The ThrottleStop Guide

I wish it was single vs dual channel. Should've clairifed, 2x8GB @ 2133 vs 2x4GB @ 2133 gives a difference of 70 points in scores. Really can't understand why, but it is what it is.

And yeah, trying to get thermals under control is a nightmare. Even with max fans and Liquid Ultra paste, at 4.2 GHz the XTU bench would still start throttling towards the end. Also 120W is desktop CPU territory, I should be thankful my laptop didn't start shooting flames out the back LOL.

 

I have one of the new Intel Bay Trail Atom tablets, specifically Lenovo's Miix 2 8, and I've noticed the tablet disables turbo mode for both the processor and graphics at 20% battery life remaining, and lowers the CPU speed down to 533mhz at 15%. The latest release of Throttlestop with Bay Trail support doesn't seem to help stop the throttling.

I personally don't mind performance being limited at 10% battery life remaining, but gutting the end user's experience at 20% is a distasteful way for Lenovo to claim better battery life.

Is there anything that can be done to alleviate this problem?

 

dooms33ker - If you post some screen shots of ThrottleStop and the TPL window, maybe I can figure something out but don't hold your breath. At the moment, I have no idea what works and what doesn't on Bay Trail. Without hardware to test with or the full documentation from Intel, there is not much I can do. I don't have any plans at the moment to add more features to ThrottleStop for the Bay Trail tablets.

zygioks - I think you would need to disable all of your C States to run your CPU at the full 22 multiplier. I do not recommend doing this in a laptop because it would create extra heat and you will not notice any difference in performance.

 

when can we expect beta 2?

option of black theme would be nice, since TS is running 24x7.

there is no way to minimize the the app to the notifications bar, instead it resides at the task bar. any way to fix this?

and profile parameters don't always stick when i mess around in the TRL and TPL menu.


again, this is wonderful and i thank your for the software,

Lenovo needs a spanking for all the throttling!

 

ThrottleStop 7.00 beta 2
ThrottleStop_700b2

New Features:
- added Adaptive / Static voltage adjustment for Haswell CPUs.
- increased the offset voltage adjustment range.
- went back to using the original Nvidia library.

Does that answer your first question?

If you are having trouble with the ThrottleStop - Notification Area icons not showing up, exit ThrottleStop and run Notification_Area_Cleaner.bat which is available in a zip file from here:

How to Clean the Notification Area Icon Cache in Windows 7 & Windows 8

This deletes all of the icons from the Windows Notification Area icon cache. After this, icons will be added back into the Windows icon cache as you run each new program. There is no feature that lets you delete icons from the Windows icon cache one by one. You have to delete them all which forces Windows to rebuild its icon cache.

After doing this, ThrottleStop 7 beta 2 seems to work OK. If you run older versions of ThrottleStop after doing this, Windows might get confused. If this happens, the only way to fix this is to clean the cache once again.

I am not having any problems with the ThrottleStop icons when using the beta 2 version in Windows 8.1. If there are still problems, let me know.

Can you do some testing and let me know what profile parameters are not sticking? Start by making sure that ThrottleStop is unzipped into its own folder so it can create the ThrottleStop.INI file and have a place to save all of the various settings. Some values might not be saved if the CPU does not accept those values. You also have to be careful when testing if XTU is running in the background. Both programs are reading and writing information to the same registers in the CPU which can lead to confusion. Some of these settings are difficult for me to thoroughly test because my bios is locked so any help is appreciated.

The new Static / Fixed voltage feature works correctly on my 4700MQ. The Adaptive feature is still being tested. In theory you can use Adaptive to give the CPU some extra voltage when Turbo Boost kicks in. To go lower than the base VID voltage, you need to use negative offset voltage. Hopefully you can combine these features and come up with the voltage that you are looking for. On the things to maybe do list is different voltage settings based on CPU load or C0%. That might let me run a larger offset voltage reliably without any light load BSOD issues.

My decision to switch back to the original Nvidia library should help with compatibility when using older Nvidia drivers. Optimus works correctly and ThrottleStop 7 beta 2 lets your GPU remain idle when testing with the latest Nvidia drivers.

Edit - I finally had a chance to test the Adaptive voltage feature and it works exactly as Dufus described it to me. It can be used to give the CPU some extra voltage when using Turbo Boost. This might be a useful feature on a desktop K series or perhaps a 4930MX but is not necessary on my 4700MQ. It already gets enough voltage at full load.

 

i feel like a little girl who has just been given a fresh flowers !

my college ends on the 27th this month, i will begin testing after that cumbersome day

 

Some testing with TS7 b2

Default settings (Zero)

Note that the highest VID of 1.100V is used for 34x, 35x and 36x. Without adaptive mode and using stepped turbo's the unlocked bins will run at the same voltage as the highest standard bin (34x for 4700MQ). This means using more voltage for the 34x multi than necessary.

Setting TS in adaptive mode.

Be aware that the final voltage is core voltage plus offset. In this case core voltage is 1.160V and offset -0.1V giving a final core voltage of 1.160 -0.1 = 1.060V for 36x multi. 34x multi becomes 1.100V -0.1V = 1.000V

New core voltages after applying TS settings



Result of running Intel Linpack with default voltages.

Just start to see temperature throttling at 100C with 34x multi dropping to 33x


Result of running Linpack with above adaptive settings.

Lower temperatures as Intels estimated primary power plane draw has dropped from 80W to 66W.

Nice work Unclewebb.

 

Not TS but XTU related:

I like using adaptive offset for overclocking, because it allows the CPU to draw up to 30mV additional voltage if need be to do what it needs to do. For example if I set Vcore to 1.3 and dynamic offset to -80mV, the CPU can still draw 1.25V if the workload demands it. Really helps to reduce instances of the dammed 0x124 blue screen due to insufficient voltage.

 

How do I disable C states?

 

What CPU do you have and why? Most Core i laptop CPUs need at least C3 enabled so the Intel Turbo Boost feature works correctly. ThrottleStop lets you disable C1E and if your bios is not locked it will let you disable some of the CPU Package C States. If you truly want to disable all of them this will result in significantly more power consumption and heat while idle but it is possible with a registry modification.

Code:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Intelppm

Go to the above registry key and set Start to 4 to disable the C2/C3/C6/C7 core and package sleep states. Default value for this is 3. You will need to reboot to see any change.

I have not tried this yet in Windows 8.1 so give me a minute to make sure this trick still works.

Edit - Very Interesting! Good news for all the C State haters out there. The registry mod disables all of the C States except for C0 / C1 and C1E. C0 is the state that the CPU is in when it is working on a task. When it has nothing to do it will go into C1 but in this state it is immediately ready to get back to work. Now C1E is optional. You can enable it with ThrottleStop or leave it disabled.

Here's the good news.



Sure you lose the maximum 36 multiplier which is normally available when running single threaded apps but you still have access to the full 34 Turbo multiplier when the CPU is idle or under load; whether 1, 2, 3 or all 4 cores are active as long as you do not go over the TDP limit. Idle power consumption is way up and my idle temps are also up about 20C. I know the music production guys hate the C States so they are going to be excited to see this kind of performance out of a laptop.

Enabling C1E drops power consumption in half when idle which makes using the laptop on your lap a little more bearable.