920xm throttling with 680m?

i recently bought a 680m,i've updated our mighty sv17's bios edition
the gpu is running fine with 320.18 driver
however i find out my 920xm will throttle when i running games
multiplier is 25,tdp 90
when i running games the multiplier dropped to 10
on 1.7ghz
all temps are normal,cpu max under 80 degrees ,gpu under 70
which is critical for gaming
is there any solution?

ps：the gpu didnt got underclocked at all,it was the cpu only who underclocked

 

First of all, what machine you have is VERY important. I'm personally guessing m15x, but feel free to tell us
Secondly, to run 1.7GHz at 10x multiplier you would need a bclk of 170, or 26% over stock. There's something wrong with the math here.
What's your TDC on the CPU?
What power rating does your PSU offer? Are you overclocking the GPU?
For me to stably run 25x multi across all cores at full potential, I need a 95W TDP on 940XM, just saying (although dropping to 10x multi is not normal).

Have you ticked enabled the two options above the Multiplier one in Throttlestop? (one with chipset clock mod and the other i don't remember).
Do you have BD PROCHOT disabled?

I can't think of anything else to ask right now.

To me it sounds like the classical Alienware m15x problem where you have to heavily undervolt (and sometimes underclock) the GPU (for 7970m's you would have to go down to 0.975-0.95V) in order to not throttle the CPU due to lack of power.

 

yes it is m15x,its m15x forum
multiplier was 13 not 10, my fault
the bd prochot is disabled,
tdp was 90,but it was fine to run 25x all cores at full speed even the tdp is set to 72
but as long as i launch games like gw2
it will drop down to 13X
btw if i want to undervolt my card,which software should i use?
cause i tried afterburner,it wont let me adjust the voltage even i turned unlock voltage control in settings
psu is original one ,should be 150w,
i didnt overclock the gpu
gpu's voltage is on 0.987V
clocks on757mhz at full speed

 

CPU shouldn't throttle due to power demands of GPU. CPU gets power first. Make sure options that sangemaru lists are all checked. Make sure multiplier is set to turbo and clock chip and clock modulation are all set to 100%.

 

wow thx man
clock chip and clock modulation are all set to 100%. <<< after i checked this
it runs all on 100% perfectly
didnt know i have to check this
cause when i use 5870m it doesnt need to check this to run all cores on 25X full speed
thank you so much man

 

Heh you can run 25x and the 680M without any throttle?? Goodbye AMD...

Are you certain the 680M doesn't throttle at all? Seriously if this is the case I am buying one!

 

yes it is
just flash sv17's bios
and your all good
his bios runs constantly at 757mhz
will try overclock later after i got off from work
still in office now
cant wait to play with my new toy!

 

Run 3dmark11 just in case, and make some screens with gpu-z and throttlestop setup. If sv7 bios works,that would be awesome! ^_^

 

I agree. Please do the above for the community. I have a feeling many of us got the wrong card. Not next time!

 

I bet you still get throttling in combined test on 3dmark 11 if you overclock processor.
Best I've got at the moment with an undervolted 7970m (0.975v) and overclocked cpu is P6260. Even then the combined test is dragging the score down a bit.

 

check the gw2's screen shot
you can see the cpu is running at full speed
as the 3dmark result
i think the score low is just due to the lower clock of gpu (757 mhz)
and the 920xm on 25x ,its not about throttling
its the cpu only capable of getting this score
my desktop is running on a gtx680 lightning and I52500K clocked to 4.5ghz
my desktop's combined score is 7807
2500K @ 4.5ghz is way more powerful than 920xm at 3.3ghz
so it think that's it
will try to clock the card higher later

 

Great job! Can't wait for oveclocked GPU score )

 

Weird! My graphics score is only slightly higher but my cpu score is much lower. Not sure that entirely makes sense. I'll be interested to see what numbers you can get before you hit throttling.
I managed to get a magnificent combined score of 2960 with gpu and cpu both overclocked! Good job crappy M15x voltage circuits

 

i now hit another worse scenario ...after a few run,my psu shut down itself( before i already get that not genuine dell psu sign on bios, seems this is the sign of the psu dying)
i guess its nth to do with the circuit board cause from other guy's post when they using 150w psu it was just fine
maybe its just my psu getting old(nearly 3 years)
i've ordered a 240w psu
will see how it goes after i receive the new psu

 

Thanks for posting. Very interesting!

 

Hope you get your PSU sorted.

Here is a nice benchmark for you to beat This is with a 0.975v undervolt too!

 

750mhz is till a 30mhz OC right? That is really good.

The Kepler cores are at least as efficient as the GCN cores. What makes the 680M a winner I think is that is uses lower power GDDR5. In the M15x this translates to much better stability as the card as a whole will draw less power. Oced to 1200-1250 MHz the 680M would crush any 7970M in the M15x. Due to lower vram voltage this is the upper limit (I know there are workrounds for this but in the M15x best to leave as is)

I am very tempted to pick one up as the 780M seems to draw more power (20-25% more) this card would be a bad choice for the M15x therefore. Throttle galore. So either 680M or wait for 22nm... The 770M is another good choice but a little underpowered. I am thinking the next gen 75W cards will be faster than both 680M and 7970M. I look forward to these offerings.

To be fair at this point I am fairly disappointed with the 7970M. If only we could adjust the vram voltage.

 

Whaaaaat? I'm pretty darn impressed with the undervolted performance of the 7970m! You have to keep telling yourself that our laptop is designed to run a 75W card not these big powerful 100W ones. I'm interested to see the relative performance of elflegolas' undervolted 680m.

 

True it isn't all that bad. I will stick at 850/1400 at 0.975V for now. Then I will get a 75W card from the next gen.

The true weakness of this card in the M15x is that the memory voltage is quite high. This really reduced the stability headroom we have. The 770M GTX looks brilliant but at an OC to beat 850/1400 on the 7970M it will consume just as much.

 

That's the problem, any of the next gen don't compete with the 7970m except obviously GTX780m.

I think the biggest disappointment, as a know you were excited about it, was the 8970m. We all had big expectations but its now clear AMD were pinning everything on their new architecture which I hear is delayed again!!!

Btw those benchmarks svl7 ran with 680m and 7970m were with tess off so we can assume they aren't realistic figures.

Not sure its possible to get over 5500 combined score (3dmark 11) on our aging beast.

 

If only someone could manufacture a dual PSU for me. I would love to test one out.

For now we should look for ways to reduce power consumption.

1.) Disabling all alienware lighting during gaming seems to save a little juice.
2.) Running external cooling fans off a difference usb power source. Different laptop or from the mains.
3.) SSD (something we both already have. No tangible difference between 470 and 840 in terms of power consumption.
4.) Installing a second SSD instead of HDD (far too expensive to put a decent capacity backup drive in) to save 5-10 watts.
5.) Undervolting GPU
6.) Try out a I7 640 which is just 35W.....
7.) Game off an external screen and completely disable the internal one to save power.

 

About 6.) do you know if its possible to disable hyperthreading on our XM processors? 4 cores (4 threads) running at 3.2Ghz would be pretty sweet for gaming and would consume much less power?

 

If it is I think we could certainly match the 3.46ghz on the i7 640. Don't know how much it will bottleneck the 7970M though.

 

After a quick google it seems there is not proper way to turn hyperthreading off but you can select the number of processing cores to have active in MSCONFIG.
Apparently selecting two will only use 1 core using 1 physical and 1 virtual. Waste of time unfortunately. Unless you select 6 cores meaning 3 physical and 3 virtual.
We'd be the cool kids rocking a hexcore

 

Well if we disabled 4 cores then we would be running basically an i5. The only difference would be the higher fsb.

I might do some tests with this and see whether it helps with stability. Once we upgrade to the 870M GTX or AMD equivalent 75W card then we can enable the cores again for gaming.

Hexcore sounds interesting. It should still offer some power savings while not compromising multithreaded performance so severely.

Booting now with 6 cores.

 

No difference at all. Running 7970M at 1V at 875/1400 still get non stop throttling in FC3. Even with 4 cores disabled! I should try 850 0.975V before I throw in the towel but not tonight.

 

That doesn't make any sense at all. Did you confirm in realtemps or cpu-z that in fact several cores were disabled? I read that a virtual core doesn't equal a physical core and that they only offer 20-30% of the performance of a physical core and therefore prioritizing workloads to physical cores is an excellent way to improve performance.

I would have thought it would have quite a profound effect on power consumption but looks like I was wrong unless that msconfig setting is just the cores that windows will use and doesn't affect 3D applications.

 

Well coretemp only reports 2 cores and throttlestop shows 4 threads.

I didn't disable alien fx or run the external fans externally considering I thought more power would be available.

 

Perhaps 1V is too much in FC3. Weird that I can run 950/1450 no problem at 1.05V in Crysis 3 but in FC3 I can only run max 0.975V! Clearly FC3 taxes the card far more than C3!

The CPU is definitely running 2 physical cores as I only need 61W tdp at 23x to maintain 100% load in prime 95. It seems the card is indeed limited by its own circuits and that different games use different amounts of power.

More testing is needed but I am certainly a bit confused and frustrated. Perhaps my M15x is on it's way out instead lol

Then again the first time I tested I didn't do any warming up of the card or anything and got lots of throttle. In the past to get a clean slate I discovered the laptop had to completely cool down in order to try again or it would still throttle regardless. This I did not do tonight. I think this approach must work. Will try again soon. Perhaps Fatboyslimmer you can also give it a try.

 

I will when I get a chance. I'm stuck down doing uni work at the moment. Did you select 2 or 4 processor cores in MSCONFIG to get 2 physical cores active?
FC3 throttles for me even with a slight cpu OC regardless of gpu OC. Running cpu at stock has no throttling.

Would be so much easier if we could turn off hyperthreading since 4 physical cores would be more desirable than 2 physical and 2 virtual.
Lets find someone to mod our BIOS

EDIT: btw King my 7970m is stable at 890/1420 @ 0.975v in Tomb Raider, Metro Last Light and FC3.
Does run slightly hotter though.

EDIT 2: After a quick bit of testing I found even with 2 cores (4 threads) @ 26/24/24/24 and 62/62 with gpu at 850/1350 @ 0.975v I was still throttling in FC3 even with render tool fan-spool-up.
Nowhere near as much as with all cores active but still enough to affect gameplay. AlienFX was turned on though.

Seems like a waste of time?

 

My Psu has arrived,i'll run some benchmark after i off work ...i just start working though
does far cry got a benchmark mode?i'll try it for you if it has

 

I don't think Far Cry 3 has a benchmark mode. Try 3DMark 11 as that will tell if your gpu is throttling in the combined test.
Just run performance setting.

 

yo just did 3dmark11
i think i beat your marks completely
i clocked my 680m to 950core and 1200 on memory
cpu all cores on 25X multiplier
think those who still considering 7970m or 680m is no doubt to go for 680m

 

Very nice score! Are games stable at those clocks? Is this still undervolted?

It seems the GTX 680m is less prone to throttling than 7970m. I don't want to push my 7970m any higher running @ 0.975v because it runs nice and cool.
Did you take a look at temperatures while you ran that benchmark or during gaming?

 

yes i havent adjust the voltage at all
its very very hot though it will go up to 91 degrees when i running at 950mhz core
but i dont know maybe it was me applying thermal compound badly
because i got like 87 degrees on my 5870m
so 4 degrees higher but with a much more powerful card doesnt bother me
though i would really want to know how can i lower the heat
cause i saw some1 with 680m is under 70 degrees
but when i run on the stock clock of sv17's bios i still got like 89degrees
so i think the clocks doesnt affect much
im using gelid gc-extreme and on 5870m i was using mx-4

 

You should see if you can get ICD7 or ICD24 (they are the same paste just different sizes). This thick thermal paste is the best.
Also are you using the original C-clip screws attached to heatsink? You might not have enough pressure on the chip causing overheating. Some longer screws might help.

My undervolted 7970m doesn't go above 75 degrees even after 2-3 hours of Far Cry 3. Unfortunately the DELL 7970m suffers thermal shutdown at 85 degrees for some reason stopping large overclocks from being possible.

I think you made the better choice though going for a 680m if you can get those temperatures down a bit as it seems to throttle less.

 

i've tried to repaste it
it down a little bit to 87 degrees
but gpu ambient gets like 91 degrees
i remember gpu ambient means memory of the card?

edited: at last it climbs to 93 degrees again,99 on ambient..

 

Ambient means your room temperature - presumably 20 degrees or something.
If your ambient is 20 and GPU is 80 then if ambient goes up to 30 gpu will be 90.

As long as you have good thermal pads on the memory they shouldn't be a problem in terms of overheating.

I wonder if the lack of throttling on 680m is to do with the lower memory voltage.
Perhaps a little memory underclock may reduce throttling on 7970m?

 

Maybe problem with memory temperature is just because of the memory bunks placed on booth sides of the card?

 

thanks man didnt know ambient means that
but my ambient on 99 is it means the wind that my laptop's blowing are on 99 degrees?

 

You bought 680M from Dell or Clevo?
What difference with Dell and Clevo versions of this card, which one better to buy?

 

Just sick!

Anybody looking to upgrade from a 50xx or 60xx series card should get a 680M hands down. Unfortunately for us 7970M users it still isn't worth upgrading to but it is good to know that if nothing better comes along there is even for us a very solid upgrade out there.

OP I do think you should re-paste and pay some attention to improving your cooling. 91C is too hot it shouldn't get that high even at 950mhz. You should try 1250mhz on the memory the 680M is severely vram bandwidth bottlenecked. If stable the extra 50mhz will net you a very decent increase in performance especially at 950mhz core! I think 1250-1300mhz is the upper limit though with without vbios workarounds and the like. Something perhaps that shouldn't be tinkered with considering the M15x's throttling issues.

 

Guys I would hate hijack this thread but you seem like overclocking geniuses, how far can I overclock my 680 without flashing vbios but using software like MSI's TDE or MSI afterburner?

 

If you refer to the gtx 680m in m15x, you can't even reach stock clocks without flashing vbios. After the flash you can use software to overclock.

 

No chopsy, I am referring to a GTX 680 in a GT60 0ne laptop, can it be overclocked without vbios but only software like afterburner or TDE?