Surface Book 3 Throttling at 0.19 GHz

Ok i've call MS support ... and they find out something !

Surface book 3 was totally up to date (drivers, windows ...) and i have this performance issue especially when i was doing some visio stuff (such as teams).

Problem identified by support was that it was configured to only run on 1 logical cpu ... 

Just do a msconfig, boot, advanced option and select all the processors (mine was set on 1 !)

Of course i have never changed this setting before

So far so good, no more performance issues

This link is from the 2nd of July: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=101315

I did think it solved the issue but unfortunately not. Or there are much bigger issues at play. I'm trying everything, changing the priority of the graphic cards, the power settings... nothing seems to work.

Now I've found that when doing video-conferencing, the CPU is also throttling down MASSIVELY. All becomes laggy.

I've run this benchmark during a call:

And look how the CPU hasn't gone above 1.6-1.7 GHz for the benchmark!

And yeah, it hit 88 points on the single-threaded benchmark. Except normally it would hit 460+ AND it would go up to 3.9 GHz...

I really wanted to keep this but I think a Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 is the way to go...

Absolutely crazy given all the throttling issues on the Surface Book 2 that:

1. Microsoft would not fix the issue and release a new product that has the throttling issue
2. People would buy the SB3 given Microsoft's track record of not fixing the throttling on the SB2 despite people complaining about it for over a year now

My advice: return the device, get a full refund, and buy something non-MS.

I cant even use my SB2 for basic web surfing and emailing. It constantly throttles down to .4ghz, acts laggy, gets extremely hot, in a 68-70 degree room.

Hi Chris/ all,

Thanks for your help. I installed the update but I'm still experiencing issues with the laptop being extremely hot with the fan sometimes going full pelt and others not. The behaviour seems very sporadic. 

The other day I was working on CAD software via VMWare (virtual desktop from my office), which normally isn't a problem. (I'm using this software every weekday for ~7.5 hours with, I would say, reasonably similar/ stable room temperatures). On this particular day the fan was churning and the laptop was roasting hot at the back of the screen. I believe I turned the laptop off for a little while (not long as I was supposed to be 'at' work) and then continued what I was doing for maybe a couple more hours - the only difference being that I turned Sportify off. I took some screenshots (attached) to see if you guys can interpret the data: basically the computer running at a temperature that was so hot I thought it may become damaged to running lukewarm and quiet. I don't know what info is relevant so I posted all screens in the task manager:

(hopefully the merged screenshots are legible, if not I'll repost)

Re. Theme Hospital; again sometimes I can play for an hour and the laptop seems to be able to handle it and others not. I did see on GOG's website that there may be problems running the game on Windows 10 due to it not being able to handle updates. So maybe this is the issue as far as this goes?

I'm intended to try another game from about 1998 (similar management sim), which doesn't have this note and for which Windows 10 is listed in the system requirements. 

Would be interesting to hear your thoughts. As I said in my original post I'm not sure if this is the same issue that the original poster was having (or if it belongs to the same 'genre' of issues). More importantly I would like to know if this is a normal/ expected behaviour from a computer of this spec undertaking these kinds of tasks. As I said, I would like to contact Microsoft directly but I don't know how to numerically describe the problem or if my expectations are misaligned in terms of how the Surface Book should be running...

As a small side note on some other software usage and outcomes:

I recorded a number of music tracks on Audacity (maybe 7 tracks via the mic and 2 tracks on piano via USB), which it seemed to handle fine.

I'm also working through a number of Blender tutorials, which for the most part it seems to handle but on occasion the fan kicks in for even relatively simple models/ rendering tasks.

I tried to draw with the screen detached on Krita but found a huge amount of lag with the pen, which made it a fairly unpleasant experience.

I've tried the laptop in a  number of configurations but the best I have found for working on VMWare is to use a monitor as my main screen and keep the laptop screen blank/ closed. The most useful configuration would be to use extended mode but I find some of my work software interfaces scale very small when I try to do this.

Hopefully that all makes sense. Would be great to hear you opinions.

Thanks,

Dan

As an update, I've had both 13" (original and warranty replacement) and 15" (new order) models in my possession the last couple days.  Neither of the 13" units have received the July firmware update mentioned in the thread, so I can't comment on if that improves the problems I've seen with Teams.

I can confirm that the 15" has a fan in the tablet (which is pretty quiet) and I am not noticing any performance issues.  To be sure, I really stressed the system by sitting on our shaded front porch in ~87F weather and participating in a multi-party teams video chat.  The call performed just fine.  Watching the CPU clock speeds, I only noticed some lowering of speed (into the 1-2.5Ghz range).  The fan did run the whole time.  I'm not sure if the lack of bursting in the 3Ghz range was because of being on battery or because of heat.  Either way, I didn't notice any performance issues.  This situation would push the 13" model into an unusable state in prior tests.

Wish I could get the new firmware on the 13" model to add to the conversation.  Early indications also seem to be showing that I will get better battery life as well, but will need some more reps with the 15" model to be sure.  Unfortunately I will need to ship the 13"s back to return tomorrow.  I hope this information helps.