CPU clocks drops, causing low frame rates

[Segerstad]

Hi! My troubleshooting skills are fairly limited, so i'm asking you guys with this one. 
Basically this summer i got a new laptop, mostly for school but i also looked for something that i could play some games on from time to time. I ended up with the Lenovo Yoga 730 which features an i7-8565U, a gtx1050 and 16bg ram.

Initially i worried that the 1050 wouldn't be able to deliver top performance, but that has not been the case, it is working fine. For me the processor has been acting weird and i don't know why.

 

I've been noticing this in GTA V. The game runs extremely smooth with 60 fps and everything. But then, all of a sudden i get theese random occurring fps drops for maybe 2-3 seconds with 10-15fps, and then it continues running at 60fps again until the drop happens again.

I thought it had something to do with the graphics card, but as it turns out everything looks normal. So i started to monitor my cpu and saw that the cpu clocks are acting weird when the lag spikes happen,they basically just drop and then goes back up to normal (see attached image). 

 

I think this is the source of my problem, but i might be wrong, i'm not an expert. Maybe it's just the bad optimisation of GTA haha. But do any of you guys know what is causing this, i have searched on the internet but i have not found a solution.

 

Any help is appreciated, thanks 

[The Sloth]

6 minutes ago, Segerstad said:

i7-8565U,

 what are your temps? U cpu are not designed for sustained workload. You can try undervolting/ repaste for better performance. 

[Princess Luna]

The i7 8565U has a stupidly aggressive turbo boost and the greatest majority of these "fin and light" ultrabooks that features this Whiskey Lake processor have insufficient cooling to keep it's turbo for long periods of time like in gaming.

 

The Lenovo Yoga 730  is really not a gaming device even if it has capable hardware under the hood, it's more of a extremely mobile good performing device.

 

download XTU and max out the turbo boost window, remove tdp limitations and try finding a way to improve your thermals somehow but there is no miracle.

[Jurrunio]

clock dropping after PL2 times out? Basically there's PL1 and PL2, PL1's the CPU power limit that can be sustained indefinitely, PL2's the CPU power limit that's higher than PL1 but only lasts anywhere from 8s to 30s, depending on the laptop. This can cause a clock dip as the CPU switches from running with PL2 to PL1

[unclewebb]

Setting the turbo power limits sky high can eliminate any power limit throttling that you are likely experiencing.  The low power U series have a 15 Watt TDP rating.  They are designed to throttle and slow down so long term, they do not exceed 15 Watts.  Once you remove the power limits, some Lenovo laptops will let you can go way beyond 15 Watts.  You can run at this level indefinitely as long as your CPU cooling is up to the task.  

 

For maximum performance, you should also under volt the CPU Core and CPU Cache.  This helps keep the heat down.  Somewhere around -100 mV is a good place to start testing.  Less voltage = less heat = lower power consumption and a faster CPU.

 

You can give Intel XTU a try but there is a good chance that it does not have the options necessary to get maximum performance out of this CPU.  I prefer using ThrottleStop.  Getting a 15 Watt CPU to run at over 38 Watts is fantastic.

 

 

Performance is on par with a desktop 4790K.

 

 

If the thermal paste was replaced, it could probably outperform the 4790K in many tests.  Only high temps are holding it back.