AW M15x Throttling Issue Investigation - Stock clocks and overclocked.

[fuyuki]

Originally Posted by MichaelKW

fuyuki: Its actually a Good thing to have the i7 throttle down to 933MHz during low CPU usage situations such as web browsing, office work, etc. I'm thankful for the feature heat and battery wise.

The problem is it doing it under extreme CPU+GPU loads, not in today's 'normal' situations. Follow the test on the first page of this thread or simply run prime95 stress test then add in furmark with at least 4xaa and 1600x1200 in windowed mode while monitoring with something like CoreTemp (or possibly even the Intel monitor - I'll try that in a bit). I'd almost guarantee you'll see the i7 drop down to 933MHz.

edit: actually just installed the Turbo Boost monitor and it doesn't show CPU speed at all if not in turbo boost modes. So, its not a very accurate tool to say the least. What I am surprised at is CoreTemp doesn't show the Turbo Boost modes at all, its maximum is 1733MHz when Intel's tool shows 2.8GHz etc depending on load. CPUID's TMonitor does better but is so damn fast to watch. hmmm.

Are there any other good monitoring tools anyone knows about?

Did you turn off turbo boost? if so, how did you do it?

[Soviet Sunrise]

Set the maximum processor states in OS power options to <100%.

[MichaelKW]

Originally Posted by fuyuki

Did you turn off turbo boost? if so, how did you do it?

There is no turbo boost if all four cores are active. Prime95, run with 8 threads, stresses all 4 cores to 100% maximum. That *should* drop the i7-720 to 1.6-1.7GHz (x12 or x13) and it does... as long as you don't add any stress to the GPU at the same time. Do that, say with Furmark, and the i7 gets throttled to 933MHz even while its still pegged at 100% load.

btw: you can disable the turbo boost options using TMonitor. Just right click the app screen for options.

[Forge]

Originally Posted by 5150Joker

Lets keep brand bickering out of this.

Hey Joker.

Asus pwns j00.


Very interested in this thread. While it might be brand bickering, it looks like the Klevo is the only thing packing that kind of firepower without throttling. Hoping it's just a power supply issue, which means you and Electrosoft and everyone else can lynch a Dell engineer.

[electrosoft]

Lol, please don't make me eat crow when all is said and done with this throttling issue and the M15x, banish AW back to the pits of blah and run tuck tailed back to Sager where Soviet will ridicule us for a long, long, LONG time to come....

"Hey Joker and Electro, remember that one time you both had M15X's and their GPUs would downclock when the system was under load? Oh yeah, that was just last week.....ah, life is good."

[tehpud]

it may be too early to tell but is this something that is a huge issue and I should return my AW back and go with the G51J???? I hope that is not the case. For over a month of reading these forums and people chatting about the M15x everything seemed just fine with a little issue here and there. All of a sudden I receive my lappy and now it has this?

I haven't tested my system yet, but I am also not interested in overclocking or doing anything like that. I would be running it standard and making wireframe 3ds max apps and running CAD/Photoshop. I will have the chance to test them with my software in 2 weeks.

[Soviet Sunrise]

Originally Posted by electrosoft

Lol, please don't make me eat crow when all is said and done with this throttling issue and the M15x, banish AW back to the pits of blah and run tuck tailed back to Sager where Soviet will ridicule us for a long, long, LONG time to come....

"Hey Joker and Electro, remember that one time you both had M15X's and their GPUs would downclock when the system was under load? Oh yeah, that was just last week.....ah, life is good."

Haha. You know damn well that is the only reason why I'm loitering in this thread. I'm just waiting in my lounge chair right now.

[5150Joker]

Originally Posted by tehpud

it may be too early to tell but is this something that is a huge issue and I should return my AW back and go with the G51J???? I hope that is not the case. For over a month of reading these forums and people chatting about the M15x everything seemed just fine with a little issue here and there. All of a sudden I receive my lappy and now it has this?

I haven't tested my system yet, but I am also not interested in overclocking or doing anything like that. I would be running it standard and making wireframe 3ds max apps and running CAD/Photoshop. I will have the chance to test them with my software in 2 weeks.

Don't start panicking, nothing is 100% conclusive yet. There's plenty of more tests to be done and if it is found that there is a power related issue w/the bios or mainboard, I'm sure Dell will do something about it. Even if they do not, the system will run fine with most games/applications for a large amount of people. It's when the system is really pushed hard that it throttles the GPU which could be a problem for power users and future games that utilize quad core.

[5150Joker]

Originally Posted by electrosoft

Lol, please don't make me eat crow when all is said and done with this throttling issue and the M15x, banish AW back to the pits of blah and run tuck tailed back to Sager where Soviet will ridicule us for a long, long, LONG time to come....

"Hey Joker and Electro, remember that one time you both had M15X's and their GPUs would downclock when the system was under load? Oh yeah, that was just last week.....ah, life is good."

Haha we'd never live it down. But I'm not giving up on AW anytime soon.

[JohnBatDell]

Just wanted to let everyone know that I've seen this thread, and I'm currently talking to folks in engineering about this. I'll get back to you when I get some answers.

Cheers!