The edit button exists for a reason. This is not an IRC.

 

It could be that it's using intel gpu to run that instead of the nvidia hence the performance. Go to nvidia settings and set preferred to the gpu. Also you can always repaste on your own it's pretty simple, but the cpu/gpu temp drop on load can be huge (I did it on mine that I got from cyberpower pc and my load even at 40% fan speed in overwatch hovers around 60-67c on both cpu/gpu).

 

I was having trouble getting bluetooth to work, and tried everything imaginable in Windows. It turns out cycling off and on the Fn+F4 key (Radio On/Off) did the trick! I searched this thread for an answer, so thought I would put this here for anyone else looking.

 

Retested in BFV and BF1. In-game the CPU limits itself to around 35w. Even after underclocking the GPU by 400mhz. Clearly this can be fixed but at this point, are we talking a BIOS update?

 

https://imgur.com/a/d4xSFLk

I have a hard time understanding why it would throttle in BF V so hard but not during this. This is also stock with driver updates, no undervolt at all.

 

In BF1 I'm seeing 45w max package for CPU.

 

Mine starts there but drops to 35w and that's about it

 

Alright even after the BIOS Mechrevo 1.16 EC 1.33.09 Flash the power limiting is still there.

There is also the trick to make the chassis use the 180w brick if it's configured to use the 150w brick but mine is already set correctly.

Sure I can take this apart next but others are having the same issue with this OP. So if it's not the BIOS and we have plenty of power what's the deal here?

 

What's your OP Fan Settings set at in the OP software? If it's not set on Game Mode then there's a PL set at 35w. In my Intel Extreme I disabled "Turbo Boost Short Power Max Enable."

 

I hope you're aware that you're going to need dual channel memory to handle any CPU-heavy task (like those civ games) properly, even if that CPU is not power throttled.

 

Maybe you can try to use another version of Gaming Center, few months ago I tried different versions and one was messing my PL to 35w even if I never hadn’t this issue before. Than I switched back to mine and everything returned fine.
I’m using the Eluktronics version with disabled animations, my favorite from a while.

 

If you still have the mech g2, and it is working well. Then the fastest way to test all the software combination [gaming centre + windows version + windows power profiles] and everything else. Is just to: remove the m.2 boot disk from your other computer. The mech g2. And then install it into the new OP15+ laptop. Then run your tests again.

That should make crystal clear whether it is actually a hardware issue, or a software issue.

Alternatively you can be changing and reinstalling each piece(s) of software manually on the OP15+ to all match exactly everything what is setup on the mech g2. But it can be easy to miss things. Especially if its something [like a software bug or other configuration issue].

Ultimately though, a piece of software on your system [be it XTU, TS, or the gaming centre, or the window's power profiles], will be changing the PL1,2,3 limits by:

Writing to a special register in the CPU. Through a lower level api. Those registers are commonly referred to as 'msrs' which stands for: 'intel model specific registers'. So there will be written to a couple of bytes probably to give the hex address to identify a specific MSR. Plus a couple of bytes of data to write to it.

So if your PL is bouncing around and changing a lot. Maybe one of these programs [lets say in our example: throttlestop]. Is trying to write 1 value to the MSR. Then a different program [lets imagine, maybe the gaming centre when its set in a particular profile]. Is seeing that, and going: huh, that's wrong. I'll overwrite that MSR register value and set it back to what i think it's supposed to be. Which is 35 watts instead of the 45w being set by the other program...

Thats is why I said it's probably an easier issue to debug by just swapping the disks out from the other computer.

 

To rule out Windows and Gaming Center all together and try to pinpoint issue on the BIOS, perhaps you can try to run a CPU/GPU intensive session in a Linux variant (e.g. Mint) and see how that responds? Seems there are a lot of variables here (BIOS, OS, gaming center, etc) and we need to isolate them. Unfortunately I don't know how easy it'd be to query live PL2 values in Linux to ensure its at 45W.

 

The reason to reflash the BIOS is to make sure that the PL1, PL2, PL3 power limit intel msrs are not being locked at boot time by the BIOS / firmware. (which is the: 'it can never go above 35w' situation). Just to make sure they are unlocked and can be changed by one these other programs.

 

This thread is probably worth reading. If you see the power limit jumping around a lot:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/the-throttlestop-guide.531329/page-541

 

It would be easier for him to just stick to win10. And work on those combination of programs which already are writing the power limit to the MSRs.

In linux world, the cmdline tools rdmsr / wrmsr give access to MSRs. Or you can write a program which makes a C library execute the same underlying C function calls that rdmsr/wrmsr are doing. Anyhow. Thing is linux does not have the wealth of overclocking tools. Not does it have that many straightforwards benchmarking tools / stress test either.

 

Roger, just thinking out loud and trying to rule out some things ... right now it seems we can't even pinpoint the problem. I will try this route in parallel over the weekend. Mine came in yesterday but I havent had time to tinker with it. It'll obviously be going back if this issue can't be fixed, but let's see what happens.

I do a LOT of OS builds under Linux and Docker containers daily that requires full processing power (obviously why I chose the 8750h) so it'll be disappointing if it throttles like this.

 

The Mech was a review unit and was sent back long ago.

Perhaps it’s something software related. However I have done the fresh ISO delete all partitions before installation.

Tried without gaming center and just ThrottleStop

Tried several different gaming centers with and without ThrottleStop activated.

Flashed allegedly one of the best performance BIOS this chassis has so far.

Next I’ll try Aida and a GPU stress test at the same time. If this works or fails it still doesn’t leave me with much direction as others are having the same issue with this unit.

Maybe Rivatuner is compromising the system somehow.

I did monitor the watttage pulled with hardware monitor for example and it too was showing exactly what Rivatuner showed so I made sure that wasn’t acting funny. I’m on the Beta for Rivatuner too.

I know I’ve done more but this is just off the top of my head.

 

The Mech was a review unit and was sent back long ago.

Perhaps it’s something software related. However I have done the fresh ISO delete all partitions before installation.

Tried without gaming center and just ThrottleStop

Tried several different gaming centers with and without ThrottleStop activated.

Flashed allegedly one of the best performance BIOS this chassis has so far.

Next I’ll try Aida and a GPU stress test at the same time. If this works or fails it still doesn’t leave me with much direction as others are having the same issue with this unit.

Maybe Rivatuner is compromising the system somehow.

I did monitor the watttage pulled with hardware monitor for example and it too was showing exactly what Rivatuner showed so I made sure that wasn’t acting funny. I’m on the Beta for Rivatuner too.

I know I’ve done more but this is just off the top of my head.

 

Well the 2 other things you didn't mention there, which were most aparrent were:

* Windows version

The reason I bring that one up is because:

It seems on the eluktronics support page for the mech g2, it says:

"06 - Gaming Center *To be used with Windows 1803"

So there must be some specific reason why those guys felt it was necessary add this little explanatory note next to that download link.

* Intel XTU

The reason I bring XTU up requires a more lengthy explanation.

Somebody noticed that (for a different laptop, the m15), well the alienware gaming centre does not set the MSR registers itself directly. Instead it runs an XTU script, which then tells XTU to set the MSRs on it's behalf.

So why doesnt the alienware software just do that by itself?

Why calling XTU might be better:

Because the mechanism of writing bytes to these msr registers itself is really simple. However the interaction between MSRs, and what they are supposed to do under different conditions, is rather complicated.

So the developers who are writing XTU software, they can just call up their buddies on the phone in the hardware division of intel, and say: "Hey man, I don't fully understand what this means in the MSRs documentation"...

So the XTU user interface might hide a lot more of what it is doing. But underneath that, XTU is more likely to know how to set the right combinations of things.

Wheras ThrottleStop exposes everything and doesnt hide nothing... and then some other gaming centre software, might just have some weird bugs in it and not set things correctly [sometimes, but not other times].

So IF the tongfang software just calls to XTU, then great. But if it doesnt then maybe you didn't clear the settings (in registry or elsewhere in a config file on the disk) for the Tongfang gaming centre software.

Either way, it would make sense to see if ditching Throttlestop at this point. See how it goes with XTU instead. Despite XTU having fewer controls and buttons to push which are available in Throttlestop. Which exposes everything in a more raw form.

 

I’m on 1803. My fresh ISO install has 1803 saved since 1809 has been a little buggy for me.