[SOLVED] Ryzen 5 3500U underperforming and weird behaivor

dentfuse

Reputable
Jun 10, 2018
19
2
4,525
Hi all,

I have a laptop with Ryzen 5 3500U with Vega 8 IGPU with 1GB VRAM. 8GB Ram, dual-channel and a 512GB SSD. I know this processor isn't all that bad ingame and has decent fps, but mine has been underperforming since the start. At first, it was due to the temps being limited to 70°C which was quickly reached and the CPU started throttling.

After looking around a bit I discovered Ryzen Controller and used it to raise my temps to 85°C which allowed for the CPU to put out some performance. I used it for a while and everything ran fine (CPU still reached 85°C but that was because the cooling wasn't too good on the laptop).

A couple of weeks ago my friend suggested that I DDU and reinstall all my drivers, both Chipset and GPU. We were testing out streaming at low quality but the CPU was still struggling, and he said that the CPU should be able to handle this much load. So we did that but the performance didn't really improve at all.

An interesting thing I noticed was while playing Genshin Impact when I limited my FPS to 30 my GPU usage went to almost 0% and the clock went to 200Mhz, which is also a common occurrence, my GPU clocks used to stay at 200Mhz and usage between 0%, 50%, and rarely 100% at all times regardless of load. I don't know if that is an MSI glitch or something. Cpu clocks were normal and went to up boost levels.

But when I increased my FPS cap to 60 my GPU went up, and clocks went up to 600Mhz or 700Mhz max but never up to the 1200Mhz clock of Vega 8. Buuuut at the same time, My Cpu clocks went down and were limited to 1700Mhz max, never going up.
Also some times my laptop just doesn't feel like working and will not give an fps of above 20, for absolutely no reason at all.

I am very confused as to why this is happening. My Ryzen Controller settings are Max temps 85°C, 15W CPU TDP, others are unchanged. I could set my GPU minimum clock to something higher but I've noticed that just increases the temps with no benefit to performance. All my drivers are the latest version from AMD.

Is there any explanation for all of this and possibly some method to improve performance?
 
Solution
15watt limit is what should be causing it, that cpu has 12-35watt configurable TDP...which is for both CPU and GPU, if GPU pushes harder, cpu will downclock to stay withing those 15watts

GPU for full performance will need 25watt TDP (only GPU)

but once you increase TDP limit, it will overheat even more

as for drivers..use drivers from laptop manufacturer, not from AMD
15watt limit is what should be causing it, that cpu has 12-35watt configurable TDP...which is for both CPU and GPU, if GPU pushes harder, cpu will downclock to stay withing those 15watts

GPU for full performance will need 25watt TDP (only GPU)

but once you increase TDP limit, it will overheat even more

as for drivers..use drivers from laptop manufacturer, not from AMD
 
Solution

dentfuse

Reputable
Jun 10, 2018
19
2
4,525
15watt limit is what should be causing it, that cpu has 12-35watt configurable TDP...which is for both CPU and GPU, if GPU pushes harder, cpu will downclock to stay withing those 15watts

GPU for full performance will need 25watt TDP (only GPU)

but once you increase TDP limit, it will overheat even more

as for drivers..use drivers from laptop manufacturer, not from AMD
I thought that'd be the case, but when the TDP is increased the CPU heats too much and starts throttling hard (0.4Ghz) in order to stay within limits. I've seen TDP of 20-25W go as high as 95°C which I'm pretty sure isn't the best for a laptop, or the CPU too in the long run. I tried getting an external cooler which reduced temps to around 90°C at 20W but that too causes the same issues with the CPU and GPU.