Slightly different spin on the reason for throttling
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I was envisioning a somewhat more compact and quieter cooling system for my aftermarket GameCase cooling unit. 
what he didn't show you is when you start up the first throttling to kick in is the CPU Thermal throttling and after a fairly consistent amount of time under Thermal Throttling the clock frequencies start to drop. The Main source of heat is the i3/i5/i7 chip and they are slowing down to take the chip out of thermal throttling, that's likely a good thing. MS worked extensively with Intel on this and if Thermal Throttling was good they would have left it that way.
Broadwell was supposed to be here by now and was probably in the original design spec. There may be some more optimization that can be done but they can't put a box fan in the Surface. For its size and weight the SP3 is still the best performing tablet out there. SP2 is thicker and heavier and as such has a more limited appeal than the SP3 form factor. The bigger screen, thinner frame and lighter weight is what attracted me to the Sp3 and I had no thoughts of getting the thicker heavier SP2 although I did get a Surface 2 but wish the screen was 16:10 instead of 16:9
I expect game coolers to hit the market soon.
what he didn't show you is when you start up the first throttling to kick in is the CPU Thermal throttling and after a fairly consistent amount of time under Thermal Throttling the clock frequencies start to drop. The Main source of heat is the i3/i5/i7 chip and they are slowing down to take the chip out of thermal throttling, that's likely a good thing. MS worked extensively with Intel on this and if Thermal Throttling was good they would have left it that way.
Broadwell was supposed to be here by now and was probably in the original design spec. There may be some more optimization that can be done but they can't put a box fan in the Surface. For its size and weight the SP3 is still the best performing tablet out there. SP2 is thicker and heavier and as such has a more limited appeal than the SP3 form factor. The bigger screen, thinner frame and lighter weight is what attracted me to the Sp3 and I had no thoughts of getting the thicker heavier SP2 although I did get a Surface 2 but wish the screen was 16:10 instead of 16:9
I expect game coolers to hit the market soon.
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megatronium
Active Member
I only do editing, 3D, and high-end gaming in meat lockers so this doesn't affect me.
ctitanic
Well-Known Member
That's the point. It's an issue that only affects a narrow part of the market. For sure it does not affect the Enterprise user. And certainly, it does not affect me.
Totally agree. Even though I don't have an SP3 but will shortly when their released in Oz my observations on what I've read indicate in real life situations there are few issues under a normal work environment. Sure there are limitations as in anything, and if in your situation requires more than that the SP3 is not for you. But for the average user they look to be fine.
Actually I found the video rather humorous seeing myself (I don't think so) carrying around a box fan in the backpack. Like seriously is the SP3 the first computer to get hot and throttle. I think not.
ipaq_101
Active Member
I am an adult and a student in business school and I have used the SP3 for crunching what seems to be endless data and financial modeling and it has done it without any hiccups, another example of real world usage.
Video editing and gaming isn't the only thing computers are used for. I bought the SP3 for my needs and that is the key, buy it for what it can do well and not for what you wish it could do well, that way you can temper your expectations and enjoy whatever device your purchase.
Video editing and gaming isn't the only thing computers are used for. I bought the SP3 for my needs and that is the key, buy it for what it can do well and not for what you wish it could do well, that way you can temper your expectations and enjoy whatever device your purchase.
Bitching must take a lot of computing power as well ... there seems to be a large number of computers dedicated to this workload.
Personally I don't necessarily have a problem with the throttling, I just enjoying understanding how my computers work and being able to squeeze every ounce of power out of them I can. While researching what exactly causes the throttling of my i7 SP3 and under what situations, I discovered that disabling connected standby brings back all of the old power profiles and controls of a normal laptop. I wrote a short script that lets me toggle it with a restart, and it lets me cap my Surface's power while running flash videos and doubled it's battery for doing so. I might not have stumbled across this if I didn't look into the throttling.
It is true that I don't notice any throttling under normal usage conditions (web browsing/note taking/video watching/network administration/programming) and I would never load a game for a reason other than "just because I can" as I have a powerful lightweight laptop that is better for purpose. Under benchmarks, I do see about a 15% speed improvement over my Surface pro 2, which is impressive given how much thinner and lighter the SP3 is. However, the 40% worse graphics performance benchmarks from my SP2 scared me for a bit, but after using it for a week I think its an acceptable compromise for the improvements they were able to make in the chassis, given that even with my SP2 I only loaded a game on it a handful of times for the sole reason of "because I could".
It is true that I don't notice any throttling under normal usage conditions (web browsing/note taking/video watching/network administration/programming) and I would never load a game for a reason other than "just because I can" as I have a powerful lightweight laptop that is better for purpose. Under benchmarks, I do see about a 15% speed improvement over my Surface pro 2, which is impressive given how much thinner and lighter the SP3 is. However, the 40% worse graphics performance benchmarks from my SP2 scared me for a bit, but after using it for a week I think its an acceptable compromise for the improvements they were able to make in the chassis, given that even with my SP2 I only loaded a game on it a handful of times for the sole reason of "because I could".
