Windows 10: Slow Performance in Surface Pro 4 - Core i5 8GB

Sup guys! I'm resorting to this forum, because I know the caliber of people that roam around here.

I have a Surface Pro 4 - i5 w/ 8GB of RAM, and it's been painfully slow to do basic tasks. Excel, Web Browsing , Opening the Task Manager takes a lot; mouse lag; and maybe some coding with Visual Studio. I have a laptop with an i7 4700MQ and my laptop feels way snappier.

I thought that I wouldn't need the two extra cores since I was doing some basic work, but I don't know if I'm right...

So, this is what I've done:

• Checked Startup items. Almost bare bones. No Java Updater, only Dropbox, f.lux, Windows Defender.
• Ran sfc /scannow and chkdsk - No problems found.
• Scanned for viruses (Malwarebytes). Everything clean.
• CPU temp is great at 56°C.
• CPU, Disk and RAM usage do not top 100% when experiencing these issues.
• I've refreshed and Clean Install (From USB Drive), and I'm still experiencing issues.

Is there a way for me to track the usage and see which programs may be causing some sort of distortion? Even though it's an ultrabook i5 it should be way more than enough for the type of tasks that I'm doing (I think)

Any suggestions or ideas?

:)

 

No Refresh/re-rendering on parts of a program window

I should also point out that I have a Windows 10 (anniv) image deployed to three different devices and only the Surface Pro 3 has the issue. Assuming it's the CPU as others have mentioned it seems to happen at high CPU load, however i have checked this and
the system does not seem to be utilising its CPU at the time the issue occurs.

No issue:

Surface Pro 4

Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6300U CPU @ 2.40GHz (4 virtual)

8GB RAM

HP Probook G3

Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6200U CPU @ 2.30GHz (4 virtual)

8GB RAM

Big Issue:

Surface Pro 3

Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4300U CPU @ 1.90GHz (4 virtual)

4GB RAM

 

Cursor keeps jumping in Windows 10

i have same problem,

my trackpad always jump.

its new, still on warranty..

surface pro 4, i5 8gb.

any suggestion ?

 

Heck, even for much beefier tasks, a core i5 should be more than enough to make that Surface Pro 4 quite snappy. I just built my son a computer at Christmas with a Core i5 and it's extremely fast with everything i throw at it.

Can you quantify painfully slow? For example, how long does it take to perform some of these basic tasks?

 

Thanks for the reply! *Biggrin

Do remember this is the Ultrabook variant (6300U) which is roughly 50% of the total performance of the desktop's counterpart.

My best Example comes with Excel. After doing something for a while (No heavy loaded spreadsheets), it would start to take a couple of seconds to respond to keyboard combinations. The one that I use the most is the "Wrap Text" by pressing Alt+H+WT (and it probably takes me between 3 -5 seconds via keyboard).

Task manager is painfully slow. It takes 5 - 7 seconds to fully open.

Browsing gets sometimes super painful. I remember three days ago opening a Flash video in Edge, and Oh God... I had to hard restart the machine.

I use Dropbox... a lot! I usually work inside its folder and I'm a save maniac, meaning that I would save a file I'm working with maybe once per 3 - 5 mins. Each time I do this, Dropbox peaks between 25 - 100% (depending on the document). This is understandable, and the lack of more physical cores limit the machines' responsiveness.

 

Im wondering about what your disk usage is at. Open the task manager and see what your disk usage is at when it is slow. Also check to see what your RAM and CPU usage is too.

 

Yes! Task Manager apparently doesn't give me a complete picture. RAM usage is more than 50% (Which I believe it's because Windows is compressing and caching programs), CPU doesn't hit 100% and the SSD never passes 25%.

Do you know of a program that could log CPU. GPU. RAM. and Disk usage in a file? That could help a lot to diagnose the problem.

 

Performance monitor comes with Windows and can log all of that stuff.

 

Awesome! The more you know! I'll learn how to use it, and I'll post back! Thanks a bunch!

 

Ok. I read a couple of posts and I need some help. From my understanding Performance Monitor allows you to watch a single process or group of them. Unfortunately I do not know which is the process that's causing problems. It seems that Perfmon doesn't track what caused the CPU spikes.

I downloaded Process Explorer to see if there was any suspicious activity, and I forced it to stay on top, while I was working. Surprisingly, I couldn't spot any anomalies. Excel was eating up to 20% of CPU, but the total usage of the system was below 50%. As I'm writing this I'm experiencing some lag, and it's a little bit controlled, because I'm using the Surface in High Performance mode. I can see some CPU spikes in the Perfmon... But I can't tell which application is causing that, since I can't spot any anomalies in Process Explorer or the Task Manager....

 

Hmmm. So I decided to format the computer once more. This time I installed the Creators Update and I can feel it really fast, compared to last time. I downloaded PCMark 8 and made some comparisons.

This was before formatting:





This was after formatting:




A 13% difference!!!

The formatted part was running Vanilla Windows 10, that means that I haven't installed a single program into it.

I'm going to start by installing Office and Dropbox, and I will run the test again to see how it goes.

 

Well, well. As I mentioned, I formatted the machine, and I've been monitoring it very close. To my very big surprise performance has been top notch. PCMark8 is hitting high around 3,000, and Excel doesn't seem to chop off. I've been installing programs little by little and I've been gauging the performance.

I'll post back in case I've found the culprit.