Surface Pro 3 throttling

Hang tight a bit longer, I think I'm getting closer to finding out whats going on here. By turning off Connected Standby in the registry (its easy to toggle, just needs a restart) I have access to all of the power profiles and power saving settings of a normal windows computer. Right now I'm testing around with the techpowerup application ThrottleStop and its ability to monitor and control intel processors. I've found that disabling turbo boost and forcing the processor to sit at 1.7GHz prevents the processor from ever getting hot enough to hard cap itself at 800MHz and does result in improved continuous performance, but I do notice it dropping to 1.1GHz occasionally. With the extra control I have now, I'm feeling ambitious and think I can squeeze more out if it than that, even a constant 1.7GHz or 2.0GHz will be ages better than the 800MHz throttle we've all been facing.

I would like to point out that the processor dropping doesn't have to mean the computer is throttling. It could simply be that the computer is bottlenecked somewhere and there is no need to be at full throttle. Just something to keep in mind while people are testing things out.

I still think this has to be a graphics issue because the computer can maintain a CPU load 100% with 2.2GHz+ as long as there is no significant graphics load.

I wonder if this graphics issue is why programs like MS Sudoku make the computer get so hot? 

Edit: So I just did a test. I started Sudoku and the Intel power gadget. The CPU was doing nothing and down clocked to 800MHz. Not thermally clocked it just didn't have anything to do. That didn't stop the computer from getting very hot. Intel also indicated that I was pulling around 5.0W of power to just sit and do nothing with the CPU. The GT Frq0 was also reported at 0.6GHz, which I think is very strange considering something was drawing a lot of power.

It still might be a graphics issue, but the SP3 by default is definitely throttling. We don't know exactly how or what the conditions are, but just by observing it running a high quality game at 60FPS for about 60 seconds before dropping shows that it isn't straight up bottle necked and is capable. However, turbo boost has a default cap of running for about 90 seconds straight, so it could just be giving us false hope with those high frame rates before returning to normal, but there is no reason it should be hitting 800MHz with 70%+ CPU load unless it was throttling in some way.

I agree, but I don't think the graphics are generating more than their fair share of heat for no good reason. The graphics and the CPU share the same 15W TDP, so that would cause the CPU to throttle.

Interesting thought the Intel Power Gadget is reporting the TPD limit at 19.0W not 15.

Technically it is 19.0W, or the 2nd TDP stage at least is. The processor is rated at 15W, and so is the i7-4650U in my surface. However, TDP on ULV processors (U series) are special and have levels. For my i7 level 1 is 11W and level 2 is 25W, so the Intel power gadget shows 25W as the PkgPwrLimit0 for me. I have yet to run full tests with forcing TDP levels, although I plan to when I have time.