After alot of reading on other threads, I can confirmed that the 55W long term power limit is enforced by MSI on (AFAIK) the GF Thin series. I've seen some GS users figure out a way to trick their BIOS to remove such limit ... Well, i'll dig into that at a later time.
Believe it or not, I thought about this line for a very long time. At the default settings of TS, I could not get all 6 cores to run 4.3GHz without at least 80W on PL2 (BIOS says I can push 91W so no problem there). Even then, as you can guess thermal was bad and R20 score didnt improve very much. So I was happy to keep my cache at around -102.5 for awhile.
Recently, I have been playing around with the Cache Ratio min/max and Speed Shift min/max on TS and I found out several interesting tweaks:
- If you set the Cache Ratio at a lower number, you get more Mhz out of the same Watt input. At the same time, stability also decrease (the opposite is true).
- Cache Ratio will go no lower than 9, even if you put 0-8 on min.
- Cache Ratio will go no lower than the min value on Speed Shift minus 3 (If I set Speed Shift min = 26 and Cache Ratio min = 1, the Cache Ratio = 23). There are many other threads on the webs about this topic of Cache Ratio vs Multiplier so I wont go into details here, but most of them intel users also recommend Cache Ratio to be no more than 300Mhz below the CPU operating frequency.
"light bulb"
- More negative cache offset = more Mhz out of the same Watt input. At the same time, stability also decrease. (This one is nothing new, but It's related to the first tweak)
So after some deductive resasonings, I come up with a theory that: I can pull the Cache Offset slider further to the left to get more Mhz out of the same Watt, at the same time increase the Cache Ratio to get more stability. Now I can run 6 cores at the higher frequency that I want with the lower PL2 limit, therefore reduce alot of heat and delay the point of thermal throttling. Below is my initial testing and result:
Here is the screenshot before (Cache Offset = -102.5 / Cache Ratio = 12 / Speed Shift min = 12)
View attachment 208875
Here is the screenshot after (Cache Offset = -125.0 / Cache Ratio = 23 / Speed Shift min = 26)
View attachment 208876
As you can see, the R20 score hit a new record for me. I now can run 4.2 Ghz all core with less than 72W vs full 75W previously. System run very stable so far, both in or out of games, so I believe this is not the limit. We all know that we can not just pull the slide forever to the left, there is always a point of diminishing return, and I dont know if I'm there yet. I need a lot more testing as there are more variables on the table now, but this is very promising.
Enjoy,