Low power consumption/clock rate regardless of GPU load and temperature

Graphics / Linux Linux
1

Hi all,

I’ve been using my current laptop, an MSI Pulse GL66 with RTX 3070 Laptop for about 4 years by now. Recently I’ve noticed very frequent stuttering issue, regardless if it is GPU-heavy work like gaming or just daily usage like browsers.

I tried to monitor the GPU with nvtop and noticed that the GPU is mostly running on the lowest power (10W) and clock rate even when it is on 100% load. Interestingly it sometimes run at higher power (80W) and clock rate when the system is idle. From the output in nvidia-smi -q -d POWER I can confirm it is indeed being limited to use only 10.0W, and I believe this is the main culprit as the stuttering seems to happen whenever the load spikes.

Another thing I noticed but not sure if it is related, is that the event SW Power Cap and SW Thermal Slowdown is always on even though my GPU is running on a moderate temperature of around 50 C.

Here are some things I’ve tried:

For your reference, here are some of the command outputs I mentioned earlier:

> nvidia-smi
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 590.48.01              Driver Version: 590.48.01      CUDA Version: 13.1     |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name                 Persistence-M | Bus-Id          Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp   Perf          Pwr:Usage/Cap |           Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                                         |                        |               MIG M. |
|=========================================+========================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 ...    Off |   00000000:01:00.0  On |                  N/A |
| N/A   51C    P5             23W /   40W |     818MiB /   8192MiB |     11%      Default |
|                                         |                        |                  N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+

> nvidia-smi -q -d PERFORMANCE
==============NVSMI LOG==============

Timestamp                                              : Wed Dec 24 22:10:51 2025
Driver Version                                         : 590.48.01
CUDA Version                                           : 13.1

Attached GPUs                                          : 1
GPU 00000000:01:00.0
    Performance State                                  : P0
    Clocks Event Reasons
        Idle                                           : Not Active
        Applications Clocks Setting                    : Not Active
        SW Power Cap                                   : Active
        HW Slowdown                                    : Not Active
            HW Thermal Slowdown                        : Not Active
            HW Power Brake Slowdown                    : Not Active
        Sync Boost                                     : Not Active
        SW Thermal Slowdown                            : Active
        Display Clock Setting                          : Not Active
    Clocks Event Reasons Counters
        SW Power Capping                               : 583221460 us
        Sync Boost                                     : 0 us
        SW Thermal Slowdown                            : 580249895 us
        HW Thermal Slowdown                            : 0 us
        HW Power Braking                               : 114744676 us
    Sparse Operation Mode                              : N/A

> nvidia-smi -q -d POWER
==============NVSMI LOG==============

Timestamp                                              : Wed Dec 24 22:10:45 2025
Driver Version                                         : 590.48.01
CUDA Version                                           : 13.1

Attached GPUs                                          : 1
GPU 00000000:01:00.0
    GPU Power Readings
        Average Power Draw                             : 1.00 W
        Instantaneous Power Draw                       : 20.77 W
        Current Power Limit                            : 10.00 W
        Requested Power Limit                          : 10.00 W
        Default Power Limit                            : 80.00 W
        Min Power Limit                                : 1.00 W
        Max Power Limit                                : 105.00 W
    Power Samples
        Duration                                       : Not Found
        Number of Samples                              : Not Found
        Max                                            : Not Found
        Min                                            : Not Found
        Avg                                            : Not Found
    GPU Memory Power Readings 
        Average Power Draw                             : N/A
        Instantaneous Power Draw                       : N/A
    Module Power Readings
        Average Power Draw                             : N/A
        Instantaneous Power Draw                       : N/A
        Current Power Limit                            : N/A
        Requested Power Limit                          : N/A
        Default Power Limit                            : N/A
        Min Power Limit                                : N/A
        Max Power Limit                                : N/A
    EDPp Multiplier                                    : N/A

As well as the bug report:
nvidia-bug-report.log.gz (588.6 KB)

I can provide more command output for context if needed. Thanks for the help in advance.

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