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Ever since I got my Surface Book 2 (15 inch), Windows UI performance was quite sluggish. Windows framerate drops noticeably when opening Task View even with only one or two windows open, and switching desktop also experiences stutter.
I tried to diagnose the issue myself, by installing latest drivers for UHD 620 graphics from both Microsoft and Intel. I tried reinstalling / uninstalling drivers for GTX 1060. None of these worked, and I have reinstalled Windows several times but nothing has changed.
However, one "solution" to this problem was to decrease the screen resolution to 1620*1080 @ 100% scaling, which mitigated the issue significantly. The usage of UHD 620 graphics is much lower (shown under graph labelled "3D") with lower resolution and animation became much smoother. Upon research I discovered that this issue is not specific to my device. Many other laptops with high resolution displays were experiencing the same problem.
Here are some links to thread discussing seemingly similar issue:
4k laptop lag in Windows 10 UI animations
Laggy animations and effects at 4K resolution (running Windows 10)
Is it that the Integrated Graphics Card in these laptops are not powerful enough to drive such a high resolution display? If so, the solution is not to lower the resolution as I did - that is just a poor excuse. Even my MacBook Pro Retina from 2012 performs better on MacOS than my Surface Book 2 does on Windows.
OR it is very likely that Windows 10 optimization on high-resolution laptops is just poor. It is ridiculous that such a high-end laptop experiences lag within its native OS only with few windows open; if Apple can do well with their animation on MacOS, there is no reason for Microsoft not to be able to do it.
Please look into this issue and fix it, Microsoft.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
One solution that gives you NOTICEABLE performance increase everywhere is to disable CFG.
It's not really the fault of the integrated graphics nor the Surface Book 2 as early Windows builds were 10 ten times smoother, so blame the now built-in Exploit protection.
So if you want a smooth'ish UI back this is your only pick. That or going back to Windows 8.1 ;)
Microsoft wouldn't recommend you doing this though.
- Right click on desktop, go to Personalize.
- If background is slide show, set it to a solid color instead.
- See if your stuttering and lag issues go away.
After doing this I haven't had any lag all day and I didn't even reboot after changing the background from slide show.
This might not be the answer for everybody but hopefully it will help somebody else!
This completely fixes my issues. It seems that the lag is caused by the background you set. Setting it to a single picture instead of a slideshow also works; it doesn't necessarily have to be a solid background. Turning off transparency also further improves performance.
My new Surface Pro 6 is also suffering from the same issue. The October update (1809) I received this weekend did not fix it. How can this not a be a priority to fix for Microsoft? It's detrimental to user experience and our ability to be productive..
SB2 is very, very laggy with MS Excel and the SB2 screen at 4K. So laggy that I am continuously frustrated with the dang thing. Works ok with 1920x1080 external monitors connected with USB-C.
I'm very disappointed also, and won't recommend to others who use Excel.
still have this issue on my xps 13 2018 4k
