Surface Pro 3 - The problems thread

Basically what I've been saying all along.

 

Yes given the inability of it to release the throttling when on power it does make you wonder. I am still convinced its a major issue but I get why people are discussing it. Will be interesting to see if they officially respond or what changes they make in the SP4 with baytrail although I suspect we will be waiting until fanless becomes a reality in its successor for these issues to truly no longer be relevant.

 

They won't officially respond, I'll bet my hat on it. It would be a marketing mistake, a serious one. They may stealthily try to eek out some tiny improvements, but it's not something that's truly broken. MS simply decided to sacrifice some performance that they saw as very niche for thinness and consumer appeal. Do you guys really think the average SP3 buyer is going to care about throttling? Your talking about the ultrabook crowd, those ultrabooks are throttled also. Someone who wants to do some serious CPU/GPU intensive work will probably get a Macbook Pro or something beefy like that and accept the size/power compromise.

I'm not saying it's right, but I think at some point we have to accept that we basically got a thinner device by trading off with the throttling.

 

Played around with the fan setup a little more. Under full GPU load saw stable frequencies between 900-1000 Mhz which is nearly the max for the chip anyway. This will be sufficient for any gaming I'd need and results in some cases a 60% increase in FPS in games. Now I just need to figure make it not so loud

 

Looks fine ) Using self-made cooler to cool $1.5k device - what could be better? ))

Does your tests load CPU and GPU simultaneously, like gaming does? And did you tried undervolting?

I wonder, what will happen when surface cooler will collect some dust (and it will)...

 

Simple...

Bose QuietComfort 20i Review - Noise Cancelling Earbuds - LAPTOP



Thanks for the continued testing, great to see it is at least possible to get the GPU up to a useable clock. I need to go basement diving and dig out some old fans and the jigsaw it appears.

 

I don't disagree, but its still an interesting item to discuss (and hasn't detracted from me enjoying my SP3) even more so because it does potentially have ramifications even into the next line of products. Also your assertion that most consumers don't care runs both ways if someone from MS was to address it even in a less formal way like twitter or reddit AMA, the average consumer is still unlikely to pay attention so it would be no more a marketing disaster than the stealth updates to the SP2 were.

edit: noticed in my earlier response there is a not missing between still and convinced its a major issue.

 

Yeah I do think they should address it in an ama or some kind of forum like that. But honestly what are they going to say? Hey, we traded off thinness for throttling, we thought we would sell more units and make more money if the device was thinner. I can't say I blame them, that's usually the very first thing in a SP3 versus ipad headline. But at this point it's kind of obvious there is nothing to be done. Maybe they can tweak it a hair her and there, but there will be no drastic changes.

 

I don't think this would work. If they said anything interesting, it would be echoed across the tech site blogosphere.

 

It depends on how MS words it. How much was the N-Trig vs Wacom switch echoed across the blogosphere? Not very much. But journalists could have overblown an issue like the reduction in pressure levels by making headlines like "New SP3 suffers from 4x worse pen sensitivity". However, MS was careful in explaining the advantages and disadvantages of the switch, so it wouldn't be misquoted in that fashion.

I think MS could (and should) do the same with the issue of iGPU throttling: make a candid post about the tradeoffs, then proceed to say they are working on firmware optimizations to improve performance—pretty much like they handled all other previous hardware issues. Typical users get confirmation that for regular use, the SP3 performs faster. Power users, who are on fence about buying, would get more assurance of the future value of their purchase.

Contrast this scenario with possibility of one snarky journalist to take Anandtech's results and proclaim "Overpriced SP3 outperformed by cheaper and older models" and start another round of MS/Surface bashing. It is niche issues that are most susceptible to the spread of misinformation, so I think it is in MS best interests to face this issue head on.