Spectre Bios F.31 really killing performance

[Anon16]

I've just done a few more tries, and there might sometimes be up to a ~30 second delay between the onscreen keyboard icon changing and the power management changing. i think it was just a coincidence that on my first attempt they happened at exactly the same moment. Though it does look probable they're related - I suspect both windows and the BIOS are both looking at the same signal relating to the keyboard position.

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But the difference is clearly discernible on my computer...

The above view shows the issues clearly ... it can be dividend up into roughly 4 quarters.

The first approx 25% shows it relatively idle. A few browser tabs open, but only in the background and not being interacted with. The blue CPU line is low at this point because it wasn't being asked to do much.

The second 25% shows the moment I kicked of a 'full rebuild' on Microsoft visual studio on the software development project I'm working on. The blue line shows the CPU utilisation. You can see here every time the CPU utilisation spikes, the orange line showing the CPU frequency dives.

In other words - at this point, you can have a fast CPU, as long as you don't try to use it!! The inverse correlation between the blue and orange lines in that second quarter is pretty clear!!

Then at approximately 50% you can see the purple line dive - that's the power limit throttling switching off -  and the CPU temperatures (various shades of green) step up. This is the moment that I swung the keyboard from behind the unit, to in front.

From then on, for the second half of the chart, the CPU frequency remains high. The temperatures remain high. Even when the 'full build' on visual studio finishes shortly after swinging the keyboard to the front, the performance remains high - the CPU stays high, power limit throttling remains off. With the keyboard in front, it's now performing great. (But the keyboard is now in the way of using a separate, full sized keyboard).

[Menel]

I'm tired ... I want to throw this edited** laptop in the trash 😕

[Menel]

I have news. The BIOS version could not be downgraded. I reset the BIOS settings, the performance improved, the core frequency did not fall below 2 GHz. But I did an experiment, installed a corporate version of Windows LTSC on a laptop, performance changed !!! The first screenshot of windows 10 home:

the second screenshot of windows 10 LTSC:

version : en_windows_10_enterprise_ltsc_2019_x64_dvd_74865958

This is not quite the solution that I would like to apply, in the LTSC version there are no some functions necessary for me. I will continue to test this solution, but at the moment for me this is one of the possible options.

[Riddle_Decipher]

@Menel I understand your concern and I have brought your issue to the attention of an appropriate team within HP.

They will likely request information from you in order to look up your case details or product serial number.

Please look for a private message from an identified HP contact.

Additionally, keep in mind not to publicly post personal information (serial numbers and case details).

If you are unfamiliar with how the Community's private message capability works, you can learn about that here.

Thank you for visiting the HP Support Community.

[Vladis]

Hello.

I have same problem with performance after BIOS updating to F31. But now (after upgrade to F32) i can't downgrade BIOS version to F28.

[Betty0610]

@Vladis

Welcome to the HP Support Community.

If you have the same Laptop as the above mentioned thread, do downgrade the BIOS using the "BIOS manually from a USB Flash drive" option from this link: https://support.hp.com/in-en/document/c00007682, else let us know your Computer name and model number.

Let me know if this helps.

If the information I've provided was helpful, give us some reinforcement by clicking the Accepted Solution button, that'll help us and others see that we've got the answers!

Thanks!

Have a great day!

[Menel]

After upgrading to version 32, it’s impossible to downgrade even through BIOS and USB

[Anon16]

---

If the information I've provided was helpful, give us some reinforcement by clicking the Accepted Solution button, that'll help us and others see that we've got the answers!

---

Please understand that even if we were able to revert back to F28 that that would NOT resolve the issue raised on this thread. It may (if it could be done) act as a temporary workaround, but it is NOT a solution.

At the time I wrote the original post, we were able to switch between F28 and F31 at will. The not being able to revert from F32 is a new - additional - problem that has appeared since this thread was started. 

• F28 had an irritating problem with excessive use of fan, even when system idle and ~40degC
• F31 solved the excessive, irritating use of fan problem, but introduced the much more serious problem of <bleep> performance when the unit was put under load.

My original post was to bring this issue to HP's attention in the hope of getting a combined version of bios that had the idle performance characteristics of F31 (i.e. no unnecessary fan) with the high performance (under load) characteristics of F28.

At the time I wrote that OP, I was able to revert back to F28 - contrary to what your "Premium" support center is prepared to believe - and choose which problem I wanted to have to live with.

• But it was a choice of one problem or the other.
  Not great!

An HP employee reading this forum forwarded my concern onto the local premium support team around 6 weeks ago now.

I have had multiple contact with them, and now my patience is starting to wear very thin. 

• As of yet, HP do not yet seem to accept that there is any problem with this F31 - and subsequently F32 - BIOS.

On my latest contact with your HP "Premium" support team, yet again the engineer said he would have to (yet again) go back to second line support, because all the things he tried (suggested to him by second line support), yet again, had no effect on the problem.

I tried to stress to this first line support engineer to - PLEASE - emphasize to the second line support that prior to F32, I was able to switch between F28 and F31 a number of times, and most importantly each time I did, the problem came and went according to the version

• Why is this important?
  Answer: It is very strong evidence that the problem lies with a change ('bug') between the F28 and F31 BIOS versions.
• Unfortunately, the first line support engineer did not seem willing to accept this. He told me it was never possible to down grade the BIOS version - and that if it were possible to do so, he said that would be a security hole, so it was never possible to do so. He then checked the support assistant logs, and what do you know, unfortunately when you install the BIOS direct from the exe from the driver download site, it doesn't produce a log entry in the HP support assistance logs (because by doing it direct from the exe, I'm bypassing the support assistant). The only hint that he had that I might be genuinely telling him the truth was that he could see that I was on F32, but luckily I'd installed that directly by the exe, so there was no log that F32 had ever been installed either, but he could clearly see that that was what I was on.
  
  However, he would not acknowledge nor confirm that he believed my claim over being able to revert to F28 and refused to confirm that he would pass that information on to second line support, so I have absolutely no confidence that THE most important piece of information regarding fault finding this issue is actually being relayed to the second line support.
  
  For the avoidance of doubt - the screen shot in this post I made a long while ago now... https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Hardware-and-Upgrade-Questions/CPU-slowing-right-down-and-CPU...   clearly shows the BIOS version being reported as F28 and running well under load, which was taken AFTER I had first started encountering these performance issues with F31, and had reverted back to that F28.

Where does this leave us?

• To be honest, I feel like we're being fobbed off.

Although HP have opened a support call for me with their "Premium" support, all premium support seem to be doing is going by the script of 'things to try if a customer complains their computer is slow' - like looking if any process is hogging the CPU etc. I have had a number of times to point out that this issue occurs when deliberately loading the CPU so it should be sustaining 100% usage.

They don't seem prepared to accept the pretty clear evidence that this is highly likely a problem with the BIOS.

In fact, the latest support engineer did start to try and suggest that this is possibly intentional behaviour for this model.

I really had to stress to him that that was not how it behaved on the original F28 BIOS that the unit shipped with, and so I do not find that stance reasonable.

Furthermore, I bought this unit specifically to swing the (built in) keyboard out of the way when doing productive work. And when I received the unit, that is exactly what I was able to do.

He also suggested that I should back up all my data, etc, as they might as the next step want to do a full factory reset.

• Again I do not find this reasonable and might yet refuse to do so if they follow through on this suggestion, because between BIOS F28 and BIOS F31 I was able to switch the problem in and out entirely at will. So I do not see that there are reasonable grounds to try a full reset of the unit. (And a full backup and reinstall will take a good number of hours, so I'm not prepared to do this on a guess/whim)

It just feels like a last gasp guess of a support team that just don't seem prepared to accept that there is a bug in the BIOS.

What would be a proper solution?

• Firstly, HP to publicly ackowledge that there is actually a problem here
• Secondly, HP to provide a realistic timeframe when they can provide a proper solution
  (on the evidence so far - the problem being 100% reliably switchable between F28 and F31 -  I'd anticipate a new fixed BIOS version as being the likely proper solution).
• Thirdly, HP to then follow through on anything promised in the previous step.

With each week / month that passes by, my confidence that HP will ever fix this is diminishing.

[Riddle_Decipher]

@Anon16 I understand your concern and I have brought your issue to the attention of an appropriate team within HP.

They will likely request information from you in order to look up your case details or product serial number.

Please look for a private message from an identified HP contact.

Additionally, keep in mind not to publicly post personal information (serial numbers and case details).

If you are unfamiliar with how the Community's private message capability works, you can learn about that here.

Thank you for visiting the HP Support Community.

[Banjomx]

Hi, i have the same problem. Along pity performance, the unit is also hot as hell due to fans being turned off all the time.

Anyway, if you  08519.bin file, u'll get rid of this error. Not of much use anyway, because u'll get "Unable to open signature file" error. They locked BIOS rollback.

I am much, much disappointed by HP.