Last week I received a Lenovo Legion T7-34IMZ5 (RTX 3080, 10700K, 32Gb RAM), and to see if everything is working well, I ran 3D Mark Time Spy. I was surprised to see my results are in the bottom 8% when compared with other peoples machines of the same specifications. You can see this in the screenshot attached below. How can this be the case? I have overclocking and performance mode turned on in Lenovo Vantage, latest drivers and latest Bios, no other programs open and still get this low score.

I noticed from monitoring the CPU when under load that it doesn't even attempt to reach the proposed overclock that is set to default when I open the overclocking utility in Lenovo Vantage. Frankly, I noticed zero difference in processor speed under load between when overclocking is selected and unselected. I understand overclocks can fail and not all CPUs can reach the desired speed but I can see that literally nothing is happening when I select the desired overclock. It should at least fail and cause a crash if set too high but it literally does nothing compared to being turned off as though the feature is broken and not working. This PC was advertised as overclockable. The CPU overclock feature is definitely not working correctly. 

In fact, I have read on the Lenovo website the following: "The Legion Tower 7i gaming desktop unleashes overclocked performance via 10^th Gen Intel^® Core™ K-Series processors for ultimate in-game domination. Push your to the top of the rankings with up to 10 cores, 20 threads, and up to 5.3GHz Turbo Boost". 

My CPU most definitely does not boost to 5.3ghz as mentioned above. I have checked this with HWInfo64 and tested it with CPU intense applications. So to me, this is false advertising.

I also see that the CPU current is being limited with EDP throttling and that there is no way of increasing the current in the bios within the limits that CPU is rated for (which is more than what is set in the bios). Apart from this there is also no way to change the XMP profile for the memory. I see that with the bios of the near identical 11700k that a bios update has been released to allow better overclocking and control of XMP profiles. I am sure these standard and missing features contributed to my low 3D Mark Score. 

I am only using 3D Mark Time Spy as a metric to prove my point...that the bios is restricting the hardware from performing at a normal rate for which it was designed and I find that very misleading by Lenovo, especially with the 11700k version having a bios that gives solutions to these performance issues. At the end of the day, I need my PC for demanding CPU intensive tasks which as per the 3D Mark score is not what is being delivered. I bought a PC with a 10700kf for a reason - for great performance, not limited performance. Otherwise I would have paid a lot less for a lesser machine. As a side note, I also have the issue of the extra noisy high pitched CPU liquid cooler that others with the same PC are complaining about on here. 

I would like some proper feedback from Lenovo regarding this poor performance and what can be done to help me with this considering the high specification and high price of this PC when compared to other PC's of a similar specification, and also an update on when the bios will be updated to offer the same bios features as the 11700k version? Otherwise, this PC is being sold in a very misleading manner with locked down hardware that customers like myself bought into believing that we would be able to access the features of the hardware we paid for, namely a 'KF' rated 10700 processor, 32gb RAM @3200mhz and a very expensive RTX 3080 GPU. This deserves urgent attention from Lenovo and a proper response.

Hello @stealth31000 ,

Welcome to the Community Forums.

Our machines are already pre configured from the factory to perform at the best and safest possible performance determined by our engineering team. XMP and overclocking is unfortunately not a feature added to the gaming machines.

Hope this helps.
Regards,
Jack_Lenovo1

Hi Jack,

Thanks for the response but you have not addressed what I have written in my post.

I already know that Lenovo's engineering team have greatly restricted the bios and prevented overclocking and XMP.

The issue is that they have restricted the current power supply to the motherboard so much that the CPU fails to work as it is supposed to even at 'stock' default settings. Instead it throttles back to 3.2ghz under load! Lenovo engineers have made this PC so that it does not allow the CPU to perform as it should under stress. Instead I get similar performance to an old 7700K processor. I bought this for work as well as gaming and need a 10700kf CPU that can actually reach it's full performance potential under load. As per my 3D Mark Score, my CPU performs terribly. Any feedback on that considering it's in the bottom 8% for PCs of the same specification?

Tell me, what was the point of me buying this PC for CPU intensive tasks and pairing it with a very expensive RTX 3080 that I can't even fully utilize, if the CPU throttles back due to EDP Current Limit Throttling? I would never have bought this model if I had known it would perform the same as a mid range PC. 

Unfortunately Lenovo has made misleading claims about how great this PC is in their marketing. Picture the situation, I, as the customer, see on Lenovo's website it has the parts I need included (10700kf, RTX 3080, 32GB Ram), and Lenovo advertises as a high-end gaming machine with excellent performance - should I not believe this works correctly as a customer? And then when it doesn't I should just accept that? This is potentially a form of false advertising of a product which Lenovo has purposely restricted to perform significantly more poorly than it should at stock settings and not in the amazing way they claim on their website.

Saying that the bios is limited for safest and best performance is not an adequate explanation as performance is far worse than other PCs of the same CPU and GPU, critically at stock settings. The issue is nothing to do with overclocking. We are talking about stock settings not even working as they should, let alone overclocking (which is supposed to work via the Lenovo Vantage App but doesn't). I don't care about putting spin on things. It's intentionally misleading customers by decreasing what the CPU can handle in the bios at stock speeds. If that's the case it should have been advertised as such, not as a high performing gaming rig. Bottom 8% is not high performance, is it?

If I bought a pre-built PC from other manufacturers, I would not have the same issue. This is not a normal thing to do prevent power to the CPU that causes EDP throttling at stock speed to such an extent. The key term being 'to such an extent'.

I would have been happy with the CPU working correctly at stock settings, nevermind overclocking. However, and separately, your website did also advertise this as having overclocking features and so does the Lenovo Vantage App which in any case doesn't even work for overclocking due to the EDP current limit throttling. I also have constant and loud high frequency liquid cooler buzzing noises as other's have reported even when the PC is idle.

As already asked, please escalate this to your management. I need this to be followed up on urgently and expect an adequate response and solution as a customer who has paid thousands of euro (CHF in my case) to be more than let down and critically, misled. We don't all have money to throw away on things that don't work properly and with all due respect, I don't appreciate my valid issues being dismissed here on the forums as though they are something that I should just simply expect and accept when clearly it is wrong. There are actually strict laws associated with misleading a customer.

It is blatantly unethical for Lenevo to downgrade a CPU's ability to perform as it should at stock speed to render the PC significantly slower compared to other similar spec machines, and then also to promote overclocking features which consequently don't work, and which are very misleading to customers. 

To OP, might be silly and you've done it already. But in case you haven't, have you also changed your Power Plan to "High Performance"?

Yup, I have Lenovo Vantage set to high performance, I have tried setting Windows to high performance (with and without Lenovo Vantage Installed in case that was somehow conflicting with Windows as Lenovo have their own Lenovo default power plan in Windows settings), and I also set my GPU to high performance in the Nvidia Control Panel. Each time, I get the exact same result and the CPU remains EDP throttled. I have also updated all drivers and am sure my temperatures are all low.

Interestingly, turning 'overclocking' on or off in the Lenovo Vantage App makes not an ounce of difference. For example, if I set two cores at 5.1ghz and save the overclock, I see every core staying on 4.8ghz using individial core monitoring (HWinfo). And this is when using a CPU intensive task and a high load (which I use a lot and why I bought this PC). So the overclocking tool literally does not work. I have tested every scenario.

No matter what I do, I see that EDP/current limit throttle is kicking in when the CPU is stressed.

This would explain my extremely low 'bottom 8%' 3D Mark score for my CPU type. As a result I am seeing much lower performance than I should at stock settings in any high CPU demanding software I am using.

Basically as soon as my CPU is pushed too much it throttles down. This 'current throttle limit' is crippling the entire system and makes having a 10700k and an RTX 3080 combo rather pointless. Consequently I have a CPU peforming far below its stock settings should allow and a Lenovo Vantage App that says I can overclock but does not work due to the EDP throttling.

This also makes upgrading any components in the future completely pointless. And this was also a major selling point that Lenovo advertised. What would be the point installing a new GPU in 2 years with a CPU that already massively underperforms and bottlenecks my system?

As a side note there's also the RAM that is downclocked with no XMP in the bios with no way of changing this, again making adding faster RAM in any future uprgade pointless as it will downclock. 

Oh and then there's the high frequency noise my Lenovo PCs liquid cooler makes even when running on idle as reported by many other users on this forum. 

I have been sold a machine that does not work correctly at stock settings that it has been rated to run at by Intel. What's the point in even having a 10700 and 'K' rated processor then if Lenovo cripple it so much? This in itself is misleading to the customer, let alone all the marketing falsely promoting this as a fast high-end PC when the results show it has been crippled in the bios/motherboard to underperform to such a degree with its EDP throttling which is completely unreasonable.

There is no way such a PC with this hardware inside should perform so poorly. And there is no way I could have known this fact as I rightly believed the components inside would work to their stock settings which they do not, and I believed and trusted Lenovo's description of their product in their advertising. 

Once again, Lenovo, I want a solution please that respects me as customer who has not got what I paid for. I am waiting for a thorough response with my issue escaleted to management.

@stealth31000 Im right here with you! Totally misleading and seems to have been on purpose to try to sell. These PCs are not "future proof" "upgrade-able" "overclock-able" or anything else they've advertised. And what do they do. Take down all the advertising. Malicious. Literally you could get the same performance for half the price. They took advantage of people in need in the whole GPU shortage and used it to they're advantage.

The worst part is, you have to buy a new motherboard, which means new OS, new RAM because these RAM are trash. new PSU, because they don't sell the cables to this power supply alone (for dual 8pin cpu_pwr1 and 2 on decent motherboards) The fan cables length wont fit to the normal new motherboard layout because they were designed for this motherboard So new fans or extensions. Front panel extentions . And once you get all that done, you need a new AIO water cooler because this one cant handle regular work loads, that's why they have the limits on CPU, let alone "overclocking" like they have advertised. I know this because I have had to go through this. So once you have spent 1000$ Your pc will be running great. But don't try to talk to tech support. They are not fit to solve the simplest of problems.

So Lenovo. What are you going to do to fix this?

@Jack_Lenovo1   this is what you guys mean by "upgrade-able" ??

@Jack_Lenovo1 I am still awaiting an answer from Lenovo management to my post above. Can you confirm you have escalated this?

For something so serious Jack, this needs to go to your manager and above if necessary. As nice as it is to have community forums to ask and answer questions, you are also representing Lenovo as an employee here, and have an obligation to escalate issues that you cannot solve such as this, and provide a proper answer with an actual solution that does not simply ignore what has been reported by a paying customer.

And by the way, I see other people on Reddit have exactly the same performance issues that are not at all standard and absolutely not acceptable to this extent (the original poster and another person in the last comment of that thread report the same issues).

- https://www.reddit.com/r/Lenovo/comments/mx1k3m/legion_t7_34imz5_es_poor_3dmark_score_at_stock/ 

Hello @stealth31000 ,

Sorry for the late reply.

Since this is an OEM PC there are restrictions that are expected in the BIOS and performance level.

If you feel that there is something that needs to be checked further in terms of perfomance. I would suggest reaching out to service for your region.

You can reach them at +41 44 798 2222 for Lenovo & Idea products #2.

Regards,

Jack_Lenovo1

Hi Jack

With all due respect, whether you are instructed to or not by management, you are fobbing me off here which I think is a rather cheap customer exit strategy from actually helping me to resolve the actual problem I have now several times explained.

I have asked you as a paying customer of Lenovo's to escalate this to your manager and you have refused by ignoring my request and dismissing my problem. I didn't realize managers where beyond the realm of being questioned, and that it is forbidden for me as a mere customer to request access to a manager. Is this Lenovo's policy? Is this how unimportant a customer's satisfaction is to Lenovo? I find this to be an incredible disrespectful way of behaving. 

There is also the potential for serious legalities around misleading customers. Last time I checked consumer laws in most countries protect against that. This is becoming a classic case of a company using 1st level support as a way of deflecting a customer's real problems and treating them like they are normal issues when, as in this case, it is not at all normal or even close to it.

And by the way, I contacted support by email (they didn't answer the phone using the number you suggested) and the response I have received so far has shown no acknowledgement of the actual issue or apparently an ability to even read what I wrote concerning my issue!! I have wasted days of my time over this fiasco and it somewhat ruined my 40th birthday this week as so much of both my wife's, and my time and energy has been spent trying to sort this mess out. This was a birthday present we bought for myself for my new business which actually needs a high performing CPU and GPU which I now don't have. This is also after my wife and I both lost our jobs during the pandemic and unsurprisingly don't have money to waste, nor take kindly to being messed around in situations like this. I trusted Lenovo with providing me with a high quality PC as advertised, and this how we are now treated asking for help and an actual solution. I also know what I am talking about in terms of IT so please don't tell me to basically temper my expectations of how an OEM PC should perform.

I have owned other OEM PCs before and know they can perform slightly less than a home built PC. However, to this extent is actually not normal. Also, this PC was marketed as a cutting edge gaming machine with features such as overclocking via the Lenovo Vantage App (doesn't work...not enough current), upgradeable (which it really is not in any meaningful way), and with fast RAM (which in reality appears from what I can see to be downclocked), and it is supposed to be quiet when at idle (which it is the complete opposite of....it's super noisy). Nevermind the main point which is, once gain, that the motherboard limits the CPU to such a degree that it is not even recognizable as a 10700KF. Nope, that is not normal for a high-end OEM PC. I am pretty sure if you were to ask MSI, ACER, HP, or any of the other OEM PC manufacturers they would likely agree with me that a 20% decrease in performance is more than a little ludicrous, and probably think it is a great way of losing customers.

And if for whatever reason Lenovo wants to limit the CPU and GPU and memory to that extent in the bios, then Lenovo has a responsibility to clearly advertise this as such and not the way it has marketed this PC as though it was as fast as lightning! To be clear in 3D Mark the reduction in performance is around 20% less when compared with other 10700KFs and RTX 3080s!! I would say a one fifth drop in performance is fairly significant, wouldn't you? Do you really think that other OEM PCs would be so low with a similar set up? I know for a fact they are not. Also, is being an OEM PC really an excuse for such poor performance from Lenovo, for my PC to be in the bottom 8%???? It doesn't make any kind of sense. 

I have never seen such limitations imposed on OEM hardware to such a degree that makes it completely pointless to buy the high-end model of this PC with the RTX 3080 when I could get the similar performance out of a cheaper processer paired with a cheaper 3060TI or a 3070!!

I paid for a 10700KF and an RTX 3080 Jack!!! Paid with my wife and I's hard earned money, you know the stuff that doesn't grow on trees.

Your limited response is like saying that it's completely fine for Lenovo to have willingly misled me into believing I was buying an actual 10700KF and RTX 3080 that could be used as Intel and Nvidia had designed them for. It's kind of insulting after spending thousands on your company's product that it simply doesn't work to the standard that the components produced by Intel and Nvidia were built to perform at.

Do you think it's ethical for Lenovo to intentionally mislead people Jack, and to take their money, delivering substandard products and then disregard people like me and my wife because we have some self respect, and dare complain and ask for a solution? Does Lenovo hold its customers in such contempt that you can just tell me I should change my expectations even though I am right to expect to get what I was made to believe I had paid for?

I am still waiting on a proper response from Lenovo with a fair and tailored solution, and still asking you to escalate my issue to management in order to achieve that response.

So @Jack_Lenovo1  

What you are saying is you are aware that you guys have intentionally lowered the performance of these computers, but yet advertise them as high end top of the line performance PCs?