Asus VivoBook S510UN sudden performance drop

[VanquishShadow]

Could it have been Asus bios setting have to do with the CPU side?

Or the themeral throttling that affects it?

hm nope i just reset the BIOS settings to optimized defaults.

i don't know whether there's some throttling issue going on, but the core is running at a very cool <45 deg C even after CPU mark. it just doesnt seem to push beyond 25% of CPU load.

 

[Hailgod]

captured during cpu mark?

the benchmark only uses 1% cpu? i doubt so.
By default, windows uses the balanced power mode. It should be on 0.4 or 0.8ghz if there is no load on it.

 

[VanquishShadow]

captured during cpu mark?

the benchmark only uses 1% cpu? i doubt so.
By default, windows uses the balanced power mode. It should be on 0.4 or 0.8ghz if there is no load on it.

1% CPU was right after CPU mark completed, and the rest of the charts (where CPU load was around 20-25% was during CPU mark). It CPU mark didn't even push the CPU to a high enough temp to get the fan to spin up, which I find very strange. The PassMark home page animation (the one with the spinning mobo) puts a heavier load on the system than CPU mark.

I'm also running the Windows Memory Diagnostic test right now, and it's a LOT slower than when i ran it on my old Asus UX31A (which has 4GB of RAM vs 8GB of ram on the new machine, but still).
[edit: it has been more than 30 mins and the Windows Memory Diagnostic test is still at 68%... gosh]

It's all a very strange problem, basically feels like CPU, GFX and Memory are all performing at 1/4 of what their actual perf ought to be.

 

[VanquishShadow]

1% CPU was right after CPU mark completed, and the rest of the charts (where CPU load was around 20-25% was during CPU mark). It CPU mark didn't even push the CPU to a high enough temp to get the fan to spin up, which I find very strange. The PassMark home page animation (the one with the spinning mobo) puts a heavier load on the system than CPU mark.

I'm also running the Windows Memory Diagnostic test right now, and it's a LOT slower than when i ran it on my old Asus UX31A (which has 4GB of RAM vs 8GB of ram on the new machine, but still).
[edit: it has been more than 30 mins and the Windows Memory Diagnostic test is still at 68%... gosh]

It's all a very strange problem, basically feels like CPU, GFX and Memory are all performing at 1/4 of what their actual perf ought to be.

oh my, it took a full 60 mins to run the Windows Memory Diagnostic Test!

 

[VanquishShadow]

after more testing, i suspect it has something to do with the Power Plan.

In addition to the default Balanced Power plan (which appears as the only available option in the Power Plans settings page), I also created a custom plan based off High Performance, and a custom plan based off Battery Saver.

For all of the plans (And regardless of whether my laptop is plugged in or running on battery), the benchmark scores are the same. This doesn't make sense

Apparently for Surface devices, the default is only to have the Balanced power plan, but for laptops, shouldn't there be the 3 power options available?

 

[Hailgod]

only balanced is available.
the rest makes little to no sense so windows 10 hides it to prevent casual users from messing around with it.

Balanced plan is the best of both worlds. i still use throttlestop to control my cpu either way. the plans doesnt make much of a difference.

 

[VanquishShadow]

i see. yea i wouldn't expect balanced plan to throttle by so much anyway.

this morning for a brief period the system was working fast, but now its back to the slowpoke mode again. for some reason the max CPU utilization is capped at 22%, even when running benchmark tests. Similar result for both on AC and on battery.

im out of ideas. if i can't figure it out, im going to bring it over to Asus this weekend. On the phone, the rep did tell me that benchmarks scores aren't a valid reason for warranty service, but maybe if I demonstrate that opening windows explorer takes a full 6 seconds....

 

[Intrinion]

Lost
Anyone with 8th Gen CPU laptops on hand to verify ?

 

[james112]

I got the S510UN via Hachi Tech around a month ago.

It was generally doing fine, until this week suddenly a big performance drop, everything became noticeably laggier. I thought it was due to bloatware and tried to uninstall McAfee etc., but didn't help. In the end, I did a clean reinstall of Windows 10. Btw, the laptop is running 8th gen i5 processor, 8GB RAM, MX150 graphics, so its fairly decent.

Then I ran passmark, and I got these results on the S510UN (below). Oh my! Very very bad! Some tests cannot even complete

Compared to my very old Asus UX31A (below), there is definitely something wrong with my new laptop, but I can't figure what is wrong.

Is this sufficient to lodge a case for RMA? I can't pinpoint the failure, but it does seem like there is a hardware issue right? Any advise how to get a successful RMA?

And I'm guessing its just a coincidence with the recent Intel chip Spectre/Meltdown issue?

New S510UN user here too! Bought my laptop on mid Dec 2017 and it worked perfectly fine until last Sunday, where everything start getting slower, ie. it takes longer time to open chrome, check task manager, open file explorer and etc, with additional 4-6 seconds. Worst, my laptop will eventually auto sleep/shutdown despite that I was using it at the moment.

I reset my laptop and the auto sleep/shutdown problem gone. The performance drops improved a little bit, but it is still very obvious that it is slower compare to before this incident.

I not sure if it is due to latest Windows 10 update 1709. Do let us know the outcome after you visited ASUS service center

 

[VanquishShadow]

New S510UN user here too! Bought my laptop on mid Dec 2017 and it worked perfectly fine until last Sunday, where everything start getting slower, ie. it takes longer time to open chrome, check task manager, open file explorer and etc, with additional 4-6 seconds. Worst, my laptop will eventually auto sleep/shutdown despite that I was using it at the moment.

I reset my laptop and the auto sleep/shutdown problem gone. The performance drops improved a little bit, but it is still very obvious that it is slower compare to before this incident.

I not sure if it is due to latest Windows 10 update 1709. Do let us know the outcome after you visited ASUS service center

Great to know I'm not alone! Could you try checking task manager to see whether your CPU utilization can go above 22%

 

[james112]

Great to know I'm not alone! Could you try checking task manager to see whether your CPU utilization can go above 22%

tried. capped at 22% too (1253), my ram testing suck too (444)
I also arranged warranty service, but i guess this only can be solved with windows update or bios update

 

[VanquishShadow]

Yup definitely the same problem then. Hopefully Asus can resolve it quickly

 

[james112]

Yup definitely the same problem then. Hopefully Asus can resolve it quickly

I have arranged pick up for service. Let's see how it goes.
Do update us your service outcome too

 

[VanquishShadow]

sure im intending to send it in tmr.
the problem is somewhat intermittment though, like right now I'm running it passmark again (no settings changed whatsoever) and things are back to regular speed. i'm just worried that when the service centre takes a look at it, the system behaves per usual and then when i collect it back, it goes haywire again :S

 

[VanquishShadow]

I'm not sure if you noticed this on your system, but for mine, if I run it on battery for a while and then plug in to charge, the charging seems to be quite slow and may stop charging altogether before reaching 100%.

I ran a passmark on battery, until 86% batt life, then when I plugged in, it charged for a short while and then stopped charging (still at 86%)

 

[VanquishShadow]

@james112
I was about to send the system to Asus today but since I got up I have not been able to replicate the issue
The intermittency of the issue is really frustrating, but so far I can't get it to 'cap at 22%' again and if I can't replicate it, chances are that the service centre will just say that there is no issue. I've restarted around a dozen times and so far everything seems to be working fine just for today.

It's like a little kid that don't want to see the doctor, suddenly all recovered and healthy on the day that I want to bring it to see the doctor

 

[VanquishShadow]

okay, so i didn't manage to reproduce the issue in the morning and therefore i didn't send it down to Asus.

But lo and behold, come afternoon, I decided to start reinstalling some software, namely MS Office, Chrome etc. on to the clean Windows reinstall. Things seemed to be working fine.

Then I decided to sign into Windows using my Microsoft account, instead of using Windows through an offline account. then the 22% issue occurred again!
I undid that step, i.e. switched back to signing into Windows using an offline account, but the 22% step remains.

I've really never seen any problem like this before. It appears that certain software-related actions trigger the emergence of some bug that caps CPU usage to 22%, but as of now I can't tell what.

Looks like I'm going to have to go through yet another round of Resetting Windows and trying to troubleshoot further :S

 

[5408854088]

could it be due to the CPU's features like Turbo Boost Technology, SpeedStep Technology or Thermal Monitoring Technologies?

 

[watzup_ken]

could it be due to the CPU's features like Turbo Boost Technology, SpeedStep Technology or Thermal Monitoring Technologies?

The symptoms don't seem to suggest so since it works fine out of the box, and only starts to slow down considerably after some time.

Perhaps Asus is doing an Apple stunt in throttling on used/ old batteries.

 

[james112]

okay, so i didn't manage to reproduce the issue in the morning and therefore i didn't send it down to Asus.

But lo and behold, come afternoon, I decided to start reinstalling some software, namely MS Office, Chrome etc. on to the clean Windows reinstall. Things seemed to be working fine.

Then I decided to sign into Windows using my Microsoft account, instead of using Windows through an offline account. then the 22% issue occurred again!
I undid that step, i.e. switched back to signing into Windows using an offline account, but the 22% step remains.

I've really never seen any problem like this before. It appears that certain software-related actions trigger the emergence of some bug that caps CPU usage to 22%, but as of now I can't tell what.

Looks like I'm going to have to go through yet another round of Resetting Windows and trying to troubleshoot further :S

CPU throttle still not that bad, mine has the random autoshutdown came back to hunt me again....