Venue 11 pro i5-4300y Throttling

Are you sure you aren't still getting the thermal throttling? Throttlestop is telling me that is exactly what is happening, and running CoreTemp at the same time tells me that the power use drops to 6 watts.  Unfortunately, I can't run Intel XTU because it hardlocks my device after installing it, and I have to do a system restore from safe mode to uninstall it. I do not believe any of the throttling has changed as a result of doing the grub setup_var procedure.  My bios is A14.  Both GPU and CPU start throttling after passing 60 C still, and I'd love it to stop.

Pretty sure it isn't thermal throttling - before the mod it was throttling to about 450mhz GPU and 850mhz CPU under the XTU stress test.    Since the edit, the GPU barely drops below 750mhz and the lowest I've seen the CPU go is about 1.15ghz (it hits 2.1ghz initially, then fluctuates between 1.15ghz and about 1.7ghz).  My guess is we're looking at a TDP limit, as thermal throttling didn't really kick in until temps were at about 66/67c before the mod and voltage drop. 

[update] Just tested with baredit - the CPU stayed at 1.6ghz throughout the XTU test, but temperatures hit 70c and the GPU dropped to 200mhz almost immediately, so it's not recommended for gaming etc. 

From my testing, I've seen a real world difference in gaming and photo editing by: (i) dropping the voltage offsets in XTU; (ii) doing the bios mod; and (iii) setting the GPU to performance mode in the Intel Control Panel (under 3D and power). 

I have done some experimentation and found out a few things.

1. The setup_var really just unlocks things, in addition to increasing the throttling temperature threshold.

2. The throttling is entirely Package Power related. That is for both the CPU and onboard GPU. Short term power goes up to 11 watts (which shows up as 2.0 ghz for the cores) and 6 watts long term.

3. In order to circumvent the Package Power limitation, I did the BAR edit procedure. For this to work, the following must occur:

The computer must be fully charged (Plugged In, Not Charging) and on High Performance power setting

In BAREdit, complete the change to FEB159A0 (memory address) to set 00000000 to all fields.

Put the computer to sleep with the top right button on the device.

Wait at least 3 seconds. Then press the button to wake it up.

In BARE edit, re-read FEB159A0 - you can see it has changed back to the non 00000000 settings. Change them back to 00000000.

Using Throttlestop 7 beta 3, under TPL, set the TDP level to 0, set the PP0 Power to Lock, Clamp, and 8 watts (long term). Set Package Power Limit (long) to 8 watts as well. (I am recommending 8 watts because I found (have read) that 9 watts can sometimes trigger thermal throttling from the GPU due to exceeding the higher 84C setting we set with setup_var at the beginning.

Turn on Throttlestop and run the TS bench (1024). You should note that TDP throttling is minimized and the CPU will work up to 8 watts.

You can then run whatever application you wanted higher performance for. There will still be throttling to get to 8 watts, but that is still 33% more performance power. I believe any higher package power levels will require improved CPU cooling, but Throttlestop still gives you some room to undervolt the CPU and thereby increase the room the GPU has to stretch within the power limit. Apparently future versions of throttlestop will add more voltages to play around with for the Haswell processor.

I should note that most of this procedure comes from a dedicated thread on the Notebookreviews forums ( you can look up venue 11 core i5 overclock, although this isn't an overclock).

Good luck.

Thanks - that's very helpful.  Does this mean that you have to redo BAR-Edit every time you reboot? 

I can't speak for the method he's utilizing, but if you're able to use XTU, there's no need to use the baredit program at all.   Just do the BIOS mods, start up XTU and make whatever changes you want.  Just keep in mind that you'll have to do the sleep cycle trick on every reboot (and make sure XTU is running to make the changes), and also anytime the charging status changes.  It won't allow you to mod the TDP while charging, but it works under all other circumstances.   The design spec on the 4300y is 11.5 watts for the package (and 100C on the chip) and I have mine set to 11 without issue.  Additionally, I doubt the 84C poses any problems.  I've not played with ThrottleStop so I don't know the equivalent settings, but setting the Turbo Boost Power Max to 11 in XTU allows the package to dynamically allocate power between the GPU/CPU.  Just having the headroom seems to help quite a bit.  I also undervolted the cache/CPU both by -55mV which seems to help lower idle temps and may or may not help at higher temps under load.  YMMV on stability, of course, but you can't do any harm by undervolting unlike overclocking.  XTU has a watchdog service so if you back yourself into a corner, it will reset everything to the defaults on a hard reboot. 

Thanks - I noticed that the BAR-Edit settings definitely don't stick on reboot.  The XTU settings do (on mine at least) and load in the background via the service. 

I've done a bit of testing with 3DMark.  Using the XTU method I score about 22,000 in Ice Storm (that's with a -55.66mV offset on the core and -50.78mV on the cache and GPU).  With Throttlestop, I score about 16,000 (that's with the CPU at 1.6ghz, TDP at 9w).    I'm at a bit of a loss to explain it - in XTU the CPU clock varies from about 1.16 - 1.7ghz (mostly staying at the 1.16ghz end), but Throttlestop is more or less locked at 1.6ghz.  According to GPUZ, the graphics core stays at 800mhz under Throttlestop, but from the difference in results I have big doubts about that. 

The grub_var method is somewhat permanent, from I entered it once months ago I haven't needed to again. I think a bios update may remove it tho

Has anyone been successful at and/or tried hard coding PL1?  Nothing I do seems to have any affect and it would be nice to just set it to 11W in the BIOS and forget it.

Would this work on a 7130 with the i3 4020y? I don't expect the same results but the i3 suffers from the same crippling power throttling which makes even civilisation V on minimum settings at 1366x768 unplayable. It starts off at a very high fps for a few seconds then drops down as the throttling kicks in.

this worked perfectly for me once I figured out it doesn't work with the battery kb. Thanks for the work guys

I'm trying to replicate on my Acer w700 but I'm lost get the variables. Did you start with a doc like this? https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9950356/IDS.txt

Hi, thanks for replying.

You might be right but when I first bought it, it could run Civ at medium settings at 1366x768 absolutely fine. Now, after having updated the bios a few times, it's virtually unplayable at any setting. My only guess is they have ramped up the throttling a bit to save power. It's a bit irrelevant to me though as I have a keyboard case with the built in battery. I have already undervolted quite a bit which gives me an extra 50mhz or so of GPU but performance is very poor.

I would like to give the boot file thing a try, but I have a question: Where is this X:\efi\boot ? I can't find it anywhere.

Thanks for the help.

You need to create a folder called efi on a usb drive and drop the boot file in there.  X = whatever drive letter your USB drive has.

Once you've made the bios edits, you should notice a good improvement in your voltages in XTU (from memory, it does little to nothing without the bios edits).  Remember to also set your power profile to high performance in control panel, and configure you graphics settings for performance in the Intel control panel. 

Mod works great. Using the IntelBurnTestV2 to measure performance, my Venue went from 12 GFlops to 27 GFlops.

Has anyone had luck with adjusting the fan trip point. The mods.txt makes note of addresses 0x1ac and 0x1ad as being Active trip points for fan speed. Setting these values have no effect. I've noticed the fan start up at about 57C and get higher at around mid 60s. Maybe another address needs to be set to unlock the fan trip points?

One other question. Address 0x39 default value is 0x00 so why is everyone setting it to 0x00? Is this a typo, should it be set to something else?

Thanks,

Hi,

I tried to do the edits just now and although each one gave a message that was something like 'GUID does not match expected GUID, taking it nethertheless' it showed the default and the new value. 

However, the power is still limited to 6W. I changed all the variables in the second post but it hasn't changed at all. I have also tried reapplying all the settings but the readouts show they were already changed.

Edit: I have tried changing Turbo Boost Power Max in XTU but it has no effect. Since I have an i3 I suspect this is because Turbo Boost is disabled. Is there any way I can increase the power limit from 6W without turbo boost? Also I have no High Performance Profile only Dell and Balanced.

Edit II: I managed to enable the high performance profile using a guide online but I am still unable to break past the 6W barrier. I downloaded Throttlestop 7 but I accidentally clicked lock on the TDP Level Control and now I can not unlock it or change anything. I have tried deleting all the files I have for Throttlestop and downloading it again but it is still locked off.

ORStoner,

Here's the web post that most of the info here was pulled from. Here they talk more about the i3.

http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/threads/dell-venue-11-pro-i5-overclocked.65020

The BIOS settings are only a way to unlock and adjust limits. XTU is used to increase the wattage. You have to be on battery power not connected to travel keyboard or plugged in at 100% charge and not charging. Then and only then you put the device to sleep and then wake up and it will then use the increased wattage setting and increased temperature setting. If you unplug the Venue and plug it back in the wattage goes back to 6, but all you need to do is sleep the device and wake it up and you are good to go. The i3 needs an extra registry setting to change the way it sleeps and you will find that in the article.