Laptop undervolting

willhub

willhub

willhub

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Just wonderibg if anyone else has tried this ?

I've got quite good results with my laptop at -0.145mv on the core and the GTX1070 running at 1911MHz at 0.875V, overall a reduction of between 15 to 20 degrees and a GPU that can now sit at 1911MHZ without throttling and a CPU that sits at 3.4GHz solid.

Seems very worthwhile and improved the experience of using the laptop and performance no end.
 
willhub said:
Just wonderibg if anyone else has tried this ?

I've got quite good results with my laptop at -0.145mv on the core and the GTX1070 running at 1911MHz at 0.875V, overall a reduction of between 15 to 20 degrees and a GPU that can now sit at 1911MHZ without throttling and a CPU that sits at 3.4GHz solid.

Seems very worthwhile and improved the experience of using the laptop and performance no end.
Click to expand...

i will be looking into it over the weekend.

what do you use to stress test? and how long for? stability is more important than me than eeking out the lowest possible volts. over time CPU usually degrade so i tend to over compensate for that too. so will be looking for modest undervolt on cpu only as gpu is on board.
 
I used heaven Benchmark for gpu and built in one in you z. And there is one on throttle stop but can use prime 95. Also just used laptop normally and played games.

I'm going to make another profile in MSI Afterburner to try boost to 2000MHz reliably, can't do this without the voltage curve due to it overboosting and crashing out but I think it's doable but only will use that curve when using 4K
 
Compare your results undervolted with normal volts at a similar clock speed. Pascal is funny and can be stable at a lower voltage but loose performance as secondary clock speeds drop
 
Yeah just realised that performance is worse compared to stock (using timespy Benchmark), just sticks to 1700 and won't use the higher speeds, and it's not limited by temp.
 
I'll be doing this with an identical setup to the OP - laptop with GTX 1070 and 7700HQ (Kaby Lake) CPU, albeit in a Medion Erazer shell.

I plan to use a combination of XTU and MSI Afterburner to try and achieve the best performance in games (i.e. most likely undervolt the CPU to reduce the thermal load on the heatsink and allow the GPU to stretch its legs).
 
OK, laptop has arrived and the tweaking has begun!

On the CPU, it seems pretty good - I think I can go as low as -160mW to stop thermal and power throttling, which increases the CPU clock to the max (while running both Small FFT Prime95 and Kombustor to ensure maximum heat load). Without undervolting, it tops out at 3.08 Ghz. With the undervolt applied, it's basically no longer limited and sits happily at 3.38 GHz (pretty much the max for 4 cores I believe).

However, I'm struggling with the GPU.

At present, it maxes out at ~1500 Mhz (hitting a power limit).

I *think* I'm supposed to adjust the voltage curve, but struggling to find a decent guide on how to use it (MSI Afterburner). I understand the power limit is fixed on the laptop GPUs, so my only option is to undervolt, right?

Off to google "voltage curve MSI Afterburner"
 
OK first impressions are that the GPU core isn't that great, but the GPU memory is insane!

I can run the memory all the way to the limit (+1000), but it produces some artifacts in Unigine. +750 MHz seems to be perfect. However, the higher I push the memory, the lower the core boosts. Must be a power limit.

However, the GPU is a tricky beast as it's constantly hitting a power limit.

I believe default is 1645 MHz, but in Furmark (Kombustor), it only hits about 1500 MHz. In Unigine (Heaven), it sits much higher (Unigine reports 2000 MHz+, but I think that's a snapshot during a peak).

I hate the way the voltage and frequency is constantly changing. I'll play with the voltage curve in MSI Afterburner, as I understand I can lock it to certain voltage / frequency points to help understand its limits.

CPU seems very stable at -150 mW (multiple Unigine runs), which keeps it happy at maximum 34x multiplier for 4 cores without any throttling. It's VERY close to the thermal limit (about 96 'C), so I think some dissasembly and thermal paste might help...

Default settings give Unigine score of ~3300 in default settings (High, 2560 x 1080). Fully overclocked give ~3700, which is probably about the best I can expect.

Still, my old laptop gets ~900, so a 4x performance increase is pretty sweet!

I'll see if playing with the memory timings can squeeze any more out of it... although I have my concerns about being able to reset the "BIOS" if I go too far...
 
I tested my memory overclocks about +700, but I find +500 is just right in terms of performance boost, I believe above that it looses performance due to memory correction even though it might not artifact. In Kkingdom Come deliverance I see a boost of 1850 usually constant. But to be honest it's hit and miss with games, for example Cities Skylines it just sits at 1444 and doesn't budge.

I've tried to limit my GPU to about 0.970V at 1900MHz, I don't believe it's stable and needs a bit more voltage. But it's such a faff I don't feel trying to push higher than 1900 is worth it.
 
OK, well I DO NOT recommend trying to tighten the memory timings on this system. :D

Currently, it's CAS 17 but even lowering to CAS 16 results in no POST, so I had to dissasemble the thing and pop the keyboard out to unplug the CMOS battery!

Supposedly, holding Fn + D while powering on should reset the BIOS, but that didn't work.

On the plus point, I've now seen the guts of the thing and can confirm it's got space for another M2 SSD and a 2.5" SATA. I've added another M2 to it and I might repaste the CPU and GPU. I'm power-limited on the GPU, but sometimes thermal throttling kicks in on the CPU, so hopefully a repaste will help...

It's also got a Clevo serial etc. inside, so I know it's a rebranded Clevo.
 
Very customisable, my MSI only has 2 slots, both full, both M2 COMBI slots I think. Shame as it clearly supports more in the bios.
 
Any progress made on using MSI afterburner to undervolt a bit?
I'm looking at doing this just to get the GPU to run a little cooler but I've never used it before.
I think I've managed to drop my CPU temps by about 6-7deg using a -0.130 undervolt so far.

Did you repaste the laptop also?
 
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