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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.
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..
I had a problem similar to this for a long time. I had these really weird Intel GPU processor spikes like every minute or so even when the Surface Book 2 wasn't doing anything. If it happened in the middle of a video or typing code in Visual Studio, there would be a second or two of lag before everything "caught up." Then it would work just fine for another minute or so, then I'd get a lag spike again. It was the Intel GPU that would spike, the discrete Nvidia GPU would just sit there idle. Anyway, I've updated drivers, reinstalled Windows, etc. After I reinstalled Windows, the problem seemed to go away for a few days but then came back. I couldn't think of what was happening every minute when I wasn't doing anything. Task View and Start Menu would take several seconds to pop-up, and then they'd be snappy for a bit. But then a minute or so later, they would take several seconds to pop-up again.
As I was staring at my 4k external screen and the beautiful 4k nebula desktop background, the background changed to another 4k space picture and I saw the GPU spike in task manager. I had an aha moment. I had set up the desktop background to be "slide show" and pointed it at a bunch of cool 4k space images. It was configured to change.....every one minute.
Not only that, but my "Colors" in Personalization was set to "Automatically pick an accent color from my background." So now every minute, not only does the GPU have to load up a 4k image, it also has to change the entire Windows color scheme (including all open windows, Start menu, Task View, etc).
I set the background to "Black" and i've had no stutters or spikes sense. I remember resetting the desktop background to slideshow after my reinstall, which is what caused the problem to "come back" after the reinstall, but I didn't connect the two at the time.
Long story short:
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!
- 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.
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.
What CFG are you talking about?
