Power problem with my P771DM-G Laptop

chrisssj2

Active member
So I used to get power disconnects with this laptop. Just straight after playing a game 5 for 10 minutes sometimes 30 minutes. Or when put up a stress test like furmark, pretty much instantly.
And in a few occasions even when just browsing the internet.

-Nvidia display driver lost level 3 error
-Processor state limited by firmware event id 37

Now my friend soldered a new VRM on my 980m and the power outages COMPLETELY stopped when running furmark or anything really. So I was happy and thought it was fixed. I run 6 hours Heaven Benchmark, and 2 hours furmark. Ran perfectly fine without a single freeze, crash or power outage. We have more VRM's for the GPU card but we haven't added extra ones then the one we replaced (which might help with stabillity we read) and are not sure it would help with the problem, but it is still something we could try.

So It was curious for me to find out, when I started playing games again, that the game is still freezing. giving me those errors in the windows log. about nvidia display driver lost and processor speed.
Eventhough the game (I test with rune terra) is really not taxing 10-25% cpu and 4% gpu and 0.5 GB Vram in use. And im sure by now this is not a specific game issue.
When this happens the image is just frozen in the screen and does not move, but I can use alt tab.
I tried using TDR manipulator to increase TDRlevel.. but that didn't help unfortunately.

So what my friend did ,definitely helped. but it didn't completely fix the problem.

Some things I read on google:
"The "Speed of processor 0 in group is being limited by system firmware" warning message in event log, is commonly caused from Intel(R) SpeedStep Technology. Intel SpeedStep Technology, reduces the clock speed of your processor whenever your processor is idle, in order to reduce power consumption and heating"

"The speed of processor 0 in group 0 is being limited by system firmware. ... may be drawing excessive power or otherwise disrupting proper voltage regulation"

"Kernel-Processor-Power Event ID 37 is not an error, it is a warning. It informs you that your system runs on low battery and therefore has reduced the speed."

Some screenshots of my windows error logs

http://prntscr.com/rbw3s0
http://prntscr.com/rbw3wg
http://prntscr.com/rbw42a
http://prntscr.com/rbw46d

We are at a complete loss what to do next.
I hope you can give some tips on what to try.

My friend says it is likely still a power issue, caused by powersupply or VRM.
So one thing we would like to know is, what VRM (voltage regulator module) are used for the mainboard of P771DM-G.
Is that info you could provide us with, so we can resolder VRM's to the mainboard?
Tried looking into this, but it doesn't seem you can make out of it, what VRM's are used.
http://www.e-weekly.co.uk/download/RnD/DRIVERS/CLEVO/P7x0DM/P77DM_ESM.pdf

I don't think the entire GPU would need to be replaced. But I think it is power components around it that make it produce errors.
Because I also get messages about processor speed being limited I think the problem is much bigger/different then just a broken GPU card.
On a side note my bios is 1.05.04 system bios date 10/05/2015 video bios date 08/10/15
I haven't seen any updates for my laptop. But I don't think it would help with the problem im facing anyway.
 

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
I think the message "The speed of processor 0 in group 0 is being limited by system firmware" is because the CPU is being throttled by the BIOS for over temperature reasons. It's very common to find a laptop BIOS throttling CPU and GPU speeds in order to prevent overheating, since laptops so easily overheat.

To me, those messages are most likely by design. A phone call to PCS would confirm whether that's the case...
 

chrisssj2

Active member
I think the message "The speed of processor 0 in group 0 is being limited by system firmware" is because the CPU is being throttled by the BIOS for over temperature reasons. It's very common to find a laptop BIOS throttling CPU and GPU speeds in order to prevent overheating, since laptops so easily overheat.

To me, those messages are most likely by design. A phone call to PCS would confirm whether that's the case...

Hey there, thnx for the fast reply.
I sent the same message to email for support for PCspecialist.
But I don't think temperature is the issue here. Why do I think that?
Well because sometimes the error about processor (in the windows log) occur when just browsing internet. Not the most intensive task.
And when playing RuneTerra (a very lightweight card game) the 2 errors occur.

What this tells me that regardless of operating tempature the error will occur. Because temps when browsing internet are ofcourse low and playing rune terra. are like 45-50 for cpu, and 56-57 for gpu. Those are fine.

There is only one option in the bios I can change. (the bios is EXTREMELY bare bones.)
Gpu performance scaling which is default @ enabled. haven't tried changing this. But I don't think it would matter. But maybe i'll try later.

There is one other thing I could try, but frankly I don't think will help much either, and should not be necessary to begin with. is underclocking cpu and gpu..
 

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
I would phone PCS because you can have a proper real time discussion about these issues.
 

chrisssj2

Active member
So I try to undervolt but there are no options in MSI after burner for me at all
:(
everything locked.
I use nvidia inspector and put max underclocks -135 mhz gpu and memory.
My default clocks are: 1037 mhz gpu and 2506 mhz memory.
So after putting the max underclocks of -135 mhz gpu and -905 mhz memory. I get
987 mhz and 1598 mhz memory
But for my calculations it should be 902 gpu and 1601 memory.
So I don't know why it differs and I get higher GPU mostly..

Anyway, after doing this underclock.RuneTerra no longer seems to cause the display driver to reset.
So not sure if it is because less power is drawn or what.

It seems you can't undervolt this card. :( and the limits of underclocking are pretty limited aswell.
 

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
Well again, you need to speak directly to PCS about this, none of us on here can help I'm afraid.
 

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
Why can one help here? Isn't this forum ment to help people with technical/software problems?
That's not something we would know about, you've got a hardware issue which needs addressing, but you're trying to bypass the hardware issue. You'd need to speak to PCS who know more about the physical properties.

None of us work for PCS, that's a bit out of our repertoire.
 
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