I have just received and installed a Gen 2 AMD Radeon RX7700S Graphics module to my 18-month old Framework 16 laptop.
Found the installation process straight forward and good to see that the Windows drivers updated fine. Performance was greatly improved (frame rates increased significantly) and I was pleased I had selected the Gen 2 version, as it is stated as being quieter. The fans seemed to operated all the time and certainly expelled hot air and are loud enough.
However, after enjoying using it for 2 days, I thought I would rely on battery power and only plug it back in once the power warning popped up. After 50 minutes or so, the pop up appeared, and the power supply was reconnected. I noted that I couldn’t hear the fans anymore, and it looked like graphic performance had reduced. This did not improve, and I assumed that once I booted, this would be remedied, but it is not the case. It looks like I now had worse graphics than before fitting the graphics module.
Device manage states both graphics adaptors are operating fine. I have checked that the RX7700 is still showing as being used, not the iGPU. I have tried using the AMD Software to enable Hyper-RX. I have tried with and without a second screen.
The framerate is now displaying as 8 FSR on my external screen, whereas it was in excess of 60 FSR before this. and is not much higher with just the laptop screen. With the iGPU I was typically seeing 28 FSR.
I’m concerned that the fans do not seem to be working. When looking in device manager/Control panel earlier, the RX7700 temp was showing as only 40 deg C, but this was just with the desktop not with graphics intensive work.
I’m not an IT professional, so any help or pointer for what to check next would be appreciated
I believe this is an issue others have experienced where the 180 watt adapter isn’t enough to power the notebook in gaming situations with the dedicated gpu installed, and it actually has to drain the battery to provide full performance. Though I’m a little confused cause you shouldn’t loose that much performance if it has to charge and run the game at the same time.
Turbo, thanks for the swift reply. I’m not sure that is the case here.
Maybe I wasn’t clear in the first place; the issue occurred once the laptop reached 30% remaining power and the laptop switched to power-saving mode. I had not plugged-in the power cable, so that it was running on battery, to drain it and help maintain battery life/capacity.
I have now tried various options within power-saving, and also optimised the settings in the AMD software, but neither made a difference.
HOWEVER, I did restart, and then disable the RX7700 within display adaptors, in device manager. Following a restart, the cooling fans came back to life. I could then re-enable the RX7700 and this has solved the problem for now, as a work around. But clearly, it has not fixed the underlying issue.
Deep cycling lithium ion batteries has no affect on battery health, so i don’t think discharging them for that reason is needed.
The embedded controller (EC) controls the PMF power profiles.
If you are running on battery, the lower it gets, the lower the power profile applied, trying to eek out as much battery life as possible.
One change happens below 60%, anothe below 30%.
So, what you are seeing is normal expected behaviour.
I understand performance will be affected while off power, but surely once mains power is restored, performance should return. This did not occur.
Once the 30% remaining power threshold was reached, a sudden decrease in performance was observed, which did not return, even after full shutdown and restart, and the other settings I tried adjusting.
I was only able to get the performance to be restored by disabling the RX7700 graphics adaptor in Device Manager. It was only after this, that the cooling fans could be heard once more.
I then re-enabled the RX7700 and the graphics module is now working properly once again.
I don’t remember the exact profile it uses. But once a PSU is plugged in, it tries to recharge the battery. When recharging the battery, it has less power available for the GPU, and so has to back that off a bit.
You can check how it works by looking in the EC firmware source code.
James, I can understand that, but we didn’t find the fix I describes above, until the following day. The battery was then fully recharged and and we were still seeing frame rates in the region of 8 - 28 FPS (on external screen and also when only using the laptop’s screen)