Dell XPS 13 9310 Core i7 Laptop Review: The 11th Gen Tiger Lake Difference

[Killian Lobato]

Hi everyone,
Can people report what their sustained wattage is during stress testing (e.g. Prime95 or Heavy). In games like iracing I get a sustained wattage of 12W. No more. I use the laptop docked, but with the screen open.

I have noticed that if you play around with the Dell Power Management software, you can alter the PL1 (dynamic power limit) between 28W (Ultra performance), 25W (Balanced) and 15W (Quiet) and 10W (cool).
Then when you play around with the windows power setting (between power saving and performance), the CPU frequencies spend more time boosted or not. However, this increases fan speed and causes heating. The result int he PL1 limit dynamically adjusts downwards.

Also, you can add registry setting to alter the max frequency of the CPU. I have found that limiting the frequency (2 to 2.8Ghz) reduces drastic throttling when CPU is under heavy load.

So, for light work where there can be at times spikes in CPU load, dynamic PL1 is fine. However, playing games where settings have to be tuned to ensure you do not bottle neck your CPU and GPU for constant performance, requires that CPU be limited to a max thermal load of about 12W. This means reducing the CPU max frequency and maximising the Fan speed.