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Windows 10 Preview on Surface Pro 3

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cliffr39

Active Member
Benefit: FULL control panel with custom resolutions, more control, usually NEWER, support for more games, more apps, bug fixes.

Negative: Not supplied by MS, not updatable through Win Update. May not have specific battery customizations that MS may or may not add to drivers, every firmware from MS, you have to reinstall manually again...

For some reason every version of Win10 has only given me the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter and not Intel HD Graphics. When it does the MS BDA I cannot adjust brightness. When I install the Intel ones Windows Update doesn't replace them either with the May Firmware update. These are clean installs.
 

jnjroach

Administrator
Staff member
Has anyone ever figured out why MS has deemed it necessary to exclude the HD Control Panel from the SP3 Drivers? I know having control over things like gamma, etc is something NO ONE WANTS (sort of like the Start Menu, right MS?), but is there actually a rational reason?

P.S., I hate when MS excludes an incredibly popular feature everyone uses simply because THEY have decided WE don't need it. Meanwhile they add all kinds of esoteric new features no one asked for which usually just break things we actually use.
It wasn't an arbitrary decision, all of the bits that go into the Control Panel run in the background and impact Startup Speed and Battery Life.
 

lparsons21

Active Member
I put 10130 on the SP3 last night and got all the updates. Some things are really hinky still.

1. Getting to the PC Settings with a swipe oft times doesn't work. No rhyme or reason for it that I can see.
2. DropBox keeps notifying incessantly that it has updated 2 files. Haven't figured a fix for that yet.
3. The new Mail app works fine for Gmail and Outlook mail, but iCloud mail won't get mail. That problem is exacerbated by the fact that you really can't change any settings in the mail accounts though it does have an edit function. A real PITA.
4. And as noted by me earlier, Tapatalk continues to crash.
5. In Accounts settings, it says to verify my settings, click on that and it cycles something unseen over and over again.
 

lparsons21

Active Member
Arghhh!!!! I feel like a real dummy!!

I KNEW that the new mail would need an app specific password, but I just blanked and kept going around in circles! :(

Mail and iCloud are now getting along just fine.

For DropBox, the only fix was to turn off notifications which I don't care for, but it is what it is!
 

cliffr39

Active Member
I put 10130 on the SP3 last night and got all the updates. Some things are really hinky still.

1. Getting to the PC Settings with a swipe oft times doesn't work. No rhyme or reason for it that I can see.
2. DropBox keeps notifying incessantly that it has updated 2 files. Haven't figured a fix for that yet.
3. The new Mail app works fine for Gmail and Outlook mail, but iCloud mail won't get mail. That problem is exacerbated by the fact that you really can't change any settings in the mail accounts though it does have an edit function. A real PITA.
4. And as noted by me earlier, Tapatalk continues to crash.
5. In Accounts settings, it says to verify my settings, click on that and it cycles something unseen over and over again.

I had #5 - I created a new local account, logged out/in as that user and removed my MS account. I then signed in as MS account with that new user and seemed to resolve it for me. Hope that works for you.
 

mitchellvii

Well-Known Member
It wasn't an arbitrary decision, all of the bits that go into the Control Panel run in the background and impact Startup Speed and Battery Life.

I'm having a hard time buying the idea that being able to set gamma darker actually makes my battery life worse. Or that Startup Speed would be dramatically impaired by the HD Control Panel. Apparently MS knows something no other major computer manufacturer does. In reality what we have here is another case of MS fiddling with something that took away a large benefit in exchange for a small one.

It wouldn't be so bad if the gamma setting MS has built in actually stuck, but it seems to randomly revert to zero for no particular reason on a regular basis.
 

malberttoo

Well-Known Member
I'm having a hard time buying the idea that being able to set gamma darker actually makes my battery life worse. Or that Startup Speed would be dramatically impaired by the HD Control Panel. Apparently MS knows something no other major computer manufacturer does. In reality what we have here is another case of MS fiddling with something that took away a large benefit in exchange for a small one.

It wouldn't be so bad if the gamma setting MS has built in actually stuck, but it seems to randomly revert to zero for no particular reason on a regular basis.

I don't think it's the gamma itself that (potentially) impacts battery life, but rather the part of the driver that maintains/controls the gamma, that has to run in the background 24x7, that impacts battery life.

It could be other things too. Maybe they couldn't get it working perfectly with Connected Standby, or something like that.

I do know that a good number of Microsoft employees use the SP3, it would be interesting to hear sometime (maybe in an AMA or something) what they do with their driver settings.
 

bmack

Member
As a few others have mentioned my fan in the new build is always running at a speed I can hear it. Something that wasn't present before.
 

bluegrass

Well-Known Member
I don't think it's the gamma itself that (potentially) impacts battery life, but rather the part of the driver that maintains/controls the gamma, that has to run in the background 24x7, that impacts battery life.

It could be other things too. Maybe they couldn't get it working perfectly with Connected Standby, or something like that.

I do know that a good number of Microsoft employees use the SP3, it would be interesting to hear sometime (maybe in an AMA or something) what they do with their driver settings.
They might not worry about it. I haven't felt the need to download and install the Intel driver.
 

jnjroach

Administrator
Staff member
I'm having a hard time buying the idea that being able to set gamma darker actually makes my battery life worse. Or that Startup Speed would be dramatically impaired by the HD Control Panel. Apparently MS knows something no other major computer manufacturer does. In reality what we have here is another case of MS fiddling with something that took away a large benefit in exchange for a small one.

It wouldn't be so bad if the gamma setting MS has built in actually stuck, but it seems to randomly revert to zero for no particular reason on a regular basis.
If you have the reference driver installed you will notice under the Startup Tab in Task Manager that the Control Panel has High Impact on Startup and if you look at all of the resources that the "igfx" components are consuming you'll see what I mean, better yet use Resource Explorer.
 

mitchellvii

Well-Known Member
If you have the reference driver installed you will notice under the Startup Tab in Task Manager that the Control Panel has High Impact on Startup and if you look at all of the resources that the "igfx" components are consuming you'll see what I mean, better yet use Resource Explorer.

High impact on startup? I'm running the latest Intel Drivers with HD Control Center right now and my SP3 starts up fast. Are we talking about saving a second or two here? Sorry but I'm not so busy I'm looking to shave seconds off my day. Startup lasts a few seconds, the benefit of the HD Control Panel lasts all day. No brainer. Bad call by MS here. Right now typing this note, I'm running at less than 10% of CPU. Again, complete non-issue compared to the benefit of having HD Control Panel.

This is MS giving up a big benefit to gain a small one. To make it worse, they didn't bother asking us how WE felt about it or give us an option to use the startup killing, resource hogging full-fat Intel Drivers if we wanted to. If I want to eat Twinkies for lunch, that should be my call.
 
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