CPU Maximum Frequency Drops to 20%

[Blaze Johnson]

Okay.. so i recently recieved a laptop from a friend because they were no longer using it. I reformated the PC and put windows 7 on it.. its much faster than my old laptop and was fine until i tried to play a game, it ran very well for the first 10 seconds of a dota 2 match before i suddenly had a huge fps drop. After inspecting the problem in performance monitor i realised the maximum CPU frequency would drop to 20% whenever i am in a game which makes it unplayable as this laptop is pretty shit.

 

I was wondering how i can stop this from happening because its very frustrating.. 

 

i have tried advanced power options and changing the settings in AMD Vision Engine Control Center (PowerPlay settings) but this has not changed anything

 

Please help

 

Specs:

 

Processor: AMD Turion X2 Dual-Core Mobile RM-74 2.20 GHz

 

4GB Ram (3.75 usable)

 

64-bit Operating System

 

 

[Hans Christian | Teri]

Sounds like a thermal problem.

[Blaze Johnson]

Yeah my laptop tempertures are really high, but theres nothing i can do about that i need a new pc really but i cant at the moment so im just trying to stop my CPU from limiting itself

[Blaze Johnson]

Is there a way to change my maximum temperture before my laptops cpu limits itself

[Nafanya]

No, tjunction is part of firmware and you can't access this setting. What is it for? The laptop tries to protect itself and cool down, in order to avoid permanent damage from reaching critical temperatures. Before the introduction of this feature, the CPU would simply continue heating up and go straight to hell. You'd be left with a broken machine and you don't want that, do you?

But you can and should do something better instead. Take the laptop apart and clean it, apply new thermal paste onto gpu and cpu. I've purchased a used laptop myself recently and had the same issue (photo related). It's taken care of now. Also, you can use a cooling pad, but it will only help a little. Overheating damages your laptop. If things continue this way, it may die sooner than later. This is maintenance and it needs to be taken care of. You got nothing to lose, so do it.

 

Even without repasting, you'll benefit greatly from cleaning out the vents. As you can see, the thick coat of dust was completely blocking any airflow in my laptop. Causing the machine to freeze up even during idle. The previous owner thought it was done for. But I don't let my hardware die so easily. And even after it goes, I'll still build a working one out of 2 dead machines. Don't be afraid, you can only learn something. Depending on the model, getting to the heatsinks may be a piece of cake. In my case, I only had to remove the lid on the bottom. But I've also worked on laptops that required almost a complete disassembly. Test your luck...

[Blaze Johnson]

No, tjunction is part of firmware and you can't access this setting. What is it for? The laptop tries to protect itself and cool down, in order to avoid permanent damage from reaching critical temperatures. Before the introduction of this feature, the CPU would simply continue heating up and go straight to hell. You'd be left with a broken machine and you don't want that, do you?

But you can and should do something better instead. Take the laptop apart and clean it, apply new thermal paste onto gpu and cpu. I've purchased a used laptop myself recently and had the same issue (photo related). It's taken care of now. Also, you can use a cooling pad, but it will only help a little. Overheating damages your laptop. If things continue this way, it may die sooner than later. This is maintenance and it needs to be taken care of. You got nothing to lose, so do it.

 

Even without repasting, you'll benefit greatly from cleaning out the vents. As you can see, the thick coat of dust was completely blocking any airflow in my laptop. Causing the machine to freeze up even during idle. The previous owner thought it was done for. But I don't let my hardware die so easily. And even after it goes, I'll still build a working one out of 2 dead machines. Don't be afraid, you can only learn something. Depending on the model, getting to the heatsinks may be a piece of cake. In my case, I only had to remove the lid on the bottom. But I've also worked on laptops that required almost a complete disassembly. Test your luck...

I have found a potential fix for this issue, however my AMD control center is restricting me weirdly.. 

 

Basically my idea was to underclock my CPU so that the temperture never reaches 100 degrees making my CPU to cap at 20%; however it is impossible for me to cap my CPU at anything other than 50% for some reason, which is too low to play games comfortably. Do you know of anyway of unrestricting the ranges in which i can set my CPU frequency?

 

http://imgur.com/WRIr1f0

[Nafanya]

It seems you want to avoid undoing screws at any cost. Sorry, I have no experience with under/overclocking. And to be frank, that's not the solution for your problem. Your plan is to castrate your machine, instead of fixing it.

But I've noticed something weird in your screenshot. System cooling policy is set to passive. Is your fan even spinning? Set it to active.

[mimo belkacemi]

looks like throttling , try cleaning it from dust then change your thermal paste , does the pc suddenly turn off after  some time of using it ?

[Blaze Johnson]

looks like throttling , try cleaning it from dust then change your thermal paste , does the pc suddenly turn off after  some time of using it ?

no it's completely fine usually. It has an idle temp of 73 degrees then when I play a game that needs a lot of CPU power i will reach as high as 100 degrees which makes my CPU underclock itself to 20% power. If i can make my CPU only go to 90% power it would never reach 100 degrees and i would get decent enough fps but the range in which i can set my cpu power is 25% power, 50% power or 100% power

[lvh1]

no it's completely fine usually. It has an idle temp of 73 degrees then when I play a game that needs a lot of CPU power i will reach as high as 100 degrees which makes my CPU underclock itself to 20% power. If i can make my CPU only go to 90% power it would never reach 100 degrees and i would get decent enough fps but the range in which i can set my cpu power is 25% power, 50% power or 100% power

That idle temp is way too high, even for a laptop. Should be around 50-60 or even lower. I'd replace the thermal paste if I were you, I had the same problem last week. Laptop was hitting 95°C while playing a game so the processor ran at like 1.2 GHz instead of 2.9 and the GPU at 400 MHz instead of 800 MHz... Replaced the thermal paste on both and now it maxes out at 81°C on the GPU while not throttling down at all and the CPU stays at 2.9 GHz too.

 

Try googling the name of your laptop and who knowns that you're as lucky and me and find a full disassembly video of your laptop

 

But if you really want to be lazy you could try this http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/2288/throttlestop-6-00/, you can limit your processor's frequency with it. But I don't think it will help much tbh.. 

[mimo belkacemi]

That idle temp is way too high, even for a laptop. Should be around 50-60 or even lower. I'd replace the thermal paste if I were you, I had the same problem last week. Laptop was hitting 95°C while playing a game so the processor ran at like 1.2 GHz instead of 2.9 and the GPU at 400 MHz instead of 800 MHz... Replaced the thermal paste on both and now it maxes out at 81°C on the GPU while not throttling down at all and the CPU stays at 2.9 GHz too.

 

Try googling the name of your laptop and who knowns that you're as lucky and me and find a full disassembly video of your laptop

 

But if you really want to be lazy you could try this http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/2288/throttlestop-6-00/, you can limit your processor's frequency with it. But I don't think it will help much tbh.. 

i would suggest taking it to a shop so you wont regret your doings if you failed .thats pretty true and also cleaning the fan and heatsink would be a good idea !