Optimus VII i7-6700HQ CPU excessive throttling, no temperature problem

[Mff]

Hi peoples,

two issues have arisen since I recieved and installed my Optimus VII laptop yesterday:

Firstly, as the topic title suggests, the CPU is throttling needlessly during gaming, while the temperatures are completely fine. (stays in the 60ies-70ies, CPU fan barely making an effort)
When I stress test the CPU without load on the external GPU the CPU works fine, even keeps its full turbo speeds for most of the time.
However as soon as the external GPU is loaded the CPU throttles down a lot, even regularly dropping below the base clock of 2,6GHz.
The Intel Extreme Tuning Ability reports heavy throttling as a result of going over the current limit while the external GPU is loaded, while without GPU load the performance seems quite normal.
The result is that the package TDP practically never goes over 15W while gaming, while usually limiting itself to around 12Watts. There is no such problem when the external GPU is idle.

For a CPU with an advertised TDP of 45Watts this is quite a dramatic decrease, and certainly not what I expected or paid for.


Secondly but not as important: the laptop cannot properly wake from sleep. After waking from sleep I only see white and grey vertical lines on my screen, which can only be solved via a hard shutdown. Updating, reïnstalling and completely wiping and then reinstalling drivers does not work.


I'm on windows 10.

 

[n1ghtwish]

I have the Optimus VII with the i5 Skylake, can you explain how to test the throttling? Would like to see how mine works.

Mine does wake from sleep no problem so far.

 

[Mff]

I suppose the most easy way to check would be to download HWMonitor from cpuid.com and keep it running while playing a game. pay special attention to the package power numbers and the clockspeed of your CPU while gaming.
Alternatively you could download the "Intel Extreme Tuning Utility" which also has the option to show all of that and more, but needs a bit more background knowledge.

Regarding the waking from standby: I suppose i haven't tried reinstalling windows 10 yet. I'm planning on waiting for the windows update in november that makes it possible to directly activate with a windows 8 key before I try that though.

 

[ubuysa]

I know that on my Optimus IV the BIOS is set to disable CPU turbo boost when the GPU is in use, this is for cooling reasons. I'm wondering whether the throttling you're seeing is also intentional and for cooling reasons?

Windows 10 and sleep is an issue for many, and not just PCS customers either. If you have an SSD as your system disk sleep is completely pointless anyway.

 

[Mff]

I indeed think it's a BIOS setting, however its definitely not for cooling reasons as both the GPU and especially the CPU at the time of throttling are not close to overheating, nor are the fans running at very high RPM's. I will put the laptop behind a watt-meter this weekend to see if there is a reason system-wattage wise but I don't expect it to come even close to 120Watt effective when the GPU has a 60Watt TDP and the CPU is self-limiting to 15watts.

As to sleep being completely pointless, I don't really agree with that. Regardless I'd just like a fully functional system, not one where one of the major OS functions does not work.

 

[n1ghtwish]

Mff, how does this look compared to yours? I ran about in Dying Light for a while slicing zombies up. Cpu Frequency appears to be able to cope at 2.3ghz most of the time (drops a tiny bit). The drops at the start were before I started playing I reckon.

On my power reader most I saw power draw wise was about 95W, which is fine given it's a 120W supply.

 

[ubuysa]

As to sleep being completely pointless, I don't really agree with that. Regardless I'd just like a fully functional system, not one where one of the major OS functions does not work.

I quite understand that. There are however sleep issues with Windows 10 and some computers, so your issue might be with Windows and thus not solvable by you or PCS...

My Optimus IV cold boots (i.e. with hibernation off) on my SSD to fully working desktop (including the time taken to type my password on the logion screen) in under 20 seconds. That's as near instantaneous as I need, hence for me sleep is irrelevant. Each to his or her own of course.

 

[Mff]

Mff, how does this look compared to yours? I ran about in Dying Light for a while slicing zombies up. Cpu Frequency appears to be able to cope at 2.3ghz most of the time (drops a tiny bit). The drops at the start were before I started playing I reckon.

On my power reader most I saw power draw wise was about 95W, which is fine given it's a 120W supply.

For me it looks similar during a warthunder run, albeit with slightly higher CPU clocks, probably since it's not as CPU heavy as dying light so the cpu can hold slightly higher clocks while still consuming the same power. Edit: 2,3Ghz is your base frequency, as opposed to 2,6Ghz with the i7.
Very nice that you were able to take powerreader measurements! Our 120Watt PSU with an efficiency of 85% (which might be on the high side?) should be able to pull rougly 120W/0,85%= 141.2Watts from the wall. Your laptop is currently only at 67% of its maximum and the CPU is already heavily throttling.

This leads me to believe that the current throttling mechanic is faulty and that a BIOS update is in order to fix that so that we might get the full performance out of out laptops. The cooling solution certainly can cope with that.


Also, if you press the wrench icon in the top right of the bottom right window you can set it to show current TDP values as well as throttling values for things like TDP, temperature and current. This allows you to monitor why the CPU is throttling. For me it's only ever because of a current cap, and only during load on the external GPU.


edit:

I quite understand that. There are however sleep issues with Windows 10 and some computers, so your issue might be with Windows and thus not solvable by you or PCS...

My Optimus IV cold boots (i.e. with hibernation off) on my SSD to fully working desktop (including the time taken to type my password on the logion screen) in under 20 seconds. That's as near instantaneous as I need, hence for me sleep is irrelevant. Each to his or her own of course.

Agreed on everything here Might've been a bit too direct. However I doubt I'd/we'd be in this situation if Nvidia/Intel/Microsoft didn't have such a monopoly on laptops in this specspace, but alas.

 

[ubuysa]

Why not give PCS a call? They should know whether the BIOS throttles and whether there is any chance of a BIOS update to fix this.

 

[Mff]

Why not give PCS a call? They should know whether the BIOS throttles and whether there is any chance of a BIOS update to fix this.

Well indeed, will do so once I've made my own wall-measurements. You recon they don't look at their own tech support forums though? Was kind of expecting the forums to be the first place to try getting an answer for stuff like this.

 

[Rakk]

Well indeed, will do so once I've made my own wall-measurements. You recon they don't look at their own tech support forums though? Was kind of expecting the forums to be the first place to try getting an answer for stuff like this.

The forums are not an official channel for support (any PCS staff member who posts in the forums tends to state that in their sig), and whilst sometimes they do find time to look at the forums, they don't always have time - many of the forum members will be able to answer peoples tech support questions but there are some things that we will just not know and you will have to contact PCS to find out.

 

[Mff]

Thanks! I obviously didn't do enough reading still.

 

[n1ghtwish]

Mff I will check it with the TDP options tonight, if you need anything else from me do let me know, because the last thing I want is a throttling CPU as well.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Thanks! I obviously didn't do enough reading still.

The forums are all PC Specialist customers or non customers, even the mods are customers, no one actually works for PCS.

Occasionally, the staff do pop on here, but not frequently. We all do our best to help out as a source of support pre-calling up PCS to try to lessen the load on them, but none of us work for them.

 

[Mff]

Mff I will check it with the TDP options tonight, if you need anything else from me do let me know, because the last thing I want is a throttling CPU as well.

I suppose testing more GPU intensive games might help.
Also thanks for the info Spyder

 

[n1ghtwish]

Hi Mff,

I added the TDP and throttling things you mentioned, but I didn't see anything on mine in the recent logs when I browsed through it to suggest it was.

Do you have any charts yourself showing the throttling occurring for you?

 

[Mff]

Here is a screenshot, wall measurement at that time is 85Watts:


As can be seen, GPU is not that heavily loaded, CPU is barely loaded at all and already it's running into this current limit. As soon as the CPU load increases, the CPU clock tanks even more.

Scenario: Having Warthunder running on the main laptop monitor, simply sitting idle in the main menu, 2nd screen showing the contents of the screenshot.

 

[n1ghtwish]

You can add the TDP limit things to the left chart too in the same way (the spanner). I did so, and upped the timeframe on mine, but did not see it even historically throttling on any of them.

I wonder if the i7 throttles where the i5 does not?

 

[Mff]

So no current limit throttling, even when the GPU is heavily loaded?

That would indeed point to a bug specific to the i7.