Restore Maximum Power State to Surface Pro 4
Thursday, January 14, 2016 by Frogboy | Discussion: Personal Computing
My Microsoft Surface is a constant companion. It is absolutely central to my workflow.
One of the challenges I’ve had with it is battery life. There’s a lot of things you can do to help with your battery life but one simple thing I’ve done, for now, is to set the max CPU when on battery to 99%.
Setting the max CPU to 99% prevents the CPU from going into Turbo mode. For me, this accomplishes two things:
(1) I get roughly an extra hour of battery out of the system
(2) I don’t get the annoying fan when I watch videos
Set your maximum CPU while on battery to 99%
Here’s how it works:
Step 1: Download and run https://draginol.stardock.net/files/SP4_Max_Processor_State.zip
Step 2: Go to advanced power settings and go to the new option: Processor Power management
Set the on battery to 99%.
There is no step 3.
You should notice the behavior difference fairly quickly on battery. For one thing, when you have Edge running on an ad intensive site or are watching a video your CPU speed will not go nearly as high (on the other hand, it won’t get power throttled to 0.5Ghz either which is a big benefit).
Hope this helps. Feel free to comment if you have questions.
Reply #2 Thursday, January 14, 2016 9:35 PM
Wow, I was just wondering the same thing... Would this work on my Surface Pro 3???
Reply #4 Thursday, January 14, 2016 11:25 PM
Adding an hour with such a simple tweak is pretty damn clever, Brad. May I ask what the pre-tweak baseline SP4 battery life was day-to-day?
Thanks!
[But I'm just guessing]...
Reply #7 Sunday, January 17, 2016 4:14 PM
it was about 5.5 hours. mow its 6.5 hours.
if i set it tp 33% i can get 10 hours but i notice the perf hit.
Reply #8 Sunday, January 17, 2016 4:57 PM
Thanks! That's about 3.5 hours more than my current laptop, so SP4 likely to happen soon.
Reply #9 Saturday, January 23, 2016 9:18 PM
Well after trying this tweak for my SP3, I can definitely see the improvement in battery life, but more importantly, the fan barely turns on now when doing light tasks. It really is a night/day difference.
Reply #10 Saturday, January 23, 2016 9:34 PM
Works great on my SP4. I like the fact that it keeps the fans off during video runs.
Reply #11 Wednesday, January 27, 2016 10:39 PM
Hi, If this is addressed in a future Microsoft update is it possible to remove this tweak?
Thanks
Reply #12 Thursday, February 4, 2016 4:47 PM
Hi, Works Great in my SP4. but I want to know, how to disable it(In particular SP4 MAX_Processor_State )
actually if microsoft solve this problem by update, These settings are problematic to update?
Thanks a lot
Reply #13 Thursday, February 11, 2016 5:22 AM
If you don't want to loose 1% of your CPU capacity you can use Real Temp and disable the Turbo mode
http://www.techpowerup.com/realtemp/
BTW is the Surface Pro 4 reliable? I read too many awful comments about the unresponsiveness of the screen. I'm hesitating between the SP4 and a VAIO X Canvas for for my artistic work. I need a modular system that can replace a graphic tablet.
Reply #14 Thursday, February 11, 2016 6:26 AM
Quick question: Why does this need a tweak? I thought you could set the power settings like that anyway in Windows . Is it disabled in the SP4?
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Reply #1 Thursday, January 14, 2016 8:27 PM
Great tweak! Do you think this would apply to the Surface Pro 3?