Question Disabling Turbo Boost causes freezing ?

[LRMaster]

I have a Dell E5570 with an Intel I7-6820HQ, that I use for light gaming (go me for playing games on a laptop with pretty woeful cooling). Most of the time I play Valorant or other low end shooting games. With turbo boost turned on it reaches 80c+ and it causes the GPU to reach 90c+ to the point of shut down caused by overheating once. I then went to the BIOS yesterday and turned off turbo boost. It helped immensely; it lowered both the GPU and CPU to under 75c maximum with ~40 fps (i am only casual player so it does not matter too much). That is until today, I played Valorant and my laptop froze and I had to force shutdown. The funny thing is, I was in a 1v1 with a friend when it happened. Once I force restarted the laptop, I tried Valorant again, this time in a spike rush match and it ran fine with the same ~40 fps.

Before I played Valorant to try spike rush, I checked Event Viewer to see the logs and I saw this:
The speed of processor 0-7 in group 0 is being limited by system firmware. The processor has been in this reduced performance state for 71 seconds since the last report.
(Keep in mind this happened to all processors at the exact same time)
The CPU now runs with the base 2.7GHz under load now with turbo boost turned off.

I hope the solution to not be to enable turbo boost again, as I currently don't have the time or thermal paste and thermal pads to do a thermal paste replacement, heck I don't think thermal paste and pad changes wont do that much sadly.

 

[uWebb429]

@LRMaster

Consider using ThrottleStop.
https://www.techpowerup.com/download/techpowerup-throttlestop/

If you use ThrottleStop to enable Speed Shift Technology in the TPL window, you can adjust the Speed Shift Max value. This lets you decide how much turbo boost you would like to use. It does not have to be full turbo boost or no turbo boost. The amount of turbo boost is adjustable. Set Speed Shift Max to 30 to limit your CPU to 3000 MHz max.

Post a screenshot of the TPL and the FIVR windows. You might be able to lower the CPU voltage. This reduces heat. Some laptops that are using the most recent BIOS version might have locked out this useful feature.

Setting the core and the cache to an Offset of -50 mV is a good place to start testing. Fine tuning the voltage can drop your CPU temps by up to 10°C. Wouldn't that be nice?

 

[LRMaster]

https://ibb.co/GvvmXk9 (FIVR Screenshot)
https://ibb.co/0QpRw7T (TPL Screenshot)
Do I have to activate Turbo boost in the BIOS to do this?

 

[uWebb429]

@LRMaster

Turbo boost should be enabled in the BIOS. You want to use some turbo boost, just not all. Check the Speed Shift box in the TPL window and change the Speed Shift Max value to 30 or however fast you want your CPU to run.

Your computer has locked out CPU voltage control so you will not be able to change the voltage.

 

[LRMaster]

Sorry for the really late reply. Anyways, I think I might do this. One final question, does this eliminate the stability issue during gaming (freezes/hangs having to force restart the laptop) caused by the laptop not being able to into turbo boost frequencies?

Edit: Another question, do I have to turn off disable turbo in Throttlestop? I have a screenshot of what option I am talking about: https://ibb.co/YQ7PSgC (in the image I turned it off as I assume after activating it in the bios, I have to deactivate the option in Throttlestop to allow the Speed Shift Limiter to work)

 

[uWebb429]

Yes, the Disable Turbo box in ThrottleStop should be clear.

does this eliminate the stability issue during gaming

Only you can answer that question. Go play some games and find out if it is any better.

Check the Log File box on the main screen of ThrottleStop so you have a record of your CPU performance. It will be in your ThrottleStop / Logs folder. Copy and paste this information to www.pastebin.com and post a link here if you want me to see how your computer is running while gaming.

The 6820HQ has a 45W TDP rating. Your TPL screenshot shows that you are only running this CPU at 35W. If it is getting too hot at this reduced power limit, you need to clean out your laptop and you should probably replace the thermal paste while you are in there. Nothing lasts forever.