This setting is primarily limited to types M and H (high-performance mobile and all-in-one) processors, although some higher-power type U processors support it as well.High TDP ( cTDP up) increases the power and clock rate limits to enable higher performance, but requires additional cooling and reduces battery life. See: Ivy Bridge Configurable TDP Detailed. This feature was introduced in Ivy Bridge. These settings adjust the power and cooling limits of your processor.Ĭonfig TDP Level ( cTDP) determines the maximum power which may be used by the processor. "Specify the acoustics cooling limit for Intel(R) Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework")Īgain, hundreds of thousands of laptops with this thing installed, and no clear search result when Googling for any of this. (as you can imagine, the mouseover tooltips are fantastically useless e.g.
What does the Power Limit mean? Undervolting?.What exactly does the "Low Power Mode Setting" do?.What exactly is "Acoustics Limit"? Does "1" mean quietest fan and 5 loudest, or the other way around?.So I can guess what "Config TDP Level" means. The thermal design power (TDP), sometimes called thermal design point, is the maximum amount of heat generated by the CPU that the cooling system in a computer is required to dissipate in typical operation.
Despite the fact that virtually all modern Dell laptops (and probably others) are supposed to have the Intel Dynamic Platform & Thermal Framework Driver installed, I couldn't find any end-user documentation about what exactly the settings do, and what the 1-5 levels mean for each: