October firmware update

[rege0039]

Help !

Since I installed this update I no longer have a working physical keyboard on 8.1.

I have tried both the wireless one connected through my dock and a Surface Keyboard attached directly to the machine, neither work !

Both work fine if I boot in to 10 technical preview that I have installed in a partition for dual booting.

Anyone else getting this ?

 

[InspectHerGadget]

My wifi issues seems to be fixed...no limited connectively sign which is nice. Plus my connection doesn't throttle when downloading anything. But when I turn Bluetooth is turned on...It still cuts my connection speed in half. I don't think that will ever get fixed??? Its terrible...

I've seen this and measured this Bluetooth effect before on my MBA 11 which was new in January 2014.

I tried this again and got about 58Mbps with bluetooth off and 59Mbps with bluetooth on. This is on the Macbook. For some reason, maybe a driver update, it doesn't have an effect now.

I then tried my SP2 and got 62Mbps with bluetooth off and 39Mbps with bluetooth on.

It seems like this is an issue that either can be fixed (as appears to be the case with the MBA) or it might depend on what the bluetooth is doing. In my case, the MBA wasn't paired to anything whereas on the SP2, it is paired to my Arc Mouse.

Edit: These are internet speeds measured via www.speedtest.net

 

[cmergel]

My windows update is 1.5MB. I wasn't sure what it was so I went out to the Microsoft Download Center and found the download for the driver pack. I see that there is an update to the Surface Pro 3 Pen (Oct 6th). You can download just that one update if wanted.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38826

 

[GreyFox7]

I've seen this and measured this Bluetooth effect before on my MBA 11 which was new in January 2014.

I tried this again and got about 58Mbps with bluetooth off and 59Mbps with bluetooth on. This is on the Macbook. For some reason, maybe a driver update, it doesn't have an effect now.

I then tried my SP2 and got 62Mbps with bluetooth off and 39Mbps with bluetooth on.

It seems like this is an issue that either can be fixed (as appears to be the case with the MBA) or it might depend on what the bluetooth is doing. In my case, the MBA wasn't paired to anything whereas on the SP2, it is paired to my Arc Mouse.

Edit: These are internet speeds measured via www.speedtest.net

It *might* be a chip limitation the Marvell Avastar 88W8797 chip handles both Wifi and Bluetooth.

Edit: its actually the 88W8897 chip found in the SP3 teardown not the 88W8797. The 88W8897 is also used in the Xbox One.

 

[jnjroach]

This is sad its still the old Intel driver repackaged with the small WiFi fix. yup again no Intel control panel included. what's the reason for that?

Microsoft is not going to include the Control Panel as "igxtray" runs in the background and impacts the battery life....

 

[jnjroach]

It *might* be a chip limitation the Marvell Avastar 88W8797 chip handles both Wifi and Bluetooth.

Its contention between the 2.4GHz WLAN and the Bluetooth, since both are on the same chip and share the same space their Wireless single interfere with each other.

OEMs and ODMs often will use the Intel WLAN and a Broadcom Bluetooth adapter so that the can move the bluetooth away from WLAN mini-pci card. ThinkPads an example but the bluetooth on the inside of the bezel of the LCD Screen.

 

[GreyFox7]

It *might* be a chip limitation the Marvell Avastar 88W8797 chip handles both Wifi and Bluetooth.

Edit: its actually the 88W8897 chip found in the SP3 teardown not the 88W8797. The 88W8897 is also used in the Xbox One.

The 88W8897 is also in the Samsung Chromebook 2. I mention these on the off chance someone has one of these devices. it would be interesting to know if they see similar problems on other devices or is it just the SP3.

The 88W8897 documentation claims simultaneous operation and it supports dual band and mimo. There could still be issues with antennas, antenna placement, signal discrimination, channel selection, beamforming, or internal limits with buffers etc. Its definitely going to be more challenging with both using the 2.4 GHz spectrum.

 

[jnjroach]

The SP3 has a dedicated antenna for recieve, but I'm sure contention is going to be difficult to overcome...

 

[mitchellvii]

If you prefer the Intel HD Control Panel, you'll have to reinstall it after this update. I don't care whatever miniscule effect this may have on battery life, taking away our HD Control Panel is just stupid.

 

[BobG]

Past updates were labelled "System Firmware Update", this one showed up as "System Hardware Update." I wonder why they changed the terminology?

I haven't looked at the file system, it seemed quite small.

I had to restart my SP3 3 times for it to stop saying "Pending restart" in the update history.

 

[jnjroach]

Because it was exactly that, it was just a Driver Update not an actual Firmware. The Firmware Update includes drivers typically.

 

[awaiK]

The Firmware Update History was updated:

• Surface Pen Driver (v2.0.1145.0) enables additional upcoming configuration options for Surface Pro 3