CPU throttling under stress test?

Sewyboowy

Commendable
May 23, 2016
2
0
1,510
Heya,

I am having issues with my CPU underclocking when it shouldn't be, and it's becoming problematic with performance.

It's a dell xps 9550 running windows 10 home with:
I7 6700Hq
16gb ddr4 ram
Gtx 960m
4k display
Samsung 850 500gb msata ssd
1tb HDD.

I ran into the problem running dolphin emulator, the frame rate was abnormally low. I checked the CPU usage was stuck at 30% and everything else was very low (usage). I checked in cpu-z and the frequency was at 800MHz.
I then stressed the CPU with the CPU burner in firmware and the same thing happened. I then switched to prime 95 and same again.
The performance setting is set to performance and the max CPU usage is set to 100%.
I then tried disabling speedstep and this didn't change anything.
I also contacted the dell support staff and they've been next to useless. I've updated my BIOS and this still hasn't done anything.

Any ideas?
Any help is much appreciated!
Thanks,
Tom.
 
There are all sorts of issues with mobile processors and thermal throttling. Anandtech had loads of articles where incorrect profiles, etc. can cause thermal throttling. Cooling design can play a role in it.

If I were you, I'd keep it simple, contact Dell tech support and play it as dumb as possible and have them walk you through a proof (benchmark) that your processor is indeed performing to specifications. It may very well be that you have one with a quality control issue.

The Intel Processor Diagnostic tool may be handy to determine whether the processor is throttling on thermal issues, since it will clearly display same.
 

Sewyboowy

Commendable
May 23, 2016
2
0
1,510
thanks for the reply, my processor shouldnt be thermal throttling at all, its idling a and never goes past 800Mhz, not even right at the start of the stress test. Good idea withe the intel processor diagnostic tool. Yes they made me do an eps test and it passed with a couple of bios errors, dell told me to update the bios and thats what ive done. But it took an hour and a half to get through that with their support so i decided it would be better to ask more knowledgeable people! thanks!