Surface Pro 3 Throttling Solution?

Anonymous
2014-07-06T03:09:34+00:00

Hi! I received my surface pro 3 about 2 weeks ago and so far my experience has been great while surfing the internet, personalizing it to my needs, watching videos, and writing with the stylus.

 I have seen how the surface one and surface pro 2 can handle games on the lowest settings and was very impressed and encouraged to buy the SP3 for light gaming when I have free time and am not using it for work.  However, I am a little disappointed with how the performance on the SP3 drastically drops to less than 1Ghz about 3-5 minutes after I start playing any game or even a less intensive game like Dota 2, Portal, or the newer version of GTA San Andreas (a 2005 GAME) which I bought this week from the Windows Store.  Most of the games I have tried start at 30-60 frames per second but as the heat starts building up, the frame rates drop to 10-15 frames due to throttling... This DOES NOT happen with the surface pro or pro 2 and most people play high end games at 30 frames per second on low settings for long periods even with throttling. I am not able to do that on my surface pro 3... Why? Why is there so much "power" that you can only use for a short time?... Did I just spend $1400 for much less performance than a Surface pro 2?...

I hope that this can be fixed in some way very soon. I really love the surface pro 3 and don't want to return it. But when I play a 2005 game like GTA San Andreas which was ported for smartphones and tablets and the frames drop below 25 after a while... it really gets me thinking...

Surface | Surface Pro | Performance and maintenance

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments No comments

42 answers

Sort by: Newest
  1. Anonymous
    2014-07-25T19:30:18+00:00

    Hearing from MS concerning this would be very helpful.

    There is a great explanation of the problem here:

    http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/microsoft/62921-surface-pro-3-problems-thread-58.html#post406135

    Cothek is correct, that is a great description of the problem. In case MS won't follow the link, I will paste text here:

    "I have to share my thoughts.....

    I got a launch day core i5 8gb 256GB of ram

    I have noticed strange slowdowns on it when even editing basic wordpress posts... just typing letters was delayed. I would type and it would take a second for each and every letter to fill in.

    My biggest issue with the core i5 is this:

    A) According to microsoft it IS "designed for gaming" (see official quotes below)

    Surface for gaming -Microsoft Surface 

    Statements from Microsoft:

    "Ready to take your game on the road? Grab a Surface Pro 3 now."

    "stay on the cutting edge of games"

    "Surface is an amazing tablet for playing with apps, surfing the web, or gaming."

    From the Press Release:"The new, thinner fan cools a series of fins placed around it instead of forcing the exhaust air out through a channel. Not having to create space for this channel allows Surface Pro 3 to be thinner without sacrificing performance"

    B)Throttling despite not exceeding heat thresholds!

    Look at that screenshot, I limited the SP3 to 1.6Ghz and started a PC Game to see if It could sustain 67C and not get throttled because it never exceeded 85-90 or whatever I thought the throttling trigger limit is.

    Can you see the problem?

    Despite running for about 5 minutes and NEVER exceeding 67C, and sustaining a constant temperature, the device still throttled down to 60C. It is throttling ANYTHING over 60C even if not peaking above 70C!

    C) The device COULD be a great gaming device if microsoft adjusted the damn throttling profile.

    The SP3 throttles to 60C even after the most recent firmware which is what a lot of laptops simply idle at.

    A 60C throttling temperature equates to a sustained performance speed of 1Ghz CPU, 600Mhz GPU.

    I've proved that even a thermal throttle limit of even 67C would sustain a 1.6Ghz CPU 850Mhz GPU..(see Screenshot above) This is 1.6x the cpu frequency and 1.42x the GPU frequency of current SP3 throttling!

    I would speculate that even a 75C thermal overhead would allow basically the full advertised performance of the device probably 2.1Ghz cpu / 1000mhz gpu, and would alleviate sustained load issues many are experiencing.

    Instead, we are forced to throttle down to 60C with a 1Ghz CPU and 600Mhz GPU. You'd be better off with a AMD E Series APU for gaming with these limits imposed.. hardly a core i5 performance experience.

    Microsoft NEEDS to up the throttling limit to minimum 75C, we would see massive performance gains from non-throttling in sustained workloads, these cpus are rated up to 100C and most laptop designs allow for up to 90C

    If there IS some reason microsoft can't adjust the throttling profile due to design, they need to comment on it, because their official statements makes them liars about the sustained performance and the usage model they are advertising for their device.

    I've returned my core i5, in hopes of a core i7, but only if microsoft can fix the throttling issues."

    As stated above, GPU throttling down to 598 Mhz is killing performance and must be addressed.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  2. Anonymous
    2014-07-25T19:13:40+00:00

    Hearing from MS concerning this would be very helpful.

    There is a great explanation of the problem here:

    http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/microsoft/62921-surface-pro-3-problems-thread-58.html#post406135

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  3. Anonymous
    2014-07-11T22:47:01+00:00

    If you are going to do 3D modeling, get the i7.  The i5 is real good but can 'choke' even with TurboBoost.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  4. Anonymous
    2014-07-11T22:33:53+00:00

    With the most recent update it seems that the SP3 throttles at 90C and then is limited to 70C which equates to around 2.1GHz.  Can this be raised any higher?  A higher temp will definitely achieve better sustained results.

    I am considering buying the i7 version and am watching this issue closely as I plan on doing 3D modeling and graphics design as well as coding on the SP3 and will be using it at sustained load.  Even if a higher limit were an option we could enable, this would benefit many users who would like to use the SP3 as a true laptop replacement.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  5. Anonymous
    2014-07-10T10:53:10+00:00

    I notice this too especially after the July updates my games seem much slower has if the graphics or CPU power has been reduced and it was plugged in near a cooling source. I guess the battery improvements are by reducing power even during the demands.

    But I just read the opposite. July's updates decreased this issue according to some tests that somebody ran in another forum.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments