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Surface Pro 4 i7-6650U power throttling issue?

jason10mm

New Member
I guess it depends on what it is doing. Actually cooling the internals or just fooling the superficially located temperature sensor leading to internal overheating. I wonder if folks will figure out how to just disable that sensor completely and what that will do to core temps (are there other temp sensors that will kick in?). If some external air flow is all it takes to keep the SP4 at a normal operating temp then I can't see how it will cause any long term damage.
 
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theveterans

Member
As long as that any kind of throttling doesn't kick in, it shouldn't harm the device. It might harm the battery though since the heat located throughout the back unlike the SP3 where heat is only concentrated on the right side of the surface.
 

Seneleron

Active Member
Wow, at the end of the day I was right. . AND wrong. It's "heat" throttling, just not from the sensor I'd suspected.

And for the record: Setting a computer to run in excess of it's OEM performance configuration is "overclocking". Overclocking does not just refer to cranking things up with afterburner or adjusting CPU multipliers in BIOS. I get that most people don't see "high performance" mode in power options as actual "OVERCLOCKING", but given that the option is hidden in its OEM configuration and requires additional work to "unlock" pushes it into the realm of "overclocking"

Ever so barely, but that's my story and I'm stickin' to it :p
 

Cerif27

New Member
I've had a lot of success with the suggestion from the youtuber from earlier on a different video of his. Frame limiting and V-sync seems to keep everything doing just fine. For now anyway. I do wish there's something MS could do along the lines of nixing this issue, but considering they don't seem to have done much about the Surface Pro 3 power throttling I don't see that happening.

Have any of you guys been having power throttling issues with the performance mode on "balanced"? I haven't set my GPU to "performance" mode yet and also haven't noticed any problems yet. But maybe it's just the game I'm playing...I suppose it's within the realm of possibility that Shadowrun: Hong Kong just won't trip the power throttling.
 
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theveterans

Member
Cerif27,

Power throttling only arises when game needs a lot of high CPU frequency and power like online FPS games such as CS GO, BF3/4 multiplayer, Crysis 3 multiplayer, GTA 5. Otherwise, performance should be very close to unthrottled performance when games don't need high CPU frequency/power.
 

ian50000x

New Member
This does not bode at all well for emulation. I just ordered an SP4 i7, with much hope it would be able to handle PCSX2 better than my current SP1. Hearing all this, I wonder if I made a bad decision.
 

jason10mm

New Member
Cerif27,

Power throttling only arises when game needs a lot of high CPU frequency and power like online FPS games such as CS GO, BF3/4 multiplayer, Crysis 3 multiplayer, GTA 5. Otherwise, performance should be very close to unthrottled performance when games don't need high CPU frequency/power.

So does this mean strategy games like X-com, CIV5, Total War, Europa Universalis, etc will not max out the CPU? Most of these will run on my SP1 but it would be nice to see the full power of the i7 on those games. My SP1 gets damned hot playing that stuff so I imagine there is some serious CPU usage going on but there isn't really a framerate counter in those games that can say if the PC is throttling or not (or is there?).
 

Cerif27

New Member
All I know is I'm not having any issues playing Shadowrun:HK at full 2K screen resolution. I turned off post process, but that was it. Everything else is running maxed. And I found a new use for the pen I never thought I would use as a non-artist! It's great for strategy games.
 

PumpkinPie

New Member
So whats Microsoft's word on this? Surely someone must have reported this to them to fix? - It's kind of a deal breaker to not be able to use what you're paying for to it's full potential. Microsoft needs to come up with a fix to this power throttling issue.

In the meantime, I'm holding off buying a Surface Pro 4 until this i7 crippling problem is corrected.
 

jbowden

Member
While MS may tweak this a bit, they may not provide a fix. If there are other PCs using this chipset that does not experience power throttling, then it is likely a hardware design flaw with SP4.
 
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theveterans

Member
While MS may tweak this a bit, they may not provide a fix. If there are other PCs using this chipset that does not experience power throttling, then it is likely a hardware design flaw with SP4.

See my post #12. It's not Microsoft but Intel rather. Just download intel power gadget, max the CPU with handbrake transcoding and you should see that the whole 15 W TDP is gobbled up by CPU alone. Throw in the GPU then you've got the power throttling mess.
 
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