AMD CPU slowing down clocks when starting emulation

[FIPOLINIO]

So I have decent FPS when playing The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, in some areas stable and normal 30 FPS and some others decreasing to 26 or so...but just for curiosity I opened up AMD Overdrive to see my CPU clock speeds when using the emulator and I noted that they were going down a lot from the moment I start to emulate a game.

This are my normal CPU speeds.
https://imageshack.com/i/eyrbwbdYp

And this are when I start emulation.
https://imageshack.com/i/f0qwECbMp

Any help or tips about this problem?
Thank you.

My Specs.
Windows 7 X64
8GB RAM
AMD A8-5557M @2.1GHz - 2.8GHz Turbo
AMD 8550G GPU
I have all latest drivers and updates installed.

[Shonumi]

I know for a fact that Intel's CPUs will scale back their clocks to reduce heat; I'm not familiar with AMD CPUs, but it might be doing the same thing.

What are your temperatures before emulation and then during emulation?

[DJBarry004]

I also have an APU and the clocks don´t get lowered even if getting some heat (or at least, not too much) during large gameplay periods.

[DatKid20]

This is a laptop. Ofc the heat would cause it to throttle.

[admin89]

Install Coretemp and GPU-Z then tell us the temp of your CPU and GPU when Dolphin is running (Youmust leave Dolphin running for 10 minutes or longer)

[FIPOLINIO]

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(10-05-2014, 09:02 AM)admin89 Wrote: Install Coretemp and GPU-Z then tell us the temp of your CPU and GPU when Dolphin is running (Youmust leave Dolphin running for 10 minutes or longer)

The temperature of the GPU is 40 -43 Celsius

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I just discovered reading some comments on another site, that if I disconnect my laptop from the charger it will run it better, and it does....

I don't know why it performs better with the charger not connected... any ideas?
Also it does not only increases the speed of dolphin...but also of all my other pc games...this is really strange....

For example, in Borderlands 2 I tested playing around an area that gave me 28-35 fps when looking around and being there, and with the charger disconnected it now gives me around 45-56 fps.

I don't know why this is happening.

[KHg8m3r]

You should be getting better speed when your charger is plugged in. Are you running in a high performance power plan in Windows Power Management?

What I can think of is when you have it plugged in you have it in balanced mode, and in unplugged its in high performance.

[FIPOLINIO]

(10-05-2014, 09:46 AM)KHg8m3r Wrote: You should be getting better speed when your charger is plugged in. Are you running in a high performance power plan in Windows Power Management?

What I can think of is when you have it plugged in you have it in balanced mode, and in unplugged its in high performance.

I have it at high performance when plugged in, now this is the problem it seems...that the laptop runs better when not plugged in to the charger.
My laptop is an Acer Aspire V5 552 by the way

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(10-05-2014, 10:57 AM)FIPOLINIO Wrote:

(10-05-2014, 09:46 AM)KHg8m3r Wrote: You should be getting better speed when your charger is plugged in. Are you running in a high performance power plan in Windows Power Management?

What I can think of is when you have it plugged in you have it in balanced mode, and in unplugged its in high performance.

I have it at high performance when plugged in, now this is the problem it seems...that the laptop runs better when not plugged in to the charger.
My laptop is an Acer Aspire V5 552 by the way

I found the solution! (I hope) so messing with all the settings of the power plan one by one, I found out that under ATI Graphics power settings and then ATI power play settings, changing plugged in: from maximize performance to maximize battery life solved the problem, now I can play constantly 30 FPS Zelda Wind Waker. I hope this helps anyone else!

Edit: Doing some more testing....it only solves the problem for dolphin...as it stabilizes the cores of the cpu, but using its default clock at 2.1 GHz. Still better performance when unplugged for all other games.

[Fiora]

Could the problem have been that the integrated GPU was stealing power away from the CPU, since they share the same TDP envelope?