[SOLVED] Pc is limiting performance [Ryzen 5 2500U - Vega 8]

[Benjamin Haukaas]

I have a Hp Envy x360 13''
i tried playing some light games and experienced that the pc might throttle itself without being hot. i looked at the task manager while playing and the cpu goes from 20-50% but not much above that.
no matter what resolution i play at. if it is at 800x600 or 1920x1080 the games still stutters and jumping from 0 - upwards to 100fps, but it seems like it really tries to push it down as much as possible. how do i fix this?

 

[Deleted member 2731765]

What are the full system specs of that HP ? I presume that's a Laptop ? Have you tried downloading the OEM VGA drivers from the Manufacturer's Website, HP ? Does that system uses Windows 10 OS ?

 

[Benjamin Haukaas]

What are the full system specs of that HP ? I presume that's a Laptop ? Have you tried downloading the OEM VGA drivers from the Manufacturer's Website, HP ? Does that system uses Windows 10 OS ?

CPU: Ryzen 5 1500U
GPU: Vega 8
Ram: 8gb
SSD: 256gb
OS: Windows 10 Home
i have the newest Radeon drivers and all other drivers are up to date.

 

[geofelt]

Your games are likely cpu limited since changing resolution has no effect.

Be careful how you interpret task manager cpu utilizations.
Windows will spread the activity of a single thread over all available threads.
So, if you had a game that was single threaded and cpu bound, it would show up on a quad core processor as 25%
utilization across all 4 threads.
leading you to think your bottleneck was elsewhere.
It turns our that few games can usefully use more than 2-3 threads.

Are you plugged in while gaming?
If not, the default will be to lower performance to save battery time.

Past that, not much can be done.

You buy a laptop for portability.
If you do not need portability, a desktop is better for gaming.

 

[Benjamin Haukaas]

After some more testing i found out that the pc only throttles while im charging. if i play a game i can get like 60fps solid, but when i plug in the charger it goes down to 0-50fps with a lot of lagspikes. is there something i can do to prevent the pc from limiting performance while charging?

 

[geofelt]

When you are connected to wall power(AKA charging), the pc will operate at max performance and screen brightness. When on battery. the performance of the processor and the screen brightness is reduced to save battery power.
Look in control panel/power settings.
You can adjust the settings to at least give full display brightness when plugged in.
Laptop cpu coolers are minimal size and not very efficient.
Under full load the cpu heats up and throttles.
See that the cooler airways are clear.
You could also set the cpu to something less than 100% when plugged in.

 

[Benjamin Haukaas]

But thing is, the opposite happens. It throttles power when plugged in. While on battery it uses full power and doesn't throttle at all

 

[Rdslw]

But thing is, the opposite happens. It throttles power when plugged in. While on battery it uses full power and doesn't throttle at all

If you do that WHILE battery is not 100% it reserves some power to change the battery.
Can you check please, it should not happen with >70% battery. You can also buy stronger charger, but its not always helping, depends a lot on model.

 

[reichenwald]

I have the same notebook. The only difference is that I have more storage.
I experienced some not very strong throttling but not really bottlenecks like you seem to experience. And the throttling goes away if I plug it into power and turn on the high performance fan profile in the HP Fan Controll app and set the Windows power setting to high perfomance (You have to set your region to US and then you can find it in the Windows Store).
In that profile I can play KSP, Scrap Mechanic and Ravenfield fluid at lowered settings and sometimes at 900p. Even running on battery power it runs quite well.
Have you maybe set the Windows power setting to better battery life or best battery life? Or do you maybe have the Fan Profile set to quit or cool?
Otherwise I'd contact HP support

 

[geofelt]

But thing is, the opposite happens. It throttles power when plugged in. While on battery it uses full power and doesn't throttle at all

The reason is that under full power, the cpu works hard and heats up.
The cpu cooler is not strong enough to handle the heat.
When it reaches a sufficiently high temperature, the cpu slows down or throttles until the temperature lowers and the cycle repeats.

 

[bdh1975]

I have this same processor in an HP Envy x360 laptop. It's a terrible cpu that has caused unending grief for those who have it. Bought mine in Dec 2017, updated the drivers and Bios in November 2018 per HP Support Assistant, and the trouble started. Would Bsod just every few minutes, but green, brown, green/brown plaid, and I think even orange (if I remember right, it was odd) -screened, not just Blue SOD. Sent it in to HP three times total, wound up between repair times @ 3-4 weeks each time (despite having the best HP Care Pack available) and unusability when it was here, I essentially didn't have a laptop for about 9 months until finally in an obscure forum I found a link to a bios update to F.20 with a very specific driver version from Amd that would be compatible. Fingers were pointed by HP at Amd saying the drivers were at fault, Amd said its not us it's HP and their Bios, and not enough of the 2500u sold for either side to really care or try to fix it.

As it turned out, it was both of them. HP released a faulty Bios (F. 19) which also locked you out of downgrading the bios (!) for some reason, so we essentially were told by HP and Amd that if we updated to the Bios that HP's own software and website said to use (and still today does, btw), that you now were the proud owner of an expensive paperweight @ ~$1000.

Amd on their side failed to properly build support for the 2500u and especially the 2500u mobile version into their driver packages, and as far as I know the situation has only been partially rectified. My advice is to start doing a search with your bios and driver versions, with 2500u as the search parameters and go from there. Get started maybe by going into HP's online forum and input just 2500u. You'll find plenty of info to get started. But remember, you cannot necessarily even trust what the OEM says is the correct version. If it wasn't for doing this myself and following advice I found, I'd have already started a class action lawsuit.

Good luck and I hope you figure it out.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

 

[Benjamin Haukaas]

when its plugged in it throttles until the pc charges to 100% and when unplugges. i dont think heat is the issue as the pc can become incredibly hot while gaming on battery and i never get that effect. so it throttles the pc down even when its cold when charging. so only thing that variable that slows the pc down is that its plugged in and havent reached 100%. also seen this when im in-game and unplug the charger, the fps quickly go back to normal.

so question is, is there any way to turn off the function that limits pc performance while charging?

 

[geofelt]

in windows power settings,
set max performance to 80% or whatever the setting is on the battery profile.

 

[reichenwald]

I'd really recommend contacting HP support. Such extreme throttling isn't normal