Dell G7 7700 - severe frame rate drops and GPU throttling

You have my support if you proceed with this. I have not been able to use my Dell G7 "gaming" laptop for anything other than web browsing for the past 6 months. This is ridiculous and I am so frustrated with Dell.

Someone spending 2000 on a laptop should have to do this. Dell is a big company with teams of people that can fix things. the end user needs their computer function for games or work.not waste countless hours figuring out **bleep** because of a hardware software issue

Since I removed my cooling pad and only use the laptop on a level surface, I have not had any instances of frame rate dropping. The laptop works very well, it is definitely pushing the limits of power in a small package and does run hot, but performance is very good according to several different types of benchmarking software.

My first tech support experience, initiated through “chat” was horrible but the second experience when I called, was awesome. There were firmware updates applied by the tech that had not been visible to me on the support site before despite looking everywhere, but the main fix was the 1.5 version BIOS. Before this version, it didn’t matter if the unit was flat or if you used a cooling pad or not it still throttled, but with 1.5 and no cooling pad - no problems. 

I may be one of the lucky ones. I was initially in a huge panic when this laptop didn’t work. It was a lot of money in Canada, and the nicest thing I ever bought for myself. I wanted the best video card I could afford in the smallest package and I got that, eventually. 

Be patient with tech support they are good people doing difficult work, if you get the right person you will probably get things sorted out. 

It is unfortunate that all tech hardware and software seems to get sold while still in ‘beta’ and companies rely on customers like us to shake out the bugs ourselves. They should really do this before advertising and selling them but this is not a problem unique to Dell by any means.

Hi,

I'm glad to know that the issue is fixed. Do let me know if there is anything else that I can assist you with.

Regards,

Gopal

I had exactly the same issue with major FPS drops in 3D high graphics games. Even with the latest 1.5 bios FPS still drops from 130 to 30 - not really acceptable in a laptop with a 2070 Super GPU.  3 calls with tech support did not resolve it. Tried every setting available on the laptop and no fix. Used MSI Afterburner to lower the power curve for the GPU by 300 mhz and that actually worked.

Saw the latest post here and how it was fixed by using the laptop on a level surface and tried it.   

I actually had placed the laptop on a fancy laptop cooling stand which put it at about a 20 degree angle.  Propping two DVD cases under the front of the stand made it level.  Launched my favorite game and frickin amazing! NO FPS DROPS or GPU THROTTLING without undervolting the GPU (via MSI Afterburner).

Still having trouble understanding why this works but it does. Somehow when this laptop is used at an angle either a sensor or the fans don't operate correctly.  Level the laptop out and they do.  

Thank you for this fix! It has worked me, tested for hours and though it gets warm - no FPS drops or throttling after hours of gameplay. 

WOW...I'm astounded to read the things people are having to do to get their laptop just to play games. Flat level surfaces and no cooling pads etc.? No, no! Don't bandaid the problem by adapting your life around it. Change the machine - this can all be done with software! I have been running flawlessly since, in all temperatures and all games and at all angles, with or without cooling pad! The way this laptop should be. Have a read of this sister thread, as many answers are contained within it: G7 7500 RTX 2070 Drops Framerate - Page 9 - Dell Community

In short, the frame drop gets triggered by overheat from the CPU and/or GPU, putting it into a sort of limp mode for protection. Stop them from overheating in the first place:

1. Get MSI Afterburner. Look up how to unlock undervolting the GPU. Set GPU voltage at 0.8V constant. This will automatically bring down the clock ceiling to 1590mhz instead of 1800+mhz which the GPU was never designed to operate at. Ensure Afterburner says it is running at 1590mhz and 800mV. Run Alienware Command Centre with the Balanced profile and this combination will already fix the frame drop issue for most people. You can go one step further if you are still getting problems:

2. The default profiles in Alienware Command Centre are not really appropriate for gaming, even "Performance". They either lack the fan cooling (Balanced, Quiet) or give you too little or too much power (Cool, Performance). Create your own profile for gaming! Under the Fusion tab, click on the Thermal Profiles section and create a new profile called "Game". Then over in the CPU fan and System Fan monitors, you want to click on the Advanced tab for each of these, where you can set a custom fan speed. By default these will be set to "auto-managed". Click on "offset" and set both fans to 80%. I find this to be a good balance between fan noise and cooling and it's easy enough to change back to "Balance" profile in Alienware Command and the standard voltage level in MSI Afterburner when you are not gaming.

I doubt anyone will have frame drop issues after doing the above, if done correctly and running directly off the power adaptor (battery mode seems to detune the performance). It's unfortunate we have to do it, but I can now use my laptop as it was intended without issue (I have been playing games all day in the Australian summer heat!). Keep in mind, these are still conservative numbers for fan speed and GPU performance so very safe to run for many hours.

I've got a brand new G7 7700 here with the i7-10750H and a GeForce RTX 2070, also saw severe framerate throttling in games and in benchmarks. I could see the drop primarily in the CPU speed, but also audibly via the fans cutting out despite having them set to the Performance Thermal profile.

Before I begin: BIOS 1.6.0, all Windows Updates, all Dell Software Drivers installed.

Here's how I reproduce the problem:

1. Put the laptop flat on a desk
2. Open Alienware Command Center
3. Set the Thermal Profile to "Performance" and the power profile to "High Performance"
4. Run any benchmark or stress test (Prime95, Dell Support Assist CPU Test, etc)
5. Watch the CPU Speed, it stays up around 3.0 - 4.0Ghz without dropping over time
6. Physically lift up the laptop or otherwise move it gently
7. Leave the benchmarks running
8. Immediately observe a massive CPU Speed drop to 1.0 - 1.9Ghz
9. Return the laptop to a flat desk
10. Wait a few seconds to a few minutes, and watch the CPU Speed recover to 3.0 - 4.0Ghz and stay there

This set of steps also works for major 3D Games. I could watch both the CPU Speed and FPS drop significantly whenever the laptop is lifted or moved, instantly.

So, I set about trying to find a solution to this movement throttling issue.

I ran Ubuntu Linux 20.04 from a stick drive, and started up stress-ng on all 12 logical cores and monitored the CPU speed. This brought the CPU to 100% utilization and the fans to 100%. I let it run for 30 minutes, picked up and laptop, put it down, several times, never seeing a CPU speed drop, it stayed between 3.9 - 4.2 Ghz the entire time and the fans never faltered.

This lead me to believe that this is a software or device in Windows 10 that doesn't trigger the throttling in Linux -- just a hunch, but worth investigating before returning the laptop.

After some digging, I came upon this device in Windows 10: Intel Integrated Sensor Solution Driver. From what I can tell, it handles acceleration, movement, etc. 

Now, I'm not advising anyone to disable this device, because I'm not 100% sure why it throttles the CPU, and it might well damage your machine if you disable it. I would love Dell to weight in on why it's throttling the CPU. Either way, when I disable that device in Windows 10 Device Manager - I have yet to see any form of CPU throttling or FPS drop whether gaming, benchmarking or anything else, device on lap, desk, cooling pad, etc with Intel Integrated Sensor Solution Driver disabled.

Dell, is this a matter of a driver update that could fix the issue?

I hope that Dell responds with more clarification as to why this movement/acceleration/level basedthrottling happens.

This thread is so sad. Sorry to say but this is last dell HW ever. Why is it setup so badly is beyond any though i can muster. All of the fixes all us have posted here are only response to dells failure to deliver a product that they have advertised and we have bought. Getting a laptop one expects the laptop to just simply work the way it was build. I will not go in to saying how well my acer predatow works and how well it is build. I have bought dell to have a decent looking laptop with good specs. Boy was this a big mistake. The only thing that makes sense, including no support what so ever, the obvious suggestions not taken in to consideration. Which by the way demonstrates the lack of actual experience with the HW a is that all the overheating is done on purpose to make the laptop die after warranty, but i hope that is not the case. In any case please do not sell HW that you are not capable to build well.

To others that couldnt solve it yet...try this

- I could did a lot of tests on my Dell G7 7588 with a i7 8750h and GTX 1050 TI after a lot of search for a solution for the throttling and overheat issue that was driving me crazy when i was playing games. I will share with you my perceptives and possible solution for each one of two points

- First of all i want to clear that the tests was realized on a brazilian summer, when days are very hot arriving until 35°C in my city.

- Second I could noticed that the issue starts when GPU temperature was above 77°C ( i dont know why but if the GPU temperature was below 77°C, the CPU temperature even arriving in 100°C did not drop its clock to 800mhz...)

- As i spoiled above, the throttling starts when CPU drops its clock to 800mhz to down its temperature after arrived to between 96°C~100°C

- The first (possible) solution was disabling intel turbo boost. By doing that, the CPU temperature keeps between 80°C~90°C e throttling has gone. But in this case, the processor clock drops from 4.1ghz (overclocked) to 2.2ghz (its base). In my case i didnt notice any changes in gaming by doing that...(i usually play MMORPG)

- The Second (possible) solution (to users who dont want to disable intel turbo boost) was installing Asus Tweek 2 and blocking GPU temperature to maximum of 74°C. By doing that obviosly the GPU usage was increased and the clock starts vary to keep the temperature defined by asus tweek. This solved the throttling but did not solve the CPU temperature (continued arriving 100°C but this time, without reducing its clock to 800mhz). The intel i7 8750H specs says thats 100°C CPU temperature are safe but i dont recommend that...we know that a lot of other components could not support that and i prefere to use a CPU temperature known as safe

- A lot of people says to repaste processor but i could note thats a hard work and the result its about 1°C~3°C diference from original... so i dont recommend that for hot weather like here...

The insanity some of you people are going to with continued testing...even after a solution has been found...if you would just read my post at the bottom of page 4, you’ll see a perfect solution to this problem and a bit of an explanation!

Quick question on how to unlock undervolting the GPU using MSI Afterburner. Is this possible to do with all RTX2070 cards and does it require BIOS upgrade to get access?

Thank you.

I cannot use overclocking on my g7 7700 its locked. No tuning at all on Alienware command center. So this wont work for newer 7700 bought aftet the new year.