Mini DisplayPort Power Throttling

[ibzmeister]

Hi Guys,

Got my Surface 3 this week and really like the Surface experience in such a lightweight package. The pen is just amazing!

I've been having a problem that I wanted to see if anyone else is experiencing. My work involves a lot of presentation work in Powerpoint. My presentations are usually animation heavy and so I usually work off a more powerful CPU than an atom. However, whenever I play from the machine itself, the S3 is perfectly capable of animating smoothly!

When I try to present using my projector, the animations are very slow and jerky. As far as I can tell, this could be linked to two possible things. The first is the quality of the mDP port-to-HDMI connector I'm using, however, I am using the Microsoft proprietary converter from my old SP2 so I'm not sure this is actually the problem. The second, and more likely possibility in my opinion, is that the power to the port is being throttled for battery consumption reasons. On further research, Microsoft seems to have locked out a lot of the advanced power options available on other windows machines (including the different power profiles, I only have 'balanced' in my battery settings). I've tried running the presentation over projector while plugged into the mains, but this was also a no-go.

Has anyone else had this problem? Does anyone have any thoughts they can share on how to solve this as I'm quite stumped now?

 

[GreyFox7]

Assuming all your troubles have been via DisplayPort, you might try using Miracast to see if that helps any.

 

[surfdock]

Ibzmesiter, welcome to the forums.

Is the presentation in duplicate/clone mode? i.e. do you see the same image on the projector as on the Surface? Does the behavior change if you choose "extend" mode such that the projector and surface show different things? Hit winkey+P and choose whatever mode you're not using now. Also try projector only so that the surface screen is blank and report back.

I bet you'll find different behavior when the animations are only being shown on one screen as opposed to 2 screens.

I find it more likely that the issue is Intel Graphics driver related and has nothing to do with the DisplayPort dongle or power throttling. But that's just my theory without actually seeing it.

 

[ibzmeister]

Thank you both for your replies.

I will try your suggestion first SurfDock, as I don't have a Miracast dongle to hand. It will be interesting to see if the issue is caused by the driver support for different screen set ups. I'll post back my results.

 

[hughlle]

How is performance on the projector doing things other than your presentations? Might help identify if it is a DP power issue, or just that the presentations in question are too demanding for the atom. As per above, see how it performs if the projector is selected as the sole display.

 

[ibzmeister]

I tested this yesterday. It does seem to be a driver issue as per SurfDock's post. Thankfully, it's working very smoothly now.

It seems to happen only in extend mode with presenter view enabled in Powerpoint. With presenter view disabled and the projector set to another output setting, it works buttery smooth. I'm using it on duplicate now.

Thank you very much for the replies, this has solved a very critical problem for me. I was contemplating returning it as presentations are a big part of what I do!