Game throttles on CPU Overclock

[xcl15]

System specs:

CPU: Ryzen 5 3400G (Overclocked to 4.1Ghz)

Motherboard: TUF Gaming B450M-Plus II

RAM: 2x8 3200 Mhz TFORCE

Storage: 240GB SSD

 

So all other games work fine and don't trigger the, even more demanding games, but when I play Warframe, it throttles. The frames drop from around 80-100 FPS to 5-15 FPS for a about 3-5 seconds and then goes back to normal. I even set all settings to low and it still throttles and my CPU temps don't go beyond 70C. This all started happening when the Dog Days event started, and it still happens. So, I tried to reset my CPU settings to default and it works fine which is weird because other games don't seem to throttle on OC. I hope someone can help. Thank you!

Edit:

Now it throttles even if the CPU is on stock settings. Everything is on stock / default, yet, it still throttles, to the point where it is not fun playing anymore.

Did a clean format on my pc, installed the game on a different hard drive (brand new) and it is still throttling. Even at the lowest settings it throttles. Kinda weird so idk what is causing the throttle. No temp issues too, CPU temps are at 50-60C and the VRM is at 40C

[sam686]

On 2021-06-14 at 7:15 AM, xcl15 said:

CPU: Ryzen 5 3400G (Overclocked to 4.1Ghz)
Motherboard: TUF Gaming B450M-Plus II

This motherboard have no heatsink for SOC VRM and the SOC VRM is possibly low end that can overheat or reached some limits, and throttle.

Can try to use more fans and better cooling. Can manually drop the integrated graphics speed to 1100Mhz or lower to reduce SOC VRM watts usage. Best to get a better motherboard with better SOC VRM heatsink and more powerful SOC VRM, if possible.

More information from Google search: https://www.google.com/search?q=ryzen+3400g+throttling+soc+vrm

[xcl15]

On 2021-06-20 at 12:28 PM, sam686 said:

This motherboard have no heatsink for SOC VRM and the SOC VRM is possibly low end that can overheat or reached some limits, and throttle.

Can try to use more fans and better cooling. Can manually drop the integrated graphics speed to 1100Mhz or lower to reduce SOC VRM watts usage. Best to get a better motherboard with better SOC VRM heatsink and more powerful SOC VRM, if possible.

More information from Google search: https://www.google.com/search?q=ryzen+3400g+throttling+soc+vrm

Thanks for the response. Yes I already have upgraded cooling for my setup. SOC VRM temps are averaging at 40-50C on load. Also, everything was fine before the update, the game does not throttle whatsoever, it only happened after the update (Dog days). I also run more demanding games and they do not throttle even if I reach higher temps compared the temps I reach when playing warframe. 

Temporary fix I found out is running the game on windowed mode with a resolution of 1600x900. Idk what that worked but for now it doesn't cause the game to throttle and it works even on OC. Kinda weird that it fixed the problem. Will look more into this and try to give updates. Thank you!

[MillbrookWest]

On 2021-06-15 at 12:15 AM, xcl15 said:

The frames drop from around 80-100 FPS

What happens when you limit this to 60 (and run in fullscreen, not windowed).

What were the overclock settings used as well.

[xcl15]

On 2021-06-23 at 4:34 AM, MillbrookWest said:

What happens when you limit this to 60 (and run in fullscreen, not windowed).

What were the overclock settings used as well.

Tried limitting to 60 and Fullscreen. The throttle becomes more frequent but shorter. (Like 1-2 seconds)

Only used XMP for the RAM. Everything else is on default settings.

[xcl15]

On 2021-06-20 at 12:28 PM, sam686 said:

This motherboard have no heatsink for SOC VRM

The motherboard I have (TUF Gaming B450M-PLUS II) comes with a VRM heatsink and PCH heatsink. Sorry forgot to mention that in the previous reply

[sam686]

3 hours ago, xcl15 said:

a VRM heatsink and PCH heatsink

Only 1 VRM heatsink for TUF Gaming B450M-PLUS II. Many other motherboards have 2 VRM heatsinks to cover both CPU VRM and SOC VRM. The integrated Ryzen graphics use a lot of SOC VRM.

Can use a tool, HWinfo64, to check the temperatures.

Can try to get a different motherboard with better VRM cooling with 2 VRM heatsinks.

TUF Gaming B450M-PRO II  (not PLUS)
Asrock B450M Pro4
MSI B450 Tomahawk Max  (large motherboard)

[MillbrookWest]

11 hours ago, xcl15 said:

Tried limitting to 60 and Fullscreen. The throttle becomes more frequent but shorter. (Like 1-2 seconds)

Only used XMP for the RAM. Everything else is on default settings.

- What voltage did you use for CPU overclock in the op?

- What BIOS revision does the Motherboard use?

- What happens if you manually set clocks to some fixed frequency (preferably base frequency)? Does it still down clock?

Since you ran an overclock initially i would assume there is a hardware issue, of some sort. Warframe, in itself, can't control the state of the hardware; It merely asks for work to get done. Since you are (were) hitting 80-100 i would infer that you also ran with no vsync. Since the gpu core isn't one distinct 'block', but many blocks, that each do their own thing, running without vsync usually means you hit more of those parts, more often - which means more heat, more voltage. Early ryzen CPU's had issues with prolonged load at high voltage, and heat. The chip would start to degrade. You say heat wasn't an issue, but what were the voltages?

Since the issue goes away when you run minimized (windowed is always v-synced), and is less pronounced when running with a frame limit, i'd wager your chip is tripping something and causing it to report an issue - resulting in the sporadic downclocks.

[wavic]

Throttle should not happen on 70 C temp.
I don't know if my CPU throttles but I observe the same fps drops on my Intel machine and it's really annoying to play sometimes and not fun at all. Same, the CPU temp rarely goes above 70 C ( it's a laptop ). The fps drop happens from some time after some graphics improvements and fixes. Before that the fps was 144-145 stable. The system specs are beyond the requirements. More resources hungry games are  running smoothly. Even that I lowed all graphics settings to the minimum or turned them off ( except the resolution which is FHD ) doesn't help. It was not so bad but recently is getting worse. 

In addition to my topic couple of days ago. And this too.
It was fun.  Now I wonder if I have to look for playing something else.

[xcl15]

Sorry for the delay (Almost 6 months lol) since I stopped playing Warframe for a bit. But jumping back into it after a while, the problem still happened so I tried playing in Windowed mode and it was fine for a bit, until it wasn't. It was so irritating to play when those fps drops significantly. After some time though, a solution finally worked for me. FINALLY

 

What worked for me was going to the Warframe Local folder and deleting 2 files.

So I went here: 

C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Local\Warframe

 

and I deleted the Editor.cfg and EE.cfg files. I made a backup of these 2 files just incase something goes to shizz. 

 

After deleting these files, opened up Warframe again and setup my preferred Graphics settings and played in Fullscreen, no lags (so far so good). Then, I got into playing for a bit (around 3 hours straight) that I actually forgot about the lag problem I was facing lol. So I hope this works for you guys too. IDK why it fixed the issue, but it worked, and HWinfo does not show any thermal throttling issues anymore. Also played while YT was playing in the background and no lags happened. Anyways, thanks for help mates!