Red PL1 power throttling on stress test

[plampo]

I have set the Throttlestop set up as per below screenshots and on all core stress test in Cinebench R23, PL1 keeps power throttling.

When I tried to set the PL1 to 190W in TPL, red PL1 has disappeared, on 180W it was blinking yellow and red, but under 180W it stayed red.. This is not looking good because on this crazy high values, my laptop is thermal throttling.

I think this issue might have something to do with Lenovo Virtual Power Controller and Intel Innovation Platform Framework CPU module drivers. If I enable these driver, the power limit disappears BUT the max wattage the cpu can pull is around 100w only regardless of what PL1 / PL2 values set up in TPL settings. However, if I disable this driver, I can see the correct wattage pulled as per the TPL, but the power limitation then happens which decreases the cpu clockspeed.

If anyone has the same issue, please let me know what can be done ro resolve the power limitation.

 

[unclewebb]

This is not looking good

Intel and most laptop manufacturers used to limit their mobile processors to 45W. Now you need almost 200W or more to get maximum performance out of a 13900HX.

ThrottleStop lets you choose what you want. You can increase the turbo power limits and go for maximum performance but this will result in thermal throttling. If you choose to lower the turbo power limits to avoid thermal throttling, you will end up with power limit throttling. Lenovo could double the size of your laptop so there would be room for a bigger heatsink but most consumers are not interested in 20 pound laptops.

It is hard enough trying to keep an Intel 13th Gen CPU under 100°C in a desktop computer. Lenovo has done a fantastic job with cooling but they are still up against the laws of physics. There is only so much heat that can be dissipated in something the size of a laptop. You have reached that wall.

If anyone has the same issue

Everyone has the same issue.

In the TPL window I prefer to clear the Sync MMIO box and then I check the Lock MMIO box instead. I am not sure how ThrottleStop interacts with Intel and Lenovo power management drivers and software. I would only use ThrottleStop. It should allow you to balance performance vs heat output. Perhaps setting PL1 to 160W or 170W would be a good compromise. Consider lowering the turbo time limit from 56 seconds down to somewhere around 8 to 16 seconds. Running a 13900HX at 190W for 56 seconds might produce more heat than your cooling can dissipate.

Have you tried using the mV Boost @ 800 MHz feature? This feature lets you add more voltage to the CPU at the lower end of the curve. This might allow you to undervolt further which can help reduce power consumption when running Cinebench. One user with a 13900HX said he sets this to 185. No more light load instability. This lets him run a larger undervolt for better full load temps.

 

[plampo]

Intel and most laptop manufacturers used to limit their mobile processors to 45W. Now you need almost 200W or more to get maximum performance out of a 13900HX.

ThrottleStop lets you choose what you want. You can increase the turbo power limits and go for maximum performance but this will result in thermal throttling. If you choose to lower the turbo power limits to avoid thermal throttling, you will end up with power limit throttling. Lenovo could double the size of your laptop so there would be room for a bigger heatsink but most consumers are not interested in 20 pound laptops.

It is hard enough trying to keep an Intel 13th Gen CPU under 100°C in a desktop computer. Lenovo has done a fantastic job with cooling but they are still up against the laws of physics. There is only so much heat that can be dissipated in something the size of a laptop. You have reached that wall.


Everyone has the same issue.

In the TPL window I prefer to clear the Sync MMIO box and then I check the Lock MMIO box instead. I am not sure how ThrottleStop interacts with Intel and Lenovo power management drivers and software. I would only use ThrottleStop. It should allow you to balance performance vs heat output. Perhaps setting PL1 to 160W or 170W would be a good compromise. Consider lowering the turbo time limit from 56 seconds down to somewhere around 8 to 16 seconds. Running a 13900HX at 190W for 56 seconds might produce more heat than your cooling can dissipate.

Have you tried using the mV Boost @ 800 MHz feature? This feature lets you add more voltage to the CPU at the lower end of the curve. This might allow you to undervolt further which can help reduce power consumption when running Cinebench. One user with a 13900HX said he sets this to 185. No more light load instability. This lets him run a larger undervolt for better full load temps.

Thanks for your reply and I now understood this is the limit for this cpu. To be honest, in game with max GPU (rtx 4080) usage between 160 & 170 W, my cpu was only around 80 W, when GPU was lower, then CPU reached higher consumption around 110w max. Nonetheless, this cpu is still more than enough for everything even with these limitations as I saw my GPU was constantly on max clockspeed. I am now at - 172.9 mV on cpu core voltage, -50mV at p cache and my system still seems stable but the temps during gaming still goes up to 85-87°C after some time, even after I have lowered my PL1 & PL 2 to 120 W and 150 W which never reached apart from stress tests anyway. I will try the mV Boost, thanks.

 

[alert]

Somewhere, out there, someone did the perfect job to get to know all the details about undervolting in theory and undervolting 13900HX in particular. Maybe, there is more than one of such persons. In theory, their settings may be applied to 95% of 13900HX, and all these happy people would not study undervolting, and experiment for hours and hours to get to these settings' success in achieving perfectly stable, energy-efficient, and fast CPU. I wish those smart people shared their ThrottleStop .ini so I could be happy. But I am not happy. I am grumpy because from this topic I have just discovered another feature called "mV Boost @ 800 MHz", and I will be forced to spend a few more hours to experiment without even knowing what this feature is.

 

[Bogus5]

Somewhere, out there, someone did the perfect job to get to know all the details about undervolting in theory and undervolting 13900HX in particular. Maybe, there is more than one of such persons. In theory, their settings may be applied to 95% of 13900HX, and all these happy people would not study undervolting, and experiment for hours and hours to get to these settings' success in achieving perfectly stable, energy-efficient, and fast CPU. I wish those smart people shared their ThrottleStop .ini so I could be happy. But I am not happy. I am grumpy because from this topic I have just discovered another feature called "mV Boost @ 800 MHz", and I will be forced to spend a few more hours to experiment without even knowing what this feature is.

There is no perfect TS recipe for a specific CPU that would fit every laptop. Too many variables (different cooling system, size of the case, paste used).

 

[unclewebb]

I will be forced to spend a few more hours to experiment without even knowing what this feature is

If you think you have it bad think about me. I try to add useful features to ThrottleStop without having any proper documentation from Intel and without owning any recent computer hardware. I have no plans to spend my own money on a 13900HX laptop so it is up to users to figure out if new features are useful or not. No one is forced to use this new feature.

The mV Boost feature adds voltage to the low end of the voltage curve. When undervolting, many users start to lose stability when a computer is lightly loaded or mostly idle. By adding some voltage at the low end of the curve, this can help fix some of the light load blue screens that people get when they are undervolting too much. Set mV Boost to 100 to boost the voltage at 800 MHz by 100 mV. I think one user set this to 185.

Something useful to play with for the lucky people that can afford laptops with HX processors.