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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

RS
Star III
The GPU will definitely throttle. Not sure what temperatures the throttling kicks in at since I get enough thermal overhead to avoid serious frame drops in COD Mobile or PUBG Mobile. I also live in a cold country and use the AeroCooler every time. On the first ROG Phone, the GPU and SoC noticeably throttled at 48/49 degrees (the temperature given in the Real Time Info applet). I am sure every phone will throttle if the GPU is maxed, it's just impossible to cool the SoC enough unless it's actively cooled like PC GPUs. That being said, the ROG Phone 2 does better than basically every other Android phone in gaming since it has the best passive cooling to give enough thermal headroom for running stuff like PUBG on smooth+extreme. You can also run a desk fan blowing across your device's screen since there is a massive heatsink/vapor chamber directly underneath the OLED panel. That helps a LOOOOOT with maintaining decent framerates.

pong
Star I
RS

The GPU will definitely throttle. Not sure what temperatures the throttling kicks in at since I get enough thermal overhead to avoid serious frame drops in COD Mobile or PUBG Mobile. I also live in a cold country and use the AeroCooler every time. On the first ROG Phone, the GPU and SoC noticeably throttled at 48/49 degrees (the temperature given in the Real Time Info applet). I am sure every phone will throttle if the GPU is maxed, it's just impossible to cool the SoC enough unless it's actively cooled like PC GPUs. That being said, the ROG Phone 2 does better than basically every other Android phone in gaming since it has the best passive cooling to give enough thermal headroom for running stuff like PUBG on smooth+extreme. You can also run a desk fan blowing across your device's screen since there is a massive heatsink/vapor chamber directly underneath the OLED panel. That helps a LOOOOOT with maintaining decent framerates.


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If you don't have any game that maxes out GPU you can instead use the GFXBench Manhatten battery test (the newer one). It maxes out GPU and doesn't stop running ever unless you close it. Can you try it and report the result? Make sure to run it for at least 20 minutes and monitor GPU frequency in realtime.

icecold4u
Star I
I'm a newbie installed gfx benchmark app ran battery test for 20 min how do I see GPU frequency?

pong
Star I
icecold4u

I'm a newbie installed gfx benchmark app ran battery test for 20 min how do I see GPU frequency?


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Thanks! I don't know if this phone has a built-in way of showing you frequency, but if it doesn't you can you the "Simple System Monitor" app, go to the GPU tab, and tap on it to make a floating window so you can monitor GPU frequency while running any other app. Result is like this:
AUWNUY6CJDJC.png