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Does ROG phone 2 GPU throttle?

pong
Star I
So called "gaming phones" have left a bitter taste in my mouth because they throttle just like regular phones except delayed by 5 or 10 minutes.
For example when the GPU of the Razer Phone 2 is maxed out, within just 5 minutes the frequency will enter into this ridiculous sine wave form where it jumps up and down between 710 MHz and 350 MHz, literally halving the frame rate every 3 seconds. The problem is these gimmicky "vapor chambers" which are sandwiched inside the phone and surrounded by thermally insulating plastic and glass which prevents the heat from escaping and causes it to build up till the temperature reaches a critical point of throttling. Not only do these "Water Cooling 3D Super X Ultra Gaming Vapor Chambers" not prevent throttling but they add a lot of extra weight to the phone making it stressful to hold.
Has anyone here with the ROG 2 tested whether the GPU throttles when maxed out? GPU throttling is far more important than CPU throttling as most of you know. I saw anadtech benchmarks saying it doesn't throttle, but there's two problems with that:
1- They didn't check to make sure Asus isn't cheating by detecting the benchmark app and disabling throttling. I wouldn't blame Asus if they did this since almost everyone else does it, especially OnePlus and Xiaomi. Anandtech also mentioned that the phone literally gets too hot to touch during these benchmarks, fueling further the theory that they disabled the throttling that normally kicks in during gaming.
2- Anandtech ran the 3DMark test which gives room for the GPU to breathe every 3 minutes when the test has to be re-run which provides an opportunity for the temperature to go back down. This is unrealistic since during gaming you won't exit the game every 3 minutes then open it up. You'll be running it continuously for 30 minutes or an hour.
10 REPLIES 10

Anders_ASUS
Hall of Fame III
The GPU is not supported by Simple System Monitor.
To my knowledge from talking to our R&D. ROG Phone II will throttle the CPU before it touches the GPU frequency in order to maintain lower temperature. Lowering the CPU will of course affect the GPUs performance too.
In Armoury Crate, you may choose the thermal limit for an app (when it's allowed to throttle). You can choose between Low, default and High. When picking the last option, it's recommended to use our AeroActive Cooler as the phone will get quite hot.
For experienced users who are interested in playing around with the hardcore tuning settings. It's possible to put the CPU and some other settings that are less crucial for the games performance to a much lower setting as a way to maintain acceptable temperature over prolonged gaming sessions.

OPC
Zen Master II
This is more of a theoretical question. Every GPU or CPU will throttle at a certain load, but this bar in Rog 2 has been set pretty high. Based on my several hours long sessions on Asphalt 9 it never happened. It's a 60 fps game and not 120, but with high running dynamics. My X-mode is set to ultimate, CPU max, heat management to high and Aeroactive Cooler fan speed to max. Screen is set to 60 Hz as this is the limit of the game. After playing even 6-7 hours in a session, the GPU is constantly running over 90%, CPU is running on average at 20%. Without the cooler temperature would go fast to 49 C, but the fan blowing at max keeps it constantly at 39-40 C! That's a whopping 10 degrees lower! With the fan speed set to auto it maintains 43 C. Charging during playing would not affect those values. The Cooler keeps everything in place. So I would say that for games currently available it's an amazing device. The cooler is the game changer, as well as real time info and settings in the Game Ginnie.
There are issues though as the game crashes sometimes. But that is related to the network, both WiFi and 4G. There are constant variations in network speed. I am not sure if this is related to the phone or providers. At the moment I would say it's providers as my IP TV also has occasional droppings although on a wired cat8 Ethernet cable and the router connected to optical cable. But it happens rarely enough not to affect me and motivate me for a deeper investigation.

pong
Star I
OPC

This is more of a theoretical question. Every GPU or CPU will throttle at a certain load, but this bar in Rog 2 has been set pretty high. Based on my several hours long sessions on Asphalt 9 it never happened. It's a 60 fps game and not 120, but with high running dynamics. My X-mode is set to ultimate, CPU max, heat management to high and Aeroactive Cooler fan speed to max. Screen is set to 60 Hz as this is the limit of the game. After playing even 6-7 hours in a session, the GPU is constantly running over 90%, CPU is running on average at 20%. Without the cooler temperature would go fast to 49 C, but the fan blowing at max keeps it constantly at 39-40 C! That's a whopping 10 degrees lower! With the fan speed set to auto it maintains 43 C. Charging during playing would not affect those values. The Cooler keeps everything in place. So I would say that for games currently available it's an amazing device. The cooler is the game changer, as well as real time info and settings in the Game Ginnie.

There are issues though as the game crashes sometimes. But that is related to the network, both WiFi and 4G. There are constant variations in network speed. I am not sure if this is related to the phone or providers. At the moment I would say it's providers as my IP TV also has occasional droppings although on a wired cat8 Ethernet cable and the router connected to optical cable. But it happens rarely enough not to affect me and motivate me for a deeper investigation.


View post
When you run this game without a fan does the phone get uncomfortable to hold or just very warm? I mean of course without fast charging the phone at the same time as that's insane.

OPC
Zen Master II
If you want to play without the cooler, set the temperature to default. It will heat up to 44-46 C, which is just on the edge of comfortable. It will reach that temperature very fast but it will stay there for hours. Setting temperature management to high it will heat to 49 C and will not be comfortable to use. If you know Asphalt 9 to get the idea how much I play, my rep for the club in the past season was over 11.000 a day.

pong
Star I
OPC

If you want to play without the cooler, set the temperature to default. It will heat up to 44-46 C, which is just on the edge of comfortable. It will reach that temperature very fast but it will stay there for hours. Setting temperature management to high it will heat to 49 C and will not be comfortable to use. If you know Asphalt 9 to get the idea how much I play, my rep for the club in the past season was over 11.000 a day.


View post
49C doesn't sound that bad on glass.