Does thermal throttling really affect the performance of the laptop? If so, how much?

[mrchow19910319]

(I do not know whether I should put this thread here or under the laptop section.)

 

Okay... I have heard that some people complained about certain laptops (razer's blade, apple's macbooks) thermal throttle when under stress. 

 

Is it a bad thing though? If the whole point of thermal throttling is to protect the components itself.

 

I know that in theory, gpu and cpu will slower their clock speed when temperature are too hot. Therefore make themselves slower.

 

But does it really affect the users?  Can the users tell that "oh noooo! my laptop is insanely slow!" while their laptop's cpu/gpu thermal throttling? 

 

Like i mentioned above, some people have been saying that: "Don't buy a certain brand/model of laptop because they thermal throttle" , is this claim reasonable? Just because under certain circumstances a laptop's cpu will lower its clock speed so we should avoid the laptop all together? 

 

 

[Jurrunio]

In some cases, users can feel the lowered performance. It depends on what the users do with the laptop and the actual specs of the laptop.

 

The claim of not buying a laptop because it's thermal throttles is reasonable. Those computers deliver less performance than what their price should offer

[Princess Luna]

6 minutes ago, mrchow19910319 said:

Is it a bad thing though? If the whole point of thermal throttling is to protect the components itself.

Well duh of course it is bad as you'd want your hardware to work on its full potential WITHOUT having to cap itself to keep temperature on safe levels.

 

Quote

Like i mentioned above, some people have been saying that: "Don't buy a certain brand/model of laptop because they thermal throttle" 

-  I would go as far as saying don't buy gaming laptops altogether, they aren't worth it when the cost is so high, performance still can't match the desktop, if you need gaming to go a console is preferable in my point of view, laptops for work loads with Office and what not  even cheap i5 ones with iGPU can do the trick.

 

[Sauron]

It's a bad thing because you do lose performance compared to what that same cpu could do in ideal conditions. It's even worse in the macbook, where the cpu is meh even at its best and the thermal throttling has been shown to cut its speed in half (at least in the first gen model).

 

Does it affect the user? Yes, because you paid for performance you won't be getting (and incurring into thermal throttling still means the cpu's lifespan is being threatened). Is it still usable? Sure (****depending on workload - if your framerate in a game tanks from 65 to 38 you'll notice, same if your rendering takes 3 hours instead of 2), but that's not a valid excuse given the hefty price of many of these parts. If the cooling can't handle the cpu they should use a lower end one, so the customer knows what performance they can expect before hand.

[MysticalRainXIV]

4 minutes ago, mrchow19910319 said:

<Snip>

 

 

All depends on what you want to do on the laptop. In my opinion more than anything its uncomfortable to have sitting in your lap when its that warm. Generally speaking however, unless the laptop itself was designed to use thermal throttling to cool, such as some mac book airs, any throttling is regarded as less than desireable

[Sauron]

Just now, Princess Cadence said:

f you need gaming to go a console is preferable in my point of view, laptops for work loads with Office and what not  even cheap i5 ones with iGPU can do the trick.

 

Besides nowadays you can play many modern titles decently with the igpu anyway (on low settings, but hey).

[Dackzy]

6 minutes ago, mrchow19910319 said:

SNIP

 

thermal throttling is only a part of the story.

If a part is thermal throttling you won't get the performance you paid for, which is very anti-consumer.

You might not notice the thermal throttling while writing a word doc, but you sure can if you play games or do something intensive. 

 

Now the other part of the story. The hotter a CPU runs the shorter it's lifespan basically becomes, BUT then we have all of the parts around the hot parts and because of it is hard to remove heat in a laptop, then that heat will spread to the other parts in the laptop

[Princess Luna]

5 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Besides nowadays you can play many modern titles decently with the igpu anyway (on low settings, but hey).

Why yes, I see people come here with +1000$ budget some times even as high as 2000$ budget to buy a college or work notebook for workloads  a cheap Acer i5 7200u laptops with 4 to 8gb of ram could perform perfectly fine and every one goes advising ultrabooks and models with i7's and a GTX 1050ti / 1060 which frankly is a waste of money,

 

And I insist that having portable gaming is not all that great, you spend a lot to be able to game decently on a small screen when lets be honest when you are working and studying and every thing else you'll hardly have time to play AAA on the go, myself I only get time to play on the weekends when I'm already home and the desktop is more than sufficient.

 

I think the whole deal with "buy a gaming laptop to have gaming to go for say a lan party and what not" best suits teenagers who still have such free time for it at best and even so I would see nothing wrong bringing a PS4 instead and playing good and old sports, fighter games like capcom vs marvel and naruto ninja storm etc with dual controllers instead.

[MercuryRain]

11 minutes ago, mrchow19910319 said:

(I do not know whether I should put this thread here or under the laptop section.)

 

Okay... I have heard that some people complained about certain laptops (razer's blade, apple's macbooks) thermal throttle when under stress. 

 

Is it a bad thing though? If the whole point of thermal throttling is to protect the components itself.

 

I know that in theory, gpu and cpu will slower their clock speed when temperature are too hot. Therefore make themselves slower.

 

But does it really affect the users?  Can the users tell that "oh noooo! my laptop is insanely slow!" while their laptop's cpu/gpu thermal throttling? 

 

Like i mentioned above, some people have been saying that: "Don't buy a certain brand/model of laptop because they thermal throttle" , is this claim reasonable? Just because under certain circumstances a laptop's cpu will lower its clock speed so we should avoid the laptop all together? 

 

 

 

Whether or not you can feel the throttling really depends on how much the thing actually throttles: the CPU will do whatever it can to not go above 100C.  Once it hits 100C it will dial back performance however much it has to to stay there.  Whether that means you're only getting 98% performance on a laptop where the cooling is just BARELY not adequate, or whether that means you're getting 2% performance because there's no thermal paste underneath the heat sink or the heat sink isn't seated at all.

 

 

Source: I didn't have the cooler mounted on a Pentium when I booted it up and was wondering why the computer was going THAT slow even with a Pentium.  Pulled up temp mon and saw both cores pegged at 100C on idle.

[mrchow19910319]

okay.... let me be more specific.

1. If there is a laptop that ONLY thermal throttles when the cpu temp hit 90C, to cool off the cpu, does this consider bad? 
2. Is there any laptop that won't thermal throttle AT ALL, no matter how much you try to push it (run furmark 24/7 or something...)? 

 

@Dackzy  @Sauron @Princess Cadence

7 minutes ago, MysticalRainXIV said:

Generally speaking however, unless the laptop itself was designed to use thermal throttling to cool,

I thought all of the laptops that thermal throttle are just trying to keep itself cool...........

[mrchow19910319]

14 minutes ago, L.Lawliet said:

 

Its actually a good thing.

And not all people will  run torture software or stress their component so often.

As for will it be noticeable? for me its yes although it depends on what kind of workloads u are doing.

No thats dumb because their mileage may vary, it can be manufacturers defect or maybe they run some kind of torture software to see if its throttling down or they use it for certain workloads that throttle it down.

But For the people who will utilize their laptop to its limit i'd say its important to consider that and avoid that particular model.

 

This is what I thought too. If a laptop is only throttle under super heavy load, (99% of the time it works fine, the temp is fine) then it should be okay... 

But for people do all the heavy lifting on their machine, thermal throttling is a pretty bad news for them... no one wants to get dps  frame drop while they are gaming...

[Princess Luna]

Just now, mrchow19910319 said:

If there is a laptop that ONLY thermal throttles when the cpu temp hit 90C, to cool off the cpu, does this consider bad? 

From a Desktop user point of view, yes it is bad because the CPU started limiting itself which is not desirable, that means whatever workload that it is maxing it will be done slower.

 

1 minute ago, mrchow19910319 said:

Is there any laptop that won't thermal throttle AT ALL, no matter how much you try to push it (run furmark 24/7 or something...)? 

I'm not sure as you can tell I'm no enthusiast towards high end laptops, but some alternatives are much better than others, I personally like the Acer Aspire V Nitro because it looks professional and clean in aesthetics without stupid alien like looks and has a very good cooling system to avoid throttling the best it can.

 

2 minutes ago, mrchow19910319 said:

I thought all of the laptops that thermal throttle are just trying to keep itself cool...........

It is more towards to prevent damage than simply run colder, Intel CPUs usually can run as high as 106Cº before the automatic shut down takes place as hotter than this will damage the transistors.

[Dackzy]

7 minutes ago, mrchow19910319 said:

okay.... let me be more specific.

1. If there is a laptop that ONLY thermal throttles when the cpu temp hit 90C, to cool off the cpu, does this consider bad? 
2. Is there any laptop that won't thermal throttle AT ALL, no matter how much you try to push it (run furmark 24/7 or something...)? 

 

@Dackzy  @Sauron @Princess Cadence

I thought all of the laptops that thermal throttle are just trying to keep itself cool...........

1. well either the CPU throttles at 85c (set by the manufacturer) or the standard 95c. I highly recommend not going above 85c on the CPU at ANY time. Why? Well this is quite simple, after that and we start to go into the area where every single 1c increase is going to matter quite a bit for the lifespan. Also yes

 

2. Yes, basically all clevo laptops with mobile CPUs. AW laptops also run cool if you get one without a heatsink flaw.

 

Thermal throttling is there to keep the damage to a minimum and the 85c is to be even more sure that there aren't going to happen any heat damage because of the CPU.

[Jurrunio]

1 minute ago, mrchow19910319 said:

okay.... let me be more specific.

1. If there is a laptop that ONLY thermal throttles when the cpu temp hit 90C, to cool off the cpu, does this consider bad? 
2. Is there any laptop that won't thermal throttle AT ALL, no matter how much you try to push it (run furmark 24/7 or something...)? 

 

1. Yes. Again, pay money for high end hardware but get mid end performance because of bad cooling is a bad deal

 

2. If it doesn't thermal throttle and it's a gaming laptop, then itself is a good deal. Whether it suits you is another question. My uncle loves playing games, but he is always in business trips. That's why he bought a laptop with a GTX 1070 in it.

If it doesn't thermal throttle because this function is disabled, then that's stupid. It's "computi-cide"

[mrchow19910319]

1 minute ago, Princess Cadence said:

 

okay... thanks... 

[FIXXX]

A week or two ago went to a friend with a huge TV to watch a 4K movie (from a tile). He connected a Macbook Pro (late 2015 model or something like that)

So after a few minutes - the video started stuttering - and continued to do so. The laptop was throttling and the CPU was unable to properly play the video.

[mrchow19910319]

1 minute ago, Dackzy said:

1. well either the CPU throttles at 85c (set by the manufacturer) or the standard 95c. I highly recommend not going above 85c on the CPU at ANY time. Why? Well this is quite simple, after that and we start to go into the area where every single 1c increase is going to matter quite a bit for the lifespan

 

2. Yes, basically all clevo laptops with mobile CPUs. AW laptops also run cool if you get one without a heatsink flaw.

 

Thermal throttling is there to keep the damage to a minimum and the 85c is to be even more sure that there aren't going to happen any heat damage because of the CPU.

I see thanks. 

[Sauron]

4 minutes ago, mrchow19910319 said:

okay.... let me be more specific.

1. If there is a laptop that ONLY thermal throttles when the cpu temp hit 90C, to cool off the cpu, does this consider bad? 
2. Is there any laptop that won't thermal throttle AT ALL, no matter how much you try to push it (run furmark 24/7 or something...)? 

 

@Dackzy  @Sauron @Princess Cadence

I thought all of the laptops that thermal throttle are just trying to keep itself cool...........

1) 90 is still safe, throttling happens at 96 (on intel cpus). It should not reach that temperature. If it does, it's bad design. Many of these reach 100.

Fun fact: imacs also do this despite being desktops.

2) Yes, many don't. However, the ones with a powerful cpu/gpu will often be very large if they have good cooling, which is why razer chose not to care for the sake of looking like a macbook pro.

[MercuryRain]

6 minutes ago, mrchow19910319 said:

 

1. Is there any laptop that won't thermal throttle AT ALL, no matter how much you try to push it (run furmark 24/7 or something...)? 

 

 

My Alienware 13 R3 it would depend...stock, even sitting on the desk with plenty of room to breathe, it would toe the line - got up to 83C and stayed there with like 5 minutes of Intel XTU stress test.  

 

On a -120mV undervolt that went to 67C.

 

So, on a desk, with room to breathe, my AW13R3 will basically never throttle no matter what I throw at it.

 

That changes if it's sitting on my bed and the bottom vents are blocked by my sheets and the rear vents may be blocked by a blanket.

[KenjiUmino]

reasons not to buy a thermal throttling laptop:

 

- you will not get the performance you paid for

- it possibly shortens the lifespan of your laptop

- a thermal throttling laptop is a design failure and failure should not be rewarded

[Sauron]

8 minutes ago, L.Lawliet said:

Well thermal throttling not only affect laptop but it affect desktop as well.

Its actually a good thing.

And not all people will  run torture software or stress their component so often.

As for will it be noticeable? for me its yes although it depends on what kind of workloads u are doing.

No thats dumb because their mileage may vary, it can be manufacturers defect or maybe they run some kind of torture software to see if its throttling down or they use it for certain workloads that throttle it down.

But For the people who will utilize their laptop to its limit i'd say its important to consider that and avoid that particular model.

 

The thermal throttling feature is a "good thing" because it saves the cpu in case of emergency, but it should be just that - an emergency. A cooler failure. Something unaccounted for. Not the way the machine was designed to run. If a laptop throttles regularly, it's NOT a good thing, it's bad design.

[mrchow19910319]

1 minute ago, FIXXX said:

A week or two ago went to a friend with a huge TV to watch a 4K movie (from a tile). He connected a Macbook Pro (late 2015 model or something like that)

So after a few minutes - the video started stuttering - and continued to do so. The laptop was throttling and the CPU was unable to properly play the video.

mine hits 90 or less when connected to a 1440p external display provided I am watching 1080p video on twitch.tv... 

So... no surprise that your friends one could not handle 4k video on a tv. 

[Dackzy]

1 minute ago, mrchow19910319 said:

I see thanks. 

if you want a longer list then PM, Pendragon, D2ultima and me OR make a thread in the laptop subforum. Plus those two guys also knows a LOT about laptops, in some areas more than me...

[MercuryRain]

Just now, L.Lawliet said:

Tbh i never seen a gaming laptop got thermal throttled

 

 

Razer Blade

[mrchow19910319]

3 minutes ago, CerberusLabrat said:

 

My Alienware 13 R3 it would depend...stock, even sitting on the desk with plenty of room to breathe, it would toe the line - got up to 83C and stayed there with like 5 minutes of Intel XTU stress test.  

 

On a -120mV undervolt that went to 67C.

 

So, on a desk, with room to breathe, my AW13R3 will basically never throttle no matter what I throw at it.

 

That changes if it's sitting on my bed and the bottom vents are blocked by my sheets and the rear vents may be blocked by a blanket.

Like I said above, Mine only run super hot when connect to a 1440p monitor and that monitor is playing 1080p video from twitch.tv full screen..

If I use the laptop alone, cpu temp is at 60 something, if connect to a monitor, temp will be at 75+/-.. just for reference.