I have this laptop called ASUS Zenbook Pro UX501JW with:
Intel Core i7 4720HQ 2.6Ghz
8GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960m 4GB
The had this throttling problem for a long time whenever I play demanding games such as AC Unity, Shadow of War, Witcher 3, Warframe, etc. The clock speed always goes down the 405Mhz. I got this BIOS mod from a website called VOLTGROUND (now down) and I was able to unlock the temp limit. Does anyone know how to contact Dreamonic by email or anything I can do to send a PM? Because I tried to do it here but I couldn't send it. It said that Dreamonic can't recieve PMs anymore unless he deletes the cache or something for him to receive PMs again? I don't exactly what is that.
Damn I never thought the temp. will go higher than I expected. The locked temp limit by default is 78° but when I unlock it, it goes beyond 95°. I went in a repair store to clean and put thermal paste on both CPU and GPU, twice. The first time gave me a problem where the GPU isn't working at full speed, literally but for now its ok. However, the high temps are still there and I had to lock the limit to at least 82° to 87°.
I've read a lot of posts about this 960m and it appears this is a common problem. The only game I could enjoy playing right now is Warframe due to the game having a dynamic resolution option, while the 2014-2015 games I have don't. That tech is amazing that low end users can enjoy smooth gameplay with the cost of resolution scaling.
I've been looking for a program/software that do dynamic resolution scaling and it appears there's one, called Hialgo Boost. Unfortunately it only support some DX9 games. I've learn that RADEON already had a dynamic resolution feature to its driver. I was wondering why NVIDIA can't do the same?
Is this how 960m really works? I can't be the only one having a such overheating problem with this laptop GPU. I'm planning to go back in a repair store again to clean and repaste this laptop, I can't risk doing it myself for I have no experience for this.
I was thinking that I regret buying this 2015 laptop model and instead I should've waited for the 10 Series laptop and buy a 1050/1050 ti or a 1060 laptop. It's really a shame.
I don't even know if I can ever reduce the temps to at least 74° to 70° at this point because repasting the GPU and CPU isn't helping at all, for me at least.
If there's a chance of a software that support DX11 games and do a dynamic resolution scaling, I really wish it will come someday or at least NVIDIA should try implementing it.