Surface Book 2 throttles excessively, often down to 0.4 GHz

Anonymous
2018-05-30T14:41:18+00:00

I've recently purchased a 15" Surface Book 2.

When compiling large projects in Visual Studio 2017, I find that the processor often throttles excessively, often down to 0.4 GHz. As a result, compilation takes several times longer than it does on my 5 year old MacBook Pro. 

The Core Temp app shows that the CPU at this point is at 50-55 degrees Celcius or so.

The following question touched upon this problem, but the proposed solution did not work for me:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows\_10-performance-winpc/cpu-clock-speed-sometimes-capped-at-04ghz/315d06ac-a40a-41f8-8314-b370f8b51618

Any ideas on how to fix this?

Thanks.

T

Surface | Surface Book | Power and battery

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-10-06T08:36:26+00:00

    The summer weather is no more and I'm able to run the SB2 without the need for a fan at the moment.

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-10-03T07:52:00+00:00

    Yep, could be wrong, but I think it happened right around then.

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-10-03T02:00:56+00:00

    Oh right you didn't experience this issues until the spectre/meltdown update? hmm the timing kinda fits.

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-10-01T11:14:15+00:00

    I have the same issues, but on a Surface Book 1.

    I bought my SB1 when it was first released in the UK. It was the top spec version at that time, 1TB HD etc.

    I have used it very very heavily in the last two or so years. I am a freelance consultant / workaholic and I spend way too many hours at work. I have used the SB1 exclusively in that time since it was released.

    I think it is a cracking product. Never had any issues until Summer (ish) time this year, when CPU performance started to drop.

    I just thought the PC was getting old, but thank you to all who posted on here, as using a desktop fan blowing air at the pc gradually cooled it down and CPU performance went back to normal again.

    I think it seemed to occur when Intel had that security issue on their chips this summer time. After the quick roll out to solve the security floor, my SB1 performance started to drop. And it's never resolved itself, until using the fan!

    So I'm no pro, but I think it's an issue somewhere in the coding, rather than hardware. And given it isn't Surface Book 2 exclusive, but also SB1, then maybe another indication not hardware issues, but coding.

    Anyway, thanks again to all for solving my issue for me. I'm currently holding out for the Microsoft event on 2/10/18 and hope there's something cool, as I will be upgrading before Christmas. For some odd reason, I'm having faith microsoft will identify and solve this issue, hopefully in the short to mid term.

    Cheers

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  5. Anonymous
    2018-09-22T18:20:45+00:00

    One thing I do to make it more usable is to Force the usage of the integrated NVIDIA card as much as possible (in the Nvidia Control Panel set the prefered graphics processor to the dedicated nvidia one). This way using more the gpu that is in the keyboard will leave the integrated one (from the screen) more free time and it helps a little to keep the screen part a bit more cool so less throtling.

    Thanks for the tip - just trying this now and it seems to help a fair bit. I've been using a desk fan behind my SB2 for a while now and I'm getting tired of it.

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