Surface Pro 3 throttling

I am experiencing similar issues with my i7 Surface Pro 3. I own an original Surface Pro (i5) and use the machines as a portable workstation. I primarily work in 3D apps generating content, rendering frames (Mental Ray) and compositing.  Most 3D cards (even Intel HD) handle the 3D app interfaces very well, but the machine needs a decent CPU for rendering.  The Surface Pro performed well, despite it's small footprint.

In making the jump to an i7 SP3, I had hoped to see some decent performance improvements to go along with the delightful form factor. This sadly has not been the case.  Renders are universally slower than my original Surface Pro, running at 50% to 66% of the SP1's speed. Yikes!  Mode switches in my 3D apps (where I'm working in moderately heavy scenes) are unfathomably slow as well-- a mode switch which would occur in 3 seconds takes 3 minutes in the SP3. 

I'm assuming throttling is one of the culprits here, but I don't know enough about the hardware underpinnings to diagnose the issues properly.

Hopefully MS will address the CPU problems. Having a new top-of-the-line device outperformed by old hardware is both unfortunate and embarrassing in this flagship product.

If anyone knows what settings in the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility might help give the SP3 a boost, I'd love to hear about it. I'm willing to put up with more fan noise if I can recover performance.

That sound great (with DirectX, that is).  As for the CPU, that is a guess at best and hopefully we will find out next week.  I was starting to suspect that when first running the Pro 3 during setup.

Late last night, I tried a freeware game called Warzone 2100 and was working great during the setup but when I changed the settings for "video" to full screen and tried to match up with the current screen resolution, that fan kicked in like crazy and reaching to the back, the CPU was getting hot and fast.  I closed the game and uninstalled it.  I did try to run the game for a moment but no control.  It didn't like the maximum resolution.

I was going to attach my Asus DVD burner and go ahead and install AOE III but had thought earlier this morning, "what's the point".  It would most likely run for about 5 minutes before having to shut down the tablet.

Right now (on it right now, by the way), I am setting the tablet up for regular use and it will replace my desktop.  Maybe not good for games and probably some graphics programs, but the i3 is actually impressive in performance.  A little faster than a Pentium and scrolls great with Internet Explorer for web browsing.  When I am running regular programs to include the Metro UI apps, you can't hear the fan at all and I can reach back and the CPU is warm but not hot.  The battery packs have not heated up at all.

This wedge keyboard is an absolute dream to work with, with the tablet.  No touchpad to get in the way.  I will be getting the keyboard/cover along with a few 64GB micro-SD cards.  I was needing the tablet itself for testing because of all the issues about them here and didn't have one to work with.  I will be using the Pro 3 as the primary now and my Surface RT will be used for secure web browsing.

Let us see what next week will bring.

Changing the performance profiles still doesn't help, as the processor hits 90 Celcius within a minute and then goes back to throttling. I'm starting to wonder if you're right and the surface is just not using the integrated graphics and just using the processor to run everything. I ran GPU-z and a furmark benchmark and found that under load, the GPU actually clocks down from the 600MHz it idles at down to between 400 and 500Mhz, which is suspicious enough. It also gets the memory dynamically allotted to it reduced. I'm running out of ideas as to what is going on, but this one seems like the most likely right now

P.S. I already updated my direct x, I just automatically do that on all of my computers when they're fresh.

Now, there is something else to try.  I forgot all about this but some CAD but mostly game programs (older ones) still use DirectX.  Even though the game may have came with it, do you have the latest?

Here is the download link for the web installer of DirectX if you want to try it:  http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35

As you have noticed, the higher you went in resolution, the much higher demand and the fan kicking in a lot faster.  What I am thinking of what is happening is that the CPU is not allowing the graphic circuit do its job completely..  Even if it is integrated, it is still supposed to function independent.  The reason for it to be integrated is to reduce the amount of parts needed for the computer (no video card needed).  The CPU itself has always done graphics and in fact, it performs the bulk of the graphics when streaming on the Internet.  The graphics card does onboard video.  One is supposed to help out the other when needed to lighten the load and to boost the performance speed.  That is what is not happening.

NVIDIA has been doing that for quite some time.  Look at the RT tablets.  Even though they have as much backbone as a jellyfish, they do perform quite well.  Most of your gaming laptops and even desktops of today are NVIDIA based and that is all with the integrated video in the CPU.  I have never heard of a problem from those.  Intel has been trying to play 'catchup' with the others but as stated before, they great with chips but forget it with the software/drivers.

Now we still have the update coming up next week.  Intel did release a stack of driver updates (for video) for their chipsets about two weeks ago.  If there is a fix, it might be included with the updates next week.  I do know that the "August Update" (Update 2) is going to be optional.  It is not mandatory to install it.

Never mind, I found this post Lenovo Forums that explains how to switch it off in the registry, although my initial guess of turning on Hyper-V does bring back all the power settings. Time for some more tests! I'll report back when I get some results. Without loading a game I can see why they got rid of the power profiles by default, high performance is no joke on the i7 SP3. Just idling I'm sitting at over 3Ghz and 85 degrees Celcius. Also, even on the balanced profile with active cooling set to enabled, the processor is sitting above 2GHz and around 75 degrees Celcius with the fan half spun up idling.