XPS 15 9550 Throttling

[Jarlathmd]

XPS 15 (i5 32GB-1TB ram) is throttling at constant 34 percent and struggling at even the most basic tasks. Seems to have started suddenly and have no idea what brought it on.

[Jim Coates]

On some of the XPS models there were reports of WavesMaxx using 30% cpu. Don't know if that would be relevant to your issue.

[Jarlathmd]

Thanks for responding, I have noticed some audio issues but it looks like 64 percent of the CPU just isn't being used (in Task Manager screen) and it doesn't increase in higher work loads, and I can't see WavesMax running so I don't think that's the problem.
Jarlath

[forbesjon2]

I have the exact same issue with my laptop. I still cant find a fix for it but heres what I found out

• Its not a thermal issue because I ran a test with realtemp active while doing "intensive" tasks (kind of hard to do when your cpu doesn't go over 34%) and it hit 47 degrees C max.

• I tried what this guy said (uninstall and disable DPTF) but that didn't work either.. even after making sure the DPTF did not reinstall after restarting the computer (that did take a while to do)
• I made sure that the computer is in high performance mode and the power settings are not throttling the CPU
• I also tried what these people did (disable the intel speedstep function in the BIOS) and that didn't help either.
• this site mentions two types of throttling.. CPU and VRM throttling which both don't make sense in our case because we know that the CPU is not overheating because of the realTemp tests and the throttling is at a constant percentage no matter how long the computer was on so the VRM would have to overheat within the matter of seconds

maybe its the BIOS update, ill do a system restore and see what happens. I don't remember if this was an issue before

[forbesjon2]

I tried installing an older version of the BIOS and that didn't seem to work. After some research however this problem seems a lot more common than I initially thought if you google "laptop throttling at 0.78ghz"

anyway I found something that works in my case. the problem seems to be coming from something called BC PROCHOT.. They go more in depth about what this does here but the solution is to either open up the back of your laptop, unplug & reconnect the battery, then dust everything out (which works in some cases). Or to install and run an application called ThrottleStop which disables BC PROCHOT.