Laptop GPU Stuck At 300/150 MHZ Unplugged/Battery Power fix

[toemass]

I have a Dell G7 7790, i7 9750H with an NVIDIA RTX 2070 Max-Q Design. It runs flawlessly on AC power/plugged in. Whenever you use the laptop on battery power/unplugged, the GPU core clock plummets to 300 MHZ and memory clock to 150 MHZ. For example, MSI Kombuster was reaching 6 FPS with 720 resolution and default settings. This was a design choice by Dell to save battery life, while majorly sacrificing performance. This made running games unplayable. You couldn't run any game smoothly. You had to plug it in whenever you game, so it wasn't even a mobile gaming laptop, which is what I intended to use when I bought it, regardless of how long a gaming session would last.

 

I've tried making tweaks and performance adjustments to no avail by following many forum and video posts such as:

• Setting every energy saving option to disabled and every battery power option to high performance via Nvidia Control Panel, Geforce Experience, Power Options (including hidden power options available via registry), Battery Performance, Registry Tweaks and Dell battery apps
• Registry tweaks
• Downgrading BIOS
• Overclocking GPU
• Overclocking/underclocking CPU
• Formatting Windows 10
• Avast antivirus scan

 

With every option I could think of exhausted, I thought of changing the VBIOS on the graphics card. This fixed the problem. After trying some similar VBIOS's to the Dell RTX 2070 Max-Q through the Techpowerup website, I managed to find a Razer RTX 2070 Max-Q VBIOS that was compatible with my graphics card. As soon as I made the change, I saw a massive improvement in performance. I am now reaching 21 FPS with MSI Kombuster. It is not on par with AC power/plugged in (which is 47 FPS on MSI Kombuster), but I am satisfied with the sacrifice of performance to save battery life. 

 

So, to increase your performance on battery usage on laptops, you must upgrade or use a different VBIOS. To do this, follow these guidelines:

• Use nvflash through an elevated CMD. You should only need to use 3 commands, which are 'Save VBIOS firmware to file', 'Remove write protect' and 'Update VBIOS firmware'
• Be sure to backup your current VBIOS with nvflash to a .ROM file
• Visit techpowerup and download their VBIOS's. Find one similar to your graphics card. Match up your default core and memory clock to the ones on techpowerup. You can view your default core and memory clock in NVInspector
• You will know the VBIOS you tried to use does not work/fails if your graphics card in device manager will stay disabled. To fix it, it should be as easy as updating it back to your original VBIOS

I hope anybody finds this information useful. I can finally game anywhere I want.

[DoctorNick]

So you couldn't just change windows power options? Like so (ofc not intel iGPU as on this one)

[Kilrah]

If the BIOS limits you nothing you can adjust on top will help. Looks like the stock BIOS was hardcoded to just run the GPU at minimum if no AC adapter is connected.

[toemass]

23 minutes ago, DoctorNick said:

So you couldn't just change windows power options? Like so (ofc not intel iGPU as on this one)

Like I said in the post, I had already tried changing that setting.

[toemass]

2 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

If the BIOS limits you nothing you can adjust on top will help. Looks like the stock BIOS was hardcoded to just run the GPU at minimum if no AC adapter is connected.

Yeah which was very frustrating to find out. Guess Dell doesn't want their customers feeling like they have control over their products, because any setting that sets maximum performance on battery did nothing.

[ha1o2surfer]

hold up. can you show me this actually works? show us on battery and HWInfo showing the GPU wattage. It's normally limited to 15w. 

[toemass]

6 hours ago, ha1o2surfer said:

hold up. can you show me this actually works? show us on battery and HWInfo showing the GPU wattage. It's normally limited to 15w. 

Ok I gave it a go, have a look

[ha1o2surfer]

wow man. that is freaking awesome. forgive my attitude. I have been trying to dump the bios of my G7 7588 but i can't find a way!

 

My 7588's vBIOS must be integrated into the BIOS as no utilities will read it. I've flashed cards before (my GTX 970) so im aware of the process. Just sucks as I wanted to be able to play overwatch on a 65w adapter. It can just hit 65FPS on battery and a 65w adapter but I'd like a little more and so that it doesn't dip to 45 under heavy battle. lol 

[NoGanksEric]

In the Nvidia GeForce experience there is a battery Saving mode and whisper mode. 

Disable whisper mode at all 

 

And set the slider of battery Saving mode to 60fps

[toemass]

9 hours ago, ha1o2surfer said:

wow man. that is freaking awesome. forgive my attitude. I have been trying to dump the bios of my G7 7588 but i can't find a way!

 

My 7588's vBIOS must be integrated into the BIOS as no utilities will read it. I've flashed cards before (my GTX 970) so im aware of the process. Just sucks as I wanted to be able to play overwatch on a 65w adapter. It can just hit 65FPS on battery and a 65w adapter but I'd like a little more and so that it doesn't dip to 45 under heavy battle. lol 

Damn dude that sucks. I'll steer away from that model lol

[toemass]

9 hours ago, NoGanksEric said:

In the Nvidia GeForce experience there is a battery Saving mode and whisper mode. 

Disable whisper mode at all 

 

And set the slider of battery Saving mode to 60fps

Literally tried everything, including that.

[ha1o2surfer]

8 hours ago, toemass said:

Damn dude that sucks. I'll steer away from that model lol

I actually really love everything else about this model. Great battery life, i upgraded the screen, got 6TB of SSD, and 64GB of ram. The power limit on the GPU is really my only gripe..

[NoGanksEric]

10 hours ago, toemass said:

Literally tried everything, including that.

well my guess is that it is some sort of power saving effort.

 

my laptop also has really bad fps when running on battery

 

 

[Kenor]

My dell g7 with 1660ti does the exact same thing i have been trying to fix it for long time and thought it was faulty device. I'll try this method

[toemass]

On 2/12/2020 at 9:52 PM, Kenor said:

My dell g7 with 1660ti does the exact same thing i have been trying to fix it for long time and thought it was faulty device. I'll try this method

Good luck

[Rizhen]

On 1/9/2020 at 4:00 PM, toemass said:

I have a Dell G7 7790, i7 9750H with an NVIDIA RTX 2070 Max-Q Design. It runs flawlessly on AC power/plugged in. Whenever you use the laptop on battery power/unplugged, the GPU core clock plummets to 300 MHZ and memory clock to 150 MHZ. For example, MSI Kombuster was reaching 6 FPS with 720 resolution and default settings. This was a design choice by Dell to save battery life, while majorly sacrificing performance. This made running games unplayable. You couldn't run any game smoothly. You had to plug it in whenever you game, so it wasn't even a mobile gaming laptop, which is what I intended to use when I bought it, regardless of how long a gaming session would last.

 

I've tried making tweaks and performance adjustments to no avail by following many forum and video posts such as:

• Setting every energy saving option to disabled and every battery power option to high performance via Nvidia Control Panel, Geforce Experience, Power Options (including hidden power options available via registry), Battery Performance, Registry Tweaks and Dell battery apps
• Registry tweaks
• Downgrading BIOS
• Overclocking GPU
• Overclocking/underclocking CPU
• Formatting Windows 10
• Avast antivirus scan

 

With every option I could think of exhausted, I thought of changing the VBIOS on the graphics card. This fixed the problem. After trying some similar VBIOS's to the Dell RTX 2070 Max-Q through the Techpowerup website, I managed to find a Razer RTX 2070 Max-Q VBIOS that was compatible with my graphics card. As soon as I made the change, I saw a massive improvement in performance. I am now reaching 21 FPS with MSI Kombuster. It is not on par with AC power/plugged in (which is 47 FPS on MSI Kombuster), but I am satisfied with the sacrifice of performance to save battery life. 

 

So, to increase your performance on battery usage on laptops, you must upgrade or use a different VBIOS. To do this, follow these guidelines:

• Use nvflash through an elevated CMD. You should only need to use 3 commands, which are 'Save VBIOS firmware to file', 'Remove write protect' and 'Update VBIOS firmware'
• Be sure to backup your current VBIOS with nvflash to a .ROM file
• Visit techpowerup and download their VBIOS's. Find one similar to your graphics card. Match up your default core and memory clock to the ones on techpowerup. You can view your default core and memory clock in NVInspector
• You will know the VBIOS you tried to use does not work/fails if your graphics card in device manager will stay disabled. To fix it, it should be as easy as updating it back to your original VBIOS

I hope anybody finds this information useful. I can finally game anywhere I want.

Hi, I have Dell g5 15 5590 with GTX 1660ti. I have had this "300mhz" problem since I bought the laptop. Back then, I was trying to find a way to fix it but then I thought that "maybe it is a laptop, maybe it only run on low clock speed when it use battery". So then, I have never care about that problem anymore. But stangely today, in the afternoon my GPU clock at 1900 mhz without even plug in. I was really happy as I have just install a driver update. Then suddenly it went back To 300mhz after about an hour and I can't get it back. Because of this, I started to look into the internet and I find your instructions of how to fix it. I want to try but I have never touch VBIOS before. I'm afraid I will do something wrong. So can you make a tutorial of this?