Surface Book Discussion Thread

<<...Does anyone have any ideas?..>>

Check your display settings, e.g., is the resolution now different from the native resolution...?

 

@dellaster I so feel your pain, but have few ideas - except that you cross-post this in the SB2 thread, that has more followers, even name a few of the most technically savvy members. I'm sure this can be resolved with software/resets.

One thought: uninstall the display port driver and re-boot to let it re-install itself.

Good luck.

 

Yes, as far as I've been able to ascertain everything is set the same way it was before I tried the DisplayPort for the first time. I even had an idea that maybe the contacts were dirty since I had detached the clipboard once during the process. So I cleaned them. No go.

It no longer scales the game DPI the way it did before. My borderless window now only covers part of the screen. Used to do a fake full screen. Though if that was the only problem I can force it to work through some ENBoost settings.

 

Thanks. I'm downloading the 1809 ISO in case I want to give that a try. (I'm on 1803.) Before I install that I'll try your idea and uninstall the DisplayPort driver.

 

Did you know that in order to use the Microsoft diagnostic tool you have to be fully up-to-date with Windows 10? So I had to go to Update 1809 anyway just to run that. It didn't help—the dGPU is still throttled—but at least nothing worse happened.

I then went to Microsoft support chat and got someone who actually knew what I was talking about and why it would be important (you sometimes get these guys who you KNOW are thinking "what's the big deal? Just live with it"). Unfortunately, I had already done everything that he could suggest I do other than a full reset. And he knew that nobody with a gaming setup would want to go through that (it'll take days to get it back to were it is) so he suggested knocking it up to tier 2 support and see if they had any suggestions. I agreed to that and they were supposed to call yesterday but they didn't...

I guess I'll wait until Tuesday and then plan to wipe it clean and see if that helps. I suppose if that doesn't work I'm going to have to try to get a repair or replacement.

 

<<...Did you know that in order to use the Microsoft diagnostic tool you have to be fully up-to-date with Windows 10?..>>

...Same thing with Snip & Sketch. I use Snip all the time, but I can't install it on my ZBook X2 because I haven't installed built 1809... and likely don't want to until MSFT fixes the pen functionality...

 

So sorry for all your going through, @dellaster, it's so unfair! Do press up the levels of tech support before making the investment of a wiping. This can't be the first time this has happened.

 

Wow. I can sort of understand it with a diagnostic tool but something like Snip & Sketch? Why would it need the latest update?

"Windows 10 version 17687.0 or higher". Okay, I guess it's because they did the compile on 17687. Programs are touchy like that. The same kind of stuff happens when I make a Skyrim mod, it becomes dependent on the update version and whatever DLCs were active.

 

I feel stupid. Skyrim is my only game that uses the GPU to the max, so that's all I was testing it with. I was about to do a clean install so I figured I'd get a reasonably lightweight benchmark to test to see if anything changed afterwards, testing first as it is of course...

And I was getting 99% GPU utilization in the benchmark (Resident Evil 6 Demo). So, obviously, it was something with my Skyrim setup, not my hardware or Windows 10.

Long story short I eventually found out it was altered .ini configuration file(s), one or both—I just copied them over from a Skyrim profile that I didn't use with the external monitor. I don't understand why configuring an external monitor over DisplayPort would gimp the GPU in the settings, but there it is. Case solved.

 

A final follow up: Microsoft tier 2 tech support just called and I was able to explain what happened and close the support ticket. I wondered if they would follow through and am glad that they did. I now have more confidence that I'll get help in the future if I need it.