Forum Discussion
Teams Performance
Brad Adler So I think this issue goes beyond Teams.
When the Surface Pro 7 i5 runs at high load, forced by video calls, Teams, Zoom or whatever, the CPU is throttled.
Observe this by running task manager, and keeping the performance tab open. You will notice the GPU fires up to 100%, but after a few minutes, you CPU utilisation will only be at 30%, BUT the Speed will be stuck to 0.18Ghz or there abouts.
Compare this with when you are working normally, maybe surfing websites, opening 365 apps etc, the CPU will often turbo boost to 100% utilisation and go to 3Ghz to give you that speed boost.
I've sent my surface back to my supplier for testing, they have sent me loaner, identical in spec. This one doesn't throttle as much on video calls, but it still does - I get 0.4Ghz instead. Still awful. Waiting to see what my supplier recommends.
By comparison, I ran Teams and video calls on my 2021 Mac Mini the other day, no problem multi tasking.
This is a massive issue for Microsoft Surface devices, that no one at Microsoft is acknowledging.
Do some searching online, around 'Surface Pro 7 - CPU throttling' you will find lots of threads about this, with no resolution.
Thanks 24Plimlico.
What is really strange is that my Surface worked fine till early Dec 2020 (the unit I have is 12 months old). Based on this I find it hard to believe it is a hardware problem and rather a software issue introduced during an update.
I have noticed that the Teams call works as expected for approximately 15 minutes before the performance issue brings the Surface to its knees.
My current workaround is to use a Lenovo Yoga only for Teams calls (works fine, same as your Mac Mini) whilst using the Surface for everything else. Not a great solution trying to juggle a call across 2 devices.
Question: Would reinstalling the latest Win10 image onto the Surface fix this problem? Trying to avoid this option due to the time involved and on the basis that it won't fix the issue.
Brad
Brad Adler This does seem to be a combination of Surface Pro overheating and throttling severely at high loads and Teams being a resource hog using Electron.
With my last Surface Pro 7 device, just 5 mins on a video call caused the device to drop to 0.4Ghz whilst it cooled down making it basically unusable and I was able to demo this to Microsoft Support where even typing a message in Notepad wasn't possible. It would then cycle between 0.4Ghz and mild to medium throttling every few mins.
The replacement device is not quite as bad (yet) but throttling still occurs daily making it slow and frustrating to use, especially when on a Teams call. This is not great when it costs so much. Outlook is another resource hog so doesn't help that I must use both applications all day (like most other people at the moment probably!).
