Intel’s Xtreme Tuning Utility is a great tool for overclocking CPU’s, while we can’t overclock the U series of CPU’s what we can do using this application of Intel’s is increase the power limits. Doing this on the 8th Gen Intel Core i5 8250U gives us huge gains up to 29% when testing with Cinebench R15 and encoding 4k video using Adobe Premiere Pro.so much so we can get the 15W stock TDP i8250U to perform as good as if not better than a 45W Core i7 7700HQ typically found in 2017 gaming laptops.
So we can get the 1Core i5 i8250U to perform as good as if not better than a 45W Core i7 7700HQ. And the i7 8550U to perform better than an i7 7820HK typically found in 2017 gaming laptops & desktop replacements.
This tweak is very simple, all we are doing is moving that stock TDP of 15W to say 35W or 40W, now the CPU can hold it’s 3.4Ghz turbo on all 4 cores for as long as the cooling allows us to. This tweak will work on all the 4 core 8th Gen CPU’s and results will vary, especially when it comes to undervolting the CPU.
My Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro with it’s Core i5 8250U can be undervolted to -0.105, but it all depends on each CPU just how much you can undervolt. What this undervolting does is reduce the CPU temperature a faction, which also helps out in the long run. It will also offer a small battery saving as a bonus.
Above is a quick guide on how to undervolt, increase the TDP and also overclock the Nvidia MX150 GPU to perform up to 31% faster when looking at Heaven benchmark results. Also due to the better cooler on the Mi Notebook Pro, my i5 8250U can hold the 3.4Ghz turbo indefinitely on all cores with a max temp of 65 degrees C after a 20-minute CPU stress test. Pushing both the GPU and CPU resulted in 81 degrees max on the CPU after 15 minutes. Impressive results! Enjoy boosting your 8th gen CPU to perform faster than most 7700HQ 2017 gaming laptops!
The notebook used for this tweak was my Mi Notebook Pro Core i5 8250 version, this is Xiaomi’s latest premium laptop which sells for around $917 here with coupon GBPCPCS
You can download Intel XTU here.