need help! Turbo Boost on Acer laptop way too little

[MS Eierfeile]

Hello guys,

I recently bought an Acer Spin 3 SP314-53N convertible laptop for study and editing drone videos on the go.
This Model has a Intel Core i7 8565U with 1.8 GHz baseclock and 4,1 GHz all-core and 4.6 GHz single-core turbo-boost.
I noticed, that the turbo-boost under synthetical load (AIDA64) as well as under realistic workload (rendering in Adobe Premiere) cranks up to 3.5 to 4.0 GHz for about 20 seconds:

 

 

Then after 20 seconds the boost descents to 2.5 GHz and stays there for the whole time:

 

 

The temps in this scenario were slightly over 90 degrees C max.

 

 

So I did the only right thing and replaced the thermal compound with Coollaboratory Liquid Ultra.



I thought this would fix the problem since the CPU would no longer have to thermal throttle the boost. Indeeed I got the temps down to unter 75 degrees C under full load!



But still: The boost goes down to 2.5 GHz after exactely 20 seconds of full load and stays there no matter what. This seems to be pre-programmed in the bios. And here`s the next problem: The BIOS offers no useful settings at all.

 

 

I asked the ACER support about this but got nothing useful in return. Only the statement, that the BIOS options are just like this, so that the user can`t "damage the hardware through false settings" and that there is no "unlocked BIOS" available.

 

It takes a while for me to give up but I gotta admit I`m stuck here.

Someone got anything for me?

[.Apex.]

31 minutes ago, MS Eierfeile said:

But still: The boost goes down to 2.5 GHz after exactely 20 seconds of full load and stays there no matter what. This seems to be pre-programmed in the bios. And here`s the next problem: The BIOS offers no useful settings at all.

It's how Intel's turbo works, it only operates at a certain power setting for an amount of time then it throttles down for a sustained power load, those settings can be changed if you had full BIOS control but you don't.

 

There's a program called ThrottleStop https://www.techpowerup.com/download/techpowerup-throttlestop/ but I'm not sure how it works or if it lets you bypass power limits, use at your own risk.

[.Apex.]

6 minutes ago, _Syn_ said:

There's a program called ThrottleStop https://www.techpowerup.com/download/techpowerup-throttlestop/ but I'm not sure how it works or if it lets you bypass power limits, use at your own risk.

Yes you can bypass power limits with that program.

[MS Eierfeile]

4 minutes ago, _Syn_ said:

Yes you can bypass power limits with that program.

I don't think it'll allow me do change those settings. I'll still give it a try after lunch.

[MS Eierfeile]

1 hour ago, _Syn_ said:

It's how Intel's turbo works, it only operates at a certain power setting for an amount of time then it throttles down for a sustained power load, those settings can be changed if you had full BIOS control but you don't.

 

There's a program called ThrottleStop https://www.techpowerup.com/download/techpowerup-throttlestop/ but I'm not sure how it works or if it lets you bypass power limits, use at your own risk.

At first look it at least seems to work. Gotta wrap my head around the tutorial and all the settings this evening and learn how to adjust stuff. Thanks for the tip and I`ll post my results here. In the worst case I`ll post by smartphone

[.Apex.]

3 hours ago, MS Eierfeile said:

At first look it at least seems to work. Gotta wrap my head around the tutorial and all the settings this evening and learn how to adjust stuff. Thanks for the tip and I`ll post my results here. In the worst case I`ll post by smartphone

 

Here's a helpful video to let you know where to look, don't use the same settings as him but he shows you where to set the Long Duration and Short Duration power limits (Turbo Boost Power Max, and Short Power Max) which normally would be adjusted in BIOS.

[unclewebb]

ThrottleStop shows a black dot beside the word Throttle at the lower right.  That means your CPU is throttling.  Click on the Limits button and you should see something in red.  Likely one of your power limits is set too low.  PL1 and PL2 are the Long and Short turbo power limits which can be adjusted in the TPL window.  ThrottleStop is reporting 14.8 Watts.  By default, the long term power limit is typically set equal to the TDP which is 15 Watts for the low power U series.  

 

If you have adjusted these power limits in the TPL window but are still being limited to 15 Watts, next thing to try is to disable the secondary set of turbo power limits.  Go into the FIVR window and setup the option, Disable and Lock Turbo Power Limits.  You will first need to install the RwDrv.sys file into your ThrottleStop folder.  It can be downloaded from Mega. 

 

https://mega.nz/#!CNNA0SoC!Z2Xi2icwX4d4jzW016dKnKGhVglWmSSPpgiRU7VCG6g

 

Click on the Install button beside this feature in the FIVR window and it will guide you through this step.

 

Even with this trick you might still be limited to 15 Watts.  The 8th Gen low power U CPUs are capable of so much more when fully unlocked but some manufacturers do not allow this.  Without power limits holding you back, you can run these CPUs indefinitely at full speed.  Only inadequate cooling is holding this Lenovo C930 back.  A good candidate for some of that liquid metal you were using.  

 

[MS Eierfeile]

Oh my god guys

I went through the video and the whole tutorial and set up three profiles (performance, battery and cooldown). I managed to not only disable the throtteling of the boost but also to set it exactely to what my cooling is capable of, which is at the moment a permanent boost of 3.1 GHz for 5 minutes without getting over the 92 degree C threshold.



It also had an incredible impact on performance here for example the Cinebench R15 scores before and after:

 

I furthermore managed to undervolt the CPU by 80mV and the Intel GPU by 50 mV (both first tries which surely can be improved with a little experimenting).

I have a little experiance with OC and UV but not with laptops. But you just gave an amazing and incredibly versatile tool into my hands. For me this is a huge success!

Thank you guys very much and cheers from Switzerland!
Martin

[unclewebb]

Congrats. Another ThrottleStop success story!

 

Remember to undervolt the CPU core and CPU cache equally.  If undervolting the Intel GPU, you need to undervolt this and the iGPU Unslice equally.

 

The 92°C thermal throttling temperature that Acer set is well below the 100°C that Intel specifies for this CPU.  Even if you bump your power limits up and let your CPU thermal throttle a little, it will still be running well under the Intel 100°C limit.

 

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/149091/intel-core-i7-8565u-processor-8m-cache-up-to-4-60-ghz.html

 

A 50% boost in your Cinebench score is not that bad at all.  Cheers.  

[MS Eierfeile]

Hello again guys

Besides the great success with ThrottleStop and my more than satisfying performance in AC-mode I still have one problem which I couldn`t solve until now:

When I am on AC-mode the CPU boosts on all-cores with 4.1 GHz until the 92 degree threshold and never falls under 3.1 GHz. So far so good. But since I also edit drone-footage on the go I need good performance on battery mode as well.
But on battery-mode (although I chose Acers "maximum performance" battery setting) the CPU boosts up and dips down between 4.1 GHz and 400 MHz all the time under full load in benchmarks or Adobe Premiere. I get worse performance than without ThrottleStop and get double the time in the ThrottleStop benchmark.
Maybe there are settings that I gotta improve. The tutorials i watched helped me with everything but this.

To clearify what I mean and which settings I used I made a short video.
Since I am from Switzerland my OS is in German. Sorry about that :

On 2/6/2020 at 7:03 PM, unclewebb said:

Congrats. Another ThrottleStop success story!

You seemed to have decent knowledge about TS? Maybe you can help out with this too?
Thanks for your time and your opinions guys

[unclewebb]

On 2/12/2020 at 2:01 AM, MS Eierfeile said:

You seemed to have decent knowledge about TS?

As the guy that wrote the program, you could say that I have some reasonably decent knowledge about how TS works!

 

BD PROCHOT is lighting up in red.  This is what forces your CPU speed down to 400 MHz.  Try clearing the BD PROCHOT box in ThrottleStop.  Personally, I would avoid running any full load stress tests while on battery power.  You could permanently damage your battery.  Some throttling is intentional to protect weak components.

 

I am not sure what Acer's Maximum battery plan is all about.  I usually delete this stuff and install a clean version of Windows 10.

 

You can also check the Speed Shift EPP box and set the EPP value to 0 for maximum performance.  The Acer battery plan will likely interfere with this ThrottleStop setting.

[MS Eierfeile]

8 hours ago, unclewebb said:

As the guy that wrote the program, you could say that I have some reasonably decent knowledge about how TS works!

Okay. Didn't know that. Well then thank you once more this time for that great job you did writing this quiet helpful piece of code

8 hours ago, unclewebb said:

Try clearing the BD PROCHOT box in ThrottleStop

I' ll do that just to try. I'll create a third profile called "battery performance" or so and do that in a third profile.

8 hours ago, unclewebb said:

Personally, I would avoid running any full load stress tests while on battery power.  You could permanently damage your battery.  Some throttling is intentional to protect weak components

 I will limit the boost clock to about 2,5 to 3 GHz in this new profile. I'm pretty sure it can handle that since it boosted to 2,5 GHz permanently without TS activated. I only have the battery temps to check if it withstands the extra load but hey. I'm pretty sure you took a few risks programming and testing TS as well

[MS Eierfeile]

On 2/13/2020 at 10:48 PM, unclewebb said:

You can also check the Speed Shift EPP box and set the EPP value to 0 for maximum performance.  The Acer battery plan will likely interfere with this ThrottleStop setting.

So like you said unchecking the BD PROCHOT box solved it and the CPU boosts equally on battery or AC. But is there a way to set the boost to a limit in a seperate profile? The TPL settings are for all profiles if I got that right. I'd like the CPU to boost to about 3 or 3,5 GHz max when on battery profile. Maybe with the SPEED SHIFT EPP setting? 0 is max performance you said. What settings are possible?

Thanks again for your help and I'm pretty sure after those answers I can handle TS by myself.

[unclewebb]

The original purpose of ThrottleStop was to prevent throttling so a user could achieve maximum performance.  Different turbo power limits for each profile is a good idea but it is still on the things to do list.

 

The only option at the moment that might work for you is try reducing the IccMax variable in the FIVR window.  If this gives you some control over your CPU, it can be adjusted for each profile.  Less current going to your CPU will automatically reduce its power consumption. 

 

Some CPUs are very sensitive to this adjustment so you might end up with a BSOD.  It would be best to use the,

 

"OK - Do not save voltages"

 

option in the FIVR window until you find some IccMax values that are stable.

[MS Eierfeile]

Thank you very much! I'll try those things and if it works or not I can totally live with what I could achieve till now. It's not a big deal to manually change the Speed Shift Value to 35 instead of 46 when I'm on battery anyways.

Thanks again and I'll spread the word

Cheers from Switzerland

Martin

On 2/13/2020 at 10:48 PM, unclewebb said: