Ezbook 3 Pro (v4.0) – default TDP setting is already at 9W

[David Stone]

I watched with interest, Chris’ review of the v4.0 with the factory unlocked BIOS.

At 3m 23s in the video below, he talks about completely disabling the power limit in the BIOS:

But I’m not sure it’s really necessary. If you look at the video at 3m23s, the “Power Limit 1 Power” setting is already at 9W by default (from the standard 6W).

I tried changing it to 15W and ran Prime95 for about 5mins – temperatures hit a toasty max of 90C but it still doesn’t seem to draw more than 10W, so I’m guessing that’s probably around the maximum limit for this CPU?

Anyone else benchmarked or tested this with different settings? I’m wondering if there the law of diminishing returns apply once you go past a certain TDP threshold?

15W setting in BIOS running Prime95

 

[David Stone]

10W setting in BIOS running Prime95

[Chris G]

Hi, good spotting as I didn’t even see that myself its set to a higher 9W. The real difference with this tweak is when you push the iGPU this is that what gets the real benefit from the TDP increase. The CPU just hold the turbos longer and barely sees any improvement going from say 6W to 10W. But with unlock or say 10W the GPU will clock up so much higher than the 6W TDP. At unlimited it can hold the faster rates. I don’t do Prime and furmark tests, I don’t believe under normal use you would have the CPU at 100% and GPU also at 100%. If you do it will of coruse get too hot, but with my EZbook 3 Pro under normal use no issue with temps on unlimited TDP. But I’ve yet to try some gaming on for over an hour. That’s the trade off, more power and more heat generated for higher clocks for longer periods.

Just run the Half-Life 2 Lost cost demo at the stock TDP, then unlimited. You’ll see a massive difference in FPS as per my tests, up to 80% improvement in some games. (again the intergrade GPU is the one that gets most of the benefit) It’s great that we can push this Apollo Lakes like this, I hope the Gemini Lake will be the same and MFG’s like JUmper level the bios setting open to the end user.

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Chris | Admin
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[David Stone]

Chris G wrote:

The real difference with this tweak is when you push the iGPU this is that what gets the real benefit from the TDP increase

That’s a fair point – I forgot about that as I don’t tend to game on this laptop. It’s clear from your graphic it does hit 15W on your GPU orientated benchmark.

No entirely convinced about the wisdom of squeezing more performance from a GPU on a laptop that you wouldn’t really want to be using for gaming anyway but each to their own…..

[Brad]

Has anyone requested from Jumper an updated BIOS and flashing utility to enable this for those who don’t have it?

more about me here

[Chris G]

Brad wrote:

Has anyone requested from Jumper an updated BIOS and flashing utility to enable this for those who don’t have it?

I’ve asked the Jumper Aliexpress store with no response Seems Jumper doesn’t release bios updates or want us updating?

Chris | Admin
Please support us and help keep TechTablets online. Affiliate revenue is used to pay for the server, studio apartment (Techtablets HQ) and buy new tech to review. Without it, this site would be dead.
Next up for review:
Ordered and waiting for my: BMAX S15 & Teclast F6 Plus
Currently testing: LG G8X & Redmi K30

[David Stone]

Just ran ‘Life is Strange’ the computer game (it uses the Unreal 4.0 graphics engine) to test power draw.

BIOS setting @ 10W limit, yet HDInfo reports 13W TDP.

All a bit strange!

[John]

David Stone wrote:

Just ran ‘Life is Strange’ the computer game (it uses the Unreal 4.0 graphics engine) to test power draw.

BIOS setting @ 10W limit, yet HDInfo reports 13W TDP.

All a bit strange!

You have to look at the time setting as well. The laptop will allow itself to spike well above the 9w limit, but only for a short amount of time. You can set this to as low as 1 second, but the default is 48 seconds I think. I’ve tried playing around with both the power limit and time limit and haven’t really found it to change the battery life very much. You only really need the power limit off for gaming, then it will stay around 14w for longer periods of time.

[Author]

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