ROG Zephyrus G GA502 - Asus frame drops in games

[Siker]

So Ive been using the laptop a lot this days to play Fortnite and Destiny 2. Seems I habe no more 0.39GHz throttling but still have fps drops from 120 to 40-60, and when im going Ultra graphics even to 20 fps. Thing is I never surpass the 190 fos in fortnite with everything in low, even the 3D resolution set to 40% lmao

 

Anyone who fixed the throttling issue with repasting it or removing the fans can actually get 240fps in games like fortnite or cs go?

 

Its like when i go with low setting on Destiny 2 it runs at max perfomance 100fps and drops to 90 fps and when Ii switch to Ultra graphs it still going with 90 fps and makes no sense for me.... any idea or suggestion?

[dd12rock]

13 hours ago, Siker said:

So Ive been using the laptop a lot this days to play Fortnite and Destiny 2. Seems I habe no more 0.39GHz throttling but still have fps drops from 120 to 40-60, and when im going Ultra graphics even to 20 fps. Thing is I never surpass the 190 fos in fortnite with everything in low, even the 3D resolution set to 40% lmao

 

Anyone who fixed the throttling issue with repasting it or removing the fans can actually get 240fps in games like fortnite or cs go?

 

Its like when i go with low setting on Destiny 2 it runs at max perfomance 100fps and drops to 90 fps and when Ii switch to Ultra graphs it still going with 90 fps and makes no sense for me.... any idea or suggestion?

I’ve played both games after repasting and removing the covers. I’m pretty sure that after the latest season started my performance on both my desktop and laptop suffered and frame drops became worse. I think it’s just something with the game. For destiny I noticed that it was more taxing on the CPU than the GPU so even thought your increasing the graphics the GPU is still able to handle it but it’s still being bottlenecked by the CPU.

[Churrucaman]

Hey there, just registerd to add my two cents about this topic. Like many others bought this during black friday for a discount and been facing some termal throttling issues.

 

As has been previously stated, it seems that there's a BIOS policy or sort of misconfiguration that detonates the CPU to get throttled to 400Mhz for short bursts during sustained high demand on both GPU and CPU,which is made worse by the lack of proper ventilation. I undertand that the closed vents may have be done due to the lack of a raise mechanism on this laptop and to prevent dust getting inside but it doesn't improve the situation. I cannot confirm if this happened after a Windows update, but this could also be caused by drivers pushing the hardware more than before or many other reasons.

 

In any case, I think I've been able to find a sweet spot with some mixed disciplines that in place at the same time prevent the throttling to detonate, keep a decent performance and should allow you to keep your warranty if you decide to keep this hot potato:

 

1. Get a cooling pad, I spent 17€ on mine in Amazon.
2. Set the turbo profile for low demand scenarios in Armoury Crate, or set it to manual and put all the fans all time to min 100%- max100% manually (part of the problem seems to be caused by an underventilation policy so this helps a lot) for high demand games. It's not gonna be quiet but I'm an engineer not a miracle worker.
3. Open rizen controller and set the temp limit between 62 and 65º depending on your particular setup (even 60º for very dry climates). This should prevent the heavy throttling but you need to keep the laptop cool or the performance will be severely degraded. Experiment with this as will be the key in limit scenarios.

With this configuration and everything in place at the same time (one step missing and you'll be throttled) I've been able to keep a sustained fps unlocked stressing on both peripherals without any throttling for more than 2h of continued execution. Ryzen-controller sometimes gets the configuration lost and must always be enabled the last step. If you make any changes on Armoury Crate you should reapply ryzen-controller settings.

 

This is not magic and your experience may vary but before repasting or fixing the vents and risking to loose your warranty I thought some may appreciate having a more soft approach. Will keep my fingers crossed for the manufacturer to provide a more elegant fix soon, and good luck with your experiments.

[zZurf]

I also have been having this issue, it seems as though not every one is affected, why is that the case only some people are affected?

[NESHAY]

Hi all, 

 

Just a quick update on my case. I received my device back from Service center yesterday and it still has the sane issue. They apparently tested it before shipping it back to me but not good enough. I am asking for a full refund or equivalent specs and Intel processor.

 

My advice is to ask for a refund as soon as possible if you have this device, or not to buy it at all.

 

Will let you know how it goes with the refund.

[DrZet]

Hey guys, I bought this laptop recently and I've also been facing this issue. I admit I am not very knowledgeable when it comes to this kind of stuff, so I just did some research and I believe I have found a solution that works, at least for my case. I have not tried any other solution proposed in this topic, so you can maybe see this as an alternative solution. I just followed animakozak's post on this thread:

 

https://community.amd.com/thread/244625

 

He basically did the following:

• Nvidia drivers,
• installed all the missing Asus software, including Armory Crate, 
• updated BIOS to 208,
• chipset drivers (at this point it got a bit better),
• enabled V-sync, 
• set in power management 99% CPU min/max usage
• and forced Nvidia card to be used with application.

He's not sure which one did the trick (neither am I, the only thing I did not do was updating my BIOS), but it seems to have worked for me so far. The frame drops I had while playing The Outer Worlds were extremely annoying, but this seems to have fixed it. I suggest looking at animakozak's post over on the above link.

 

Edit: Ok, turns out this fix is not perfect at all, I still get frame drops from time to time. But it's a lot better than before.

Edited December 19, 2019 by DrZet

[Zeirozh]

It's something between Windows Update and Drivers because back in September, I didn't have this problem until some updates in October. ASUS Armoury Crate did an update too and sometimes keyboard backlit does not turn on till you put in sleep or restart. I guess we wait till next update.

[Siker]

I did nothing special but play on the laptop and I get no CPU drops to 0,39Ghz anymore but still to 1,38Ghz wich is annoying but not as the first number at least. Nevertheless the perfomance so far is soo, soo poor right now. I still cant get good fps as I watched in some benchmark.

[Siker]

On 12/17/2019 at 4:45 PM, zZurf said:

I also have been having this issue, it seems as though not every one is affected, why is that the case only some people are affected?

Not sure at all, there's some people who got their store to send em three laptops, and every single one had the same exact problem, but then theres people who never experienced this. No idea at all.

[Rkes608]

Hi all no update from Asus but I have been using this laptop solidly and no issues after fan plastic cover was removed. 

I emailed chasing them. @rrff

 

@zxcvbnm123 tbh it shouldn't void the warrenty I don't think. Like removing or chipping of a piece of the case by accident. It's up to you once plastic is removed this laptop is a beast. 

 

If you brought from a tech place like currys PC World in UK or best buy in US for example try taking it to their tech department and show them the plastic. Maybe they'll remove for you 

 

 

[Rkes608]

Also has everyone with the issue checked for the plastic covers? Cus I'm no longer having issues but I still see people haveing issues above 

[Bobbydigital]

See my updated post below before trying this.

 

I've managed to find the sweet spot in Ryzen Controller to keep the laptop running the way its intended to. I was able to keep Shadow of the Tomb Raider running at 3.9Ghz with the CPU at 100% usage and got the highest numbers yet from the benchmark in it. This is easily fixable by ASUS changing the DSDT which is part of the ACPI ( power management). These variables are left by AMD to be set by the vendor of the laptop as depending on the cooling solution they need to be likely tweaked. 

 

 I've seen some users modify these settings using the clover EFI bootloader but it seems it doesn't work for our unit or ASUS laptops. I'm going to do some more digging and see if I can find a way to patch this in our BIOS so we have an over all solution. For now if anyone wants to try these settings give them a whirl and leave feedback here, that way if I find a way to make a patch then I can make sure its something that works for everyone.

 

Also if anyone knows how to get the current variables from the BIOS using AMD uProf please let me know, curious to know what they are currently set at. At this moment I'm leery at leaving the VRM setting at 75, don't want to blow the VRM's.  You can achieve almost same clock speed with VRM at 65 and your unit will run cooler also.

 

Also set Ryzen Controller to re-apply the settings every 10 seconds and it will needed to be loaded up every time you boot, which can be done in the settings tab.

 

 

 

 

Edited December 22, 2019 by Bobbydigital

[Bobbydigital]

It appears the unit is definitely throttling due to BD Prochot, just confirmed this in HWINFO when running without Ryzen Controller. You can see in the picture that the BD Prochot has triggered and MSI afterburner shows the CPU throttling to 400Mhz.  It isn't from the CPU though, as HWINFO says its from EXT which would be another device. I'm going to try just using Ryzen controller with just the VRM setting turned up and if it works then the problem with our unit is thermal throttling due to VRM's overheating. Not seeing any sensor for VRM's so I can't see what temps they are at.

 

Update

 

Just using the STAPM and PPT limits works fine, there's a slight performance increase but can't find any way to measure VRM temps so if you change them do so at your own risk.

 

Ryzen Controller seems to still use settings you have altered even after unchecking them and hitting apply. So if you have used previous settings you need to uninstall Ryzen Controller through add/remove programs and then delete the following folders which will remove all stored settings. You will need to goto

 

C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Local\ryzencontroller

 

C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Roaming\RyzenController

 

 

 

 

[mussifer]

On 12/21/2019 at 11:48 PM, Bobbydigital said:

It appears the unit is definitely throttling due to BD Prochot, just confirmed this in HWINFO when running without Ryzen Controller. You can see in the picture that the BD Prochot has triggered and MSI afterburner shows the CPU throttling to 400Mhz.  It isn't from the CPU though, as HWINFO says its from EXT which would be another device. I'm going to try just using Ryzen controller with just the VRM setting turned up and if it works then the problem with our unit is thermal throttling due to VRM's overheating. Not seeing any sensor for VRM's so I can't see what temps they are at.

 

Update

 

Just using the STAPM and PPT limits works fine, there's a slight performance increase but can't find any way to measure VRM temps so if you change them do so at your own risk.

 

Ryzen Controller seems to still use settings you have altered even after unchecking them and hitting apply. So if you have used previous settings you need to uninstall Ryzen Controller through add/remove programs and then delete the following folders which will remove all stored settings. You will need to goto

 

C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Local\ryzencontroller

 

C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Roaming\RyzenController

 

 

 

 

Hi Bobbydigital, so it works for you to set STAPM, PPT Slow and PPT Fast on 45 and leaving everything else unchecked?

[Siker]

On 12/20/2019 at 3:55 PM, Rkes608 said:

Hi all no update from Asus but I have been using this laptop solidly and no issues after fan plastic cover was removed. 

I emailed chasing them. @rrff

 

@zxcvbnm123 tbh it shouldn't void the warrenty I don't think. Like removing or chipping of a piece of the case by accident. It's up to you once plastic is removed this laptop is a beast. 

 

If you brought from a tech place like currys PC World in UK or best buy in US for example try taking it to their tech department and show them the plastic. Maybe they'll remove for you 

 

 

Can you show an image or how you actually removed them? Idk exactly what I need to remove.

[Bobbydigital]

20 hours ago, mussifer said:

Hi Bobbydigital, so it works for you to set STAPM, PPT Slow and PPT Fast on 45 and leaving everything else unchecked?

Yeah with just those set  and temp at 90 it works great over here. I've been poking around in the BIOS rom file and have extracted the DSDT tables which hold all the settings that you can change in Ryzen Controller and I've found most of the stuff I need to edit. I should then be able to inject the module back into the BIOS file,flash the file and we won't have to use Ryzen Controller anymore!

[Siker]

15 hours ago, Bobbydigital said:

Yeah with just those set  and temp at 90 it works great over here. I've been poking around in the BIOS rom file and have extracted the DSDT tables which hold all the settings that you can change in Ryzen Controller and I've found most of the stuff I need to edit. I should then be able to inject the module back into the BIOS file,flash the file and we won't have to use Ryzen Controller anymore!

Idk dont fix anything for me, I still get 46 to 21 fps drops and cant use all my CPU power at all even w that build in ryzen controller. Stuck at 3.21 GHZ sow erid

[Bobbydigital]

7 hours ago, Siker said:

Idk dont fix anything for me, I still get 46 to 21 fps drops and cant use all my CPU power at all even w that build in ryzen controller. Stuck at 3.21 GHZ sow erid

Have you uninstalled Ryzen Controller, deleted the appdata folders and then applied just the few settings I mentioned? If you are stuck at 3.2Ghz it sounds like something else. Have you changed the maximum power state in power options below 100%? The ASUS armoury crate also needs to be set to Turbo.

 

I captured a video of Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark running twice back to back. Its hitting 94C and still no throttling.

 

 

[C4H3B]

Hey guys, yet another owner of a throttling ASUS GA502DU here. Bought it early December; Best Buy had ran out of the 17" i7 version during their Black Friday sales, so I settled for this the following week.

 

I'm having the exact same issue everyone's been mentioning: sudden drops to CPU clock speeds of 400MHz. I first noticed the issue on the video game Apex Legends, yet the problem persisted beyond the game as I ran graphical benchmarks (e.g. Heaven Benchmark).

 

So far, I've only achieved success in going into the laptop's power settings and limiting maximum CPU performance to 80%. I spent the entire day tinkering with Ryzen Controller and received direct help from their associated Discord server, but no specific set of values thoroughly solved the issue.

 

Here's my Reddit post that provides greater detail and a video demonstration of my own case.

 

If I somehow come across any improvements or even a total solution, I'll shoot another post here. All of us shouldn't be left scrambling like this...

 

Best of luck to all of you.

[Bobbydigital]

2 hours ago, C4H3B said:

Hey guys, yet another owner of a throttling ASUS GA502DU here. Bought it early December; Best Buy had ran out of the 17" i7 version during their Black Friday sales, so I settled for this the following week.

 

I'm having the exact same issue everyone's been mentioning: sudden drops to CPU clock speeds of 400MHz. I first noticed the issue on the video game Apex Legends, yet the problem persisted beyond the game as I ran graphical benchmarks (e.g. Heaven Benchmark).

 

So far, I've only achieved success in going into the laptop's power settings and limiting maximum CPU performance to 80%. I spent the entire day tinkering with Ryzen Controller and received direct help from their associated Discord server, but no specific set of values thoroughly solved the issue.

 

Here's my Reddit post that provides greater detail and a video demonstration of my own case.

 

If I somehow come across any improvements or even a total solution, I'll shoot another post here. All of us shouldn't be left scrambling like this...

 

Best of luck to all of you.

Hello again! All I can say is WOW your throttling is so much worse then mine ever was playing anything. Made up this video to show you the game running properly, and well I think some people are probably thinking that I'm talking out my arse lol.  Stop by the discord and we will do all that we can to get you running smoothly. Cheers!

 

 

 

[lamername]

I'm also getting this issue, in this case in linux. Surprisingly, after installing v208 I get it when I leave the laptop mostly idle for 1 min or so, while I can keep playing videogames for hours without issue. Seems like a combination of underventilation when being idle plus not being able to recover from the throttling. I hope somebody in the community discovers a way to patch the bios with a different preset, it was a very good deal I got... otherwise I'm going to need to ask for a refund, because it's not fun having to put a youtube video playing all the time so the laptop does not become idle and the performance goes to hell forever.

[Bobbydigital]

6 hours ago, lamername said:

I'm also getting this issue, in this case in linux. Surprisingly, after installing v208 I get it when I leave the laptop mostly idle for 1 min or so, while I can keep playing videogames for hours without issue. Seems like a combination of underventilation when being idle plus not being able to recover from the throttling. I hope somebody in the community discovers a way to patch the bios with a different preset, it was a very good deal I got... otherwise I'm going to need to ask for a refund, because it's not fun having to put a youtube video playing all the time so the laptop does not become idle and the performance goes to hell forever.

I run Arch Linux as my main OS and yeah its even worse as the CPU gets stuck at 400Mhz and requires a reboot. Ryzen Controller is available Linux and works fine to stop my throttling there also.

[lamername]

6 hours ago, Bobbydigital said:

I run Arch Linux as my main OS and yeah its even worse as the CPU gets stuck at 400Mhz and requires a reboot. Ryzen Controller is available Linux and works fine to stop my throttling there also.

Thanks! I was directly supposing that was one of those official windows-only tools. I've set it up with with the lax limit of 45W on STAPM, PPT Slow and PPT Fast and it has already gone twice to 400MHz. Are you using those same settings on Arch too?
 

In any case, I'm not sure if in my case this settings work, because as dumb as it may sound, it works like a charm under heavy loads and gets throttled when idle.

[Bobbydigital]

2 hours ago, lamername said:

Thanks! I was directly supposing that was one of those official windows-only tools. I've set it up with with the lax limit of 45W on STAPM, PPT Slow and PPT Fast and it has already gone twice to 400MHz. Are you using those same settings on Arch too?
 

In any case, I'm not sure if in my case this settings work, because as dumb as it may sound, it works like a charm under heavy loads and gets throttled when idle.

Yes those are the settings I have changed. Are you running using  Ryzen Controller sudo, as it needs root privileges? 

[lamername]

4 hours ago, Bobbydigital said:

Yes those are the settings I have changed. Are you running using  Ryzen Controller sudo, as it needs root privileges? 

Yep, I start it with `sudo ryzencontroller --no-sandbox`. I've added a temp limit of 85º too too see if it helps.