HP spectre performance issues

[Eisele244]

Hi guys, so my wife recently bought me this spectre, and on paper its exactly what I was looking for. however, HP command center is doing some really dumb things causing massive performance issues. I've spent a lot of time testing and playing with it to know exactly what is going on, but there aren't many options for fixing it, besides waiting for enough people to complain that HP does something about it.

Here is a rundown of what it's doing:

upon unboxing, it ran okay, not as good as it should, but decent. I downloaded a couple smaller games to try, I was sitting in bed with the unit on a laptop table, you'll find out why this matters in a moment. gameplay was atrocious, 6-8 frames per second. my 5-year-old 17" hp runs these with no issues. So, i start looking into what could be causing it. I downloaded afterburner to monitor things, and then proceeded to use bloatynosey to debloat the OS. slight uptake in performance, but still not working right, core clock is only 2.5~ghz, GPU only drawing 7~ watts (it's a 4050 with a 45w TDP) Ran out of time that evening, take it with me to work to try again in the morning. take it to work, set it on my table, fire it up. Things run amazing. 120+ fps in the games i was running last night. 38~watts from the GPU, core clocks on the CPU back to 4.5-4.6 where they should be, downloaded 3dmark, posts decent scores in time spy and fire strike. Okay so what changed? pick it up while a game is running to move to a different table. BAM. power reels back from 40w to 7w, CPU core clocks drop again. keep in mind, I didn't unplug it from the charger to move it. set it back down on the new table, walk away for a second, come back and it's running okay again. 

I then try unplugging the power thinking maybe the cord had a connection issue while moving? Nope, no performance change. Then I pick it up and fold it into tablet mode. Still running great. Tried plugged in and unplugged in tablet mode, runs great. Unfold it back to laptop mode. Bam, drops everything again. 6fps. (I'm holding it) I try flipping back to tablet mode, performance won't come back. Plugged in or not. Unfold it, set it back down, wait about 15 seconds, performance creeps back up to being okay.

In summary, what is happening is that the laptop has an accelerometer in it, maybe several. And when it senses movement, after 10 seconds, it heavily limits CPU speed and power, and GPU power. If, within those 10 seconds, you fold it into tablet mode. performance will not drop; it will maintain full power. However, if it has already sensed it's been moving for long enough, and it throttles power way down, the only way to get it back is by setting it down on a stable table, letting it sit, and then picking it up and folding it into tablet mode. Also, if you have a table that is slightly wobbly, good friggin luck ever getting performance out of the thing. Every time you breathe it will throttle. 

The only reason I could see for HP to do this is because they're either worried about it getting too hot on a customer's lap, or they're worried a customer will block airflow and overheat the unit. The problem is, it's a laptop. being locked to a table kind of defeats the purpose. and also, in tablet mode, it runs with max power, so the "getting too hot in a customer's lap" probably isn't the reason. This is a thing that I assume is taking place inside HP command center, because it's the only thing I can't seem to remove. And I cannot override it with another software like throttlestop or universal x86 tuning utility, so they have it in there pretty darn good. 

The TL;DR version here is: HP needs to patch command center to either allow customers to bypass this extreme throttling under movement, or prompt the customer saying, "hey keep the computer on a flat smooth surface or you're going to hurt it" and then let them bypass it, or something. Because unless they do, what this product line from HP essentially is, is a desktop you can fold up into a tablet sometimes. I have several videos of this if someone doesn't believe me. it is very recreate-able.

[BeemerBiker]

Thank you for posting this information. I was unaware of the accelerometer problem.

There are some things I've seen that cause similar problems.

1 - Some games phone home the first time (or two) they are run causing performance issues especially if there are timeouts connecting to a tracking server.   The phone home can also look for game updates which can be applied if desired.

2 - Antivirus apps:  Some antivirus programs have a game mode that automatically postpones antivirus updates, notifications, and scans until after you're done playing.  I uninstalled McAfee as it would phone home frequently and some of its servers were not online causing 30 second timeouts before it tried another server.  This was a few years ago and possibly they have fixed the problem. 

3 - Tracking apps:  From the windows search bar, run MRT to remove malicious and other tracking apps.  This is usually only a problem on free or demo games.

4 - Caching of imagery.  Many games cache imagery. If the imagery is not cached the frame rate will drop causing stuttering, while the cache is being built up.  The cache is in the GPU so the more GPU memory the better the frame rate. Some games have lookahead caching and will preload the imagery  as it expects you to move in that direction.

[Eisele244]

As much as I appreciate the reply, this issue is 100% movement based. I'm happy to send a video if you'd like, but it's not a program software issue. Pick the pc up, frame drop, set the pc down and wait, as long as it's on a stable surface, performance comes back. I've probably done it 1000 times over the last two weeks. This is 100% being told to behave this way by command center. I'm certain a clean install would solve this problem, but would probably cause several others in lack of drivers for the screen/TouchPad ect. 

[Eisele244]

https://youtu.be/xIAPpJa6Af0?si=nX-kSOenOupyeUFe

https://youtu.be/pKK8oqGgIoE?si=I8OStxD7u8hgRlEd

Videos of the issue

[BeemerBiker]

This reminds me of an old laptop with a hard drive I had. I was playing music and I picked it up vertically the HDD heads would retract and it would stop playing. It wouldn't play again until I set it back down.

There's a large Omen forum over on Reddit you might want to mention the problem over there

https://www.reddit.com/r/HPOmen/

[BeemerBiker]

Go into the BIOS setup and disable "In-bag detection".  Maybe it thinks you are putting it into your backpack?

[Eisele244]

I gave it a shot, no change.

[TyphoonRPM]

Hallo, ich habe das Notebook gekauft und exakt dieselben Probleme wie die von Eisele244 beschriebenen! Da ich bis zum Lesen des Beitrags der Meinung war, dass es sich um einen Defekt handelt und ich nach tagelangem Chatten mit dem HP Support keinerlei Tipps erhielt, die eine Verbesserung erzielten, habe ich mein Notebook zurück geschickt und warte nun auf ein Ersatzgerät.

Leider muss ich jetzt davon ausgehen, dass auch bei diesem das Problem auftreten wird! Aber auch die hier gegebenen Antworten seitens HP halte ich wohl eher für einen schlechten Scherz! Ein portables Notebook zu konzipieren, was bei Verwendung auf einer nicht zu 100% geraden Fläche auf das Niveau von vor 20 Jahren herunterregelt und sich diesen offensichtlichem Problem scheinbar nicht mal bewusst zu sein, ist für mich absolut nicht nachvollziehbar. Erst recht nicht dann, wenn scheinbar keinerlei Anstrengungen unternommen werden, dieses Software Defizit mittels BIOS-Update zu eliminieren. Ich hoffe also auch im Interesse von HP auf eine zeitnahe Lösung, da mir sonst keine andere Lösung bleibt als vom Kauf des an sich sehr schönen Gerätes wieder Abstand zu nehmen.

[Eisele244]

Thanks for the reply Typhoon, I'm sorry I cannot reply in German,  hopefully you can translate okay. It's really a shame because other than this issue is absolutely love this computer. The only thing I can do is try to make HP aware, tell everyone I can and hope that someone that matters notices. I've tried several times to contact their tech help, all I've managed to do was get a service ticket number but no actual service yet. It's not for lack of trying. I also made two YouTube videos about it i will link them below, hopefully more people see this. I just hope someone notices and they fix it soon. I do believe that a fresh windows install would repair the issue, but you would loose the function of the tablet mode, and after all the drivers reinstall it may go back to doing it. I've learned it is the accelerometer in the screen side making it angry. 

https://youtu.be/xIAPpJa6Af0?si=t-itIA6vsNZKZ9I4

https://youtu.be/pKK8oqGgIoE?si=NUd7hD66g9-aHLsV

[TyphoonRPM]

Über die von Ihnen geposteten Videos bin ich auf die Fehlerbeschreibung hier im Support gekommen. Ich habe also dafür zu danken! Ich hoffe es ist okay, dass ich auf deutsch schreibe und auf die Übersetzung vertraue.

Da ich derzeit auf mein Ersatzgerät warte, wäre wirklich interessant, ob noch weitere Nutzer dieses Problem festgestellt haben. Ich bin sehr gespannt ob bei diesem Gerät die selbe Problematik auftritt. Ich werde auf jeden Fall hier darüber berichten. Es wäre wirklich schade wenn sich das Problem nicht lösen lässt, daher hoffe ich nach wie vor auf sinnvolle Unterstützung seitens HP.

Danke!