Low CPU clock speed under heavy load

[MarcellTóth]

Hi! I recently bought a HP 14-cf0007nx  for some light 3D design and some very light gaming. I know it's not what it's meant for but I seen videos that the RX 530 can run some games. However I noticed that under heavy load my CPU (I5 8250U) limits it's clock speed to around 800-1000 mhz which is below the base clock. I can actually see on the tests I run that the performance is way below what it should be. Somtimes restaring helps a little but it gets back to low speeds after a while. I tried checking the temps it look normal around 70°C max, I replaced the charger with a beefier oem charger (It helped a little but it's still doing it), Tried fiddling with windows power management, updating BIOS, updating drivers, and it gets progressively worst the more load you put on it, and nothing really seems to work. Doesn anyone has ever encountered this issue? If yes what was the solution?

[Jupitero]

Hello.

The base clock for i5-8250U is 800Mhz, as stated in Intel specs.

The performance is determined by the TDP (Thermal Design Power) limits HP has set in the BIOS firmware. i5-8250U can handle max. 25 watts of power, but in real life the cooling and power delivery of the computer will determine the limits.

You can alter these settings (within some limitations) with Intel Extreme Tuning Utility, a free download from Intel. Once installed, select Advanced Tuning and adjust the Turbo Boost power settings.

Intel CPU's have several Power Limit (PL), the short term PL1 and long term PL2, named Turbo Boost (Short) Power Max limits. You can raise both of them to 25 watts to achieve the highest performance (and consequently highest fan speeds). You can then monitor the CPU performance and possible throttling on the bottom of the same XTU page.

Also change the Windows power settings to Best Performance.

[MarcellTóth]

Thank you it helped a lot, now it's working as it should and temps are not so bad either.

[TzortzisG · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately XTU, the free utility by Intel to improve the performance of its CPUs......has completely dropped support for anything other than its ridiculously overpriced (completely) unlocked processors.

Any attempt at installing on "unsupported" CPUs ends with an error code. For up to 10th gen Intels, older versions can be used. Specifically XTU v6.5.2.40. For this old 8th gen Intel, the last "good" known version of XTU should be used 6.4.1.23. Generally speaking we have all transitioned to the third party application Throttlestop.

[MarcellTóth]

Thank you I noticed it, I did itt with throttlestop.

[Jupitero]

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@TzortzisG wrote:

Unfortunately XTU, the free utility by Intel to improve the performance of its CPUs......has completely dropped support for anything other than its ridiculously overpriced (completely) unlocked processors.

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Not quite. I am using XTU just fine with my locked i7-1280p on my HP laptop. Overclocking is disabled as expected, but I can change the Power Levels just fine.

[TzortzisG]

That's nice!

In that case, I have to agree that you are lucky enough to be privy to special "unlocked" versions of the XTU program that don't have the installer check the CPU. For the rest of us (Plebeians), the known msi/DISABLEPLATFORMCHECK workaround has to be applied on recent versions to even get started with the program.

So......Skål!

MarcellTóth, you should know that 6th gen Intel HP laptops (and higher) have secondary throttling schemes implemented by the laptop designers, so as to avoid overheating issues. These usually involve the use of Embedded Controllers to throttle both the CPU and the dGPU when they are used heavily at the same time. Unfortunately these secondary limits can't be lifted with mainstream programs -only programs like RWEverything can access these registers and change them, at the very real risk of completely bricking your system. However, you should (if you haven't already) visit the Throttlestop forum where Unclewebb will help you in doing some testing with the limits and finding the best balance for your system.

[Jupitero]

My version is the latest public version, nothing privy about it:

[TzortzisG]

Sweet! 👍

This is the original source of the workaround if anyone wants to take a stab at installing recent XTU versions on "locked" CPUs: kallelilja switch (2018). This is an old tweak but will still do its job and disable any installer checks......