When on battery, severe CPU throttling kicks in at 35% charge: how to change ?

Anonymous
2019-12-19T16:39:57+00:00

Brand new Spro7, Firmware up-to-date.

I noticed drastic CPU throttling when battery charge level reaches 35%: CPU tops at about 0.5 GHz and setting the power slide to "Best Performance" doesn't change that.

I found no setting that would allow to change this excessively conservative threshold to something more reasonable like 12 or 15% (my Battery Saver level is set at 15%, but it has obviously no impact on this).

Is this hard-coded in the firmware ?

Any ideas ?

Surface | Surface Pro | Power and battery

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-01-23T11:29:16+00:00

    [...]

    But this conforts me in the idea that this problem is a driver/firmware/software policy issue, NOT a hardware malfunction.

    It could be an immature implementation of the 'Intel Dynamic Tuning 2.0 with Machine Learning' mentioned in Barb's link

    So Intel would be the culprit ???? Perhaps an update of the Intel Dynamic Tuning Service is needed ?

    IMHO the user should always be able to override AI tuning decisions, e.g. by sliding the Power cursor to the right; forcibly crippling a computer at 35% battery power is ridiculous.

    [...]

    In the same vein:

    While my battery was around 50% charge, I started a CPU intensive job....the CPU topped near 1.30 GHz....I pushed the battery Power Mode to the max (Best Perf), and that didn't change anything...then I plugged the charger and the CPU instantly jumped to 3.40 GHz !

    Is the SPro7 battery so weak that the throttling has to limit power so drastically, even when the battery charge level is still comfortable ?

    Or is it just another symptom of the same issue, namely immature (or excessively conservative) implementation of the 'Intel Dynamic Tuning 2.0 with Machine Learning'?

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-01-24T09:41:26+00:00

    Hi, I also have this problem with the Surface Pro 7 i7 16 256

    Below 35% Charge the CPU throttles extremely. 

    With the App Intel Graphics Command Center you can see the power consumption and it is reduced below 35% to about 13 watts. For example, if you charge a mobile phone via Type C, the CPU is throttled even more.

    It appears to be under a certain battery limit of power consumption limited by the CPU.

    On 22.01.2020 I got a driver / firmware update, there was also the UEFI Bios and Batterymanagment Surface System Aggregator - Firmware (improves battery performance), but it didn't help.

    does anyone know a solution?

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-01-25T20:17:12+00:00

    I have re-imaged my Surface Pro 7 via the USB recovery image downloaded from Microsoft. The re-image does not remove the Surface - Firmware – 14.48.139.0 and Surface - Firmware – 7.161.140.0 which I believe started this issue, as they are part of the firmware of the Surface not Windows install.

    This has made no difference to the throttling issues.

    Is there a way to uninstall/downgrade the firmware?

    Regards,

    Muck

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-02-15T08:41:23+00:00

    It looks like the new firmware 8.100.140.0 / 13.0.1319.1 that was installed on 08 feb has improved things....to be confirmed

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  5. Anonymous
    2020-02-19T21:28:54+00:00

    The January 30th updates have improved the situation but not solved it for me. When using the Surface, below 35% battery charge, the CPU and GPU both clock down to low levels causing performance issues. 

    With the recent update, restarting the Surface a few times will resolve the issues. The issues does return if the Surface has been shutdown, but again a restart or two will return the CPU and GPU clocks to a normal range.

    Hopefully a further update may resolve this issue completely.

    MuckRogers.

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