TONGFANG GK5CN5Z / GK5CN6Z / GK5CQ7Z / GK5CP0Z

There's a comparison of the 15+ and 17 somewhere in the 17s own thread.

 

@PaulBN
Have you tried other games? From what I remember, I don’t think my 8750H ever draws more than 35W in Overwatch either, whereas it draws up to 45W in other games like Battlefield 1 when the CPU load is higher.

I am interested to hear more explanation on the TS speedshift settings, setting it to 1 vs. 80/84. I haven’t had any trouble with performance with speedshift at 1 though.

If there are actually two sets of CPU power limits that are alterable, it would seem reasonable to have both XTU and TS running in order to regulate both... but I would think that running both simultaneously is otherwise a bad idea.

 

I am running parrot security with a custom 4.20 Kernel. But as we are talking about debian testing, you should have an idea about debian.

https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-handbook/index.en.html
will only give you an idea what you could do and not specifically how.

My advise would be: jump on the bandwagon: Manjaro 18. There is a reason why it tops distrowatch. I tried it and it is pretty much idiot proof.
use drivers=free as you don't want to use bbswitch. before hitting intsall, hover over that intsall or live menu hit e and add acpi_osi=! acpi_osi='Windows 2009' nouveau.modeset=0 (should be written automatically in your grub, after install, just take a look to be sure) the first part activates optimus, which just tells the machine: on boot always use the iGPU, the latter blacklists noveau.
after install, update and upgrade everything. on Xfce there is a whisker menu with a search field. type in manjaro and look for the manjaro menu, open it, click on kernel and hit install either on 4.19 or 4.20 kernel (TP fix). alternative: pacman -S linux419/ linux420. The rest goes automatically. don't forget sudo pip install undervolt and apply everything. reboot.

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/78is1r/complete_disable_of_discrete_gpu/
is the guide I used on Manjaro to switch off the dGPU. simply copy and paste everything or adjust your needed values.
reboot and it should work. For the real beauty of an arch distro you want to use the AURs.
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay.git
cd yay
makepkg -si
no need for sudo. type yay for a full upgrade, yay -S or yay install for a package install / yay remove or yay -Rns for deleting a package. yay(yet another yaourt) is a newer version of yaourt which is discontinued and should not be used anymore. pacaur would do the same trick.

the big advantage is, if you mess something up a reinstall is about 5 min, including a full disk encryption. It is a huge pain in the back, if you have to do everything all over in Arch or Debian.
Once you got an idea how the stuff works and you have your personal sysadmin plan, you may want to try Arch or debian.

The problem with Mint is: it is designed for using hybrid graphics with a prime switch, if you don't want to use the prime switch, there is no reason to use Mint at all. But this should also work an Ubuntu, Opensuse or whatever. Just do not used a, by default, highly specialized distro.
I mean you could reinstall mint and opt against prime and the nvidia driver, but I have no idea whether Mint would try to intsall it everytime you update something.

P.S.: do not use manjaro i3 when you want to use VMs. The i3 windowmanager and virtualbox do not like each other. There is a manual fix, but it is complicated and everytime vb is updated you can reapply this fix.

 

Don't worry about too much about power draw in game really it's not that important, once configured correctly the system will draw exactly as much power as it needs to run whatever software/game you are trying to use. So a benchmark is really the best way to confirm that it is all working as intended and when put under a full load your system can run and sustain the maximum performance 3.9GHz on all cores.

What is happening when playing a game is the CPU is simply not being stressed hard enough for it to need to push all cores to max frequency (which makes it pull more watts). You'll only start seeing 45+W when all cores are running at max boost frequency of 3.9GHz due to a heavy load like a benchmark does. You might be able to see it in game by forcing the system to run at max boost by setting the Speed Shift EPP value to 0 which pushes the CPU up to max under any load. But even then unless you are putting enough load on the CPU (I see only 16% utilization in your screen shot which isn't much at all) it won't draw a ton of power even at max boost. You'll just be generating more heat and wasting power without getting any better performance because it doesn't actually need to be boosted to run that game. If in the future you run a very CPU heavy game your system will be able to push into higher power draw if a game puts it under a heavy enough load.

This is where having dual-channel RAM can help. Most games are too memory dependent where they just can't push the CPU as hard without dual channel memory. Again though, this is not an issue of any kind or even specific to the OP laptop, this is how it will be for ANY single-channel RAM system. Benchmarks are not nearly as memory bottlenecked (unless you are specifically doing a memory benchmark of course) and they are designed to push the CPU as hard as possible so this is why you see it draw the power just fine and that is how you can confirm everything is configured correctly. Benchmarks don't have some magic code that unlocks higher power levels they are simply pushing the system harder than games and thus the system responds by going into higher performance modes which require more power. Hope that makes sense.

So the EPP value on the main page tells the system a preference of under how heavy of a load should the system boost to a higher multiplier all the way to the max (i.e the max frequency). The range for the EPP is always 0 to 255. 0 says under any load it should boost to maximum. 255 means never boost to maximum under any load. Around 80 is a good balance where it will still lower the frequency when there is a very light load but then boost up to max pretty quickly when you are actually trying to do something, it's basically very close to a balanced system using the stock Equilibirum mode. I've noticed that once you start going much higher with an EPP value the CPU will not boost to max under most loads. 84 is just about 1/3 of 255 which is what many systems actually use by default when setting the Windows 10 Power Mode slider to the Better Performance (the middle setting when plugged in) if Speed Shift is enabled by default.

The 1 to 41 range on the TPL window tell Speed Shift what the minimum and maximum multipliers it can use when boosting, it is not the range for the EPP values, that is always 0 to 255 . So for example, if you set the min/max range to 1 to 20 instead even if you then had EPP set to 0 it would only ever boost to a maximum of 2.0GHz under any load. Alternatively, you could set it to 41 to 41 and it will always stay at max boost regardless of the EPP value. So when you set this range you need to look up what the minimum and maximum multipliers are for your CPU. The minimum multiplier for any modern CPU is 1, and the maximum boost frequency of the i7-8750H is 4.1GHz which means it has a multiplier of 41 so 1 to 41 gives it the full range. Also, going higher than 41 doesn't matter since it will just use the maximum that the CPU can do at that point which is 41 so you could put in 1 to 100 and it is the same as 1 to 41.

If you don't want to use Speed Shift then just using the stock Equilibirum mode is actually another excellent way to run the system. You probably won't even notice a difference in performance at all. The advantage of Speed Shift over SpeedStep (which is what is being used by default on the OP laptop) is Speed Shift can boost the CPU frequency much faster. Speed Shift takes around 10ms to boost to max whereas SpeedStep can take upwards of 100ms. This makes no difference at all for any long running loads because once they are both at max boost the CPU will perform the exact same but might help for very short term bursty work like loading a web page or opening an application but again most people can't really perceive a 90 to 100ms difference.

What EPP value and min/max range did you have set? Those will have a significant impact on the performance if you are seeing some decreases after enabling Speed Shift. Once you have it enabled you'll need to make sure you have those set correctly to avoid any throttling.

 

Instead of using virtualbox you can use virt-manager which uses KVM/qEMU as the backend and it works great with i3.

 

sorry, near complete linux noobus here, when you say hover over install or live menu to enter the "acpi..." bit, do you mean to do it on initial Grub load from installation USB or to do it later when I have booted into Manjaro from USB key? Because my Grub is not showing me any install option, just "Boot: Manharo.x86_64 kde"... or should I download Xfce?

 

There should be some advanced boot settings with boot params like nomodeset blacklist nvidia/amd or something. Just hit e over on of them and have a look where they placed these parameters. hit escape ond go back to main menu ,to live or install, hit e again and add the parameters at the exact same place where these advanced option parameters where placed.
It doesn't matter if you use kde or xface that makes no differnce, it is just about which desktop you like best.

Or you just install everything and add them on first boot temporary and write them in /etc/default/grub afterward. don't forget to update your grub then

 

Thanks.

Thanks.

Thanks.

Yet another post which needs to be front-paged @sicily428

 

Mine comes in today. I will probably do my usual benchmarks with undervolting and repaste...

 

So are you saying that we DON’t necessarily need dual channel to get high fps in games? I.e - Rainbow 6, Fortnite, Overwatch

 

Yea Speed Shift EPP of 1 is, for all intents and purposes, the exact same as 0. This is the absolute maximum performance mode the system can use since it won't even have to waste even 10ms to boost the frequency when trying to do any work. The consequence of this is more heat generated and more power usage because it is always running at max CPU frequency. I like to use 84 because it's honestly impossible to notice that 10ms boost time and it helps keep fans quieter since they don't have as much heat to battle when doing lighter loads.

UPDATE: @unclewebb has pointed out using XTU with TS is no longer necessary, just use the Disable and Lock Turbo Power Limits check box in the FIVR window instead. You do not need to use XTU and TS together with the latest versions of TS.

OLDER VERSIONS OF TS INFORMATION:
As for using both XTU and TS, in general you are correct and you shouldn't have ThrottleStop and XTU trying to change the same settings at the same time as they can conflict with each other. You should only ever use 1 at a time to set an undervolt or really any other setting besides the power limits. You could just use XTU to undervolt and set the power limits if it works just fine for you and no need for TS. I've just had more consistent results using TS for undervolting (no issues keeping undervolt after sleeping/boot like I had in XTU) and changing settings like Speed Shift and BD PROCHOT since XTU doesn't have that but on some machines you need to use XTU to set the power limits because the TS ones don't work. I'm not sure which power limits the OP laptops are using since I haven't actually messed with my power limits at all but from what I'm seeing others reporting the setting via TS may not work.

 

Yea you don't NEED dual channel to get good FPS, I'm perfectly happy with the FPS I get in the stock single-channel config. BUT dual-channel will absolutely get you better performance in game because most games are memory bottlenecked more than CPU dependent so if you upgrade your memory you will of course see better FPS performance. So I'll try to phrase this slightly differently: dual channel memory will get you the best FPS performance so if you want to get the absolute maximum FPS possible out of this machine then you should upgrade. The difference in FPS is actually noticable when you upgrade to dual channel memory. BUT Nothing is working incorrectly in the stock single channel and for me I am more than happy with the FPS I get so I have kept it with the stock single channel but you simply get better performance with better hardware, this should not be anything new or surprising to anyone. The whole point of putting in better hardware is to get better performance but that doesn't mean the previous configuration was not working correctly, it is simply just not as powerful of a setup. Again, There is no defect or problem or issue with the stock single channel setup, it is performing just like any other single channel laptop will.

 

Many thanks again, unfortunately I am getting the same result as with Mint, - I can disable nvidia card, but cannot detect an external monitor afterwards. I am starting to suspect that either my model is slightly different to yours, or possibly my firmware handles video differently. Just out of curiosity, whats your FW + EC versions?

 

XMG standard Bios is N1.03 and EC 1.29.09. I thought all the Tongfang models are the same. I never had any issues adding an external screen on linux, as long as I had blacklisted noveau.
Looking on Windows, maybe this helps, although I thought this uhd630 port is the internal one.
https://imgur.com/a/r08vNIC

It looks like the usb-c port, but I am using the big hdmi port. I am confused. Using Macs and Linux mostly for the last 15 yrs I am a complete Windows noob, so no idea.

 

Same Program in embedded C/C++ so have had zero use for Windows for a long time now. If I do need it, I'll use Virtualbox. @arcticjoe I will try to disable nvidia in Mint later today and see if external display still works. I also thought all the outputs were connected to the nvidia GPU. With PRIME and Intel selected, I couldn't get Mint to detect an external monitor connected via HDMI. As soon as I turned nvidia on, I could see it.

@99-0, just wanted to clarify. Mint isn't set up for hybrid graphics out of the box whatsoever. You have to explicitly add and install NVIDIA drivers + settings from a PPA to get it to work. That will put PRIME on. Otherwise, you're stuck with nouveau. Other alternative is you can just keep what comes out of the box on 19.1, which is the older 390 IIRC, this doesn't install PRIME or NVIDIA settings or anything.

 

Ah Nvidia Control panel. How I miss thee.

 

There are multiple sets of power limits. If you are using ThrottleStop, you should click on the FIVR - Disable and Lock Turbo Power Limits box. This should take care of one set of power limits that XTU has access to that older versions of ThrottleStop did not. Once you do this, there should be no need to run XTU. It is a resource hog that does not always set voltages consistently after resuming.



@faiz23 - When Speed Shift is enabled, SST in green, do not check the Set Multiplier box. It does not do anything. Run a ThrottleStop log file while gaming, etc. If the Clock Modulation (CKMOD) column in the log file always shows 100.0%, there is no need to check the Clock Modulation box in ThrottleStop because clock modulation throttling is not being used on your laptop. This is an older throttling method. Most manufacturers these days adjust the turbo power limits instead. Fox max performance when testing, I would use an EPP setting of 0.

 

Question for you, is there any way for it to minimize into a small icon in the notification area rather than a open window. XTU does this and I would love to know if this is possible in TS.

Thanks!

 

@rutabagus - Do you have ThrottleStop setup correctly yet? Without any screenshots for me to look at, how can I tell?

If you do not want ThrottleStop to minimize to the Task Bar, did you clear the Task bar box in ThrottleStop? Did you check the Notification Area Icon box in the Options window? Maybe you could check the CPU Temp option and look at a CPU temperature icon in the system tray like I do.

 

Click Options on the main screen, check Start minimized and Minimize on Close.

 

Solved my first problem tinkering and you just solved my second one. Feeling like a real idiot, thanks for your time!

 

I did not know this, I always thought that option just locked the memory locations that TS was using for setting the power limits, thanks for the heads up! So once you set that are the power limits you set in the TPL window also setting the same place that XTU sets? So newer versions of TS have access to both power limits now?

Any idea why some people are seeing different power limits in HWINFO vs TS?

 

I am trying to debug what happened. I don't use a second screen on regular basis. I definitly hat it working on Manjaro. So what could have happened ?
Manjaro uses the acpi_call dkms pkg. Maybe it did not update with a kernel update ande I did not recognize this.
How did you blacklist noveau ? systemd blacklist or boot parameter ? if you only used the boot parameter you could try to change the noveau.modprobe=0 to acpi_call.modprobe=0 that would disable acpi_call and put noveau back on and switch the dGPU back on. The point is: even if noveau does not work with our dGPU the mesa dri still can render somethinmg from the input. That definitly worked on opensuse, ubuntu and manjaro.
I was pretty much aware, when I switched, that all this would not work on a debian testing eviroment simply because the debian noveau dri was written when George W Bush sr. was President. The Manjaro noveau dri recieved some love in the meantime. I cant't really help debugging this. I would not have stated that the 2nd screen would work, if I wouldn't had it working. I only have a really old gaming Monitor as 2nd screen, whose resolution is so bad, you get eye cancer compared to the laptop screen, so I do not use it anymore.
In the end the dGPU switch off consists of 4 conf files. You could blacklist acpi_call and comment them out, when you want to use the 2nd screen and blacklist noveau and uncomment them when on the road.
it would be echo
w /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000\:01\:00.0/remove - - - - 1 >
/etc/tmpfiles.d/remove_gpu_from_lspci.conf
vs.
echo
# >
/etc/tmpfiles.d/remove_gpu_from_lspci.conf (a simple set of bash scripts could do the job)

or you rename the acpi_call.conf files in acpi_call.blah.

Did you ever get the the 2nd screen to work without explicitly installed anything else than noveau ?

@nimaim
I installed Mint shortly when I got this laptop and it asked me do you want to install nvidia... and it said recommended. The install wrapper did the rest, I would call that pretty much automatic. Ever tried this on Debian or Arch ? Mint is famous for this install wrapper, as is Manjaro. Technically you are right of course.

 

This laptop needs it's own forum or subreddit.

 

Thank you ThrottleStop author for your above post. However this aspect remains a little unlear to me:

Just wondering if you could go into any more details about this bit. Or otherwise if can refer us to a pre-existing piece of documentation. How they use different 'set of power limits'. Is that a different set of MSRs? Does one set of MSRs have higher precedence or priority over the other one?

Because I gotta tell you: reading this stuff from the Intel data sheet is really hard. I gotta hand it to you, for getting through all that. To provide us with this tool and the knowledge to use it properly. Not an easy task!

 

Is the 15 inch GK5CN6Z (with i7-8750H / GTX-1060) also supposed to run off a 180W power brick? (or just 150W?)

 

Well I was more hoping for an open source wiki site, for laptops in general. With sections for each specific laptop. But heh! Anything that is structured 'enough' and easy to navigate / find.

 

2 new ones here last week both came with 180W.

 

I have the 17+ and I think it’s cooling can handle more power and longer boost, is XTU my only option? Because I tried changing PL1 PL2 and boost duration in XTU without running TS but that doesn’t do anything performance-wise

 

Yes. There are two sets of power limits. The first set of turbo power limits can be accessed via the msr registers. There is also a duplicate set of registers that is accessed via the memory mapped IO (MMIO). The CPU will look at both sets of limits and then will throttle based on the lower values. I thought having to adjust multiple sets of limits was kind of silly so the new Disable and Lock Turbo Power Limits feature in ThrottleStop simply disables the limits in the MMIO section. Doing this has solved a wide variety of power throttling problems on a wide variety of laptops. The ThrottleStop sliders will adjust the turbo power limits that are in the MSR register.

Some users are using Intel XTU and ThrottleStop and some command center software and all of these programs are accessing the same registers. ThrottleStop does not actually report what the power limits are set to. HWiNFO might be reporting the turbo power limit values in the MSR registers or it might be reporting the MMIO values or it might be comparing the two and reporting the highest or lowest value. Not sure.

I have seen some complaints about the CPU only pulling 35 Watts but then it also shows the 8750 running at its max speed of 3.9 GHz. Throttling is when a CPU slows down below its rated speed so this is definitely not throttling. If anyone has any concerns about their CPU, check the Log File option in ThrottleStop so you have an accurate record of your CPU's performance while gaming. When finished, exit ThrottleStop so the log file can be finalized. If you do not understand what the log file is telling you, head over to the ThrottleStop thread in my signature and post a copy of it there so I can have a look. Some data from some monitoring programs and some in game data can be misleading. A log file tells it like it is.

But did you try checking the FIVR - Disable and Lock Turbo Power Limits box? Is your CPU throttling and running below its rated speed?

 

Thanks much!

 

Thank you for the informative replies

I am totally new to TS and was wondering if my OP 17+ is getting 3.9ghz during PL2, then upping PL2 will not improve performance but only increase heat right? During PL1 my laptop is getting 3.6ghz so upping power here only increase heat too? Is so then my only way to improve performance is to extend its time in PL2?

It seems like about 80 sec into a Adobe Lightroom export/convert process my laptop goes into PL1 regardless how I tweak in TS or XTU, I’ll check that lock turbo option later and report back

I eant my OP 17+ to stay in PL2 longer because I feel it’s cooling can handle it

 

What if

Well in this case why should'nt I upgrade to Mojave if high Sierra has no gtx support? I hear mojave is more stable for hackintosh's as well.

 

I checked the FIVR - Disable and Lock Turbo Power Limits box. But I still can't go above 65W in cinebench as changing power limits in XTU would allow me to do. Any ideas why?

 

On a side note, could anyone help me understand this, how come with same settings GC TS, my op 15+ cannot stay in 3.9ghz prrmently during my Adobe Lightroom export tests and the frequency would fluctuate lower while the op 17+ is dead fixed in 3.9ghz. And then when both goes into PL1 again the 15+ fluctuate lower. So overall there is a 5% to 8% less performance on the 15+

I guess the only difference is the motherboard and bios/ec

 

For now, you should and that works better with the EFI I uploaded. But there's an effort on modifying the bios which seems has the option to disable the internal gpu. If that option works, then the 1060 should be able to be driven.

 

What do you have the turbo power limits set to in ThrottleStop? What MHz does ThrottleStop show your CPU running at during Cinebench? Post a screenshot of ThrottleStop with Cinebench running to confirm the throttling.

Did you try increasing the turbo PL1 limit? If temps are not a problem I would do that first.

 

If it fluctuates, then it's probably some throttling happening. Most likely power throttling given the excellent thermal dissipation on this chassis. The 17+ has 10w more power limit than the 15+.

 

Did you ever fix this problem? Try disabling BD PROCHOT in ThrottleStop. That is the usual way manufacturers force CPUs to throttle to 800 MHz when on battery power.

 

please create a small guide on this, trying to explain everything and I will add it to the OP.

 

Figured it out. Updating TS to version 8.70.6 as found in your signature worked. Previously on 8.70.2.

 

Can the latest version of ThrottleStop be configured so the 8750H can run at a steady 3.90 GHz for an entire Cinebench run without a hint of throttling? Post some pics if that is possible so other users will know how to setup ThrottleStop on these laptops.

 

Using the guide posted previously with the 55w 65w setting and speedstep. I'm getting 1277 and no throttling in CB15 and it's not hitting over 75C.

https://i.imgur.com/htbddFf.png

 

Anyone have a working link or copy of the oemsev to change the power adapter output since the Megalink now needs a password?

 

When I tried to check and apply the lock turbo in FIVR it’s asking me to download and install a file. I googled and finds no info on that file. Could you please help?

 

so aparently im getting my laptop tomorrow sometime ups just never scanned it when it left ca . ups told me it will update on my end when the scan it for out for delivery

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/tongfang-gk5cn5z-and-tongfang-gk5cn6z.815943/page-101 scroll down there is no mega link its oem.zip and it downloads from this webpage its attached to the post

 

here i uploaded too

 

Did you click on the Install button and follow the directions? That ThrottleStop feature is very powerful and requires a separate driver. Here is a download link.

https://mega.nz/#!CNNA0SoC!Z2Xi2icwX4d4jzW016dKnKGhVglWmSSPpgiRU7VCG6g

If downloading and installing things from a mega link is too sketchy then you will not be able to use that ThrottleStop feature.

 

Does anyone know how to transfer the OS from the stock SSD in the overpowered laptop to another m.2?