ROG Zephyrus G GA502 - Asus frame drops in games

[NESHAY]

7 hours ago, st_jimmy97 said:

i didn't use the one from asus website, for amd radeon i downloaded from amd.com. and nvidia from geforce experience.

ohh yeahh, and i remove the fan blockage, and it worked like a charm.

I tried that and it did not work for me

[Avenger2519]

@st_jimmy97 can you please elaborate on what exactly you did to resolve this error. It helps greatly if you share the versions of your AMD drivers and nvida drivers aswell. Also what do you mean by fan blockage? Did you open the back panel and clean them or something? Please help me replicate your steps. P.S: a frustrated buyer.  Thank you

@NESHAY any luck?

[NESHAY]

6 hours ago, Avenger2519 said:

@st_jimmy97 can you please elaborate on what exactly you did to resolve this error. It helps greatly if you share the versions of your AMD drivers and nvida drivers aswell. Also what do you mean by fan blockage? Did you open the back panel and clean them or something? Please help me replicate your steps. P.S: a frustrated buyer.  Thank you

@NESHAY any luck?

No luck for me. I contacted RMA service of the people I got the laptop from and elaborated the issue. They asked me to send the laptop to their service center and that per ASUS it is most likely bad thermal paste. I do not have anything in writing yet.  

[mussifer]

Any updates on this issue? Updating to the latest drivers didn't fix the issue in my case. Gonna change thermal paste next week to try Kryonaut.

[Bobbydigital]

Just got this laptop today and facing the same issue, CPU keeps throttling down to 400mhz no matter what settings/drivers I use. From what From what I have read this also happens on Linux so it has to be a hardware issue or something to do with the BIOS.  Can run Fortnite locked at 60FPS fine but when turning up to 120FPS the CPU constantly throttles ever 10 seconds or so. I watched so many reviews on this laptop, one of them being Linus Tech Tips and not one mention of this issue from any of them. Besides this issue the laptop is fine by my standards, really don't want to take it back but this is not an issue that I'm willing to deal with. When you do a little digging you can find all kinds of users with this issue and it seems ASUS doesn't give two shits. 

[Bobbydigital]

Alright guys I think I have a solution that will hopefully work for you guys! Using ryzen controller try the following settings from the pictures.  With these settings I am able to boost to 3950Mhz at times and no drops to 400Mhz and the temps seem to be much lower also.  I am running BIOS version 207 and the latest Nvidia drivers from Geforce Experience. You will also need to select  a profile  in the ASUS Armoury Crate to keep your laptop cool enough depending on how much the game/app pushes your system. If you are still having drops to 400Mhz  lower PPT Fast Limit by one and try again. You can also check the auto start and auto apply in the settings tabs to have this automated if these settings work for you. Please let me know if this works for any of you and perhaps we can get ASUS to push a BIOS update with this tweaked values instead.

 

 

 

[mussifer]

3 hours ago, Bobbydigital said:

Alright guys I think I have a solution that will hopefully work for you guys! Using ryzen controller try the following settings from the pictures.  With these settings I am able to boost to 3950Mhz at times and no drops to 400Mhz and the temps seem to be much lower also.  I am running BIOS version 207 and the latest Nvidia drivers from Geforce Experience. You will also need to select  a profile  in the ASUS Armoury Crate to keep your laptop cool enough depending on how much the game/app pushes your system. If you are still having drops to 400Mhz  lower PPT Fast Limit by one and try again. You can also check the auto start and auto apply in the settings tabs to have this automated if these settings work for you. Please let me know if this works for any of you and perhaps we can get ASUS to push a BIOS update with this tweaked values instead.

 

 

 

Tried your settings today, i can confirm the temps and throttle are reduced significantly, but still happens when on heavy tasks. Tests where made on PUBG LITE with FPS uncapped. And on BIOS 208. 

 

Did you find any other tweak to apply on Ryzen Master?

[Bobbydigital]

1 minute ago, mussifer said:

Tried your settings today, i can confirm the temps and throttle are reduced significantly, but still happens when on heavy tasks. Tests where made on PUBG LITE with FPS uncapped. And on BIOS 208. 

 

Did you find any other tweak to apply on Ryzen Master?

Was your fan profile on turbo? I am still messing around with Ryzen Controller as I just got this laptop yesterday. After playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider for a bit which really pushes the machine I noticed a few drops to 400Mhz again, by lowering the PPT Fast Limit to 15 I was able to get rid of these drops. Going to likely need some more tweaking. 

[mussifer]

1 hour ago, Bobbydigital said:

Was your fan profile on turbo? I am still messing around with Ryzen Controller as I just got this laptop yesterday. After playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider for a bit which really pushes the machine I noticed a few drops to 400Mhz again, by lowering the PPT Fast Limit to 15 I was able to get rid of these drops. Going to likely need some more tweaking. 

Nice. Fans on Windows profile, where on full speed though.  Gonna try changing PPT Fast Limit to 15.

[Bobbydigital]

23 hours ago, mussifer said:

Nice. Fans on Windows profile, where on full speed though.  Gonna try changing PPT Fast Limit to 15.

After many more hours of frustration I have managed to find settings that enable me to keep base clock of 2.3Ghz or above with no  drops so far to 400Mhz while running Shadow of the Tomb Raider which was giving me the most issues as it really pushed the system to it max. Make sure to use the Turbo Profile and that maximum processor state is set to 100% or else it will put you down to 1700Mhz. @mussifer If you could test this in PUBG and let me know how it works for you that would be much appreciated.

[Avenger2519]

Does every laptop owner of asus ga502 is facing the same issue or is it a selected few defective devices? I have searched on youtube and none of the reviewers, not even one mentioned this issue. If its a bios thing all the laptops out there should be affected but i couldn't find many posts regarding this issue. 

[Bobbydigital]

13 hours ago, Avenger2519 said:

Does every laptop owner of asus ga502 is facing the same issue or is it a selected few defective devices? I have searched on youtube and none of the reviewers, not even one mentioned this issue. If its a bios thing all the laptops out there should be affected but i couldn't find many posts regarding this issue. 

I looked at every review I could before buying and not one mention of it anywhere. It seems its not just Asus but other vendors also using the same CPU. It seems to be a problem in Linux too so cant be from a Windows update. This fix I posted makes my unit run as intended, getting really good performance that matches the review benchmarks, so happy I don't have to return the laptop.

[Bobbydigital]

Update, in my messing around to get this working I had downgraded the BIOS to version 205. I've since upgraded back to 207 and now even with the Ryzen Controller running it still has the drops. Needless to say if you want this to work you will need to downgrade your BIOS to 205. With that said its likely ASUS or AMD changed something in the BIOS and probably why none of the reviewers had any problems because they were running a much older BIOS. 

[Squilliam]

On 10/17/2019 at 6:04 PM, NESHAY said:

Hi all,

 

I just bought ROG Zephyrus G GA502. Laptop came without OS installed. After signalling Windows 10 and all drivers I am experiencing frame drops in games.

 

I tried lowering the settings below what NVIDIA GeForece experience suggested but I still get the same issue. the game looks fine and runs fine for firs couple of minutes and the frame rate is decent but then it suddenly starts dropping from 60+ to less then 10 FPS. Games a I tested were COD BO4 and Warthunder. It the same issue with both games but BO4 is harder to play. I moved over from an older i5 and 750ti to this laptop hoping to have better gaming experience.

 

Please let me know if you have any suggestions for what I should try or if you need any other info regarding this.

 

Than you in advanced. 

This is a common defect in the BIOS design. It impacts all Ryzen mobile chips. ASUS has not made a proper patch for it yet. I'm on RMA #2 for my GA502. 

[Bobbydigital]

Think I may have 100% solution now that I have had time to mess around with my unit for a week. Its actually really simple too but will likely void your warranty so be warned now. ASUS has put this black plastic film over the intakes for the coolers, likely for dust prevention but it seems to block air flow. Just take the bottom cover off and where the vents on the bottom cover you will see metal brackets with this black plastic covering the vents to the outside of the unit. Just take a sharp object and carefully trim it off around the fan shapes inside the metal bracket. Assemble the unit back together, install Ryzen Controller, change the max temp in it to 67C, hit apply and make sure ASUS armory crate is set to Turbo. You can also play around with the max temp, increasing it will give you higher clock rates but increases the heat and chances of throttling so tweak away until you get the results your looking for.

 

I am now able to run Shadow of Tomb Raider at highest settings and absolutely no drops at all. CPU temp stay within limits and the GPU now hits a max of 71C. CPU freq is still boosting to max too at times, but because the game is heavily threaded it usually sits anywhere between 3400-3800 while playing. Playing the Nintendo Switch Yuzu emulator which is mostly single threaded the boost clock stays at 4000Mhz. With the fans being able to get decent air flow the machines thermals sit in that sweet spot where it seems not to throttle, no drops yet after many hours of Tomb Raider, Fortnite and other taxing games.

 

I had pretty decent results using just Ryzen Controller and setting max temp to 67C but still had a few drops here and there so you maybe able to get away without having to remove the plastic from the vents. I can't guarantee anything on your guys units as they could be a almost a year old now or perhaps even new but have a worse paste job then mine from the factory. Good luck and hope it work for you guys, pretty happy with the laptop now that it runs like a beast! 

[mussifer]

11 hours ago, Bobbydigital said:

Think I may have 100% solution now that I have had time to mess around with my unit for a week. Its actually really simple too but will likely void your warranty so be warned now. ASUS has put this black plastic film over the intakes for the coolers, likely for dust prevention but it seems to block air flow. Just take the bottom cover off and where the vents on the bottom cover you will see metal brackets with this black plastic covering the vents to the outside of the unit. Just take a sharp object and carefully trim it off around the fan shapes inside the metal bracket. Assemble the unit back together, install Ryzen Controller, change the max temp in it to 67C, hit apply and make sure ASUS armory crate is set to Turbo. You can also play around with the max temp, increasing it will give you higher clock rates but increases the heat and chances of throttling so tweak away until you get the results your looking for.

 

I am now able to run Shadow of Tomb Raider at highest settings and absolutely no drops at all. CPU temp stay within limits and the GPU now hits a max of 71C. CPU freq is still boosting to max too at times, but because the game is heavily threaded it usually sits anywhere between 3400-3800 while playing. Playing the Nintendo Switch Yuzu emulator which is mostly single threaded the boost clock stays at 4000Mhz. With the fans being able to get decent air flow the machines thermals sit in that sweet spot where it seems not to throttle, no drops yet after many hours of Tomb Raider, Fortnite and other taxing games.

 

I had pretty decent results using just Ryzen Controller and setting max temp to 67C but still had a few drops here and there so you maybe able to get away without having to remove the plastic from the vents. I can't guarantee anything on your guys units as they could be a almost a year old now or perhaps even new but have a worse paste job then mine from the factory. Good luck and hope it work for you guys, pretty happy with the laptop now that it runs like a beast! 

Great work. Gonna try your new Ryzen Controller settings then. When you enable the max temp, is it the only applied setting? or did you keep the PPT Fast and Slow Limits?

[Bobbydigital]

6 hours ago, mussifer said:

Great work. Gonna try your new Ryzen Controller settings then. When you enable the max temp, is it the only applied setting? or did you keep the PPT Fast and Slow Limits?

Just using the max temp. It seems the culprit is the settings in the BIOS are too aggressive for temps and when to downclock the CPU slightly. Without Ryzen Controller the CPU boosts to 4.0Ghz when playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider and seems to sit around 3900-4000 and just keeps going and raising the temps till it throttles to 400mhz instead of just slightly down clocking the CPU to a lower speed. 

 

I've also got the Occulus RIft working fine now on the laptop using a USB-C to DisplayPort adapter. It was a complete mess before with the drops, kinda sucks that it only works with the Geforce drivers provided by ASUS.

[Bobbydigital]

Was doing some more digging into exactly what is going on with the laptop down clocking and I'm going on a limb here but think it maybe Windows 10 that is causing this issue. I am going to dig out one of my old Windows 10 ISO's and see if it works. In a review on the bestbuy website a reviewer said that his unit worked fine until Windows upgraded. He then restored to factory and it worked fine till Windows upgraded again. See following link for details 

 

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Microsoft-finally-fixes-the-NVIDIA-dGPU-and-BD-PROCHOT-related-CPU-throttling-issues-that-have-been-affecting-some-Surface-Book-2-devices-for-months.438985.0.html

 

When gaming I noticed that once the GPU reaches a certain temp it throttles the CPU. This is what BD PROCHOT does, it is a feature  that allows certain components such as GPU,VRM, etc to down clock CPU if they get too hot. This would explain why many devices among lots of vendors are experiencing this issue. 

 

I will update thread with results of the older version of Windows 10 when I'm finished testing.

[steeds]

@Bobbydigital any luck? I am having this exact issue. Repasted with Kryonaut and still no changes. Before I tear off the vent covers, im interested in seeing if a windows downgrade would work instead.

 

[Bobbydigital]

@steeds Tried with version 14xxx something and 1803, both still throttle when running heavy tasks. Looks like Ryzen Controller is the way to go at the moment.

[NESHAY]

I can see that there is a new version of armory credits released today. Did anyone try it? Did anyone try any hardware mods like removing the dust filter and changing the CPU and GPU paste?

 

My device is still with ASUS repair center. It was sent out to Hungary, they were not able to fix the issue so they had to send it to Poland, from what I was told they have some kind of factory/lab/ research center there. Most likely I will move away from this model since they were not able to provide a fix within 15 business days.

[nmllr]

Has Asus, or AMD.. or Windows or anyone said anything regarding this issue? I've tried to looking for a response from someone at least giving some insight into the issue and what sort of steps are being taken but can't seem to find anything. Anyone seen anything?

[Rkes608]

Hi,

Thanks for the Temp fixes you guys have shared I got this laptop in the UK and I'm having the exact same issue. Received it last Tuesday, and i have applied the lowering the Max temp fix in Ryzen Controller.

Ryzen controller fix helped it quite a bit and now things are playable ish.

 

But as we all know this is not something we should be fixing.

 

I have raised support tickets with both Asus and AMD about this issue, and quoted this forum so that they may see it to try and get this fixed.

[Bobbydigital]

I opened a support ticket with ASUS and got nothing but generic basic help trying to get me to try stupid fixes that we already know doesn't work. 

[Rkes608]

@Bobbydigital  you have to go through the basic help and try the stupid stuff to actually get help.

That's how business customer support tends to work. You have a first line that goes through a script and tells you to do basic stuff then after it gets escalated. 

 

My AMD ticket is asking me for stuff like what's the chipset driver? What's the temp at idle? What's the temp and voltage at max workload?

 

And before that they asked basics like is it all up to date etc. 

 

You'll get there eventually you just need to be persistent