Surface Pro 3 throttling

Noticed the same here. I was playing a VERY playable arkham city (everything set lowest) on my pro 2 no chance on the 3, but, truly, I use my ASUS behemouth for gaming. Still would have been nice if it were equally capable as the 2. Still all things being equal i'm much happier w/the 3. You can't have everything in one package but this is still the closest you're going to come IMO. Damn you laws of physics!

Yea, when you are talking "tablet", conserving power is a key feature even if it effects performance.  The Surface tablets are having to compete with machines that can do 10 to 11 hours of battery time.  That is a selling point on the market.  Laptops have been in that group and people even asks, "how many cells are in the battery pack?".

High end games eat juice like crazy.

Now, with newer technologies in graphics performance and capabilities, I would say that in the future, the coding for those high end games would probably run on something as low end as a processor in a cellular phone.  So, both the gaming industry and Hollywood are working together in doing that.

When CGI came out, that industry turned into a firestorm.  You wouldn't believe the patents alone being created from that.

They have already demonstrated that they can bring a dead actor back to life to 'perform' in TV commercials.

So, this is just the start of it all.  Fasten your seatbelt.  There is definitely more to come and it will fit in the palm of your hands.

I agree with you on the battery issue.  It's vital for a tablet like this.  However, when I want to play games, I will plug into AC.  In that case, I should be able to say "gimme everythin' she's got, Captain - just don't burn out the Dilithium crystals."  They should give us back the "High Performance" power profile, at least for use on AC.

I spent some time testing and monitoring my Pro 3 this weekend, and I was very dismayed with what I found.  Firstly, even after just powering on, or whilst websurfing, I find my CPU core temperatures in the 40s or 50s Celsius, with the fan blaring.  That just does not seem correct behavior at all.  I'm wondering if I have a defective unit, or if I screwed something up earlier in the week, as I messed with enabling and disabling Hyper-V to get the power profiles back.

Whilst gaming (I used World of Warcraft) with settings 1920x1080 and graphics "low" the Surface Pro 2 would give a pretty consistent low 30s FPS, sometimes dropping to mid 20s with a lot of action, and shooting up to the 60s or 70s when indoors (in the game).

The Pro 3, on the other hand, would start off similarly, but rapidly degrade to the low-mid 20s, and sometimes low-mid teens in the midst of action.  Occasionally it would spike to the 40s or 50s.

I looked at the CoreTemp and GPU-Z tools, and could see that whilst my CPU had hit a max of 85 at some point, it was averaging in the 50s whilst gaming, and would often be running at 798MHz. (That could be because it throttles back when I switch out of the game to check the monitors - but the Pro 2 would keep the CPU at 2100MHz even in that same case).

As for GPU, GPU-Z gives a graph over time and I can see that while playing, there are peaks where the GPU goes to 1100MHz, but it rapidly throttles every time gradually back down to 500MHz.  It averages close to 500.  This means that the machine is almost NEVER pushing itself at all.  It's just throttle, throttle all the way no matter what I do.

This seems different from the behavior everyone else has reported where it's all guns blazing until 90 Celsius, whereupon it throttles until it cools to 60.  That's not what I see at all.....

Now, for the heat issue, look around the perimeter of the case and those vent holes CANNOT be blocked!

I have the i5 4200U in a desktop right now with Linux on it (in fact, I am on it right now) and that puppy kicks in the fan quite a few times.  So, I am thinking that a lot of bragging has been touted by Intel on these chips where the end performance is not matching up to the hype.

Good example is the need to throttle a machine 'down' in the first place.  That is a good example on that.

Now, on the comparison with the Pro 2 with the Pro 3; the Pro 2 has the actual desktop version of the CPU.  The one that is in the Pro 3 is flatter and wider.  That will increase cooling capabilities and also make it thinner for a thinner case.

You bring up a good point with "World of WarCraft" though.  Actually, a low end computer can run that.  Blizzard knows what they are doing when it comes to performance in graphics and should not have been a problem even in high resolution.  Your temp reading are a little high.

You may have a driver installation failure with the power management system - or, you could shut down all power management options to see if that will boost performance.

Power management seems to be a major player in the problems of the entire line and is unknown why or how.  I have the RT myself and have all power features shut off.  I have no problem with that machine and it never overheats.

Give that a shot and see if it will boost your performance.  You can always turn them back on later if you wish.

Thanks James.

The Pro 3 is well ventilated.  It's upright on a desk, not in any case, with only power, USB, and monitor cables (1080p HDMI monitor) coming out of it.

Oh BTW I should mention that when I'm using the HDMI monitor, I have the surface display OFF.  So it should only be driving one screen.

Right now, whilst in Metro IE, the cores are running around 39C which is better than before.

I'm not sure how to turn off power management stuff?  The Pro 3 gives only the "Balanced" option, and the only things really adjustable are sleep time and screen brightness.  There's no control over CPU or GPU performance, nor any of the usual stuff.

I had previously tried enabling Hyper-V, which gives back most of the power options, including the "Power Saver" and "High Performance" profiles.  I tried the High Performance profile and it made no difference whatsoever to the throttling.  I disabled Hyper-V afterwards, since it disables connected standby.

Not sure what else I can do beyond taping an ice-pack to the back of the machine :-) (Probably not a good idea if it leaks)!!

WoW ran fairly well last night, I'd say a little better when I turned down a couple of graphical settings - most notably particle effects.  Still throttled, but was better, certainly very playable.  Weird graphical glitches when on the loading transition splash-screen, but not sure if that's because of the monitor.  First time I've ever seen that.  I had been getting out of memory warnings too - which is unsettling because this is the 8GB model.  However, yesterday I got a similar out of memory warning while testing WoW on my Pro 2 (8GB model also).  Might be related to the monitoring tools (realtemp, coretemp, GPU-Z)??