Game:

Call of Duty: Ghosts (2013)

Duration: 7:02

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12

This is by far the best-looking COD game I've seen. It rivals Battlefield 4 in the eyecandy department, save for some areas. Unfortunately, this game is incredibly power-hungry, even hungrier than BF4. At 70% CPU performance I thought I was being safe. As it turns out, Windows was giving less performance while agreeing into the same power demands. The results were wasted power and unnecessary heat increase, yielding 93 to 95 °C max CPU temps and 96 °C max on the GPU. This immediately raised a red flag and forced me to consider other options: undervolting and underclocking.

Laptop and desktop CPU temps are rated differently. Desktop CPU temps are measured at the metal casing/heat spreader (Tcase). Because laptop CPUs lack this, the temps are measured at the core (Tjunction). This results in a higher reading on laptop CPU temps than desktops, adding (give or take) 20 °C more. Even knowing this, the temps I got on the game were still alarming. The Core i7-4700MQ has a max operating temperature of 100 °C, while the GT 750M (I think) maxes at 96 °C. Beyond these, you experience what everyone calls "throttling".

For the CPU, I used Intel's XTU program to tweak the CPU voltage and speed. The i7-4700MQ boosts at 3.4 GHz if needed, but I don't want to push it. I've read people undervolting by about -100 mV and having stability, so I tried it. I had to also decrease the max speed to 2.4 GHz, else the system would crash and restart if it tried to go higher at the desired voltage offset. I turned the speed down further to 2.0 GHz just to be safe. For the GPU, there is either the EVGA Precision X or the MSI Afterburner. I chose the former, and the beauty about it is featuring a slider for the max temp you want and the program does the rest. Sadly, only the 700 series and the GTX Titan supports this. There is a discrepancy of 2 to 3 °C from the actual reading, so I've set it to target 83 °C to get 85 or 86 °C.

With these settings, I expected to gain lower performance as opposed to their normal operating values, which is fine as long as I don't hit above 90 °C.

Framerates:
Range - 16 to 58 fps
Average - 36 fps

Maximum Operating Temperatures (1 hour of gaming):
CPU - 86 to 88 °C
GPU - 85 °C

For the record, these are the framerates you get with 4x TXAA (likeness may be closer to 8x MSAA). With FXAA at max settings I got 75 fps tops, averaging at 49 fps. Areas with dense foliage appear to have the hardest hit on the framerate.

Also, this is my first time attempting to deviate the CPU and GPU from their stock settings. Might find better ones down the road.

## Model Configuration ##
Lenovo IdeaPad Y410p-20216
Windows 8, 64-bit
1366 x 768 Native Resolution
Intel Core i7-4700MQ "Haswell" @ 2.4 GHz (3.4 GHz turbo)
GeForce GT 750M GDDR5 2 GB VRAM, SLI ready
8 GB DDR3 Samsung RAM @ 1600 MHz (1/4 slots; 32 GB max)
1 TB Seagate HDD @ 5400 RPM
JBL Dolby-certified Home Theater v4

Notes:
OS Version - Windows 8.1 Single Language
Nvidia Driver - 335.23 WHQL
GPU - Dedicated, Single
CPU Tweaks - Underclock to 2.0 GHz; undervolt by -100 mV
GPU Tweaks - Target max temperature of 83 °C
Recording Utility - Fraps
Gamepad - Yes, DS3 Controller

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