AW 17R2 AFTER-SLEEP CURRENT LIMIT BUG

Hello,
I was tinkering with throttlestop settings to get rid of the current limit throttling I was having and I noticed something. Entering sleep mode resets and locks the current limit to the stock values. To make sure, I booted the computer, checked both throttlestop settings and CPU-Z dump, entered the sleep mode, waked up the pc (that sounds weird), checked throttlestop and CPU-Z dump again and there was the bug!

BEFORE:
Throttlestop Settings

CPU-Z dump: MSR 0x00000601 0x00101414 0x00000320

AFTER:
Throttlestop Settings (After):

CPU-Z dump: MSR 0x00000601 0x00101414 0x800002A8

@unclewebb mentioned this CPU-Z method to check if the settings have been applied here: forum.notebookreview.com/threads/the-throttlestop-guide.531329/page-300 . The MSR 0x00000601 refers to the current limit control as I have understood. The last 3 digits should be converted to decimals from hex in order to understand the value. For example in the first CPU-Z dump the last three digits are 320.
320 = 800
800/8 = 100 amps

2A8 = 680
680/8 = 85 amps

Also notice the 8 in the beginning of the second dump. The 8 in the beginning implies that this value is locked unlike the first dump which has a 0 in the same bit.

I haven't seen such a bug online so I shared it. What are your thoughts?

 

Interesting find. Can you try the same test but boot up and do not run ThrottleStop. Also make sure that you are not running XTU in the background. Run CPU-Z to see what MSR 0x601 has in it and then go into stand by, resume and check again.

 

I did it as you said @unclewebb and the bug still persists. I did a cold boot and saved the CPU-Z report without touching Throttlestop, here is the code:
MSR 0x00000601 0x00101414 0x000002A8
It reports an unlocked configuration as you can see however after sleep, here is the code:
MSR 0x00000601 0x00101414 0x800002A8
It is now locked!

 

Thanks for confirming that. I just wanted to make sure that ThrottleStop was not causing the problem.

What happens if you use ThrottleStop to set that register to 100 Amps and Lock it before you go into Stand By mode? I am assuming that MSR 0x601 will become unlocked during Stand By and then the bios will reset it to 85 Amps and lock it again before you resume. I just wanted to see if ThrottleStop could help with this.

 

I tried locking the current limit to 100 amps before stand-by mode however the system reset and locked itself to 85 amps again.

 

I guess you will have to contact Dell and ask them why they use "features" like this to limit the performance of their Alienware laptops. I guess they were depending on no one being wise enough to notice what was going on.

 

Which BIOS version do you have on it?

 

I am running BIOS A06

 

I noticed it 2 days ago too. I thought it was fixed earlier.
But somehow even though I have a 240Watt PSU, Intel XTU still indicated power throttling lowering my CPU clock speeds from 3.5 ish GHZ to 2.X

This is quite a drastic performance impact in CPU heaving games such as Tera, which I tried and indeed got worse performances now.

Summary of my laptop:
Alienware 15 R1
Running Bios A06
Geforce 980M
Intel i7 4710HQ

 

↑↑↑ @Alienware-L_Porras ↑↑↑

 

I'll escalate it to the engineers. I'll let you know when I get something.