Problems when benchmarking

Hi guys,

I received my Alienware yesterday and I've been trying to get benchmarks together to share with you all as I believe the thermal issues on my laptop seem to be quite good. However I'm running into an issue I cant solve and I hope you could help me?

Info

• AW 17 R4 1080 with QHD and 512 NVMe SSD
• BIOS Settings are:
  • 1-core 0
    2-core 0
    3-core 0
    4-core 0
    Core extra turbo voltage 1200
    Power limit 1 100000
    Power limit 2 100000
• Using BIOS 1.08, should I use 1.02?
• Tried using Throttlestop and XTU, same problem on both

Issue
1. At either 3.2 or 3.7Ghz, no matter what frequency / voltage I set, the CPU will throttle down and it's nothing to do with the temps as these are good. Strangely, sometimes I can resolve this by switching to OC Level 3 in BIOS then changing defaults in windows and running a benchmark, then randomly after a few benchmarks it seems to be an issue again

Note I've not been changing the CPU cache at all. Could it be that OCCT is detecting that my settings are invalid or will crash the machine and therefore will not allow it to run at full speed?

3.2


3.7

 

Have you tried clicking on the Limit Reasons button in ThrottleStop? When your CPU starts throttling, a box in Limit Reasons might light up in red to show you what is causing the throttling.



In that example, ThrottleStop Limit Reasons is showing that the CPU's 47 Watt PL1 power limit is the present cause of throttling and the CPU has been throttled so power consumption is just under that 47 Watt limit.

When throttling, all 8 threads of your CPU are reporting a multiplier of exactly 26.00 which is too perfect so there is a possibility that nothing will light up in red in Limit Reasons. I would suggest clicking on the Set Multiplier option in ThrottleStop and set that to the same value as your maximum multiplier. After you do that, click on the Turn On button in ThrottleStop to take it out of monitoring mode. When properly setup, ThrottleStop should not be showing Monitoring in the title bar. Post some more screenshots including one of the ThrottleStop TPL window so I can see if everything looks OK in there.

Do not run HWiNFO when testing with Limit Reasons because HWiNFO can interfere with the results from Limit Reasons.

 

Thanks I seem to have fixed the issue for now, I believe it could have been:

• The paste bedding in and benchmarks becoming more stable (unlikely)
• The fact that I was trying to control the clock with both Throttlestop and XTU
• The only other change I made was to do a few runs of prime95 instead of OCCT after a reboot as well

Bit of a mystery but hopefully my experience will help others. Thanks again for your post!

 

Still getting it after the repaste, the temps are good but I did what you asked and here are the results:



FIVR is as follows:

 

Do you think it could be power throttled? Here's why I ask...

I originally didn't set any over clocking multipliers in my BIOS, I only used Intel XTU.

Set cores and core cache to 40x in XTU and ran OCCT and it clock speed would peak at 3.99 for about a minute... But then it would mysteriously go down to 3.0 and stay there.

I read that I should increase max turbo power limit... Which I did in XTU and it had no effect.

Then I did it in the BIOS and all the problems went away and it sustained 3.99.

So it looks like XTU can't override max power with a higher value than what's in the BIOS...

Looks like you've set this in the BIOS but symptoms are the same.

What size power supply you got?

 

That is the Intel definition. On previous Intel CPUs, this was usually triggered because you reached the Electrical Design Point (EDP) which was the Current Limit. Open up the ThrottleStop TPL window and have a look at what the PP0 Current Limit is set to. Many laptops lock this so it cannot be adjusted but maybe your bios has an option for the Current Limit.

 

UPDATE, some progress on this, it seems as though if I set my Cache Ratio multiplier maximum to 28 or lower then it remains stable...:

 

here it is:



thanks!!

 

so as so as you can see this is currently 0.0010 right and it looks like I can change this, what would be a safe value to increase it to?

 

The 0.0010 is the time limit. The PP0 current limit is showing zero. The 6th Gen CPU s might not be using this setting anymore. Try setting this to a big number like 256 just to see what happens when benching. The CPU can only draw so much current so setting this high will not force 256 Amps into your CPU.

Also, uncheck the Clamp option for your power limits.

Lowering your cache ratio reduces power consumption so this keeps you under the throttling limit. It also reduces performance but for most benchmarks, not that much.

 

Also have some serious issues, got my computer today which i ordered the 30th Nov 17R4 1080.

From the beginning i ran OCCT and had an Min. 2.8Ghz and Max. 3.6Ghz temps were at a 60-66C average and Max. 79C
Then i OC to Min. 3989Mhz and Max. 4090Mhz, average temps of 65-74C and Max. 92C.
Now im running at stock again and Min. is 2.4Ghz and 3.2Ghz Max. and temps are 74-86C average and Max. 92C.

I'm going to install BÍOS 1.02 and try again.

 

Thanks! there are two fields with 0 in the area for the PP0 limit, which one has 256 in it? Both?

 

PP0 Current Limit is the top one. Set that to 256.

Leave the PP0 Power Limit unchecked and that can be left at 0.

 

Yep ok see below, still throttling for some reason

 

So i downgraded to BIOS 1.02 and it fixed my high temps and got my Min CPU speed to a higher clockrate at stock speeds. Now it's Min. 2.8Ghz and Max. 3.4Ghz.
Temps are 61-68C average and 74C Max. even better than with BIOS 1.08.

 

Maybe a longshot but have you tried 1.02 Pete?

 

Nope, but from what I heard recently, 1.08 is stable as well now, I'll wait to see what @unclewebb recommends

 

Yep that is my understanding aswell. Keep us updated, Always good to have a big knowledgebase.

 

.

 

Not much to recommend. I am not familiar with this type of throttling on Skylake CPUs. Increasing the ThrottleStop Current Limit doesn't work anymore to fix this. Does your bios or Intel XTU have any other power or current limits that you can adjust?

If XTU cannot help then I would try removing it.

You might have to find a different way to overclock your CPU. Try setting the Turbo Extra Voltage to 0 in the bios, set the Voltage in ThrottleStop to Adaptive, Default and then use as much negative offset voltage as you can get away with until you lose stability. You need to lower your full load voltage so you can avoid setting off the EDP Other throttling method.

 

So if you just go into BIOS and set Turbo Power Voltage to 1200 and then P1-P2 limit to 125000
and cores at 40,40,40,40, without using throttlestop or XTU you still have the problem?

 

Hey guys I managed to fix this in the end, happily running at 4.2Ghz right now and doing a timespy and firestrike run. No matter what I did in the BIOS I couldn't get the CPU cache voltage to stick to be unrestricted (thanks @unclewebb for identifying that for me!), it seemed to be limited. I watched a video on this, tried his suggestion and it was fixed! Happily running at 4.2 on Dell's default 4.0 voltage settings from BIOS. Therefore I ran OCCT for several minutes and no surprise really that it crashed and I eventually got a BSOD.
So I rebooted and then the cache voltage limit was applied again (even if I re applied the guidance from the video again). Therefore I made the decision that BIOS 1.08 is a crock of **** so I rolled back to 1.02 and no more cache voltage limits triggering the EDP Other limits in throttlestop!

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

Thank you both for your help! Just need to work on the GPU now, anyone got any settings that work for them?

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FYI to others, BIOS Settings are now:
40
40
40
40
0
100000
100000

 

Glad that it works for you 1.02 fixed it for me also as i mentioned earlier. I'm testing 1.09 as we speak. Have you done any benchmarks at 4, 4.1, 4.2Ghz cause you might get lower scores at higher clockrates. But i know the feeling that you want to see 4.2 or higher. My best score so far is 902 in Cinebench at 41 41 41 41, 1150, 1250000, 1250000.

Will start ocing GFX tomorrorow!

 

Me too! Doing it tonight (how exciting are we on a Friday evening! )
Let us know how 1.09 goes, I'll run cinebench later

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Very! But day didnt go as planned so i'll hope i have timme tomorrow to do some more OC

 

Lower scores at higher clock speed? Why?

 

Heat, throttling, voltage....More of a thing for people to check cause for me i get lower scores at 4.1Ghz than 4Ghz. Good for people who doesn't use LM to know of.

 

To be honest assetto corsa tends to perform much better at 4GHz for me. 4.2 it crashes sometimes, 4 it's rock stable and seems another (like it's running at more FPS even though they are both the same)

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If it's crashing at 4.2 and not at 4.0, it's because you need to increase the voltage. Make sure that you have at least 8-10 hours of occt (preferably linpack!) to validate your overclocking Not feeding the cpu with enough voltage will sometimes make it too "laggy" because of windows mini-freezes.