Laggy / low FPS performance for Windows 10 UI on SurfaceBook i7 with performance base.

Question

I bought a new SurfaceBook with the Performance Base. Graphics performance has been very poor. To be clear I'm not talking about games, I'm talking about just using the Windows 10 desktop. The entire OS is running below 30FPS most of the time. Switching between virtual desktops is slow and laggy, apps resize slowly when dragging windows between monitors, when I switch desktops apps refresh their UI slowly and are often scaled wrong. If I disable Virtual Desktops performance is still generally poor when switching apps or using win-tab. Basically, any animation is slow and laggy. 

I installed all updates including Windows 10 creators. I haven't installed much software at all and am mostly running Windows 10 and UWP apps from the store. I installed the NVidia driver directly from NVidia but it didn't help. I installed and ran the Surface Repair tool and it didn't help.

I'm starting to regret my purchase. Out of the box this thing is running like a 10 year old computer. Is this a known issue or software bug?

Answer 1

Check the nVidia 3D settings - are you actually utilising the GPU?

Answer 2

Shouldn't matter. The system is configured by default to switch to the dGPU for intense load. I'm talking about the Windows animations being slow and laggy without nothing but a single browser window and one other app open. The iGPU in the i7 is more than capable of driving basic desktop animations built into Windows 10 without help fo the dGPU

Answer 3

I went to the Microsoft Store today and was able to reproduce this on every Surface Book in the store, including 2 they brought out that didn't have the retail image on them. I spent a session with one of the Answer Desk Techs - who was very great, patient, and knowledgeable - and he was able to easily reproduce it as well. He tried some troubleshooting such as disabling and re-enabling the Intel driver, installing the OEM Intel driver, etc. None of it helped. He said that he would provide Feedback to Microsoft engineering / internal support.

As far as I can tell this is a bug in either the UWP frameworks or the shell. I thought it was an Intel GPU driver bug but seeing no difference on the latest OEM driver I'm less inclined to think so.

Steps to reproduce animation lag and choppiness:

1. Reboot the system and give it a few minutes for any background processes to settle down
2. Create 3 or 4 virtual desktops
3. Place a different UWP app on each desktop. Larger and more visually rich apps such as Groove, Edge, and Store work very well for reproducing this
4. Use win-ctrl-left and win-ctrl-right or 4 finger swipe on trackpad to switch desktops
5. Observe slow and choppy animations as well as app UI refreshes, flashes, or scaling

Steps to reproduce UI scaling problems with multiple monitors

1. Reboot the system and give it a few minutes for background processes to settle down
2. Hook up a 1080p monitor
3. Ensure that external monitor scaling is set to 100% (default) and internal display is 200% (default)
4. Place UWP apps on the external display on different desktops. Make sure Groove, specifically, is on the external monitor

5. Use win-ctrl-left and win-ctrl-right or 4 finger swipe on trackpad to switch desktops

6. Observe slow animations and app UI refreshes along with scaling errors, such as app UI being set to 200% scaling when offscreen and switched to 100% after appearing. Apps may also crash when scaling

Answer 4

The same thing with Dell XPS 15 (9560), when you attach external monitor task view is really choppy.

Answer 5

Same problem with Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro. Tried different intel hd drivers, but to no avail. Windows GUI is performing poorly since the Creators Update.  Hitting Windows key or Windows + Tab shows this issue.