XPS 9700 further undervolting results

Light-Yagami · April 3

Hello everyone,

Since I last posted, I've done some more testing with my i7-10875H equipped Dell XPS 9700. Here are the results:

Bios used and modded: 1.6.3

Method used: Enable undervolting on your Dell XPS 9500/9700 (or others) | NotebookReview

Other mods: Liquid metal CPU re-paste (cooling capacity increased from 70W sustained to 95W sustained at 95°C, room T: 23°C)

Programs used: ThrottleStop 9.3, Cinebench R23

Settings changed in Throttlestop:

Speed Shift: Enable

Speed Shift EPP: 0

BD PROCHOT: Disable (disables comms between GPU and CPU for thermal, disables power throttling for CPU if GPU runs hot and vice versa)

TPL settings:

- PL2: 110W

- PL1: 110W

FIVR settings:

- Unlock Adjustable Voltage for: CPU Core, CPU Cache, iGPU (adaptive)

- CPU core v-offset: -0.110.4v

- CPU cache v-offset: -0.073v

- iGPU v-offset: -0.080.1v

- Disable and Lock Turbo Power Limits: Enable (locks PL2 and PL1)

- Thermal Velocity Boost: Disable (allows the CPU to ignore T-lim and run at max turbo ratio limits)

Power consumption under load - undervolted (Cinebench R23):

SG core: 28W

MT core: 103W

Undervolt Score:

SG core: 1300pts (avg frequency: 4.92ghz)

MT core: 11671pts (avg frequency: 4.28ghz - due to thermal throttling towards the end of the test)

Estimated sustainable clock speed for my cooling capacity: 4.24ghz at 97W - not worth the heat and noise

Stock score:

SG core: 1240pts

MT core: 9500ish pts (avg pwr: 90W, T-max throttling, avg core frequency: 3.6-3.7ghz)

Things to note: Cache doesn't want to be undervolted, will soft-lock the system if pushed too low. For regular use, I manually decrease all-core turbo from 4.3ghz to 4.2ghz, which reduces pwr from 103W to 93W. Most of the time, I run the chip locked to 35W. It scores 7850pts in Cinebench R23 at that wattage, which is good enough for me. When I need the umpf, I just switch profiles. The most notable difference about modding my XPS is that I get incredibly good lower power performance scaling, allowing me to run games better and have longer battery life. Fans don't turn on nearly as much as I'm able to run a quiet Dell profile all the time. System usually doesn't ask for more than 35W of CPU at any given time - before it would regularly jump over 50W.

Intel 10th gen stops scaling after 4.0ghz or 80W (after undervolt, 10876pts in Cinebench R23), which is why I recommend anyone who's considering this procedure to accept the limitations of the 14nm process node. I believe that achieving a 19% score improvement compared to stock for 10W more power (103W compared to 90-95W) or same performance for 25W less power (9470pts at 70W vs 90-95W) is quite a big achievement on its own, and I'm happy with the results.

Thanks for the read!

Light-Yagami · April 3

Cinebench R20 results:

DISCROBOT · April 6

Awesome work with the undervolting and posts! I have the same configuration 9700 as you with the 10875. I'd been looking at these machines since they came out last year but was worried about temperatures, fan noise, thermal throttling and the 100w power supply battery drain issue (which they fixed). When I saw your posts showing that you'd successfully undervolted with good results it helped convince me to pull the trigger and buy one!

I like it a lot. Despite its flaws it's generally a really nicely built laptop chassis. The taper and finish on the edges is beautiful design. I'm an architect/industrial designer so this matters to me. My trackpad only has very mild rattle/ pretravel in the corners and I mainly use a mouse so its not a big issue. I was having problems not being able to adjust the overly vibrant display but a Reddit user told me that you just need to roll back Dell Premier Color to previous version 5.1.89.0 and then all the presets like sRGB work again.

Out of the box all my parts are running at or above their expected specs for this machine just using user bench mark and Cinebench. CPU was in the 87percentile and all cores idle temp between 42-45....so it looks like I got a decent machine. If I attempt the undervolting following your links I will post all my results for your comparison.

For now I'm just running the stock Dell/Windows Pro 20H2 install with some of the bloatware uninstalled or disabled. Do you recommend doing a clean windows install prior to undervolting? If so, what version and what drivers did u include in the new install?

Thanks for for leading the charge with modifying this machine!

PianoPlayer88Key · April 7

NIce undervolting. I find I like doing that too ....

My laptop has an i7-6700K, normally 91 watts TDP at stock settings, & could easily get into the 80s and 90s °C after I've cleaned the dust out, or hit 100°C and throttle if I let the dust build up.

With a -150 mV undervolt, it'll do about 69-71°C and ~66-67 watts in a 10-minute CInebench R23 run.

(I have a screenshot of the score, HWInfo64, CPU-Z, XTU, etc, but I had a lot of other things running (using ~50+ GB RAM + ~100-150 GB pagefile or so), so it only scored 2987 MT, 786 ST points. I imagine it would do somewhat better with a clean boot. (Current uptime is 135:02:35:33.)

Light-Yagami · April 7

23 hours ago, DISCROBOT said:

Awesome work with the undervolting and posts! I have the same configuration 9700 as you with the 10875. I'd been looking at these machines since they came out last year but was worried about temperatures, fan noise, thermal throttling and the 100w power supply battery drain issue (which they fixed). When I saw your posts showing that you'd successfully undervolted with good results it helped convince me to pull the trigger and buy one!

I like it a lot. Despite its flaws it's generally a really nicely built laptop chassis. The taper and finish on the edges is beautiful design. I'm an architect/industrial designer so this matters to me. My trackpad only has very mild rattle/ pretravel in the corners and I mainly use a mouse so its not a big issue. I was having problems not being able to adjust the overly vibrant display but a Reddit user told me that you just need to roll back Dell Premier Color to previous version 5.1.89.0 and then all the presets like sRGB work again.

Out of the box all my parts are running at or above their expected specs for this machine just using user bench mark and Cinebench. CPU was in the 87percentile and all cores idle temp between 42-45....so it looks like I got a decent machine. If I attempt the undervolting following your links I will post all my results for your comparison.

For now I'm just running the stock Dell/Windows Pro 20H2 install with some of the bloatware uninstalled or disabled. Do you recommend doing a clean windows install prior to undervolting? If so, what version and what drivers did u include in the new install?

Thanks for for leading the charge with modifying this machine!

Thank you, It's been a lot of work.

Actually, there's been a recent development in my testing, but I haven't done a proper topic on it yet. I have finally gotten to the point where I can say that I've reached the limits of the CPU. I will do another (and last in the series) topic, explaining exactly what you can expect from the CPU and what settings work 100% of the time, for all active core configurations. Settings used in the topic here work and the system is stable, but I've found a way to further decrease power consumption at higher system stability.

I'm running a stock Dell install with most additional apps either uninstalled or disabled - but Dell's Power Manager and Update Utility are essential to have! I've been planning on concluding months worth of testing with another topic, so that anyone with this great laptop can fully leverage the CPU and enjoy a cool, quiet working environment.

Keep in touch, I'll make a new topic shortly, maybe even today. The data is all here, it just needs to be put out there, for people to see. Thanks again for the read. I firmly believe that the Dell XPS 9700 platform is the best we've gotten from Dell in years.

Light-Yagami · April 7

10 hours ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

NIce undervolting. I find I like doing that too ....

My laptop has an i7-6700K, normally 91 watts TDP at stock settings, & could easily get into the 80s and 90s °C after I've cleaned the dust out, or hit 100°C and throttle if I let the dust build up.

With a -150 mV undervolt, it'll do about 69-71°C and ~66-67 watts in a 10-minute CInebench R23 run.

(I have a screenshot of the score, HWInfo64, CPU-Z, XTU, etc, but I had a lot of other things running (using ~50+ GB RAM + ~100-150 GB pagefile or so), so it only scored 2987 MT, 786 ST points. I imagine it would do somewhat better with a clean boot. (Current uptime is 135:02:35:33.)

I have a 6700K in my desktop rig. I'm liquid cooling it, and it's overclocked to 4.7ghz locked at locked voltage.. It's been like that for.. 4 years now? 5? I got pretty lucky, most skylake chips don't overclock that well. Mine can actually hold 4.8ghz stable, but I can't cool it because of the stock TIM under the IHS.. and I'm not planning on delliding. In Cinebench R23, it scores 6568pts as it stands. And I'm okay with that.

Funny enough - while skylake didn't overclock very well, it was an incredible undervolter. Even skylake laptops can usually get away with insanely low voltages, contested only by Intel 10th gen, and even that only rarely.