Dell Laptop Purchase advice - Heard of throttling issues?

[Jinu]

Hi Folks 

I was considering the Dell Inspiron 7591 (with the Intel 9th Gen i9-9880H). However on looking for reviews on the net, i find a lot of issues reported on Dell laptops throttling CPU performance down 33% when you switch to battery power. As per the posts on the net Dell seems to claim this to be "Working as designed". Just wanted to know if this is an issue or a feature and can it be disabled so that we get full CPU performance on battery. I would assume this would be based on the power setting maintained in the laptop, but users claim that the setting has no bearing on the same.

 

Also do laptops from other brands like Lenovo, ASUS also behave like this ?

 

Thanks

[AndreiArgeanu]

It is a feature, often manufacturers have special drivers or setting which run your laptop on a lower power state to prolong battery life. It's a bit like my laptop, when it's plugged in I get very good FPS in games but on battery games stutter and slow down. You could potentially disable the feature but it depends on how it's integrated. For example the control panel has power saver features which may slow down your pc by reducing the maximum processor state which is probably related to how much of the cpu can be used.

[TheBean]

bruh.. do NOT.. I REPEAT DO NOT get any expensive intel laptop right now. AMD has MUCH better cpus that are more performance, less heat, less expensive. the ryzen 4000 series is a monster of a cpu. if can wait even 1 month, do that. more laptops with the amd ryzen 4800H are coming soon. 

[Jinu]

Yeah but this did not work for the people who were reporting these issues. The temporary solutions that have reportedly worked include

- Disabling the discrete GPU when in battery mode

- Physically disconnecting the battery and holding power button down

-Undervolt the CPU using XTU

-Using ThrottleStop  and tinkering with the  "BD PROCHOT" option

 

But this is not a generic solution, it seems to work for some and does not work for others. But i find throttling the CPU from 3.0 Ghz to 800Mhz to be very poor design.

 

[Jinu]

2 minutes ago, Saksham said:

bruh.. do NOT.. I REPEAT DO NOT get any expensive intel laptop right now. AMD has MUCH better cpus that are more performance, less heat, less expensive. the ryzen 4000 series is a monster of a cpu. if can wait even 1 month, do that. more laptops with the amd ryzen 4800H are coming soon. 

Thanks for the response, i would have waited if i knew the wait was only for a month, unfortunately with the current lockdown scenario and international travel ban,... i dont think the wait will be 1 month, its going to be a lot longer.

 

[genexis_x]

CPU performance will not be fully available while on battery power in many laptops

 

The truth is, Dell no longer prioritize performance/thermals in their laptops: Subpar cooling, BIOS updates that make fans spin slower etc. Their focus is on aesthetics nowadays. 7591 is an example of a good looking laptop but performs worse than U series CPU even equipped with H series CPU

23 minutes ago, Saksham said:

less heat

This is not true actually, 7nm is harder to be cooled due to poor heat dissipation

[Jinu]

13 minutes ago, genexis_x said:

7591 is an example of a good looking laptop but performs worse than U series CPU even equipped with H series CPU

Coincidentally this is what was said on one of the forums, but they compared it to a Celeron based laptop.

 

This is getting tough.. I had spent a lot of time coming up with this selection of laptop that would be suited for light gaming, based on availability in my region, Warranty, performance etc. Now i am back to square one.I thought of going with he dell 10th gen laptops, but the ones available here are tied with Nvidia MX250.

[genexis_x]

24 minutes ago, Jinu said:

snip

May I know where are you from? Budget? Usage? Any preferences on weight and battery life?

[Jinu]

12 minutes ago, genexis_x said:

May I know where are you from? Budget? Usage? Any preferences on weight and battery life?

Region

India.

 

Budget

Around 5500 to 6000RM.

 

Usage

Frequent but Light gaming (eg: fornite), lots of video streaming/playing, excel based processing, Android Studio app development, BllueStacks emulator. (Hence atleast 16GB Ram and a i7 Processor)

 

Display

Full HD will suffice - but good quality screen (noticed your reviews saying some high end Lennovo's have poor quality screens)

 

Other Considerations

- One primary reason I choose dell was Warranty (premium plus is available for 4 years)

- I intend to keep the laptop for atleast 5 years so would prefer latest gen processor/Architecture and good build quality

- Battery life (atleast 6 hours)

- Weight - upto 2.5Kg

- prominent laptop brands in India - Dell, Lennovo, Asus, HP

 

Thanks

[genexis_x]

1 hour ago, Jinu said:

Budget

Around 5500 to 6000RM.

Kindly provide budget in your country currency

1 hour ago, Jinu said:

I intend to keep the laptop for atleast 5 years

TBH this is a unrealistic requirement since no one can guarantee how long will a laptop last

[Jinu]

1 hour ago, genexis_x said:

Kindly provide budget in your country currency

TBH this is a unrealistic requirement since no one can guarantee how long will a laptop last

- INR 100,000

- What i mean is assuming the laptop does not fail. For eg: I still have a laptop purchases in 2000 (Dell m700) and works fine. They were quality buillds then.

[TheBean]

16 hours ago, genexis_x said:

This is not true actually, 7nm is harder to be cooled due to poor heat dissipation

wdym? if you have 7nm, then you use less power in the first place, so you get less heat. thats the whole point of shrinking the node... less power required to reach higher speeds. if you have less power, you get less heat.