Steam Deck LCD draws more power on lower TDPs after updating to SteamOS 3.6.19 Stable

[positiveoctopus]

Your system information

• Steam client version: 1726693985
• SteamOS version: 3.6.19
• Opted into Steam client beta?: [No]
• Opted into SteamOS beta?: [No]
• Have you checked for updates in Settings > System?: [Yes]

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

Before the update I could play my games lowering the TDP at least by 1 watt than now, and the game ran fine for my standards, after updating, games that I play for example, at 5 watts TDP, now they need at least a 6 Watt TDP, drawing more or less the same power but still a little higher than SteamOS 3.5.19, I can't see the 10% battery improvement anywhere, all I see is less battery life than before

Steps for reproducing this issue:

1. Open a game where you have previously set a TDP Limit
2. Look at the game performance and compare it to have it was before
3. Set an higher TDP Limit to compensate

[srmoska]

Same problem, after the 3.6.19 upgrade the system requires more power to do the same things it did before

the most notable difference to me is the Steam Menu, now it rans very poorly at 3 watts, been using it on 3 watts since I got my deck back in 2022 now it's almost unusable, performance is so poor one time it even crashed while browsing the system settings.

Also the mummy demastered ran fine at 3 watts, now I have to ramp the TDP up to 5 watts to get decent performance, at 3 watts it runs at 27 FPS instead of 60. When I press the right menu button while in game it starts to run at 60 FPS but as soon as I close the menu it goes back to 27FPS

[kisak-valve]

Steam deck LCD requires more power to do the same things it did before after F7A0131 Bios update

Issue transferred from #1701.
@srmoska posted on 2024-11-01T19:34:52:

Your system information

• Steam client version: 1730416762
• SteamOS version: 3.6.20
• Opted into Steam client beta?: [Yes/No] YES
• Opted into SteamOS beta?: [Yes/No] YES
• Have you checked for updates in Settings > System?: [Yes/No] YES

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

After the 3.6.19 stable update that included and update to the BIOS, the Steam Ui started performing with lots of hiccups and stuttering becoming almost unusable with a TDP of 3 watts, didn't had this problem before the update (been using my steam deck since 2022), Steam even froze once while browsing settings. Switched to Steam BETA 3.6.20 but the problem persisted

Also noted that the game The mummy demastered that worked fine with a TDP of 3 watts before the update, but now I had the ramp up the TDP up to 5 watts to get the game working, at 3 watts the game runs at 27FPS instead of 60FPS like it used to work before

Downgraded F7A0131 to F7A0121 and both problems corrected

Steps for reproducing this issue:

1. At 3 watts with bios version F7A0131, the steam library is very slow and with very bad stuttering
2. downgraded to BIOS version F7A0121
3. Performance returned to normal

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@deathblade201243 commented on 2024-11-01T19:43:34:

from what I heard the issue in this video was fixed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ7T3mDPtZY idk how true that is though. I never use the TDP limit I just use powertools which provides the same effect with much more control of whats underclocked

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@srmoska commented on 2024-11-01T20:03:02:

from what I heard the issue in this video was fixed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ7T3mDPtZY idk how true that is though. I never use the TDP limit I just use powertools which provides the same effect with much more control of whats underclocked

that video is form 2022, this problem I'm mentioning started early this week when they rolled the new BIOS F7A0131. I fixed it by rolling back to the previous version F7A0121 that I was using last week

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@deathblade201243 commented on 2024-11-01T20:07:05:

from what I heard the issue in this video was fixed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ7T3mDPtZY idk how true that is though. I never use the TDP limit I just use powertools which provides the same effect with much more control of whats underclocked

that video is form 2022, this problem I'm mentioning started early this week when they rolled the new BIOS F7A0131. I fixed it by rolling back to the previous version F7A0121 that I was using last week

I posted the video to show you the issue that was supposedly fixed. the date of the video is irrelevant. it being fixed would explain your issue since TDP was higher than reported prior.

[lostgoat]

What deathblade posted above is correct.

The new BIOS update in SteamOS 3.6 is stricter about TDP limit enforcement, which results in more accurate TDP limits. This may lead to cases where a previous limit that worked in SteamOS 3.5 will now need to be raised slightly to address the new enforcement rules. Note that this doesn't mean that your unit is consuming more power, with SteamOS 3.5 it may have been the case that your unit was accidentally exceeding the 3W budget and it would consume the same amount as SteamOS 3.6 with a TDP limit set one notch higher.

In general, the way TDP limits actually work under the hood make them hard to compare apples to apples across different hardware (even chips from the same manufacturer) and sometimes even BIOS versions.

[jvalecillos]

I read through the forum discussions, and the explanation makes sense. From my experience setting a TDP limit in a Visual Novel game, I noticed CPU/GPU usage didn’t change much when reducing the TDP, suggesting it wasn’t properly enforced before. People may be reporting this as a bug because they hadn’t observed the TDP setting’s effect prior to the OS update (the overlay was misleading showing the fake TDP).

This bug report reminds me of this meme: