Aspire E5-551G heavy CPU throttle

DidiMidi · March 2017

First of all, hello everyone. I'm new here and i signed up kind of as a last resort since i think i've tried pretty much everything i could find on the net, or i could think of.

To keep it short, the laptop has an A10-7300 APU which has a base clock of 1.9Ghz. Now, every time the dGPU (R7 M265) is tapped into it instantly downclocks to 1.1Ghz. Turbo Core still works though, and i get short bursts so the average frequency is a bit higher than that but it roughly does 1.3Ghz, which i find unacceptable.

Overheating is out of the question, i have modified the cooling (basically i'm forcing air through the intake vents, i don't want to void the warranty - yet) and they NEVER reach 70ºC, both GPU and CPU. Before doing it, the dGPU tended to throttle down to 400Mhz at ~76 ºC while the system fan wasn't full on but that's another story. So i must insist that heat is out of the question, i can get it to run even cooler by pushing in more air.

Here's a snapshot of a gaming session so you can exactly get a picture of what i'm complaining about:

https://imgur.com/a/GNmbg

Obviously, there's no settings in the BIOS menu for thermal management - and that's OK, if you get what you pay for. A 1.9Ghz part in this particular case. But i got a crippled down system instead.

Any kind of feedback would be welcome before i decide to keep returning it until i get my money back. Nevermind buying or recommending Acer again.

EDIT: Yes, i'm running the latest BIOS, which almost bricked my R7 when flashing it from windows (really Acer, windows only?) with a display hooked to the VGA port.

EDIT #2: I'll post later an example of the same throttling when the CPU is maxed out instead of the GPU so you can see see it's just the same.

Here it is. To cut the system some slack i just ran prime95, the dGPU was disabled. It barely does 1.6Ghz with a 10+ ºC thermal margin.

https://imgur.com/a/JS9AV