Surface Book 2 Task View Lag (and other high-resolution laptops included)

Anonymous

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)

Windows 10 Animation lags

Lag with Surface book 2

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.

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58 answers

Anonymous

2018-06-10T15:59:23+00:00

I agree; when comparing it to a much inferior Windows 10 laptop at home, I notice how sluggish the SB is. I just hope that these problems are fixed so that I can purchase it again after I return it.
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Anonymous

2018-06-10T15:54:27+00:00

If I knew that this issue was present before I purchased my SB2, I wouldn't have bought it. IMO this is unacceptable for a $3000 laptop, and if this is bugging you, return the laptop. Honestly the hardware is great, but the software experience is much more terrible than I had expected.
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Anonymous

2018-06-10T15:03:33+00:00

I'm glad this thread exists because as a recent buyer of the SB2, I've been noticing lag in all sorts of places (minimizing/maximizing windows, closing out tabs in Chrome, etc.) and it's been driving me crazy that no one else has mentioned it. Do you guys think I should return the laptop since I'm still within the return window or stick with it?
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Anonymous

2018-06-07T03:34:02+00:00

I'm facing the same issues. The latest update did not help. Is somebody working on resolving this issue and when can we expect the fix.

Thanks David
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Anonymous

2018-06-07T02:54:50+00:00

Just checking to see if anything's changed since. Have the exact same problem and not a big fan of my SB2 right now.
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