CPU Throttling on 15 inch Surface Book 2 after 1709?

[Theartiszan]

I keep going back and forth on this myself. Contrary to my relatively harsh statement above, I think you make a valid point here. I won't say "99% of people won't notice this," probably it's a lower percentage. But it's not trivial. I'd amend my earlier harshness by saying that people who buy the SB2 for gaming will notice it. IF it doesn't affect creative apps (e.g., the Sketchup and CET apps that my wife runs, that depend on a fast GPU for decent performance), then it won't matter to the SB2's key constituency.

So, the challenge for Microsoft will be to describe this to people in a way that doesn't oversell it as a hardcore gaming system and at the same time doesn't undersell it as a powerful machine for creative types. I think they're okay relative to their MacBook Pro positioning, because even if you throttle the GTX 1060 it's still going to be faster than the AMD GPU in the Apple machine.

I'm likely going to go ahead and pick one up, particularly given the holiday return period. I'll have plenty of time to work the machine out before need to make a final decision. I'm guessing it'll be more than fine for my own needs -- I'm not much of a gamer so I won't run into that particular issue myself

I would recommend buying from Best buy then. You will have to January 14th for return if so desired.

 

[theveterans]

1.396v! That's getting into the upper limits of DESKTOP CPU overclocking MAXIMUM voltage O.O

If the system is pushing voltages up that high to keep turbo clocks stable, I'm going to say that would indicate a borderline faulty CPU [again, in desktop circles we'd say it's badly binned, or "you lost the silicon lottery"]. In an application like the SB2, there's no room for that. I'd call MS ASAP

Crazy voltages there. As for OP, definitely exchange his unit. The i7 in my Surface Pro only goes up to 1.2 V at 4.0 GHz

 

[wynand32]

I would recommend buying from Best buy then. You will have to January 14th for return if so desired.

Thanks for the advice, but I actually hate Best Buy and avoid buying from them. Had some bad experiences with them in the past.

That said, the Microsoft Store currently has its holiday return policy in effect, which runs through January 31.

 

[Darkhan]

My SB2 15 i7 has the same issue, soon as I run any intense program it shoots to 100c within seconds.

On call with support last night and mine failed the Intel IDPT test twice in a row for thermal issue and said to check thermal paste.

Microsoft is shipping me another one Monday.

 

[Bill Dolan]

My SB2 15 i7 has the same issue, soon as I run any intense program it shoots to 100c within seconds.

On call with support last night and mine failed the Intel IDPT test twice in a row for thermal issue and said to check thermal paste.

Microsoft is shipping me another one Monday.

Yeah. There must be some sort of quality issue that something with either the CPU voltage delivery system is messed up or something wrong with the thermal system that isn't right.
That is fast for shipping. Did you do an advanced exchange? They said mine will ship in 2 - 3 business days.

 

[Darkhan]

Yes I chose the Advanced Exchange.

 

[Bill Dolan]

My SB2 15 i7 has the same issue, soon as I run any intense program it shoots to 100c within seconds.

On call with support last night and mine failed the Intel IDPT test twice in a row for thermal issue and said to check thermal paste.

Microsoft is shipping me another one Monday.

I completely forgot about IPDT. Just tried that on mine and within 2 seconds of hitting the CPULoad test, it fails. Pretty darn quick. I get the same message to about checking the thermal solution.

 

[Darkhan]

It makes me concerned that this is wide spread issue? That will be the first thing I run with replacement.

 

[Bill Dolan]

It makes me concerned that this is wide spread issue? That will be the first thing I run with replacement.

Agreed. That will be my first run too.

 

[theveterans]

Hopefully, not all SB2 units are like that. At least with Surface Pro I still have 35 degrees left before it fails, and yes I've run it twice consecutively.

 

[Theartiszan]

Hopefully, not all SB2 units are like that. At least with Surface Pro I still have 35 degrees left before it fails, and yes I've run it twice consecutively.View attachment 8753

The largest gap between received and max on mine is 9 right at the start. Then hits 5 or 4 a few times and then fails.
Your result is pretty much similar to what I get with my surface book gen1.

 

[Seneleron]

My SB2 15 i7 has the same issue, soon as I run any intense program it shoots to 100c within seconds.

I suspect they got a bad yield somewhere. I actually replied to your comment on the notebookreview forums [as Mindinversion]

The big problem here is that it's not like a hardware defect that can be traced in testing, as the chip actually WORKS-- but they're not binning them the way they should be for this application [if they're binning them at all] Silicon lottery is usually reserved for desktop CPUs, but I'm keeping a very close eye on this one with the advent of quad core ULV chips.... It could really give shape to how Intel is really doing with shrinking die sizes and CPU performance characteristics moving into 10nm process, etc.