Dismal performance of new Yoga 3 pro (with Win 8.1): will Win 10 improve it?

Question

Dear all,  As I said in another topic, coming from years of Macbooks, I just bought a new Yoga pro 3 (the version with the latest processor, 8Go am, 512 G SSD) and I find it very slow in daily usage. I usually have Chrome, Outlook open all the time as well as Evernote and when I try to play Hearthstone in the mean time, it gets very slow: the game (which i not very demanding) lags (and not because of internet issues), and if I want to switch to Chrome and browse, it is agonizingly slow. Sometimes, I even have the impression that loading pages is slower than on my Maacbook (tried both at work where the Wifi is quite fast and at home). I have run onekey optimizer, removed some unecessary programs  like MacAfee (truthfully, I have added stuff in the background like Avast, Listary, launchy but nothing big...) I wonder what else I can do to improve the performan. Maybe remove Aero? Also, how can I checck the performance ? I looked at system monitor while the system was slow and it was telling me that the processor was used at something like 80% but nothing more, and memory about 50%. I am wondering wether installing Windows 10 might improve the performance. Any feedback?  Thanks for your help!I have to admit that I am a bit dispirited and I am considering  sending it back (and maybe try a Dell XPS, because I really would like to try Windows 10). I don't have huge computing needs anymore (apart from some excel of Rstudio from times to times, but I haven't even tried that on the Yoga...) but if even those needs cannot be satisfied...

Answer 1

Specifically Chrome, Windows 10 is a huge improvement. This may be due to the improvements with DPI scaling and GPU optimizations.
I've done a couple of custom, highly not recommended changes to see if I can get around the thermal limitations of the system, but it looks like it can only be tweaked through a UEFI update. In the end, disabling the thermal system in the BIOS aided the throttling impact.
The performance sits solely on the Core M chip. Used in other machines (noteably, the Macbook 2015), this architecture has been criticized for sacrificing performance for its low power profile. However, this is also its greatest benefit. I can watch Netflix on my Y3P for at least 5 hours on battery, where other machines would maybe give me 2 hours. When a program uses the hardware acceleration on the HD 5300 built into the CPU, it works great. It's no performance GPU, however, it handles format decoding amazingly. However, if there's an app not optimized for GPUs, the CPU has to render a display with a resolution of 3200x1800, 4 times the size of a 1600x900 display. This is why Chrome is honestly a disaster in Windows 8.1. It's not optimized for Intel GPUs.
If you want to stick with Windows 8.1, try using IE. You'll lose add-on support, but it runs great. If you move to Windows 10, Microsoft Edge will be getting add-on support in the future.