Could type C power delivery affect performance?

[Mr.Meerkat]

Hey all! 

 

If you want the TL;DR version, the title more or less all I wanted to know. 

 

I'm currently back in Japan, 6000 miles away from my Fury, and had quite a lot of free time so decided to install some lighter games onto my laptop. The games I installed were: CS, R6S and Apex. As for the laptop I have, it is a HP envy 13t (8250U+10W MX150). Sounds like a good enough set up for some light gaming eh? Nope, these were the results: 

Apex: Lowest settings 1080p, <15fps

WoWs: Lowest settings 1080p, 20fps

CSGO: Lowest 1080p, 45fps

R6S: Lowest 1080p, 40fps

Note: WoWs was already installed, just had a 2GB update to download. 

 

That is iGPU territory and being confused, started troubleshooting a little (@Origami Cactus helped). Did everything normal like forcing MX150 on all four games, checked temps and thermal throttling. Nothing. With <70C under a gaming load, thermal throttling was ruled out. Next step, DUU and reinstall both GPU drivers. Again, still the shoddy iGPU level performance. Maybe the MX150 just performs awfully? Then, I suddenly remembered that I've not checked for power throttling. 

Opened up CPU-z, clicked stress CPU in the benchmark tab. Starts at 1900pts~, CPU temps jumps up to 80C from 40C (fan has been off for this period), the fan starts ramping up and the points+voltage+clock speed starts dropping. The faster the fan spins, the more it drops. Fan is now maxed out, temperature has stablilised at 55C with the CPU running at 2.0GHz@0.8V (from 3.4GHz@1.1V) and as you can guess, CPU-z is now showing 1100~ pts. Clearly a power-limitation. With this in mind, I decided to start stressing the MX150 simultaneously andddddd...the 8250U drops even more, all the way down to 1.7GHz, a lethargic 100MHz more than base. 

This is when I remembered that I have played a single WoWs match on my laptop before today and it was a buttery smooth 60fps at medium 1080p(!). The only difference between today and last time was I was using the barrel plug AC adapter instead of a type C PD adapter. Both PSUs are rated for 65W (OEM adapter is 19.5V3.33A whilst type C is 20V3.25A).

 

Considering there are quite a few topics online regarding how if you don't use the original or equivalent PSU (doesn't matter if it is rated to deliver a higher current), your laptop's CPU will throttle, could it be possible that this is what's happening here? If it is the case, *insert my extremely long rant about type C but is even longer now*. 

 

Edit: Just to say, I have tested the output of the type C adapter with my type C meter and it was supplying 20V3.15A~, which is close enough to what it has been rated. 

[Origami Cactus]

Very interesting, that could be the case. I have heard of laptops dropping performance when they are using type c instead of the proprietery power plug.

 

But it shouldn't be the case, because type-C must carry atleast 60w ? (max 100w) 

And your laptop should use less power than that. But then again it has happened on some laptops, so idk what is going on. Maybe @GeneXiS_X can help?

[Mr.Meerkat]

2 minutes ago, Origami Cactus said:

Very interesting, that could be the case. I have heard of laptops dropping performance when they are using type c instead of the proprietery power plug.

 

But it shouldn't be the case, because type-C must carry atleast 60w ? (max 100w) 

And your laptop should use less power than that. But then again it has happened on some laptops, so idk what is going on. Maybe @GeneXiS_X can help?

I mean are we talking about gen 1, 2 or 3 PD? There are difference between them. Anyway, this graph more or less sums it all up. 

[TrigrH]

This one seems pretty simple, its seems clear that the type c port CAN charge the laptop but is not wired the same way as the main power connector resulting in reduced performance while gaming.

[genexis_x]

This is very common in 13 inch Ultrabooks with dGPU - CPU/GPU/both will throttle when loaded. Not much you can do due to lower thermal limits (BIOS/firmware)