> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://blog.sudowl.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # HP Victus GPU Stuck at ~30 W, Low FPS at 99% GPU Usage: It Was "HW Power Braking" (EC Reset Fix) - URL: https://blog.sudowl.com/hp-victus-gpu-stuck-30w-hw-power-brake-ec-reset/ - Published: 2026-10-17T10:30:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-17T01:30:07.000Z - Description: HP Victus RTX 5050 stuck at 27 W with 99% GPU usage and low FPS. nvidia-smi showed HW Power Braking; an EC reset brought it back to 72 W. - Author: Lukas - Tags: hardware Apex at 26–44 FPS on my HP Victus with an RTX 5050\. The overlay says GPU usage 98–99 %, so the obvious read is "card's maxed out, turn the settings down". Except everything was already on Low, and the GPU was pulling 27 W. That card is allowed up to 80 W. Same laptop as in [the "non-original charger" post](/hp-gaming-laptop-non-original-charger-throttling-ec-reset/) from earlier this week. Different symptom this time: no charger warning, and the adapter even passed HP's own hardware test. Same fix in the end. **TL;DR:** The GPU wasn't overloaded, the laptop was braking it. `nvidia-smi -q -d PERFORMANCE` showed the `HW Power Braking` counter running almost the whole uptime, and a normal reboot didn't clear it. An EC reset did: shut down, unplug everything, hold the power button for 30+ seconds, boot. GPU power went from 27 W to 72 W, `HW Power Braking` stayed at 0. ## The setup - HP Victus 15-fa2309TX, Core i7-13620H, RTX 5050 Laptop (8 GB), 24 GB DDR5 - Original HP 200 W adapter, round barrel plug - BIOS current, NVIDIA driver 617.42 - Samsung ViewFinity S6 (S34C652VAU) ultrawide, 3440×1440 at 100 Hz over HDMI - Apex at 3440×1440, almost everything on Low, Reflex On + Boost, V-Sync Adaptive Notebookcheck's review of the near-identical German model (15-fa2160ng) lists the RTX 5050 at 80 W TGP. So 27 W is not "just how this laptop is". ## The symptom: 99 % GPU usage, 28 W NVIDIA overlay (Alt+Z → Statistics, custom view) in a match: | Metric | Value | | ---------------------- | ------------------ | | FPS / 1 % low | 39 / 34 | | GPU utilization | 98 % | | GPU power | 28 W | | GPU clock / voltage | 2070 MHz / 0.810 V | | GPU temp | 64 °C | | CPU utilization / temp | 19 % / 95 °C | GPU fully busy, low voltage, cool, and a third of its power budget. A GPU that's at 99 % but only sips power isn't busy. It's being held back. I saw the same pattern on this machine a few days earlier. ## What didn't help I went through the usual list first. None of it moved the GPU power: - OMEN Gaming Hub was already on Performance. - Fans on MAX dropped the CPU from 95 °C to 78–82 °C. GPU power: still 27 W. So not (only) heat. - Windows power mode was already Best Performance. - NVIDIA App per-app settings for Apex: Power management mode to "Prefer maximum performance". Don't hit "Optimize" there, it overwrites your in-game settings. - Unplugged the monitor's USB-C cable from the laptop and rebooted. Still throttled. - Adapter: original 200 W (19.5 V / 10.3 A), center pin straight and clean, different wall socket. - HP PC Hardware Diagnostics UEFI (F2 at boot) → Power → adapter test: passed. HP Battery Check: Normal. HP Support Assistant: nothing pending. By every HP tool the hardware was fine. The GPU disagreed. ## nvidia-smi: the limit, and why it's not reached `nvidia-smi` comes with the driver. Power section first: ```bat nvidia-smi -q -d POWER ``` ```text GPU Power Readings Average Power Draw : 24.38 W Instantaneous Power Draw : 23.25 W GPU Ceiling Power Limit Current Power Limit : 69.72 W Default Power Limit : 60.00 W Min Power Limit : 5.00 W Max Power Limit : 80.00 W ``` The driver allows \~70 W, up to 80\. The card draws 24\. So it's not the driver's power limit. Now the interesting one, with Apex running (Alt+Tab out, run it, go back in): ```bat nvidia-smi -q -d PERFORMANCE ``` ```text Performance State : P2 Clocks Event Reasons SW Power Cap : Active HW Slowdown : Not Active HW Thermal Slowdown : Not Active HW Power Brake Slowdown : Not Active SW Thermal Slowdown : Not Active Clocks Event Reasons Counters SW Power Capping : 3287054609 us SW Thermal Slowdown : 773578940 us HW Thermal Slowdown : 0 us HW Power Braking : 3573213470 us ``` Don't look at the Active/Not Active snapshot, look at the counters. `HW Power Braking` at 3,573 seconds means the GPU had been under a hardware power brake for about an hour. That brake is an external signal: the laptop's embedded controller telling the GPU to back off, typically because it thinks the power source can't keep up. (The \~13 minutes of `SW Thermal Slowdown` are most likely from before the fans went to MAX.) Normal reboot, a few minutes into the game, check again: ```text Performance State : P0 Clocks Event Reasons Counters SW Power Capping : 152084824 us SW Thermal Slowdown : 92222425 us HW Thermal Slowdown : 0 us HW Power Braking : 167108939 us ``` Counters reset, and `HW Power Braking` was straight back at 167 seconds, basically the entire uptime. A Windows reboot doesn't touch the EC. It keeps running whatever state it's in. ## What the internet said An [HP Community thread](https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Gaming-Notebooks/Gpu-Tgp-not-exceeding-30w-of-hp-Victus-15-i5-13420h-with-6gb/td-p/9563638?ref=blog.sudowl.com) about a Victus 15 with an RTX 3050 stuck at \~30 W got the answer "it's by design" from a volunteer. The poster disagreed, no fix. On r/HPVictus someone described the GPU as "hardlock stuck at 30w no matter what", fixed only by holding the power button until the laptop turned off. With an 80 W card, a 70–80 W driver limit and a power brake counter ticking away, "by design" doesn't fit. The Reddit fix does. That's an EC reset. ## The fix: EC reset Same as in the last post: 1. Save everything, shut down completely. 2. Unplug the adapter, HDMI and every USB device. 3. Hold the power button for 30+ seconds. I did 35\. The battery is built in, so the laptop may flash on and off again while you hold. Keep holding. 4. Adapter back in, boot. ## Gotcha: CMOS checksum and a black screen on the first boots It wasn't "boot and done". First boot: "CMOS Checksum invalid", then an automatic restart. That's the BIOS settings resetting to defaults. Showed up once, never again. If you get it on every boot, that's a hardware problem. Next boot, with HDMI attached: Victus logo, black screen, fans loud. Forced off, booted with HDMI unplugged, laptop screen fine. Then the Samsung ignored its own buttons, even after pulling its power cable. The culprit was its "Max. Energiesparen" (max power saving) setting: with no signal it drops into a deep sleep and only wakes from a PC on USB-C or LAN. Gave it a signal, turned that off. My guess for the black screen, not verified: Windows was still on "second screen only" and the image went to a monitor that was effectively off. ## The result GPU power in the overlay: 72 W. And the counter: ```text Performance State : P4 Clocks Event Reasons SW Power Cap : Not Active HW Power Brake Slowdown : Not Active Reliability : Active Clocks Event Reasons Counters SW Power Capping : 578743139 us SW Thermal Slowdown : 577196859 us HW Thermal Slowdown : 0 us HW Power Braking : 0 us ``` `HW Power Braking: 0 us`. Brake's gone. `SW Power Capping` counting is fine now, that's the GPU hitting its normal 70–80 W limit under load, which is exactly what you want. P4 and `Reliability` are just because Apex was in the background. FPS went from 26–44 to 130, later a steady 157–160 uncapped. No driver reinstall, no warranty case. ## Why? No idea, honestly Twice in one week, same laptop, both times an EC reset fixed it. First time it called the original charger "non-original", this time the adapter test passed and it braked the GPU anyway. Looks like the EC on this unit gets stuck in a "power source not good enough" state. What puts it there, I don't know. My unverified suspicion: for a while the monitor's USB-C cable (up to 90 W Power Delivery) was plugged in at the same time as the 200 W barrel adapter. Maybe the EC doesn't like two power sources. Haven't tested it. If it comes back, that's the first thing I check. ## Now it's hot Full GPU power means full heat. Within minutes the CPU was bouncing between 86 and 98 °C, even in the Apex menu, GPU at 57–85 °C, fans already on MAX. The i7-13620H boosts up to 4.9 GHz. At 3440×1440 Apex is mostly GPU-bound, so most of that turbo just turns into heat. The GUI route (Maximum processor state → 99 %) did nothing for me. This did, instantly, no game restart: ```bat powercfg /setacvalueindex scheme_current sub_processor PERFBOOSTMODE 0 powercfg /setactive scheme_current ``` `2` instead of `0` turns turbo back on. I keep both as `Turbo aus.bat` / `Turbo an.bat` on the desktop. Still 130+ FPS with turbo off. The monitor does 100 Hz, so anything above 100 FPS is wasted heat too. `+fps_max 100` as a launch option didn't apply, the game kept doing 157–160\. The cap that works is in the NVIDIA App: Graphics → Apex Legends → Max Frame Rate → 100. ## Side notes Two monitor things I'll write up separately: on this Victus, HDMI goes to the RTX 5050 and USB-C to the Intel iGPU (Windows → Advanced display tells you which), so game over HDMI. And VRR shows "Not Supported" over HDMI even with FreeSync on, because NVIDIA doesn't do FreeSync over HDMI 2.0. ## Key takeaways - Low FPS at 99 % GPU usage but \~25 W GPU power = power-limited, not overloaded. - `nvidia-smi -q -d POWER` shows the allowed limit, `-d PERFORMANCE` shows why it's not reached. Read the counters. - `HW Power Braking` counting up means the laptop is braking the GPU. A passed adapter test doesn't rule that out. - A Windows reboot doesn't clear it. An EC reset does. - Expect a one-time "CMOS checksum invalid" and maybe a black external screen afterwards. - Then deal with the heat: turbo off via `powercfg`, FPS cap at your refresh rate. - If FPS suddenly tank on an HP gaming laptop: nvidia-smi first, EC reset second, buy nothing. --- ### Related posts - [My Gaming Laptop Called Its Own Charger "Non-Original" and Throttled Everything — an EC Reset Fixed It](https://blog.diengdoh.com/hp-gaming-laptop-non-original-charger-throttling-ec-reset/?ref=blog.sudowl.com)