# ATT: unclewebb - 12th Gen i7 Advice please



## witblitz (Oct 15, 2022)

Hi @unclewebb 

First off, thanks for your invaluable software and support. If you charged for it, I would gladly pay for it. 

I'll try keep this brief as possible.

I have a new Dell XPS 15 9520 laptop. Specs below:

12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-12700H   2.30 GHz
16GB RAM
Nvidia RTX 3050 Ti GPU
Win 11 Pro

I've bought this 90% for work and audio (DAW) stuff and 10% for gaming. This post is in relation to gaming performance only.

From a tutorial I found online I've disabled both of these from device manager - "Nvidia platform controllers and framework" as well as "Intel integrated sensor solution"

I've gleaned as much as I can from your replies to other posts. I realise that its not possible to undervolt my CPU and so TPL settings are my only hope so I've left out any FIVR stuff. I was initially getting terrible FPS playing the only game I really play atm - COD warzone. After some adjustments I've gotten a pretty reasonable FPS which is all I'm really after.

That said, I've been made aware that the build quality in terms of thermals on these laptops is not great and so I'm after a balance of performance without pushing this thing to its limits indefinitely, although I know these CPUs are designed to run close to 100 celsius without issue. I'm a bit of a n00b with this stuff so I'm not sure if my paranoia is warranted or not.

I've attached a log - this goes from Idle to a full game of COD and then back to idle.

Below are my Throttlestop settings:






It seems to thermal throttle a bit going into the game and coming out of it - not sure if this is normal. I see it doesn't hit PL2 too often.

Is there anything you recommend I tweak to perhaps get a bit more performance without pushing the limits too much?

Thanks in advance!
W


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## unclewebb (Oct 15, 2022)

Product Specifications
					

quick reference guide including specifications, features, pricing, compatibility, design documentation, ordering codes, spec codes and more.




					ark.intel.com
				




Intel says the 12700H has a Maximum Power Rating of 115W but the cooling solution that Dell is using is barely good enough for 45W without the CPU reaching 100°C. Dell really needs to up their game and improve the cooling solution for these laptops. Maybe they need to shoot a little higher than barely adequate. 

Your decision to set the long term PL1 power limit to 40W is about right. You might be able to get away with 45W on a cool day but that is about it. Lowering the power limits does sacrifice some performance but there is not much else you can do. You should also consider lowering the turbo time limit. If your CPU cannot run at the 60W PL2 limit for 28 seconds without overheating, try lowering the turbo time limit from 28 seconds to about 8 seconds. That is about all your cooling system can handle. 

You can run Intel CPUs up to 100°C and you should not have any log term issues. Intel has been setting the thermal throttling temperature to 100°C for the vast majority of Core i CPUs that they have produced since 2008. If this was a problem, Intel would have lowered this spec years ago. Thermal throttling works great. The CPU will look after itself and slow down automatically if any core reaches 100°C. No need for users to worry about the CPU temperature. Use whatever settings provide the smoothest game play.


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## witblitz (Oct 15, 2022)

Thank you for or the quick reply. 

Your sentiment RE Dells cooling seems to be common. Quite annoyed tbh but I need a thin laptop for travel and there doesnt seem to be much choice out there.

I'll change the turbo time limit to 8s

Does a PL2 of 60 make sense? I had it at 65 for a bit. I'm pretty much taking shots in the dark so far

As for speedshift settings - does 4 / 58 make sense for this CPU?

Thanks again!
W


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## unclewebb (Oct 16, 2022)

witblitz said:


> Does a PL2 of 60 make sense?


60W or 65W sounds about right for PL2. You are limited by your cooling. 

I have never had my hands on a Dell XP with a 12700H for testing purposes. Your Speed Shift settings sound about right. I do not have any magic numbers that you should plug into ThrottleStop for 12th Gen mobile CPUs.


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## witblitz (Oct 16, 2022)

Thanks again


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## ADTS001 (Oct 16, 2022)

Have you disable virtualization? Try this command : *bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off*
Then reboot.
It will disable hypervisor which blocks MSR access. If you still can’t modify FIVR after doing it, maybe your motherboard has been plundervolted.


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## unclewebb (Oct 16, 2022)

ADTS001 said:


> If you still can’t modify FIVR


He can access the MSR registers including the FIVR voltage control register. Starting with 12th Gen mobile H series processors, Intel allows reading voltage information from the FIVR register but Intel has blocked writing voltage information to this register. Intel might claim that this was done to prevent Plundervolt attacks but it was mostly just a cash grab. Users will need to spend a lot more money for a 12900HK. The HK series is fully unlocked. Both the CPU multiplier and voltage are unlocked.


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## witblitz (Oct 17, 2022)

Right - so I'm correct in assuming there is absolutely no way to undervolt this chip?


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## GreiverBlade (Oct 17, 2022)

witblitz said:


> That said, I've been made aware that the build quality in terms of thermals on these laptops is not great


technically all laptop are like that unless very specific laptops.



witblitz said:


> Right - so I'm correct in assuming there is absolutely no way to undervolt this chip?


it would seems so, at least i never was able to undervolt any of my Intel laptops i had till today (never had a HK mobile, not worth it in my oppinion )

optional.


Spoiler: nonetheless, i would inquire why you did settle for a laptop with an i7 12th gen



rather than, let say a R9 5900/6900HX 45W?

that i7 12700H in my regard amount to a gimped desktop i5 (not bad per se, the 5900/6900HX are also R7 5800/6800 in disguise  )

for gaming and DAW i suspect that AMD powered laptop offering would be more relevant (and also on the thermal and autonomy side)

for example, at the same price as the Dell XPS 15 9520, but ~500gr heavier the Lenovo 5 Pro pack a R7 6800H, 32gb RAM and a RTX 3070Ti


​


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## witblitz (Oct 17, 2022)

GreiverBlade said:


> technically all laptop are like that unless very specific laptops.
> 
> 
> it would seems so, at least i never was able to undervolt any of my Intel laptops i had till today (never had a HK mobile, not worth it in my oppinion )
> ...



I had various reasons to go for another XPS (have had an XPS 13 for 5 years that served me very well). If you read my initial post I mention that I need a thin and light laptop as I travel a lot and the majority of my time on it is for work which is not that CPU intensive. I agree that Dell are absolute jokers for charging what they do, shoving these laptops full of components that you can barely utilize to their potential. Anyways, had my previous XPS not served me so well in terms of size/weight, longevity and reliability (and Dell warranty services) I would not have gone for another one

Had Dell offered a Ryzen option I Would have gone for it but sadly not the case

As for now, I can play COD on med-low settings at 100FPS on average which on my 60Hz display is good enough

Also, that Lenovo laptop is a whole half a kg heavier (this is a lot) and is your typical plastic feeling thiccc boi gaming laptop. Not for me, sir!


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## GreiverBlade (Oct 17, 2022)

witblitz said:


> I had various reasons to go for another XPS (have had an XPS 13 for 5 years that served me very well). If you read my initial post I mention that I need a thin and light laptop as I travel a lot and the majority of my time on it is for work which is not that CPU intensive. I agree that Dell are absolute jokers for charging what they do, shoving these laptops full of components that you can barely utilize to their potential. Anyways, had my previous XPS not served me so well in terms of size/weight, longevity and reliability (and Dell warranty services) I would not have gone for another one
> 
> Had Dell offered a Ryzen option I Would have gone for it but sadly not the case
> 
> ...


valids reason as any others,
well, "to my defense"  , my own laptop (an old dog from Lenovo a G50-70 ) is heavy indeed, which is why i did not think a 2.4~kg lappy is not heavy compared to a 1.96kg, and also thick, although usually thickness on a laptop is linked to better cooling.

the Legion 7 is among the few "gaming" laptops that do not look like a "gaming" device to me ...   (but i agree on the plastic feeling)

as long as you are happy with your gears and performances, it's all right
100deg C is not that much of a problem on a thin laptop (as long as it's not resting on your lap while gaming  ) as unclewebb mentioned.


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## witblitz (Oct 17, 2022)

yea its certainly not ideal and I'm a bit peeved with Dell about these consistently poor design decisions, but its been cruising so far and no BSODs are any other nonsense as yet. 2 hour gaming sessions with fans going absolutely ape sh*t are just part of the trade off here if you want a super thin laptop I guess!

Anyways thanks for your help guys

I have 2 more n00b questions while you guys are here and I'll leave you alone!

1. does it make sense to just leave throttlestop running all the time? At the moment I only launch it before gaming, as my daily work tasks barely ever get the fans spinning. but it would be much easier to have it run on startup
2. Does the power plan drop down menu in the main window (Performance) override the Windows settings? My TS profile is currently set to High performance. If I close TS - does it revert back to whatever power plan was on beforehand? I also have Dell's "My Dell" software preinstalled which is where I set power plans.

Thanks in advance


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## unclewebb (Oct 18, 2022)

ThrottleStop does not do anything as soon as it exits. It will not change whatever Windows power plan you are in when it exits.

The ThrottleStop High Performance selection tells Windows to use its built in High Performance power plan. On many laptops, this power plan is now hidden so I thought it would be a useful feature to allow users to still be able to access this if needed.

If you are going to use Dell's software to control your Windows power plan, I would not use the power plan option in ThrottleStop. Avoid conflicts. Always try to minimize the number of different programs that are all fighting against each other over control of your CPU. 

I recommend leaving ThrottleStop running all of the time. It takes a bare minimum of memory and CPU resources and is useful to show temperatures in the system tray.


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## ADTS001 (Oct 18, 2022)

unclewebb said:


> He can access the MSR registers including the FIVR voltage control register. Starting with 12th Gen mobile H series processors, Intel allows reading voltage information from the FIVR register but Intel has blocked writing voltage information to this register. Intel might claim that this was done to prevent Plundervolt attacks but it was mostly just a cash grab. Users will need to spend a lot more money for a 12900HK. The HK series is fully unlocked. Both the CPU multiplier and voltage are unlocked.


I see. Luckily I’m using 6th Gen Intel. Could still undervolt. My laptop has a new firmware which blocks undervolt but thankfully users could still downgrade. My laptop gets so hot without undervolt. It could reach 69 degrees. With undervolt under very heavy load, it was 64 degrees max.


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## (00) (Oct 19, 2022)

unclewebb said:


> On many laptops, this power plan is now hidden so I thought it would be a useful feature to allow users to still be able to access this if needed.


@unclewebb
Yes. And, thank you very much.

m(_ _)m


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## witblitz (Oct 21, 2022)

unclewebb said:


> ThrottleStop does not do anything as soon as it exits. It will not change whatever Windows power plan you are in when it exits.
> 
> The ThrottleStop High Performance selection tells Windows to use its built in High Performance power plan. On many laptops, this power plan is now hidden so I thought it would be a useful feature to allow users to still be able to access this if needed.
> 
> ...


Just a note on this for anyone who might be interested - changing Dell's power plan appears to have no impact on the Windows power plan

Below is the My Dell app thermal settings page and below that my powercfg result which shows Windows is in high Performance mode









I've disabled anything to do with power plans in Throttlestop in any case


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## witblitz (Oct 27, 2022)

Hi @unclewebb - apologies if this is not the right place to post this query - happy to repost in appropriate forum if necessary.

In a nutshell, I've got Throttlestop running on startup via a scheduled task and lives in my system tray with only CPU temp showing, however it seems to close randomly.

I'm on the latest build of Windows 11. This morning my laptop went on around 10.39am and by 11.39am it disappeared from the system tray. I had TS logs running for this reason, and they stop suddenly at this time - almost exactly an hour had passed which seems suspicious

There is nothing in any Event viewer logs either.

TS is running purely for convenience and my TPL settings probably don't kick in unless I'm playing games.

Any ideas?

*UPDATE:*

OK Im an idiot. My scheduled task was set to "stop the task if it runs longer than 1 hour"

That must be the culprit

That said, any idea why this task stays on "running" even after its successfully met the conditions?

i.e. on Logon - run Throttlestop.exe

Even running it on demand does the same - shows running permanently

How do I get this task to know that its actually completed

Sorry for my ignorance


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## unclewebb (Oct 27, 2022)

Here is an example of how a Task Scheduler task should look.









						Effective clock speed
					

Hi,  I have a problem with my CPU (8700K), which is that my effective core clock speeds decrease after a while. I have an all core OC set to 4.7GHz and initially when starting the PC, the effective core clocks are 4.7GHz as well when CPU is under load. These are later (like 10 mins later after...




					www.techpowerup.com
				






witblitz said:


> shows running permanently


If ThrottleStop is running in the background then I guess the task is never complete. Not sure. All I know is that the above method to create a task works to start ThrottleStop when Windows 10 starts. It likely works exactly the same in Windows 11. 

When a task is properly setup, ThrottleStop should never close or shut down randomly. If you move the mouse over top of the ThrottleStop system tray icons and they just disappear, that is a good sign that the task was not created correctly. Some setting in the task is telling Windows to kill ThrottleStop.exe


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