[SOLVED] Laptop GPU voltage

[rookiethecat]

GTX 1050
Intel i5-7300HQ
32 GB memory

I have been trying to troubleshoot my issues with performance in games like rust, and I have pinpointed exactly the problem, at least I hope so. I've been using throttlestop and working with the devs of the program to figure out what was wrong, but it turns out it wasn't my CPU, it was my GPU power throttling. I will leave a log as an example of me using rust to show what I am talking about. My GPU voltage in IGPU-Z program was showing that when my GPU would hit 1.0250V, it would kill itself and clock downward and also lower my GPU usage to a staggering 20% and lower the voltage as well. Note that when the GPU is at 1.0250V the game runs super smoothly, like around 120FPS on all low settings, but then would drop down to the 40 range when my GPU power throttles.

I can include a video to show exactly what happens, as well as the log to iGPU-Z to show the statistics. I am just posting this to see if anyone has any idea on how to deal with this problem or any workarounds to have a stable performance. The log can be found here. The video showcasing the volatile FPS is this. I know that most dell laptop gpus are voltage locked, but I was just hoping there is something to fix this issue. Thank you to anyone that takes the time out of their day for me!

 

[kerberos_20]

gpu frequency is variable, more gpu demanding scene is, higher gpu frequency will be used, voltage scales with frequency aswell
around 100% gpu usage means that your GPU is doing its best (max clock/ max voltage), temperatures looks fine, so no throttling there
low GPU usage means is that your GPU has nothing to do, its waiting for CPU to feed some data to it

if you would see 100% GPU usage with low GPU clocks, then it would be GPU throtting issue
theres that perfcap reason
perf cap reason 4 - max voltage reached (it wont put more voltage - ie high performance mode)
perfcap reason 16 - GPU is downclocking (or lowering voltage) as there is no need to run at max speed (to save power), because FPS is so high, that CPU cannot keep up

tho you can set in nvidia control panel for rust game to have high performance profile, that way GPU will not use lower power modes, then you can be 1000% sure that your GPU is running fine

just a side note, your CPU is below minimum CPU requirements
minimum CPU requirements are for relatively stable 30fps gameplay (nothing enjoyable)

 

[rookiethecat]

just a side note, your CPU is below minimum CPU requirements
minimum CPU requirements are for relatively stable 30fps gameplay (nothing enjoyable)

View: https://youtu.be/Tb_dsWXa7ow


Did you see the video i have included, I am sitting in a flat world, so there is nothing special going on or nothing to render. The GPU usage will fluctuate, but the CPU will never hit 100% usage. You can see my highest frame rate is around 115. So why does my gpu have super high usage and then randomly go back down to like 30% usage. There is nothing to render as its in a flat map with nothing in it that would trigger a super high gpu usage. I know my CPU is super ass, but surprisingly when playing I normally get like 70 FPS, but then it'll go down as a result of my GPU lowering its usage and downclocking when its a regular map of rust with all of the bases and map generation and stuff are present. But do you think that because of the high GPU usage my cpu can't keep up, is there a way I can lower the clock so that it has a stable FPS?

 

[kerberos_20]

nope GPU has nothing to do with that, low GPU usage still means its waiting for CPU
what is your CPU cores frequency when it drops fps?

 

[rookiethecat]

nope GPU has nothing to do with that, low GPU usage still means its waiting for CPU
what is your CPU cores frequency when it drops fps?

My cpu clocks stay the same around like 2.9GHZ to 3.1GHZ. this is the part that confuses me, since like every other person I talked to says its from the bad dell design, which is true.

 

[rookiethecat]

So I kinda found a fix for some games. I enable v-sync so that there aren't more than 60 frames rendering so that my CPU has headroom, assuming thats the problem. I also increase texture quality to bring my GPU usage up so that my frames go up. Who would of thought that increasing texture quality increase performance for me.