XPS 15 9570 GPU low core clock speed

Question

I have just gotten my new XPS 15 9570 recently. While playing LoL, I have recognized unreasonably low framerates. Looking into it, I updated to the newest drivers, BIOS and everything through Dell's Support Assist. I also made sure my power setting is at Best Performance, as well as making the Nvidea dedicated GPU as the default GPU in the Nvidea's control panel settings, but the issue persists.

I installed GPU-Z, and checked the GTX1050Ti's sensor readings while running LoL. I was surprised to find that the GPU's core clock speed was only at 139MHz. The dedicated GPU is certainly running while playing the game, since the dedicated GPU load is at 90% as seen on GPU-Z. The GPU temperature is also at an uncomfortable 90 degrees, so perhaps it's severely thermal throttling? Same thing is seen running FurMark benchmark.

I have ran the Dell's hardware checks, and the result says no issues found.

Does anyone else have this issue with their XPS 15's GPU while running other games or bench mark tests?

Roel_ · Answer

-duplicate reply deleted-

Roel_ · Answer

Hi,

Exactly the same issue here. Dell support apparently doesn't know anything about this (I called them today after trying to solve it myself for over a week).

Sometimes it works at a higher clock speed but most of the time it's severely downclocked at 135 Mhz or in the 400-500 Mhz range... even with benchmarks like FurMark or 3D Mark. I have found soms ways to sort of force the GPU into a higher performing mode temporarily:

1) Disable and enable the graphics card driver in device manager. It will give you a small time-windows to start a game or other 3D application while the normal (or at least higher) clock speeds are enabled.

2) Use GPU-Z to 'dump' the video card BIOS. This will fail but it temporarily disables and then re-enables the video card driver with less clicks than option 1)

3) Put a workload on the CPU with any CPU stresstest (e.g. Intel Extreme Tuning utility), resulting in a same short GPU performance window, until the fans of the laptop stop (well that is my guess) and the GPU down clocks again.

Alternatively you can keep starting/closing the software you want the GPU to work in as often as needed for the higher GPU clock to kick in. Restarting the notebook can also work for a very short time frame.

Basically my 9570 is a worthless piece of junk for any demanding graphical applications that don't stress the CPU enough, until Dell recognises that this problem does even exist and perhaps will start work on a fix. In it's current state the Intel GPU is probably faster for many things than the dedicated 1050 TI Max-Q.

It doesn't look that this can be solved in software so far. Most likely it's a (custom) GPU BIOS or something in the EC (embedded controller) which takes care of power management on this notebook.

... and just so that you won't have to.. I've recovered the recovery image on the SSD multiple times (and experimented with different drivers), downloaded the recovery image from the Dell website and used that as a start to work from and did a normal clean Windows 10 installation to work from. If you've found any form of workable solution or have usable feedback from Dell, please share it with me.

Thanks, Roel

Nitish Gupta · Answer

Hi I have the same problem, in games fps drops are very annoying and happen often to like 20fps in csgo. Even undervolting the gpu doesnt help. In HW info it shows that the gpu doesnt go above 0.7Volts which is veerrryyyy low and It should be able to handle at least 1V and run at speeds of up to 1500mHz but instead it runs at 1044Mhz locked for a short amount of time and then immeadiately downclocks to 200mHz and gpu hits 74°C which is the temperature limit for the gpu in the xps 15 9570, cpu clock speeds are also throttling to 1.5Ghz is games like csgo and temps are over 90°C. Dell doesnt have any help for me, thermal design and service

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XPS 15 9570 GPU low core clock speed

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