AMD GPU Stuck at 450/300 Been looking for years for help.

May 31, 2018
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So, I bought this Alienware M17 R5 (HD8970M) back 7ish years ago.
And for a while, its been running games horribly, until recently I discovered why, my GPU speed is stuck at 450Mhz. Ive turned on overclocking, ive tried MSI overclocking, Ive even tried ClockBlocker and its still set to 450Mhz and will not change at all!
It never used to be like this.

However.

I can say that the battery is always on 6% (not charging) and I HAVE to leave the charger in or else it will die. If I take the charger out, even for a millisecond, it will die.

Help? Please?
Willing to do anything to get this fixed.
 
May 31, 2018
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Sorry if i mess this up, new to this site.
But I have, Ive even replaced thermal paste, Ive cleaned out every dust particle inside. The temp of it at time of writing is 40-50 degrees C.
 

CaptainCretin

Respectable
Jul 18, 2016
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It could be a power saving function, it thinks your battery is nearly dead, so is throttling to maximise up time.

The power lead usually feeds the battery and then the battery feeds the motherboard, you cannot easily charge a battery as fast as the battery sends power to the motherboard, so the mobo is restricted in what power it can draw.

If you can replace the battery with a good one, you may find the issue goes away.

Best people to ask are the Alienware tech support.
 
May 31, 2018
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I was afraid of this, I posted to see if maybe there was some way, because Im not gonna be a happy chappy to work up 100 dollars to buy a battery then suddenly, "Whoop that didnt fix the problem" thank you though, I will call AWare Support when I can, Ill post what they said when I can.

 
May 31, 2018
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OP Here, as an update I've done a few testing and research and so far my 3 possible reasons for this are.
1. Something with an update, as in this laptop was windows 8, so maybe somewhere along the lines of Updates something got switched when it shouldnt of. Per say the BIOS?
2. The battery isnt giving as much power as it should, or not storing enough. (dead)
3. The charger, I suspected the charger when I took the battery out, put the charger inm and noticed 0 difference.
Problem with this of course is that maybe thats normal? Maybe both the battery AND the charger?

Ive downloaded allot of driver versions including Leshcat (I think thats what it's called) and still no difference at all.

Another thing I should note, is when I bought this laptop, the card was named "R9 M290X" and later on AMD changed the name to "HD *8970M" though apparently this is something I shouldnt worry about, according to Dell and MSI.

I still havent called up Dellianware support though, might try tomorrow or Monday.
 
May 31, 2018
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Actually me calling them would be the 4th time Ive called them about performance issues. Each time with a different person saying something different, remember this is Dell were talking about.
The last time I called them they told me there "was no issue they could detect but we can offer you a discount on another product", like hell I could afford another PC after paying 4 grand on this.
Infact, I once sent my PC off to them to get my GPU replaced and when I got it back, the GPU still had the same problem AND somehow they broke my keyboard, when I called and asked "yo what did you do to my keyboard" they said "oops forgot to plug the wire back in, send it back and we'll fix it for you" I gave up on it and life got in the way I suppose. It wasnt until recently me installing an SSD made no loading time difference in game which lead me to do more testing and discovering the issue. Though its an issue with an issue causing that issue, which Im trying to figure out.
But atleast calling them on monday, cause mind you I dont have the time to call them this week with work and study going on, I can finally give them specifics and hopefully they can give me answers.
 
May 31, 2018
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oh whoa, cheers mate, Ive been googling like hell for a site like this but could never actually find one, thank you!
 
It sounded like you hadn't contacted them before, which is why I thought that was a weird thing for you to say. As for batteries, they are always an expensive part of any machine, and since no one uses "standards" like mobile phones, they always have you by the sensitive parts.

I personally think, just like when Europe demanded there only be standardised Phone Chargers, that there should be a set amount of standardized batteries for Laptops/PSU's as well.

Hell, I even remember when Nokia made a battery pack for one of their phones and if the phone went dead, you could put 4 AA batteries in it. Genius idea!
 
May 31, 2018
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You'd think right? Maybe one day, in a perfect world.

And yeah well, Ive got a nice call date with Dell on Monday so, Ill post updates and stuff.
Someone mentioned maybe try getting a hacked BIOS cause MAYBE the BIOS is making the GPU restrict to no more than 450MHz
 
May 31, 2018
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So an update, (im probably using this forum wrong, but I feel if i keep updating it with my progress on fixing this problem, maybe it will possibly help others with my model and problems)

Called up Dell, due to failed warranty they told me to try the battery idea, in which if it works, yay, if not theyll make a case out of it and escalate it to see what the problem is with another team.

So far, all leads seem to point towards the battery. Or the power supply at least.
 
Try it and keep us all updated.
It can make sense, that the battery isn't doing what it should do. People think a battery just holds storage and that was true many years ago, but now it's a lot more complicated as they use it as a regulator.
Maybe something is wrong with the battery, (I don't mean the storage part) but the actual regulators are struggling.
 


Yeah, I've seen cases where the computer will cut back performance because the brick isn't providing enough power to keep the battery charging or charged while gaming. You run into the unique issue where the computer draws more power than the brick can supply and it starts draining the battery to supplement and you can actually drain the battery while it is plugged in.
 
May 31, 2018
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Precisely, which is why after 40 hours of surfing the net for someone else to show theyre having a similar problem, I finally found a forum where someone with the EXACT same machine I have, said something along the following, "My cpu is being throttled and ive tried everything but nothing working" when someone replied to that and said "just by chance, does your battery show up as "unknown" in the BIOS?" to which the OP responded "yes! How did you know" and the reply began to explain that maybe it wasnt getting enough power to the CPU even if the plug is in or not, the battery is just at fault"
Sure enough, OP replacing his battery fixed everything.

which got me thinking, hes got the exact problem I do, but instead of the GPU at error (like I have) it was his CPU.

Upon opening up the lappy again, and taking a look at the motherboard, It looked all possible that maybe I have the exact problem he had, but a mirrored effect, where the CPU is fine and overclock-able (or so MSI says) maybe the GPU is what's getting the worst end of the stick.
The only way I could get SOME sort of proof was to look into the BIOS and yep, sure enough "Battery AC thing = Unknown"

Like I said, Dell support said try it, if it doesnt work we'll investigate further.
Which would be astounding because I was seriously convinced I was scammed by Dell in spending so much money in a laptop where my old dead Toshiba Satellite (back in the day) somehow ran games a little more better.
 
May 31, 2018
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After a while update.

Right, first thing I want to note is, the day before I received the new battery (so yesterday) I was on the phone to a friend, with my PC running in the background, I suddenly heard my laptop fans all speed up. Never heard it do that at all ever.
Then suddenly i noticed MSI AB was saying my GPU is at 750 ish MHZ and 1250MHz Mem Clock.

I was completely creeped out as it did it by itself. I didnt touch anything at all.
A bloody mystery.

I enjoyed playing BF2 for a good hour with really quick loading times and gameplay and it was amazing.

But when it was time to call it a night, restarting my PC made it go back to the stuck 450MHz clock and I was pretty dissapointed that whatever the hell happened didnt actually fix it permanently only temporarily.

But, the battery arrived, hooked it up, gave it a restart.
And all I can say is the battery works fine, the old battery was definitely bad. BUT its still stuck at 450MHz and its still showing the AC adapter as unknown.

So, I called dell, they told me they dont actually have the charger anymore and in FACT. The charger I have (which they gave me) isnt even the right one, but somehow i have it.

So I got the model numbers for the wire and the adapter I need, and Im on the prowl to find them.

Once I buy and receive, ill try and test and ill post results here again.