Checking if raising the TDP limit from 15 to 30 Watts is secure for a laptop.
Checking if raising the TDP limit from 15 to 30 Watts is secure for a laptop.
I own an 11th Gen i5 laptop and I’ve heard a YouTube reviewer mention he boosted his benchmarked performance with a basic tweak in the BIOS. He turned on the Turbo GT frequency and adjusted the power limits for TDP to 30W and 25W. He notes this change comes at the cost of shorter battery life.
My machine already had Turbo GT enabled, so I didn’t need to make that adjustment, but my power settings are currently set at 15W and 25W.
Questions:
- What distinguishes Power 1 from Power 2?
- Is it safe to raise the power limits?
- Will this actually improve performance? He demonstrated a benchmark jump, but in practice would it just cause throttling?
Thanks!
TDP is a poor metric. It's a vague way to estimate heat production and power usage, but should never be used in the context of overclocking. There are 2 things that should be monitored: voltage and temperature. Since this is a locked chip, voltage is probably not going to be a problem. But since it's a laptop, heat will be. He was reporting very high temps (73c in gaming, and 89c in Cinebench). What makes this more alarming is that these look to be CPU package temps, not core temps which are probably higher. There's a pretty good chance that chip was bumping up against its TJ max of 100c in CInebench. Even if the chip survives this abuse, the thermal cycles will cause premature wear of everything else in the chassis.
I understand, but I'm open to trying it if it's safe and could improve performance. Since I'm often connected, unless the battery drops significantly, it seems like a reasonable compromise. I've shared the YouTube link above showing the before and after comparisons. Keep in mind that in his setup the turbo was off, which might have been an error since it should typically be left on to explain the increase.
TDP is a poor metric. It's a vague way to estimate heat production and power usage, but should never be used in the context of overclocking. There are 2 things that should be monitored: voltage and temperature. Since this is a locked chip, voltage is probably not going to be a problem. But since it's a laptop, heat will be. He was reporting very high temps (73c in gaming, and 89c in Cinebench). What makes this more alarming is that these look to be CPU package temps, not core temps which are probably higher. There's a pretty good chance that chip was bumping up against its TJ max of 100c in CInebench. Even if the chip survives this abuse, the thermal cycles will cause premature wear of everything else in the chassis.
I know I'm late for this party. But there's a take:
The power limit can definitely be a thing in laptops. Nowadays you can see RTX laptops with the very same 3070s in a wide range of maximum power limits. It's all about the thermals, but the thing is,
I don't know if the board itself will handle properly higher power limits or if it is a the speedway to wear the laptop
. Always considering no overvoltage and staying on good temps.
I've lived myself some of the scenarios discussed here. I want my components to last as long as they can, so pretty much everything I do is undervolting. But there are scenarios where definitely a slight overclock can make a huge difference.
E.g: I got a laptop with a AMD 7670m. It had a huge problem: That GPU was supposed to be paired with 1GB GDDR5 or 2GB of DDR3 (for bandwith sake). Toshiba only specified it had 1GB so I assumed it was GDDR5, but SURPRISE! It was DDR3, so there was a big ass bottleneck there. When the laptop was out of warranty I started messing around and just overclocking the memory got me huge, and I mean HUGE performance improvements in those games which were struggling with the RAM. Borderlands 2 turned from a barely playable ~25FPS experience to a quite enjoyable >40FPS gameplay.
I haven't seen the video, but if one of the modes was locking the consumption to 15W and it unlocked it to 30W, yes, I do belive it can actually double it's performance, because the componente itself was running way under its capabilities because it just was capped to keep thermals and consumption low.