Calling ALL G7 7588/5588 (8750H) owners! PLEASE LOOK

***also curious about other Dell models and CPUs

Hi everyone, thanks for taking a minute to see what this is about. I recently purchased a G7 7588 as the specs are perfect for what I want at the price point. I noticed an issue however. Performance on battery is significantly worse than when plugged in. Yes, I know this is not necessarily a red flag, and that most machines are limited in some way on battery. After all, we can not expect a small battery to do what a 180w power brick can.

However, I am noticing that max TDP for the CPU on battery is 15W. That seems awfully low for a 6 core processor. In fact, it power throttles to 800MHz under full load (cinebench). After googling, I am not the only one. However, I notice in the notebookcheck review of this laptop, they claim to achieve a score of ~1000 on battery. I am not seeing anything close to that.

I would ask that anyone with a g5/g7 5588/7588 (any CPU) please chime in with the following:

1. Laptop Model
2. BIOS revision
3. CPU installed
4. Cinebench R15 score on AC Adapter
5. Cinebench R15 score on battery
6. Lowest speed shown in task manager when running Cinebench on AC
7. Lowest speed shown in task manager when running Cinebench on Battery
8. If you have any software that monitors TDP (hwinfo, hwmonitor, throttlestop, XTU), please share the max TDP displayed when running Cinebench on AC, and battery respectively.


Please take the 5 minutes this test takes to submit your sample in this thread. There seems to be a potential issue with this laptop when running on battery and this process will help identify if that is the case. You can download the program here:

http://http.maxon.net/pub/benchmarks/CINEBENCHR15.038.zip

Here is my result (testing all BIOS revisions, more to come):


1. G7 7588
2. 1.1.0
3. i7 8750h
4. 1062
5. 431
6. 2.98GHz
7. 0.79GHz
8. n/a

1. G7 7588
2. 1.2.1
3. i7 8750h
4. 1089
5. 440
6. 2.96GHz
7. 0.79GHz
8. n/a

1. G7 7588
2. 1.3.0
3. i7 8750h
4. 1054
5. 435
6. 2.16GHz
7. 0.79GHz
8. n/a

Voltran:
1. G5
2. 1.3.0
3. i7 8750h
4. 1084
5. 384
6. Settling at 3.19 GHz after short Turbo at 3.89 GHz
7. 0.81 GHz half of the time and 2.1 GHz the other half. It seems to be random, not a throttle mechanism due to heat or power.
8. AC: 78W during Turbo, 45W after settling down. Battery: didn't really bother to check, but under 20W.

Nemix77:
1. G3 3779
2. 1.2.1
3. i5-8300H
4. 822 (battery mode best performance and system cooling policy active)
5. 362 (battery mode better battery and system cooling policy passive)
6. 3.89Ghz (minimum processor state 90% and maximum 100%)
7. 1.49Ghz (minimum processor state 5% and maximum 90%)
8. AC: 47W maximum and Battery: 14W maximum (HWMonitor and Undervolt -180mv)

Bacaunawa:

1. G7 7588
2. 1.3.0
3. I7 8750H
4. 1064
5.passive cooling policy: 279 (this was pretty steady for several tests before i changed cooling settings)
active cooling policy: 529 (initial score. Stayed around 500 after reverting settings back to passive)
6. 2.94GHz
7. 0.79GHz
8. AC: 77.74W
Battery: 16.80W

Tekigun:
Run 1
1. G7 7588
2. 1.0.1
3. i7 8750h
4. 1209
5. 487
6. 3.91 GHz
7. 1.50 GHz
8. AC: 56.938W, Battery: 14.968W

Run 2
1. G7 7588
2. 1.0.1
3. i7 8750h
4. 1175
5. 486
6. 2.70 GHz
7. 1.49 GHz
8. AC: 57.059W, Battery: 14.967W

Run 3
1. G7 7588
2. 1.0.1
3. i7 8750h
4. 1150
5. 487
6. 3.15 GHz
7. 1.50 GHz
8. AC: 57.454W, Battery: 14.968W

Chrisloko:
1. G7
2. 1.3.0
3. i7 8750h
4. 1190
5. 301
6. 3.5GHz
7. 0.79 GHz
8. AC: 78W Turbo, 45W after. Battery: 15.4W

 

I am not an Dell G7 user(in fact I am an Acer Predator one),but Dell has been messing up so many things both in their Inspiron and Ailenware.
Crappy thermal paste,CPU throttling issues and countless others.

 

1. G5
2. 1.3.0
3. i7 8750h
4. 1084
5. 384
6. Settling at 3.19 GHz after short Turbo at 3.89 GHz
7. 0.81 GHz half of the time and 2.1 GHz the other half. It seems to be random, not a throttle mechanism due to heat or power.
8. AC: 78W during Turbo, 45W after settling down. Battery: didn't really bother to check, but under 20W.

 

thank you for sharing. As you can see, we are nowhere near a score of 1000 on battery (like notebookcheck review claimed). As for clock speed fluctuation on battery, I believe different parts of the benchmark utilize more of the CPU, and therefore under heavy load the speed drops to 800MHz, while other parts (easy tiles) of the benchmark the CPU can get up to 2.1GHz (still under base clock for this CPU though) while maintaining what I have seen to be under 16W TDP.

 

there must be more than 2 of us with a dell with an 8750h! Please help by adding to the results!

 

I haven't ran any of the test that you've requested; however, I do own the g7 7588 with the i7 8750h and 1060 max q. I did notice the laptop runs signaficantly slower, in game, while on battery. The first time I noticed this was in ghost recon: wildlands. I just thought this was normal. I'll try to get back to this with results.

 

thanks, any data points are helpful. Even older games stutter quite a bit on battery it seems.

 

This took more than 5 minutes to test but here are my results with notes:

1. G3 3779
2. 1.2.1
3. i5-8300H
4. 822 (battery mode best performance and system cooling policy active)
5. 362 (battery mode better battery and system cooling policy passive)
6. 3.89Ghz (minimum processor state 90% and maximum 100%)
7. 1.49Ghz (minimum processor state 5% and maximum 90%)
8. AC: 47W maximum and Battery: 14W maximum (HWMonitor and Undervolt -180mv)

 

is 8750h twice better than 7700hq? I'm getting ~550-600 points in cinebench R15

 

on battery or AC? Please use the numbered format so we can keep track of what it is doing. 8750h is about 50% faster. Your score seems about 100 points low. It could be throttling though.

 

that's AC. When i'm doing cinebench with all cores, my frequency is hovering ~3.4 ghz each core, but on a single core it's 3.5-3.6 max.

 

Cinebench maxes out all threads so that is normal to see the drop in turbo speed. A 7700hq should get closer to 700 though, perhaps you have some software running in the background using CPU resources. Also, running the test multiple times will result in some heat soak and usually lower scores on secondary runs.

 

After running the bench several times I realized the fans were never kicking on while on battery. I checked under power options>power processor management>system cooling policy and it was set to Passive. I figured changing it to Active would help a little bit and it brought my scores up by over 200 points.

Even with the change in fan settings, I cant really notice if they're on or not. I haven't tested it in games either.

So even weirder results, I tried testing it with the cooling settings set back to Passive and the score stayed the same--hovering around 500-530. So honestly, I don't know what happened to increase my score.

Here's my scores.

1. G7 7588
2. 1.3.0
3. I7 8750H
4. 1064
5.
passive cooling policy: 279 (this was pretty steady for several tests before i changed cooling settings)

active cooling policy: 529 (initial score. Stayed around 500 after reverting settings back to passive)
6. 2.94GHz
7. 0.79GHz
8. AC: 77.74W
Battery: 16.80W

Edit: also tdp never changed while on battery.

 

Interesting. I noticed the passive option but didn't bother trying to change it. I will give it a try when I get home.

 

I personally didn't see a variance between passive and active. I ran 3 tests for each and they were all within a couple percent of each other.

 

Run 1
1. G7 7588
2. 1.0.1
3. i7 8750h
4. 1209
5. 487
6. 3.91 GHz
7. 1.50 GHz
8. AC: 56.938W, Battery: 14.968W

Run 2
1. G7 7588
2. 1.0.1
3. i7 8750h
4. 1175
5. 486
6. 2.70 GHz
7. 1.49 GHz
8. AC: 57.059W, Battery: 14.967W

Run 3
1. G7 7588
2. 1.0.1
3. i7 8750h
4. 1150
5. 487
6. 3.15 GHz
7. 1.50 GHz
8. AC: 57.454W, Battery: 14.968W

Someone posted with the same issue on reddit.

Dell support suggested: "Hi, We recommend you update the BIOS, Chipset and intel dynamic platform and thermal framework driver from Dell support website. If the issue persists, send a private message with system Service Tag to help you resolve the issue. KK"

 

thank you everyone who has replied so far. It is clear this issue is not isolated.

 

My results were pretty odd to me, so it must've been an anomaly on my side. Thanks for testing it!

 

anyone else?

 

Bump

 

Same issue...
1. G7
2. 1.3.0
3. i7 8750h
4. 1190
5. 301
6. 3.5GHz
7. 0.79 GHz
8. AC: 78W Turbo, 45W after. Battery: 15.4W

 

Thanks for sharing. It seems all G7s are having this issue. I wish more people would post up results.

 

updated my bios, chipset and intel dynamic platform and thermal framework driver and still capped at 15W on battery.

 

I added a new feature to ThrottleStop recently and I need someone with this low TDP on battery problem to do a test for me.



Open up the FIVR window, find the Memory section on the right hand side, click on the Install button in that section and follow the directions to install the RwDrv.sys file into your ThrottleStop folder.

After that, check off the Disable and Lock Turbo Power Limits option and press OK. Go do another Cinebench test on battery power and see if it makes any difference or are you still capped at 15W?

I am trying to find out what method is being used to limit the CPU TDP so I can try and come up with a fix.

 

No luck still capped at 15W

 

This does not seem random or out of the ordinary to me. Besides, why do you want to game at full power on battery in the first place?

15W limit on battery is standard even on my Dell 7577.

Have you tried uninstalling the Intel Thermal Framework software/driver altogether?

There are way too many unaddressed variables in this experiment to isolate the issues at hand. At worst, it does seem like a crappy firmware issue from Dell though. 15W limit doesn't necessarily need to cap clock speed at 800MHz but if the workload is heavy enough it might make sense I guess.

I may try messing around with this on my 7577 for comparison in the coming weeks.

 

I don't want to game on battery. I would like to edit a video without it being as slow as a dual core CPU plugged in though.

 

Intel locks and limitations aside, 15 watts is likely a power limitation put in place by Dell to preserve the longevity of the battery's cells. And for the end user's safety (to prevent fires and runaway thermal events).

A 4 cell 56WHr battery consists of 4 lithium cells that are between 3.0V (dead) and 4.2V (fully charged). At best, that means that the battery will put out 16.8VDC fresh off a full charge and about 12VDC when dead.

The motherboard takes 19.5VDC from the power supply normally. (Probably to help keep amperage down.) I assume the motherboard can operate between 12VDC and 24VDC. Either way though, based on the power the motherboard sucks up straight from the power supply, that is not the limiting factor. The board can handle up to ~10amps or 180watts flowing into it.

What it boils down to is the battery's C rate. Those cells can only reliably output so much amperage without their voltage sagging too heavily (this causes amperage to go up and creates unnecessary additional heat as well as logical faults and glitches within the chips starving for voltage) or the cells overheating (due to the additional amperage and higher resistance created by additional heat) or their lifespan being dramatically shortened (by all of the above).

 

I use to have BIOS 1.01 and didn't have this TDP throttling issue on battery but since I updated to 1.2.1, it sucks. Here are my results for you

1) Dell G7 7588
2) 1.2.1
3) 8750H
4)1236
5)330
6) 3.6ghz
7) 2ghz
8) AC - 64 watts
Battery - 14.3w

This is most certainly a change in the BIOS from 1.0.1 to 1.2.1. This TDP nets me around 1.9 - 2ghz and it's SOO sluggish

 

Yeah no luck here either.. It states PL2 is the power limit

 

I attemped to change the UEFI variables for IMON Slope/Offset to see if I can trick the CPU in to reporting less power being used. I did this for my 8550u in my HP laptop and it worked great but so far the values stick but the reported power consumption is the same. Therfore my CPU is still using 60 watts on AC and 15 on DC. I dumped the BIOS and am currently looking for an "On/Off" switch for voltage regulation but no luck. Also no luck in finding battery TDP options as well. If anyone wants the text dump from the UEFI user selection lists, which shows ALL options; let me know and you can take a look.

 

Glad to see this thread getting traction. The laptop is useless for anything more than web browsing on battery.

 

Based on the results in the original post, even those running 1.0.1 had this issue.

 

If that were the case, why would notebookchecks sample get 1000 points in cinebench on battery?

 

Perhaps that main board had a different BIOS version and/or drivers than the current production models offer.

FWIW:

My Dell 7577 w/ 7700HQ averages around 10W on battery with general computing and maxes out at 15W on battery while running Cinebench/heavy computing. It scored 601cb on battery and previously maxed out around 752cb on AC power. I honestly think it comes down to Dell ensuring a certain minimum run time on their minimally spec'd batteries.



QUESTION:

Are all of you using the Dell-issued drivers from Dell's website or downloading the drivers directly from Intel/Nvidia/etc?

Also have any of you tried turning on Ultimate Power scheme or whatever the hidden one is that takes a registry key to unlock?

Also also, has anyone tried installing BitSum Process Lasso and turning on its "Highest Performance" profile? I personally use that option to toggle my power scheme and it works well.

Also also also, how are you all setting your default Windows power profile slider? Ever since they introduced that stupid slider it's been a PITA to keep my machine running the way I want it to. It just seems to act wonky imo.

 

I also have the same issue with xps 13 i7 8550u. Cinebench is roughly half with battery power and full cpu load on battery causes to throttle to 0,79ghz. Numbers on cinebench are around 600 and 250. Same ratio is there when encoding camera raw to jpg on lightroom.

Regarding this the 15W power limit would make sense but for me it seems that when it hits that limit it throttles down to 0,79ghz and 3W power for cpu. At 15W it would run at around 2ghz i think.

 

While what I said still does technically hold true in general when it comes to batteries, the more I think about it, the more I lean towards: Dell just wants to guarantee its battery life claims and its user experience for the average user (who doesn't need much actual compute power to be satisfied with browsing facebook/email/etc) moreso than power users that prefer optimum performance all the time and 15 watts seems to fit the bill all around to allow for decent battery life, not too much heat, and still keep clock speeds at an acceptable range.

As far as throttling down to 3 watts and 0.79GHz, have you messed with your ICC settings on Throttle Stop or Intel XTU? If those are set too low they can cause loss of clock speed under heavier loads.

 

Well yeah sure its always good to take care of the average user but thats why theres different power profiles such as optimized and "ultra performance". Also xps stands for Xtreme Performance System so there should be performance possible
Dell just replaced the battery and motherboard along with all the soldered components and theres fresh windows so theres no cpu messes done with throttelstop or intel xtu. At least the technical support does not seem to be sure if its working as intended or not. Ill post a link to a graph of me running lightroom export to jpg first with plugged power(red) and then battery(green).
https://imgur.com/a/iGme8NK

 

Hi all,

I'm asking dell to add in next BIOS release for all G-Series laptops (G3/G5/G7) the same thermal management system as XPS line with several cooling and processor performance options, this might help us to keep better control of thermals and fan operation (Cool, Quiet, Balanced and High Performance) as there is no way as it is to control it, I updated my G3 to bios 1.4.0 and fans were crazy, had to come back to 1.3.0 to get it working properly.

If you support this idea, please leave your Kudos/Likes there to show them that there are more people interested, the more people we get involved better our odds to make it happen!

https://www.dell.com/community/Insp...nt-system-to-G3-G5-G7-BIOS/m-p/6202919#M38864

Image of what I'm talking about:



Thank you!!!

 

I tested my xps 13 on linux and i cannot reproduce the problem of throttling to 0,8ghz. In windows its consistently happening when running on battery power but on linux it throttles sensibly. I ran sysbench with 8 threads for 120 seconds and it started with 3,5ghz and then gradually throttling down to 2,5ghz where it remained. At that point temps were at roughly 85-90. Behavior is exactly same on battery power and charger. I cant say for sure if the sysbench method equals my cinebench test on windows but at least it causes full cpu load on all cores. On windows the behavior occurs with any cpu intensive task(lightroom, resolve). I suggest you guys test this too if you have time. I tried with usb bootable ubuntu 18 lts. Used lm sensors and lscpu with watch command to monitor temps and frequencies. This would point the cause to some windows drivers and not firmware(bios).

Edit: I ran the same sysbench command on ubuntu subsystem on windows 10 and the throttling is there again. So running this same command "sysbench --threads=8 --time=120 cpu run" gets 355859 events on windows WSL and 689830 events on linux. Of course there might be something else slowing the linux subsystem down but i dont think it should matter that much unless something blocks it from using all cpu cores. Anyways theres the throttling down to 0,8ghz clearly present.

 

I guess dell is not caring about its power users. Will be getting an MSI next time.

 

So my dell support case went as follows: I said i get only 50% performance on all benchmarks when running on battery. Windows power profiles or dell power manger dont help gaining the performance. They tried everything and replaced motherboard and battery. Eventually they said its by design and refused to continue. That took over a month. Also the reply from the support next level person was that if i want full performance I need to use the windows slider to use best performance. So frustrating to realize they just bounce it around and nobody reads what the case is about. The exact problem is that the windows slider nor the dell power manager profiles do not help at all to get the cpu to not drop to 0,89ghz constantly.

TL;DR; Dell says xps 13 9360 i7 8550 only has 50% performance on battery by design.

 

I've seen posts that choosing the default DELL power plan solves performcane on battery problem. Can someone try this? I don't have this laptop but I'm planning to get the new version.

 

Go try the tool mentioned in another thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ual-custom-control-of-the-laptop-fans.827106/

 

Tried the tool, which works to control fan speed. It did not affect CPU throttling on battery though, still drops to 15w max.

 

15 watts is Dell's standard limitation on battery power. No way around that short of a BIOS bypass/rewrite/etc...

 

from the notebookcheck review of the dell g7 7588:

"Intel's 8th gen Core i7-8750H has become the new gold standard for gaming laptops, supplanting the Core i7-7700HQ. The new six-core CPU brings a massive leap in performance over the older silicon, scoring about 50% higher in Cinebench R15's multicore test. The 8750H also keeps pace with the much more expensive Core i9-8950HK in the same benchmark. On battery, Cinebench scores hover around 1000, or about 93% of the machine's performance when plugged in."

How would this be possible with a 15w cap? With the 15w cap, I can only get between 490-600 in cinebench depending on my throttlestop settings.

 

That may have been an early BIOS revision which has been changed later on to protect the battery from discharging too fast.

 

Have you tried this:

https://www.dell.com/community/Inspiron/Dell-G7-CPU-stuck-at-0-8-GHz-on-Battery/td-p/6111521/page/7

SEE NBR THREADS:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ual-custom-control-of-the-laptop-fans.827106/

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ol-fans-on-dell-laptops-under-windows.805317/

ALSO:

Have you tried rolling back your BIOS? How far back can you roll it if you have?

Either way, the clock speed glitches and power limiting issues seem to be common on newer gen Dell laptops, G5, G7, XPS, etc... Dell's overbearing firmware along with Intel's ridiculous locked down multi-control methods are the primary culprits.

 

Thanks for the report. For me the main thing is that it prevents the throttling to 0,89ghz which is like 3W. Could be that its because it also has the fans on high. Seems that we are both on this and dell forum with the same issue Ill see what ec fancontrol with speedfan controlled fans does.