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Current Limit Throttling in XTU

IHsia
Beginner
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What is the definition of Current Limit Throttling in XTU?

Does the core current really reach 120A?

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27 Replies
idata
Employee
5,556 Views

Hello ihsiao,

 

Thank you for contacting us regarding the Current Limit Throttling in our Intel® Extreme Tuning Utility (Intel® XTU); it will be more than a pleasure to assist you.

 

Depending on the machine that you own, the readings of the values can change.

 

In order for me to assist you better, please provide me with the .txt file that the System Support Utility will generate. To attach a file, you must click the "Attach" option on the bottom right-hand corner of the response box.

 

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/25293/Intel-System-Support-Utility-for-Windows-

 

 

I hope to hear from you soon.

 

Best Regards,

 

Diego S.

 

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IHsia
Beginner
5,556 Views

Hi Diego S,

My PC specification:

CPU: i7-8700K

MB: MSI B360M PRO-VD

DIMM: crucial 8G DDR4-2400 UDIMM *2

I set Iccmax from 70A to 120A, then run Prime95 Burn/In test (Small FFTs)

And I calculate the current by the TDP and voltage in XTU

Measurement data as below , Icore = TDP / Vcore

IccMax(A)MAX Core (GHz)CORE TDP (W)Vcore (V)Icore (A) 702.85450.85452.69 803.19580.91163.67 903.39680.94272.19 1003.59760.96179.08 1103.79860.99186.78 <td class="xl71" height="22" style="color: # 3d3d3d; text-align: left; background-color: transparent; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial...
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idata
Employee
5,556 Views

Hello ihsiao,

 

I was checking your case, and I just wanted to know if there is anything else that we can do for you at this time.

 

Please do not hesitate on replying back if you need more assistance.

 

Best Regards,

 

Diego S.

 

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MShen3
Beginner
5,556 Views

Hi Intel Team,

Excuse me, so this issue has been resolved ? Because I have same issue in XTU(current limit throttling).

Could you teach us how to check something and resolved it.

And also attached the SSU info for you refer.

Thank you.

Miller Shen

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idata
Employee
5,556 Views

Hello Shen# 7684,

Thank you for contacting us.

In order to assist you better can you please tell us exactly what the issue that you are experiencing is?

As well, what's the maximum setting that is causing the issue?

I hope to hear from you soon.

Best Regards,

Diego S.

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MShen3
Beginner
5,556 Views

Hi Diego S.

When I using XTU in overclocking application and sometime happen the "Current limit throttling".

Could you teach us how to check something(BIOS setting) and resolved it.

There is setting the "Turbo Boost Power, Short Power Max and Core IccMax" to maximum.

Thank you very much

Miller Shen

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idata
Employee
5,556 Views

Hello Shen# 7684

 

Thank you for your reply.

 

In this case, Current Limit Throttling refers to the limit of the processors before it starts to throttle.

 

Let us ask, are you trying to change that setting or to know what the limit is?

 

Regarding your inquiry, quoting your words: "Could you teach us how to check something(BIOS setting) and resolved it", please go ahead and give us a longer/more detailed description of your issue so we can assist you better.

 

I hope this helps.

 

Best regards.

 

Diego S.

 

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MShen3
Beginner
5,556 Views

Hi Diego S.

Let us ask, are you trying to change that setting or to know what the limit is?

- Yes, I am keep doing, but it seems that there is no progress. When I run the XTU built-in benchmark sometime happen the "current limit throttling", so need your help.

First step from the BIOS setting and unlock the current limit, so we want to know which one setting is associated with it. Thanks for you help.

Miller Shen

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idata
Employee
5,556 Views

Hello ihsiao and Shen# 7684,

 

Thank you for both responses.

 

I will escalate your case to gather further information regarding your request, this will cause a brief delay in our answers, however I will reach you back as soon as we have news.

 

I hope this helps.

 

Best regards.

 

Diego S.

 

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HMora4
Beginner
5,556 Views

I have the exact same issue aswell

Current limit throttle causes cpu to drop to 2.5 and sometimes even to 1.8 ghz

I have HP pavillion power 15 With i7 7700HQ GTX 1050 and 8gb of ram

I tried contacting hp but they couldnt help me

current throttle only happens when i use my nvidia gpu to play games or run tests

you are my last hope i hope you can help me

thank you

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KKats1
Beginner
5,556 Views

Thank you for escalating the issue. I also always see the "Current limit throttling" on two workstations with Skylake-X CPUs, one 7820X, another 7960X. The former may be mildly overclocked, the latter is not at all, just the default configuration from the motherboard. In fact, none of the throttling or other flag type indications in HWINFO change during the event. I am attaching a graph screenshot from the second, the 7960X machine, if it can help. There is a correlation in the graphs with the CPU clock (x36 vs x33), and another possibly interesting one with another parameter, Active Core Count. HWINFO does not have an indication for it, either, but my guess it reflects cores C-states. The machine is constructed quite well, with decent cooling (the Noctua largest NH-14 dual-fan heatsink), and scores a bit above 1000 GFLOPs in the MKL linpack test (the quite recent one that came with the Parallel Studio XE 2018.2, and using AVX-512 instructions). This score matches (actually, even exceeds by about 5%) that reported by the https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/hpc/Intel-Core-i9-7900X-and-7980XE-Skylake-X-Linux-Linpack-Performance-1059/ HPC workstation builder Puget Systems, so I do not believe the CPU could be in fact throttling. And the reported power dissipation with linpack is around 250W, much higher than that under the XTU benchmark, ~175W (and the temperature at 250W did not exceed 71°C, so it's a damn good cooler!). Could it be that the reported throttling indication is incorrect?

I am also wondering where the tool reads the Active Cores (my guess it's derived from per-core C-state?) and this pesky Current Throttling values. Cannot find them reported in any of the sensor-reading programs!

Here's another observation, possibly notable. The Turbo table read by HWINFO is

Turbo Ratio Limits - IA/SSE, Resolved: 44x (1-2c), 40x (3-4c), 39x (5-12c), 36x (13-16c)

Turbo Ratio Limits - AVX2, Resolved: 37x (1-2c), 35x (3-4c), 34x (5-12c), 33x (13-16c)

Turbo Ratio Limits - AVX-512, Resolved: 35x (1-2c), 33x (3-4c), 32x (5-12c), 30x (13-16c)

When the linpack benchmark runs, there is a "hot" second half of the test run, apparently when AVX-512 instructions kick in at all cores. For these ~30s, the Current Throttling indicator in XTU is steady yellow and indicates throttling. When the [EDIT:added] XTU's own [/EDIT] benchmark itself runs, the Current Throttling is on when the multiplier drops from x36 to x33. The numbers are all in the 16-core column of the Turbo table above. So my thought was, could it be that XTU takes the normal Turbo drop in the clock multiplier for the indication of current limiting? There is no way the CPU can be throttling and churning 1 TFLOP/s at the same time, really...

Here's a 'shot taken during the linpack run. The transition to the latest 1/3 of the timeline is when the benchmark goes into this "hot" phase, with TDP bumping up, clocks going down from x36 to the x30 AVX-512 value, and the "Current limit" turns steady on:

Size LDA Align. Time(s) GFlops Residual Residual(norm) Check

44000 44000 4 53.853 1054.6021 1.997583e-09 3.677608e-02 pass

Performance Summary (GFlops)

Size LDA Align. Average Maximal

44000 44000 4 1054.6021 1054.6021

Residual checks PASSED

Size LDAAlign. Time(s)GFlopsResidual Residual(norm) Check44000 44000 4 53.853 1054.6021 1.997583e-09 3.677608e-02 pass

Performance Summary (GFlops)

Size LDAAlign. Average Maximal44000 44000 4 1054.6021 1054.6021

Residual checks PASSED

EDIT: The autoformatting seems seriously borked, cannot paste plain text without having it turned into mess

EDIT: Clarify the x33 is selected during the XTU's benchmark, not linpack (that one runs the initial ~30s at x36, last ~30s at x30).

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idata
Employee
5,555 Views

Hello all.

 

 

Thank you for waiting.

 

 

I would like to gather more information about the configuration you have on the computer to continue the investigation on the case. Please attach to this thread the TXT file the Intel® System Support Utility will generate: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/25293/Intel-System-Support-Utility https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/25293/Intel-System-Support-Utility

 

Steps to save the report:
  1. Run the utility.
  2. Click on "Scan" to get the scanned system.
  3. Once the scan is complete click on "next".
  4. Use the "save" option, save the report to your desktop.
  5. To attach a file, you must click the "Attach" option on the bottom right-hand corner of the response box.

 

Regards,

 

Leonardo C.

 

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idata
Employee
5,555 Views

 

 

Hello all,

 

We just wanted to double check if you still need further assistance.

 

Please do not hesitate on contacting us back.

 

Best Regards,

 

Diego S.

 

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NKesk
Beginner
5,555 Views

Hello Leonardo,

I have a HP Pavilion Power (cb008nt) Laptop with i7-7700HQ and GTX1050. When I did a stress test via XTU, I saw a couple of current limit thorttling.

I don't know if it's related but sometimes I have an instant drop/freeze (like my mouse freezes for a second) in desktop.

I attached the SSU file below.

Regards,

Necip.

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idata
Employee
5,555 Views

Hello nfkeskin

 

 

Thank you for joining the thread.

 

 

I recommend creating a new thread since you are having a different system configuration, please make sure you add the information of the system model and specs, version of the software that is presenting the problem and detail information of the problem that you are having, plus all the information that you have added to this thread, so we can get more information about the problem.

 

 

Thank you; hope to hear from you soon.

 

 

Regards,

 

 

Leonardo C.

 

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JFree5
Beginner
5,555 Views

I also have a Pavilion Power 15 with 7700HQ and Nvidia 1050.

I've noticed the current limit throttling for quite some time and have recently actually sent my laptop to be repaired for the issue. When ever the GPU is being utilised the CPU package TPD halves from 45 to less than 20w and I can see my base clocks go as low as 1.9ghz when doing video transcoding or playing a game.

I spent hours diagnosing the issue with HP support, even resorting to drastic measures such as complete formats followed by OS install.

 

https://imgur.com/a/xNIUKHE Image of 'current limit throttling'

 

https://imgur.com/a/xNIUKHE

I have a feeling the fault lies with HP and not Intel due to it being (from what I can find) a laptop specific problem. As is, it's false advertising for HP to advertise 2.8ghz baseclocks on a machine that will half the CPU TDP and throttle the CPU to well below base clocks it if the GPU is being utilised.

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AKars
Beginner
5,556 Views

Did you face FPS drops in all the games due to this ?

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JFree5
Beginner
5,556 Views

Significant FPS drops and stutter. Also in some games like Fallout New Vegas, the constant CPU clock speed changes would result in physics issues.

The CPU clock speed changes many times per second during gaming, whereas the Nvidia 1050 stays pretty much locked at ~1700mhz. The CPU can change drastically from 1.96ghz to 3.1ghz when it's current limit throttling (keeping package TDP around 20w).

When it's not throttling while gaming (once in a blue moon it will hold the 3.4ghz max clock on all 4 cores for a long period), it will stay around 40w package TDP, reach 80c on the CPU and around the same on GPU but the fans actually turn on and keep things cool. Then as soon as it starts to throttle, the CPU will go down to around 70* and the fans ramp down.

I've tried a myriad of different fixes including undervolting in Intel XTU and also trying to use Throttlestop. I bought a cooling pad even though it was already running cool and as expected, that did nothing. There were specific BIOS updates to address the issue, but they didn't work either. I've tried every option under the Windows power options and also tried undervolting the GPU so that the CPU could have a bit more power but nothing worked.

I just got an email that my laptop has finished being serviced by HP and will be sent back to me in a few days. There was no mention of the issue being fixed and I haven't had any contact from HP since they approved the RMA due to the issue, apart from automated messages saying my laptop was received and then sent back.

I have a bad feeling that it will be sent back to me in the same condition I sent it in and will have to be taking it further. I'll know in a few days if that's the case.

I noticed the new Pavilion Gaming series have significantly thicker chassis (with purple as a keyboard backlight option + how I wish they had it for the Power series as it's my fav colour), have more than 4x the intake vents on the bottom and vent the exhaust out the back through 2 large vents even though they have the same TDP CPU+GPU. The Pavilion Power (my notebook) has a tiny row of pin holes on the bottom of the case and a tiny vent above the keyboard that exhausts the hot air over the LCD screen and I've read people have had issues with the LCD+bezel cracking most likely due to that thermal design.

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AKars
Beginner
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I am too having exactly the same issue and the same notebook.I have also tried every method available,seems I will have to send the laptop to the Service Center,How much days does it take to come back ?

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JFree5
Beginner
4,265 Views

I sent it in on the 7th and got a shipping notification that it should be delivered back to me on the 17th.

Have a look in this thread also for some possible quick fixes:

 

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Hardware-and-Upgrade-Questions/Current-limit-throttle/td-p/6702393 Solved: Current limit throttle - HP Support Forum - 6702393
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