Solution S-XPS 1645/1647 Throttling Issues

[danp224]

Thanks.

Those are some pretty sic temps.

[fmac]

Its all about ambient temperature. Here at Argentina its almost 28C and running Furmark I am getting the 83C mark which makes the GPU to start throttling. I am guessing that most of you are in the US, which is winter and it is harder for you guys to reach that 83C temp. The good news for me is that in about 3 months I will be enjoying the cold and you will be suffering, lol

[danevin]

Originally Posted by n3verm0re

This sets off warning bells. I was able to run FurMark for 30 minutes without passing 80, let alone 85C. Is is possible that you didn't apply the thermal paste correctly to the GPU? Your CPU results make that seem unlikely, but hey, you never know.

As a sanity check, I'm going to rerun FurMark right now and see my results (1645).

I'm not really doing anything differently. With the stock thermal paste I was getting similar results. Idk what's up with the GPU on here, but it literally idles 10-13C hotter than my CPU.

Ex: My CPU is 33C right now, my GPU is 45C right now. I am not running anything except web browser and aero is on, on AC 130w power. (Ambient of 62F or 16.7C)

That basically stays the same through the tests. My CPU gets to 70-72C or so, and the GPU ends up at 83-85C, which throttles.

Edit: I was also running Prime95 pushing my CPU to 100% the ENTIRE time of the test. I didn't see Prime95 running for you, so that is probably the difference.

Edit2: Running the test for over 6 minutes with the same settings without prime95 gets me a top temp of 76C, with an avg temp of 74C on the GPU. (Ambient 62F(16.7C)). My CPU got to all of 59C (with all the regular progs running in the background).

[n3verm0re]

There we go, let me retry testing with Prime95 running. Unfortunately this means I'll have to use ThrottleStop (1645 can't run both simultaneously without CPU throttling, even with the BIOS update and 130W adapter).

More to come...

[saif_katana]

Originally Posted by unclewebb

Turbe: The default multiplier for an i5-520M is 18 so anything beyond that is turbo boost which is great to see when fully loaded. Maximum turbo boost when fully loaded is a 20X multiplier but it's usually the Intel CPU that will prevent that when it detects too much load. It's typical for the multiplier to continuously cycle between 18 and 20 based on load and CPU power consumption.

danp224: Your results aren't nearly so great to see. Not only is your Quad running at less than half the speed of Turbe's Dual Core, it's also suffering from some clock modulation which slows it down even further. Dell does not intend to release a bios which lets a user run Prime95 + Furmark at full speed on their mobile Quad Core so about the only choice is to send it back and tell them they can have it.

Whoever originally decided that a 90 watt adapter was good enough should get this:



Even a 130 watt adapter is marginal since it is still being throttled back to a lot less than the 130 watt DC rating on the label.

i,m also using 1647 with i5-520M ...and i already send a massage to dell support last monday to request a adapter 130w..but i got no feedback from dell about these metters.its hard to me to speek directly to the dell .because i'm too bad in english.could you help me how to do it..

[n3verm0re]

I stand corrected!

Repeating my earlier tests while running 8 threads of Prime95 Blended eventually (after about 10 minutes) resulted in my GPU reaching 82-84C and consequently entering the same thermal throttling cycle that others have mentioned here.

Currently it's unrealistic that an application/game will max all 8 threads and the GPU, but moving forward I'm certain that this will become the norm.

I updated my earlier posts to reflect this.

[danevin]

Originally Posted by n3verm0re

I stand corrected!

Repeating my earlier tests while running 8 threads of Prime95 Blended eventually (after about 10 minutes) resulted in my GPU reaching 82-84C and consequently entering the same thermal throttling cycle that others have mentioned here.

Currently it's unrealistic that an application/game will max all 8 threads and the GPU, but moving forward I'm certain that this will become the norm.

Sucks, doesn't it? That Dell didn't come up with a better thermal design :-\. Well, my next question would have to be, just how hot would it get if the 84-85C limit was lifted?

I haven't EVER seen these temps in games (even BF:BC2). But, I'm not sure that we won't see these kinds of temps in future games, as you have stated. It's kind of disheartening, that even with the best thermal paste, it just can't cut it.

[n3verm0re]

Personally I'm unaffected by this since I don't stress the GPU and the CPU pegged doesn't get that hot, but I can certainly see how I'd be pissed off if I was using this system for gaming. One of the leads on my system was listed as 150F when I stopped the torture tests, which isn't TERRIBLE, but is certainly much higher than I would like.

TL;DR: This system doesn't dissipate heat well.

[Turbe]

Originally Posted by danevin

I'm not really doing anything differently. With the stock thermal paste I was getting similar results. Idk what's up with the GPU on here, but it literally idles 10-13C hotter than my CPU.

Ex: My CPU is 33C right now, my GPU is 45C right now. I am not running anything except web browser and aero is on, on AC 130w power. (Ambient of 62F or 16.7C)

That basically stays the same through the tests. My CPU gets to 70-72C or so, and the GPU ends up at 83-85C, which throttles.

Edit: I was also running Prime95 pushing my CPU to 100% the ENTIRE time of the test. I didn't see Prime95 running for you, so that is probably the difference.

Edit2: Running the test for over 6 minutes with the same settings without prime95 gets me a top temp of 76C, with an avg temp of 74C on the GPU. (Ambient 62F(16.7C)). My CPU got to all of 59C (with all the regular progs running in the background).

Are you on stock paste or did you redo yours?

[danevin]

Originally Posted by Turbe

Are you on stock paste or did you redo yours?

I redid mine, but it hasn't fully cured yet. Also, I am not sure if it's worth a crap, I have had it for a little while.

n3verm0re is on Gelid GC-Extreme, sure he has a 1645, but he is also getting thermal throttle on the GPU.


Update 3/10: Played WoW for the first time in quite a while and I went raiding today, on the highest settings (highest everything except shadows, including 8xMSAA) my GPU temp got to 83C maximum, just shy of throttling. So yes, I do believe that there are real world games where throttling can and will occur. (CPU maxed at 76C.)

Update 3/10 #2: Tested out my GPU/CPU temps with a laptop cooler that I put together and my temps dropped significantly. Just goes to show if Dell would have put a little more money in a better fan and/or heat sink, our problems would be solved thermally.