Laptop GPU Frequency Issue

[Kamuifanboy]

Hey guys, hope all is well and thanks in advance for any and all help that comes.

I purchased the Asus GL502VS laptop upon release about 8 months ago now. The laptop has worked really well for me as I travel a lot and I need a laptop that is not only able to do basic computer needs but also be able to fulfill my gaming needs when away from home.

As of around a month or two ago, I've started to notice that my fan is always on and outputting a decent amount of heat from the 2 outputs in the back. I was thinking this was strange because at the time my laptop only had one tab open on chrome with a light webpage on it. I then closed all apps and noticed that this was a continuing issue even with absolutely nothing open. I felt around the case of the laptop and noticed that the area above the center of the keyboard had a lot of heat that I can feel through the case. I then went to investigate what might be causing this, I ran msi afterburner and noticed immediately that the GTX 1070 in the laptop appears to be running near max frequency from startup (Around 1440Mhz). I'm going to assume that this is what is outputting the heat and causing the fans to run near max all the time.

Does anybody have any idea why this might be happening? And does anyone know of a way that I can fix this issue?

Again, thanks in advance.

 

[TB]

I'd start with making sure the drivers are updated and it wouldn't hurt to make sure the heat sinks aren't clogged with dust.

 

[Kamuifanboy]

I'd start with making sure the drivers are updated and it wouldn't hurt to make sure the heat sinks aren't clogged with dust.

Drivers are updated every week and I opened up my computer and it had zero dust anywhere. Not on the fans, not on the heat sinks, and not around the heat chambers as well.

 

[Kamuifanboy]

So it has been solved. Apparently it was a driver issue to a certain degree. I had the latest drivers but something was messed up with them so I basically had to use a complete clean of the nvidia graphics drivers, restart, and then re-install the drivers and it appears to have fixed the problem. Never had to do something like that before but I'm glad a mate of mine suggested it.

 

[sesselpupser]

Good you got it sorted, but here's some words anyway:

1. The heat you could feel through the keyboard was probably coming through some vents, I've seen a number of laptops that actually have an air vent in the keyboard (usually an inlet) so if it felt worryingly hot in one place, it's usually because there're actually some holes there. Nothing to worry about.

2. If allowed, your GPU will work as hard as it can. In some games V-sync isn't enabled in the menus and a frame rate counter would show you you're getting something crazy like 2,000fps, just because menus typically aren't hard to draw so your GPU will just crank out an enormous number of frames because nothing is telling it not to. That can cause temperatures to rise, but...

3. When the GPU hits a certain temperature, it'll automatically slow its various clocks down to stay at a certain temperature limit. This is why Apple laptops kind of suck (I can say this, I'm a MacBook Air owner); they put basically as little heatsinking in as they can get away with and rely on the CPU (and GPU in the one or two models they make with discrete GPUs)'s thermal throttling to stay within the power dissipation limit of the heatsink. Bulkier laptops tend to be able to run at their boost speeds for longer, because of their improved heat shedding ability.

So basically it sounds like a poor optimisation was letting your GPU do what it does as hard as it's able to, but I guess even that wasn't quite enough to get into thermal throttling territory. The GPU will tend to be at its maximum frequency whenever it's being called on to do stuff, I don't think they deliberately downclock themselves under light loads but I could be wrong, I think they're either at a very low idle speed, full speed or thermally throttled back down to their core clock. But because they're usually not allowed to just go nuts and process all the frames they can, they stay nice and cool because while they could in theory do, say, 1,000fps or more, doing 60fps takes barely any power.

But even if you didn't already know this, it's not exactly useful to you now.

 

[Grayfox]

Get GPUz running and see what the GPU is doing.

Check to see if "High Performance Mode" is not enabled in the nvidia control panel under power savings, you will have Adaptive, Optimal and High Performance.
Setting it to High Performance will keep the GPU running at max clocks even for 2D work loads.

Reinstall the drivers and select the "Clean Install" option.
This will remove any customizations you done.

Something is forcing it to run in in a lower P State

Download this tool to see what state you are running in.
http://www.guru3d.com/files-get/nvidia-inspector-download,4.html