Mobile GPU Thermal Throttling Simulator

Rendering Load

Graphics quality

Ambient temperature 24°C

Live Readouts

Frame rate

60.0 fps

Frame time

16.7 ms

GPU clock

100%

Battery drain

—%/hr

SoC temp24.0°C

How it works

Mobile GPUs don't run at a fixed speed. A DVFS (Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling) controller watches chip temperature and steps the clock down when the phone gets too hot to protect the silicon — this is the real cause of a game getting "laggy" ten minutes into a session even though nothing in the code changed.

Heat balance each frame:
  P_total = P_idle + clock · workload · P_max
  dT/dt   = (P_total − h·(T − T_ambient)) / C_thermal

DVFS controller (with hysteresis so it doesn't chatter):
  T ≥ 40°C → clock steps to 85%
  T ≥ 46°C → clock steps to 70%
  T ≥ 52°C → clock steps to 55%
  T ≥ 58°C → clock steps to 40% (floor)
  clock steps back up once T falls 4°C below its trigger

Rendering cost:
  frame_time = base_render_time(workload) / clock
  fps        = min(fps_cap, 1000 / frame_time)

Graphics quality sets the per-frame GPU workload — more draw calls, shaders and particles mean more heat generated per frame at full clock.
Cap at 30 FPS mimics real frame-pacing: capping the render rate cuts power draw (and heat) roughly in half even at the same quality, which is why many mobile games offer a 30fps "battery saver" mode.
Cooling assist raises the heat-dissipation coefficient h — a bigger heatsink, a cooling clip, or simply a phone lying on a cold table.
Ambient temperature shifts the equilibrium point the chip settles at — the same workload throttles sooner on a hot day.
Watch the readouts: as the GPU chip in the scene glows from blue to red, clock % steps down and frame rate follows it down — not smoothly, but in the same discrete steps as the controller.

⚠ THROTTLING

Rendered game objects GPU die (color = temp)

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