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Surface Pro performance issues?
Grundlestiltskin
Behind you!Registered User regular
Behind you!Registered User regular
Hi all,
I got a Surface Pro 3 (Core i7, 8GB RAM) for work a few weeks ago and was initially pretty happy with it. However, I've run into a myriad of issues that seem at odds with a lot of the praise that people heap upon the device, and I'm wondering if it's just my machine or what.
My biggest issue is that the Surface seems to overheat for virtually no reason; right now the thing has the fan going full blast and is incredibly hot to the touch running nothing but internet explorer (with 5 tabs), Outlook, and Skype. It's not exactly a demanding load.
In general, the thing seems wonky about memory. Excel will often give me alerts/errors about how I can't open a new sheet or modify a cell because it's out of memory, but I still have a ton of memory left (http://imgur.com/H8q5Knv).
Browsers seem to be a nightmare. Chrome is so terrible at whatever it's doing that it was sucking the life out of my battery *while it was plugged in*, and I.E seems to routinely run out of memory and refuse to render pages.
I'm hoping someone has some insight as to something I might be doing wrong that is causing these issues, or that this particular Surface Pro 3 might be defective, because the whole experience has just been frustrating and is actively interfering with work at this point.
I got a Surface Pro 3 (Core i7, 8GB RAM) for work a few weeks ago and was initially pretty happy with it. However, I've run into a myriad of issues that seem at odds with a lot of the praise that people heap upon the device, and I'm wondering if it's just my machine or what.
My biggest issue is that the Surface seems to overheat for virtually no reason; right now the thing has the fan going full blast and is incredibly hot to the touch running nothing but internet explorer (with 5 tabs), Outlook, and Skype. It's not exactly a demanding load.
In general, the thing seems wonky about memory. Excel will often give me alerts/errors about how I can't open a new sheet or modify a cell because it's out of memory, but I still have a ton of memory left (http://imgur.com/H8q5Knv).
Browsers seem to be a nightmare. Chrome is so terrible at whatever it's doing that it was sucking the life out of my battery *while it was plugged in*, and I.E seems to routinely run out of memory and refuse to render pages.
I'm hoping someone has some insight as to something I might be doing wrong that is causing these issues, or that this particular Surface Pro 3 might be defective, because the whole experience has just been frustrating and is actively interfering with work at this point.
3DS FC: 2079-6424-8577 | PSN: KaeruX65 | Steam: Karulytic | FFXIV: Wonder Boy
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3d rendering causes it to burn through battery and overheat and use the fan far more frequently than the SP2 did.
This was for games though, but seems to follow.
I've got both a Surface Pro firs generation (with an i3) and a Surface Pro 3 (with an i5, my work machine). The later is capable of heating up, and occasionally I have to futz around with hibernation/sleep settings, which tends to cause a heat issue if left plugged in, but that has more to do with the weird settings inflicted by my office onto it.
I've never run into any issues with either Chrome or IE on my SP3, no error messages with any MS Office software (I have 2013 installed on both), and definitely nothing in the range of power issues (for general browsing, my SP3 lasts several times what my original SP1 or colleague's SP2 will last, easily). It will get warm, but not so warm that I can actually notice it (due to the kickstand). In fact, of the issues I have had with my SP3 since I got it, Office and browsers are the two things that work pretty flawlessly every time.
However, I have a theory: I also don't know anyone who owns a SP3 with an i7 processor. When I was placing an order for my work machine, I was generally advised, for fairly vague, nonspecific reasons, against getting an i7 unless I was actually going to use it (for example, something like video rendering, which I don't do). It's not the first warning I've heard against getting any ultrabook with an i7 processor either.
That being said, I can't say why. In my case, the longer battery life for an i5 rather than i7 Surface Pro 3 was enough to convince me, but if you actually do use the horsepower that comes with an i7, I can understand why that would suck. Sorry I can't offer anything concrete.