My Second try with ThrottleStop (Need advice) !

[vampgirl]

I have a legion 7i 2022 with 12800HX and RTX 3070 Ti which is running too hot for my taste. The laptop CPU would idle at around 38~40 if I disable the Nvidia GPU and use only the iGPU
But as soon as I enable the dGPU without any usage the laptop CPU will idle at around 62 ~65 and the GPU at 55 (66 hotspot). When playing games CPU goes to high 80's and reaching low
90's. I know that these temperatures are not extreme and considered as normal within specs, but I didn't feel comfortable playing hours on my laptop with these temps. I successfully tried
ThrottleStop and got it working, but did not find the time to spend time and optimize it on my system.

On my second try (two days ago) I was able to do some testing and finally get the results I was hoping. My CPU temperature is now much lower and it almost never goes higher then 75.
In a game like Elden Ring where temps were around 78~80 it will now run at 60~65 only and with The Witcher 3 temps have fallen to around 75 instead of 88~90. And I personally don't see
any difference in game performance. (Only in elden ring I am getting 59 to 60 fps instead of a stable 60fps!)

here are my setting: I would really appreciate if you could tell me what you think and if anything else need to be done.

I have few questions:

1- My laptop has 3 original Lenovo power plans: "Legion Performance", "Legion Balance" and "Legion quiet mode". I don't want ThrottleStop to modify any of these plans, but instead
I use ThrottleStop with Windows original "Balanced" plan. Apparently once I run ThrottleStop, even after closing it the settings remain active. I run ThrottleStop with a script so as soon
as I close it, it will switch to my original power plan (Legion Balance). I need to understand about the remaining effects of ThrottleStop after closing it! Is there any way I can set it to reset
settings on exit and have my PC act with original settings? Is ThrottleStop modifying my 3 other power plans also?

2- Do I need to undervolt my "CPU E Cache" also (with the same amount?)

3- I thought I should lock the MMIO, but when I did that I had my fps go from a stable 60fps to 55~60 and experience regular stutters! Is this normal behavior or should modify another
setting for MMIO lock to work without this issue?

In any case I really want to thank @unclewebb for this great gift. I gave up playing with the laptop I bought for gaming as I was not feeling comfortable and now I am playing again after
some time

 

[unclewebb]

I really want to thank @unclewebb for this great gift.

You are welcome.

Now the bad news. I have never owned or even used a 12th or 13th Gen CPU. It is a miracle or an act of God that ThrottleStop works as well as it does on your CPU. Without having done any hands on testing, I cannot really recommend what settings you should be using.

I need to understand about the remaining effects of ThrottleStop after closing it!

Another one of those I simply do not know answers. Besides not having any new hardware, I have never used Windows 11 or done any ThrottleStop Windows 11 compatibility testing. How ThrottleStop interacts with your Lenovo power plans is a mystery to me. In theory, ThrottleStop makes changes to the CPU and it should not be changing any of your power plans.

I need to understand about the remaining effects of ThrottleStop after closing it!

I never close ThrottleStop so I do not know the answer to that question either. In general, if you make any changes in ThrottleStop, those changes will persist after you exit ThrottleStop. If you change the voltage, the voltage will still be changed after you exit ThrottleStop. When ThrottleStop is no longer running, Windows or one of the power plans you are using will resume control of your CPU. It might not take over full control immediately. I do not know the inner workings of Windows 11. It might take something like a sleep resume cycle before Windows is able to take over full control. Maybe you will have to completely reboot.

Do I need to undervolt my "CPU E Cache" also (with the same amount?)

One user told me that it is not necessary to undervolt the E cache. If the difference in power consumption is minimal or hard to measure a difference, I would not bother. The core and P cache are the two most important things to undervolt.

I thought I should lock the MMIO

I always recommend checking the MMIO Lock box but guess what? That works great on my 10th Gen CPU but it is completely untested on newer CPUs. It may not work correctly on your CPU. Perhaps checking this caused power consumption of your CPU to skyrocket and that is ultimately what caused stuttering and other issues.

If your Turbo Groups or Turbo Ratio settings give you the performance vs temperature compromise that you are looking for then your settings are good. Lots of users like to slow down their poorly cooled laptops. Many games perform quite well with a slower, cooler running CPU. The GPU speed tends to be much more important.

Your undervolt values look about right.

Try doing some Google searching to see if you can find any info from other 12800HX owners. Someone that owns one of these will hopefully know more than I know.

 

[vampgirl]

Thanks a lot for your detailed reply and your support. To be honest it's very sad and disappointing to hear that you don't have access to new gen PC's. With all the contribution you done to the community you should have access to those hardware easily, at least for testing! There should be a sticky on top of this forum with link and possibility for donations and a call to people for at least lending you needed hardware for some testing! ( I should probably not recommend ordering a new gen laptop on amazon for a few days test) but anyway you can get any laptop online and return it within few days!

Back to my case, here is what exactly I want to achieve with ThrottleStop:
I don't find it necessary in my case to always run ThrottleStop and have it load at boot as my laptop dose not overheat and works fine in normal usage scenarios. I only "Manually" run ThrottleStop when I want to run a game to have the laptop's temps under control. Almost every game I tried run fine (with almost no difference) with my settings in ThrottleStop and temps are really great now.
What allowed me to achieve these lower temps was lowering the "Performance core" ratios and not the undervolting (is this normal?). I will continue looking for other users with 12800HX to see what they have done. Maybe it is still possible to optimize my settings and get better performance. (If there are any here reading this, please share your experience and settings )

 

[vampgirl]

@unclewebb,
Sorry but another question comes to my mind! Isn't it possible to test ThrottleStop on 12th and 13th gen CPUs remotely?
You could connect to our PC with Teamviewer or Anydesk and do all the testing you need remotely.

 

[unclewebb]

donations

ThrottleStop used to have a Donate button but it was rarely used so I removed it. It was just taking up space. There are over a million downloads per year but only a handful of people per year ever bothered to donate.

test ThrottleStop on 12th and 13th gen CPUs remotely

Thank you very much for that offer. ThrottleStop 9.5.1 seems to be working reasonably well on the newer CPUs. I am going to leave it as is.

Intel has started releasing microcode updates which have a new feature called Undervolt Protection. This can disable undervolting even if you paid extra money for an unlocked HX series CPU. Intel already removed undervolting from their regular 12th and 13th Gen mobile H series CPUs.

lowering the "Performance core" ratios

Slowing a CPU down to create less heat is a popular trick. For a lot of games or tasks, you will barely notice a drop in performance. You will notice a big drop in temperatures. Your combination of undervolting and reducing the CPU speed looks good to me.