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P53 RTX 4000 throttling

P1/P40/P50/P70 Series
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H-Atkinson
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P53 RTX 4000 throttling

#1 Post by H-Atkinson » Mon Nov 18, 2019 4:38 pm

My P53 has been having some issues since BIOS 1.16, and it has continued in ver. 1.17.



The GPU will throttle down to ~25% clocks and consume no more than 40 watts. Ive tried using the Quadro drivers that came with the system, as well as the Quadro experience beta drivers from nVidia. The drivers had no effect.



The problem occurs pretty much always when on battery, regardless of the power mode and driver settings.



It occurs seemingly at random when on wall power, and sometimes will happen when in the middle of GPU intensive work, or when switching from an iGPU app (word or chrome) to a dGPU app (solidworks, etc).



Restarting does not fix it. I tried reinstalling both drivers as well, and it didn't fix it. The problem does not seem to be a thermal constraint.





My current theorey is that there is something wrong in the BIOS since the version mine shipped with didn't have this issue, but 1.16 and 1.17 have it. As far as I know, there is not a way to roll my BIOS back. This would imply it is software, and not hardware.

Its also worth noting that my CPU (i7 9850H) does not throttle at all, even when becnhmarks are run back-to-back for an hour+.
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RealBlackStuff
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Re: P53 RTX 4000 throttling

#2 Post by RealBlackStuff » Tue Nov 19, 2019 2:04 am

That seems to be a common issue with that (and similar so-called) power-models.
Huge complaints here:
https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-P ... -p/4528377
https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-P ... -p/4575733

But only yesterday (18 November) Lenovo brought out a new BIOS 1.17: https://support.lenovo.com/ie/en/downloads/ds540999
It shows Severity: Critical.
Try that.
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H-Atkinson
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Re: P53 RTX 4000 throttling

#3 Post by H-Atkinson » Tue Nov 19, 2019 5:07 pm

Ive already tried BIOS 1.17 (as stated in my original post), and as per the advice of the Lenovo forums, have tried the following BIOSes as well:

1.14
1.15 (mine shipped on this version)

Im pretty sure its a driver issue at this point.
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Re: P53 RTX 4000 throttling

#4 Post by RealBlackStuff » Wed Nov 20, 2019 2:31 am

RMA, return or flog it.
Methinks people are daft to spend so much money on brand new machines, before they have been proven to work.
I bet Lenovo (and other manufacturers) just LOVE such silly guinea pigs.
Why not buy a used (if need be previous generation) machine instead, that has all its quirks sorted?
You'd save loadz of money as well!
Lovely day for a Guinness! (The Real Black Stuff)
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H-Atkinson
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Re: P53 RTX 4000 throttling

#5 Post by H-Atkinson » Thu Nov 21, 2019 3:53 pm

I actually managed to get this thing cheaper than most P52 machines with a P3200 are going for on eBay, and I need the graphical power that comes with this thing since I no longer have space for a desktop. Its replacing a W541, which was basically top spec, and at the same time replacing my desktop.

I found a temporary solution to the issue is to use the RTX 2070 drivers instead of the Quadro RTX 4000 drivers. This proves its a software issue, so Im hoping lenovo or nVidia will have a fix out for it soon.
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bmwman91
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Re: P53 RTX 4000 throttling

#6 Post by bmwman91 » Thu Nov 28, 2019 12:06 am

Hmmm, good to know. I have a P53 with RTX 5000 coming next week, and I am assuming that it will have the latest BIOS and whatnot. It sounds like I will need to keep an eye on the throttling and look into the non-Quadro drivers.

This is the first new Thinkpad I have ever bought (all of the 6 previous ones over the last 15 years have been used), and only because a discount program through my employer basically got me 50% off the price since it stacked with the current holiday promotion. Hopefully I will not end up regretting it...
P53 | i7-9850H | 64GB (16x4) RAM | Quadro RTX-5000 | 2TB Samsung NVMe | Win10 Pro
W530 | i7-3920XM | 32GB (8x4) RAM | Quadro K2000M | 500GB Samsung 840 | 256GB Samsung 840 | Win10 Pro

H-Atkinson
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Re: P53 RTX 4000 throttling

#7 Post by H-Atkinson » Tue Dec 03, 2019 12:21 am

GPU throttling has been patched out by a thermal management drive update combined with a BIOS update.

CPU throttles down still (9850H settling in at ~2.8 gHz, nothing close to the *4.6 gHz* advertised boost) after ~20sec of operation under max load on all cores.
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