Poor Windows 10 UI and Chrome performance with Intel Graphics HD 530

[idata]

I /thread/114776 posted this in a thread reporting on the same issues, but was requested to post it as a new question instead.

Ever since I got my Dell XPS 15 9550 (almost 2 years ago), I have noticed Windows 10 animations lag (minimize/maximize animations, resize, task view, ...) and Google Chrome runs even slower, becoming unusable at times. As per the thread linked above, I was hopeful to read about the Falls Creator's update resolving this issue for some (UPDATE: problem persists after Spring update). Unfortunately, I notice no difference on my computer. I have had a motherboard replacement, a screen replacement, and a full laptop replacement by Dell, followed up most recently now with an audio card replacement. Nothing has changed.

Judging from the information you can find online and the feedback from Intel and Dell support, this seems either to be a rare problem or people generally don't care. For example, in none of the XPS 15 reviews this problem is mentioned, although I have seen it firsthand on 4 laptops of the same model (my original laptop, the one with the motherboard replaced, the full replacement, and a similar model from a friend). However, this is definitely not an isolated issue!

Some sources mentioning this issue:

- https://superuser.com/questions/1172870/dell-xps-15-9550-4k-intel-530-ui-performance-windows-10 Dell XPS 15 9550 4k Intel 530 UI performance Windows 10 - Super User

- /thread/104262 Intel HD Graphics 530 - Poor performance 4K

- https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/5iqaid/dell_xps_9550_4k_poor_ui_performance_do_i_have_a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/5iqaid/dell_xps_9550_4k_poor_ui_performance_do_i_have_a/

- https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-performance/maximizing-window-animation-of-4k-windows-has-a/239553c7-94d3-4556-904f-19238488b28c%23LastReply Maximizing window animation of 4k windows has a severly reduced - Microsoft Community

- https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-performance/4k-laptop-lag-in-windows-10-ui-animations/38b87055-b1fd-4502-8bf2-8ae7484c05b1http:// 4k laptop lag in Windows 10 UI animations

- I've posted this resize issue also on Microsoft Feedback Hub: https://aka.ms/Fjuwtk https://aka.ms/Fjuwtk Probably most important observation here is: "It is only windows which near about 3/4th of the full 4k size (3840x2160) which stutter when maximizing."

- ... There might be more sources I can try to dig up based on my searches in the past, if this could be of any help.

Reproducible issues (Still persists July 21th 2018)

The following issues are not 'showstoppers' when considered in isolation. I merely list them since they are easy to reproduce and are indicative of the overarching problem: the Intel HD 530 graphics card (and possibly others) are unable to run Windows 10 smoothly in 4k, to the degree where I prefer to work on a (cheaper) non-4k system.

1. Opening up Task View on 4k always has reduced performance compared to full HD

Steps to reproduce: press WinKey-Tab repeatedly while several application windows are open.

In the following video, a 4k laptop (XPS 15 9550) is positioned on the left, and a full HD laptop (Lenovo T460s) is positioned on the right: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhIodAmBXz4&t=0s&list=PLD_Nf7Vbam2j3O-wXFzCouM3f9-qGvreA&index=9 XPS 15 repeated task view - YouTube

The 4k laptop only has a couple of windows open (file Explorer), whereas the Lenovo is running two instances of Visual Studio, IntelliJ, multiple Chrome instances, etc ... (my 'typical' work environment). Still, as can be seen, the animation shown when opening the task view (press Windows-Tab repeatedly) lags immensely on the 4k laptop compared to the full HD laptop. From this, I conclude this is not a performance degradation due to the system being under heavy load, but likely a bottleneck due to screen resolution. In an actual work environment (where I replicate the setup of the Lenovo on the XPS), 'every day' window management (dragging windows, resizing windows, switching virtual desktops) simply becomes unbearable.

2. Scrolling in list view of Windows explorer lags and maxes out GPU

Steps to reproduce:

1. Open up a Window explorer window.
2. Open up several folders in the list view on the left hand side so that there is a considerable region through which can be scrolled. E.g., open up "C:\Windows\System32".
3. Open up the task manager, and select the "Performance" tab.
4. Scroll in the list view using a touchpad (this might be related to XPS 15 9550's touchpad drivers specifically, although I have no clue where they are located or who is responsible for them, or why it would impact GPU performance).

You can notice there is an immense delay. The view continues to scroll seconds after the scroll action has been initiated while the Intel GPU spikes. To further demonstrate this is a bottleneck related to the GPU and somehow related to screen resolution:

1. Resize the list view so it takes up half of the screen
2. Scroll again.

This is demonstrated after another short 'task view' demonstration in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MJsS7ZqDOg&index=14&list=PLD_Nf7Vbam2j3O-wXFzCouM3f9-qGvreA Windows explorer maxes out GPU when scrolling - YouTubeThe scroll operation is now even slower, lasting over 10 seconds, and the GPU spikes to 100%.

3. Scrolling in some applications is unacceptably slow for a high-end system</h2...

[SLant1]

Hello,

This post has helped me out for this bug.

I had the same stuttering issue with my Dell Inspiron i7559 (4k touchscreen)

The laptop has Intel Graphics card 530 and Nvidia GTX 960M.

The lastest video driver from Dell is 23.20.16.4973

For Nvidia, it is 23.21.13.9065.

I saw then the post about the "fixed issue" after 4982 or higher. I downloaded then the lastest driver : 24.20.100.6136

Chrome scroll is more smooth and I noticed it use the 960m card to render it's animations. (uses 'gpu graphic 1 - 3D' instead 0)

I didn't test games though, but it clearly helped for the lag in ui animations and chrome.

I will test with the lastest video driver from Nvidia if it changes anything..

Thank you Intel for fixing this bug !

[Mikaeel]

Thank you, your post made me test this again today (The last time I did was after installing the windows 10 April update) and I'm happy to report that on my device, the issue seems to have been fixed too.

At the time of testing, the Nvidia driver was Quadro ODE 391.74 (the latest available) and the Intel driver was 24.20.100.6136 (I have since upgraded to 24.20.100.6194 without any issues)

The system appears to be much smoother, scrolling throughout the UI and Chrome as well as most system animations are now much smoother. I think it's worth noting that the animations are still choppier than they are at 1080p but the performance is now about the same as another 4k device, which has an Intel HD 620 only, that I have been using as a comparison.

Whathecode, have the latest drivers done anything for you?

[TTurb]

I have had this Problem with a Thinkpad P51s since i bought the notebook a year ago.

Graphics Chips are a Nvidia Quadro M520 and Intel HD Graphics 620, running in Optimus mode. Display is 4k, screen scaling in windows is set to 225%.

Today i updated to latest Windows 10 (that spring 2018 update) and also updated my graphics drivers to latest you can get (not from Lenovo, but from Intel and Nvidia), that is 24.20.100.6194 for Intel, and 23.21.13.9174 for Nvidia.

Scrolling in Firefox and Chrome now is far better than it used to be.

Until now it was awful and frustratingly jaggy and inconsistent.

Now it's totally okay, though still not as smooth and flowing as when running the same at 1920x1080 resolution, but at least consistent and without tearing and jumping.

[TTurb]

just to confirm ... things are running much smoother all across all aplications now.

In the meatime i tested system applications but also Adobe Creative Suite programs like Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign (the latter is still choppy as there is no GPU acceleration, but better than before) ...

HTML/CSS-Animations seem to run at higher framerate too now.

very happy with this now 🙂

[idata]

Darkmaxx1 and TomTurbo What are you talking about? No solution was provided /message/546928# 546928 to the five problem I listed. No suggested solution was posted here ... Which 'issue' and 'problem' is it exactly you are talking about out of the 5 that I listed? I hardly use this 4k laptop because of these issues so have not tested thoroughly, but have upgraded drivers recently which does not seem to make any difference. If it is some new posted drivers, could you specify which ones you had before, and which ones you upgraded to?

Ronald_Intel merely did some initial testing, and judging from the videos provided, has not tried out the exact scenarios I posted. I was awaiting for him to run through the other tests I posted. I will update my first post to better reflect these 5 specific issues in the first post, as it is currently hidden away in the thread.

[TTurb]

so to clarify:

i had this configuration:

- Thinkpad P51s (that has an optimus graphics solution based on the intel 620 and Nvidia Quadro M520)

- windows 10 1709

- intel graphics driver 23.20.16.4973 (provided through the lenovo vantage driver update utility)

- nvidia graphics driver 23.21.13.9125 (provided through the lenovo vantage driver update utility)

i was experiencing:

- scroll lags in firefox and chrome. less to no scroll lags in Edge

- scroll and ui lags in firefox debug tools (specially notable to me as i have to use them every day)

- web pages building up while loading, or showing animations felt like stuttering

- scroll lags in windows explorer (i don't know about window sizes etc., sorry i didn't test that thoroughly)

- scroll and pan lags in adobe illustrator, photoshop and other applications

- generally the impression that the scrolling "lags" or is "jaggy" (movement is stuck for a small moment every now and then). it was not totally terrible, but it just was not smooth and definitely felt slower than my old laptop in that regard.

- reducing resolution to 1920x1080 made it go away, but that was no solution after buying a 4k display.

- i didn't specifically test the 5 cases above like minimizing/maximizing windows etc., but scrolling in browsers definitely was a problem, as scrolling in windows explorer.

---------------

two days ago i updated:

- windows 10 1803 (somewhat hoping for some improvement once again ... well it didn't do the trick, so i started looking for solutions again and found this thread)

- i then updated my graphics driver for intel to 24.20.100.6194

- and for Nvidia 23.21.13.9174 (Nvidias Download for this is named R390 U6 (391.74) WHQL)

(both drivers i downloaded from the intel and nvidia site, as lenovo does not yet provide those versions)

New situation is:

these updates made all my problems described above go away, scrolling is now equally smooth in edge, chrome and firefox and almost equivalent to running at 1920x1080 resolution.

[TWoo]

I am also having the same problem with Task View/Timeline and switching Virtual Desktops in 4K.

I have a Dell XPS 15 (9570) with a 4K panel, i7-8750, and it has large amounts of lag when pressing Windows-Tab to go to the Task View/Timeline, or switching desktops, this lag also increases the more windows are open.

If I bump the res down to 1080p, the animations are much smoother.

[idata]

Same issue on Dell XPS 15 9570 with 16GB DDR4 2667MHz RAM (dual channel) and 4k display, all latest drivers. Performance wise, it is just not what you expect from the latest 8th gen CPU from Intel. As I suspect, the HD630 (which is basically the same as the HD530) is just not strong enough for 4k displaying and is just too weak for simple stuff. I also think though Windows 10 is terribly bad programmed, compared to older Windows versions, where they still had good developers at MS. Still could be bad programmed Intel drivers, because we all know, how bad Intel drivers are. HD630 is basically just copy pasta of HD530, and Intel did nothing, to optimize it for 4k (except video codecs). Iam not speaking about gaming here of course... I am just speaking about simple 2d drawing of the screen aka using Windows in 4k... The problem could be, that most parts of Windows are 3d accelerated today, and the Intel GPU is just too bad for 4k 3d acceleration. Maybe the latest Meltdown and Spectre fixes also added up to this and the performance loss.

Resizing a simple window when it gets larger (larger than 1920x1080) becomes laggier the larger it gets, moving windows, scrolling through Windows explorer is laggy if a folder contains lots of files especially pictures. Alt+tab switch animations always laggy. And many more examples of this.

[广张1]

Is so good

[Mikaeel]

I'm having the exact same issue as Whathecode on my Thinkpad P51 with a Xeon 1505m, Intel HD P630 graphics, and a 4k display. Windows animations are laggy, Chrome runs poorly and I am able to reproduce all of the issues mentioned in post 13. Lenovo allows disabling the Intel GPU in the BIOS and using only the dedicated Nvidia GPU, doing so solves all of the aforementioned performance issues but of course ruins battery life. I also have a single 16GB so I can't say anything with regard to that. I'm really hoping this issue can be resolved.

Thank you for looking into it

[RonaldM_Intel]

Hello everyone,

I would like to let you know that I filed an internal bug report [ID 1407550657] so our engineers can debug this situation.

By the way, I also compiled the other threads I was able to find reporting this same issue, oddly enough some of which have completely different Intel hardware and drivers (4th Generation) but all pointing to Dell laptops with Hybrid graphics.

While I cannot promise any particular outcome of our investigation, as soon as I have any news I'll be updating this thread.

At the same time I suggest reporting this situation directly with your laptop manufacturer, urging them to debug from their side as this is happening on systems using Hybrid graphics, keeping in mind that Intel will only debug the Intel Graphics component.

Best Regards,

Ronald M.

[idata]

@ Ronald_Intel

You are mixing two problems here which are totally unrelated.

Problem A (what this thread is about): Bad performance (low FPS) with Windows animations, mostly in combination with 4k display

Problem B (what this thread is not about and is related to hybrid systems): Freezes and stutter

Problem B is related to this issue: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-performance/partially-fixed-intel-nvidia-laptop-freeze-problem/93e7004a-62b1-4211-8e37-4c136608865e?messageId=2beecd2d-2772-4065-b9b8-2a64f5b4fb7f [Partially Fixed] Intel + NVIDIA Laptop Freeze Problem - Microsoft Community

But this thread is all about poor drawing prformance of the Intel GPU, not about stutter or freeze issues (switch between two GPUs in Windows).

[TWoo]

@ronald_Intel klumsch is right, I don't have freezes and stuttering (I've checked and the Intel GPU is the only one in use), just very low FPS with Windows UI animations when using a high resolution and there are more than a few windows open. For example, opening Task View, switching between windows virtual desktops, etc.

[RonaldM_Intel]

Hello everyone,

I would like to clarify that the bug 1407550657 is filed for 'Poor Windows 10 UI and Chrome performance with 4K resolutions' and it is being investigated. As soon as we have debugging results I'll post them here.

As I have mentioned previously regarding the micro-stuttering with hybrid graphics, Intel already considers said issue closed from its side, thus any remaining fix has to come from the other parties involved (OS+Discrete graphics card). I apologize if I made it look like both issues were being mixed, rest assured they are not.

Best Regards,

Ronald M.

[idata]

Thank you very much, Ronald, for following up on this and for clearing up this misunderstanding.

Your previous tests might perhaps not have been as clear as the videos I posted, but when I looked at them I did notice it hints at similar observations. I recommend you to pass on the steps to reproduce as I listed them originally with the bug report since these make the effects more noticeable (especially when you can see it 'in real life') than the (slower) tests in your video. In particular, I recommend looking into the CPU bottleneck which seems highly indicative of what is going on (things get 'laggy' above certain resolutions).

All things considered I am more and more convinced this is a shortcoming of Microsoft Windows (especially since this issue was exacerbated in the Windows 10 Spring update; the 'time line' feature makes things worse). In case this were to be what the Intel team debugging this concludes, I hope it carries more weight when Intel contacts Microsoft directly to indicate this is a real issue several users have reported on.

[MThom16]

Ronald_Intel Any news ?

[RonaldM_Intel]

Hello Whathecode and all,

Thank you for your patience.

Intel worked on this issue by matching tests done on Dell hardware. While initially we were able to observe most of the issues reported, as the OS builds were progressively upgraded (RS3, RS4 and newer inside rings builds) the performance kept improving considerably, to the point that we are no longer able to see the issues. This leads us to the conclusion that the 4K performance issues observed are OS related and should be improved as the technology advances. We're approaching Microsoft to work together for future optimizations but for now most of the work needs to be done from the OS first.

From Intel's side we're closing this bug as currently there is no issue detected in the driver.

Best Regards,

Ronald M.

[idata]

I think the issue is (indirectly) related to Windows 10 DPI scaling. So it may be not good implemented, or not taking advantage of the GPU well (enough). If you set the scaling to 100% instead of the adviced 250% for a 4k display, the animations are way more fluid. You obviously can't use a laptop 4k display on 100% though because it is way too tiny.

[RJang]

I have exact same issue with Lenovo Y520(Intel HD 630 and Nvidia 1050 Ti), though it's not internal display but external one connected with USB-C DP alternate mode.

Edge is blazingly fast but Chrome and Firefox scrolling is abysmal.

Tested some WebGL samples and I found Edge wins WebGL performance too (60 FPS on Edge vs 40 FPS on Chrome).

Hope that this get resolved soon.

[idata]

That has nothing to do with this issue bekker Complain at Google and Firefox their browsers are bad (under Windows) compared to Edge in speed-related scenarios. Chrome scrolling performance always was terrible compared to IE or Edge. It got a bit better over the past Chrome versions.

[RJang]

I was just adding to Whathecode 's tests. I'm experiencing bad Windows UI animations too, but Chrome scrolling was most irritating.

And apparently the name of the bug filed is ''Poor Windows 10 UI and Chrome performance with 4K resolutions'.

Sure Chrome is slow.

But you don't know it's just Chrome. I mean, this issue - slower rendering / compositing on 4k - could have made Chrome worse.