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
    2019-10-12T08:41:52+00:00

    It is fixed now :-)

    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4055398/surface-book-2-update-history

    Surface System Aggregator – Firmware

    • 182.1004.139.0 resolves an issue where the CPU will throttle down to .4GHz, and improves battery stability.

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-08-29T14:23:21+00:00

    Hi, here just to say I have the same problem. I'm no expert, I bought the computer a year and a half ago and was expecting to use it for professional purposes. Needless to say that Adobe Suite is one of the main reasons my GPU can go as low as 0.4 GHz.

    Since I didn't understand the problem at first, I've tried updating, restoring, sending it away for technical service, changing some settings... and absolutely nothing worked. I live in Spain, not exactly a cold place right now, and i can't even watch videos online now without the throttle happening. Honestly sick and tired of a 3100€ product who promised a seamless working experience who can't manage to open Premiere without getting stuck at launch.

    I'm still paying for it while having to plan on an update as fast as possible, because I can't honestly work at this pace.

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-08-28T13:24:29+00:00

    you guys probably saw some new articles in popular sites:

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/15/20807401/microsoft-surface-firmware-updates-wi-fi-problems-cpu-throttling

    https://www.techrepublic.com/article/microsoft-surface-pro-6-and-surface-book-2-devices-are-throttle-locking-to-400-mhz/

    And have to laugh to:  a Microsoft spokesperson told TechRepublic. "We are quickly working to address via a firmware update."

    Sad days when rights for warranty can blatantly be ignored if you are a corporation.... And USA is led by a handful of corporations these days, so go figure what the future holds.

    And they are about to try to release new devices in a month? I dont know how well that is going to go over if their current devices haven't worked right for anywhere from 5-12 months (depending on the issue).

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-08-28T10:59:04+00:00

    you guys probably saw some new articles in popular sites:

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/15/20807401/microsoft-surface-firmware-updates-wi-fi-problems-cpu-throttling

    https://www.techrepublic.com/article/microsoft-surface-pro-6-and-surface-book-2-devices-are-throttle-locking-to-400-mhz/

    And have to laugh to:  a Microsoft spokesperson told TechRepublic. "We are quickly working to address via a firmware update."

    Sad days when rights for warranty can blatantly be ignored if you are a corporation.... And USA is led by a handful of corporations these days, so go figure what the future holds.

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  5. Anonymous
    2019-08-26T13:06:14+00:00

    From my experience, the issue is the offloading of graphical processing from the dGPU to the iGPU. The iGPU usage spikes to 100% and the CPU throttles to 0.4GHz. This is appears to be windows issue as it does not appear to happen when using Linux with custom kernels and the dGPU enabled.

    How did I notice?

    I set all the apps to use the dGPU on the nvidia control panel (not that it matters much since Microsoft is overriding it).

    I was keeping the task manager open on the background on the performance tab.

    Overtime I started noticing that every time the cpu throttled to the 0.4GHz, the iGPU usage was at 100%. The plots were a perfect match

    Note that this does not invalidate the remaining solutions, i.e. BD PROCHOT needs to be disabled.

    You can also upvote this on the feedback hub page at:

    https://aka.ms/AA5w099

    or

    feedback-hub:?contextid=79&feedbackid=f8ced518-104d-4db1-b860-a95a2b3bc5c4&form=1&src=1

    I would love to upvote but getting an error in Feedback hub that I do not have access to view this feedback :(

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