Undervolting the Surface 3?

[TallSurfaceUser]

I just bought a SP 3 from Ebay with a Core i5. The thing would heat up and create noise immediately. Uh oh, I thought. I'm not going to like this device.

Then I changed the registry so I could change the CPU max frequency. Also, I researched undervolting and adjusted the voltage to the CPU and the GPU. Now it runs cool and quiet and retains the Core i5 snappiness.

Question: Could there be any benefit to undervolting our Atom processors? Do they ever throttle? Could their throttling be prevented by undervolting like on the SP3?

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

 

[GreyFox7]

The little squirrels in the x7 Atom need to run as fast as they can... don't put any banana skins in their path.

 

[TallSurfaceUser]

If they ever have to throttle due to heat, this could speed them up. It would allow them to run at higher frequencies longer.

 

[TallSurfaceUser]

I found this information from Microsoft itself which indicates that the Atom does throttle down due to heat. This means that undervolting could help performance on intensive tasks, I think. (I'm not very schooled in this, but I don't think undervolting is very dangerous. If things get unstable you just adjust it back.)

Q7 Does the Surface 3 have a thermal threshold for CPU cutoff like the SP3? I enjoy playing Dota 2 for a couple of hours and this was the one thing I did not want happening, at the already low settings required to play it.

Yes we do thermally throttle the CPU on the Surface 3. DOTA2 not specifically tested. We did test Civilization 5 with 4GB SKU at 25+ FPS. Another reference point is 3D Mark Cloud Gate, which shows Surface 3 at ~70% performance of the i3 Surface Pro 3.
source: Everything you need to know about the Surface 3 and more from the Surface team's Reddit AMA
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[TallSurfaceUser]

After doing some Google research, this might be impossible. Or it is so on the fringe that no one even attempts to do it. The Intel utility that I used to undervolt my Surface Pro 3 would not install on my Surface 3.