
Why Asus trackpad driver sets the CPU speed at maximum during scroll - mike_esspe
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/761664-asus-support-why-trackpad-driver-sets-cpu-speed-maximum-during-scroll.html
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quinndupont
In no way am I trying to incite Mac vs. PC, but after years of Apple laptops I
grew bored with their aluminum fascism and decided (last year) to buy a top-
of-the-line Thinkpad.

A couple of months later, taking a huge economic hit, I sold the Thinkpad and
returned to Apple. I simply could not handle the trackpad (and I gave up on
the weird Thinkpad nubbin back in the early 2000s). I quite literally felt
like I had a degenerative neuromuscular disease when I used the trackpad, and
since "mousing" is almost certainly the primary way I interact with a
computer, the laptop itself begun to give me a strong, strange aversion to
use.

I'm told Microsoft is working on improving trackpads in general, but they
should really have every single engineer working on this issue. Forget about
new features, let's get the simple stuff right.

~~~
overgard
I don't know that apple gets this right either. (I have a macbook). The actual
tracking feels fantastic and precise, and it has a nice texture, but I /hate/
how they refuse to put real buttons below it. Things like "right mouse drag"
which I use all the time become a nightmare, and the whole "no buttons" thing
just seems like it's putting aesthetics over functionality.

~~~
RandallBrown
I _love_ the lack of buttons. It makes it much much easier to click on things
since I don't have to precisely hit a button. I don't think I've ever used a
right click drag for anything, but it seems easy enough to do on my macbook
pro. Just click with two fingers and drag.

~~~
overgard
There's no reason you couldn't do both. I really hate the trackpad click thing
though for a specific reason: the pressure required changes based on where you
are on the trackpad. It takes much more force to click at the top than at the
bottom, so I end up using my thumb to click on the bottom anyway, at which
point... I'd rather just have a proper button.

~~~
MichaelGG
The reason is aesthetics. No buttons makes it look sleek, which is all the
OEMs are going for. Same reason has driven the other changes in recent
ThinkPads. It's purely about looks, with making it functional coming far
behind. (One example of many: New ThinkPads have no way to determine if they
are charging/plugged in, except by carefully looking for a few seconds after a
state transition. If the plug is loose or another problem happens while you
think it's charging, they give you no notification. This is purely a twisted
sense of aesthetics, trying to make it feel less IBM. And on more than one
occasion, this has caused me serious issues as I discovered too late that my
system was out of power.)

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krick
So, really, is there anything left to buy except MacBooks anymore? I'm not a
big fan of Apple, and would have to go through all sorts of nuisances to
install Linux on it anyway, but the longer I search for solid 13" laptop, the
more horrified I become. It cannot be that _nobody_ makes nice laptops, can
it?

~~~
ceejayoz
No idea how solid it is, but there's always the truly hilariously named HP
_Envy_ 14" if you want something that looks like a Macbook with a Windows
button.

[http://store.hp.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/us/en/mdp/Lapt...](http://store.hp.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/us/en/mdp/Laptops/envy-14-88386
--1)

~~~
aftbit
What if you explicitly don't want a clone of a Macbook? When my X220 is too
old for a laptop, I don't know what I'll do. Modern ThinkPads are pretty
unacceptable now, with the new keyboards and the giant clicky touchpad.

~~~
BostonEnginerd
This has been driving me up the wall. I just want a modern replacement for my
x61s -- higher res screen and longer battery life. I was thinking about trying
to find an x220 to keep in the closet for when this laptop breaks.

It's super frustrating.

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sydney6
Imagine: A Thinkpad x/t/w with the old non-chiclet Keyboard without their
"new" Layout, old-sytle Trackpad/Pointer with physical Buttons, a non-low-
voltage Haswell with 2 RAM Slots, capable of containing at least 16 Gigs of
Memory, a removable, non-integrated Battery, proper Intel-Chipsets and their
LED-backlit Display in the old magesium-style Body with aluminium Hinges and
the old mechanical display closing Mechanism. And the old, yellow
Powerconnector. And the a Thinklight. And ..

I simply do not get why Lenovo has made these changes. My wildest guess would
be that MS & Intel has pushed/forced Vendors into their "Ultrabook"-Model.

And yet, for all these Sonys, Samsungs and HPs, it could be this simple.

~~~
userbinator
I think it's more about Lenovo trying to appear "new" and "stylish", going
after the Macbook designs. Cost reduction could also be a part of it. Every
other laptop on the market now looks like a Macbook clone.

What they're forgetting is that many of the people who buy Thinkpads actually
_like_ the old-school, "serious business" look-and-feel that originated with
IBM. They could continue making a model that is almost exactly identical to
the X60/X61 (an "X62"?) but with a faster CPU, more RAM, and higher-res
display, and I'd bet they'd still have many customers.

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Legogris
Asus are weird. I made the mistake of upgrading from Win 7 to Win 8 on my
previous 2012 laptop. No Win 8 compatible drivers to be found. Contacted
support, who informed me that there are no plans to ever ship any Win 8
compatible driver.

Relevant detail: On the product page of the laptop on Asus's website, they
have a banner recommending Windows 8.

~~~
gnu8
They are contractually obligated to display that banner. It has nothing to do
with Asus's actual products.

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overgard
I used to have this gaming laptop from Asus (I need fast graphics), and one of
the things they did was deck it out with a lot of ridiculous lights (because
gamers, apparently?).

One of the more mystifying things it did: the giant lights on the back of the
screen would do this really distracting blink when the laptop was in sleep
mode. I have no idea what the thought process there was -- why would anyone
want their laptop to do that when they're not using it? Not only was it a
waste of battery, it was incredibly annoying. And keep in mind this wasn't a
small light, it was a light that ran a circuit around the entire screen.
Luckily you could turn it off, but I have no idea why it was on in the first
place.

They also had this bios screen that had a logo for the "Republic of Gamers"
(seriously?) that would then explode. That was more amusing than problematic,
but I wonder who comes up with these ideas.

~~~
crististm
You can just imagine the product meetings where these decisions are made. I'm
horrified whenever I do that. Turns out Dilbert cartoons come from hidden
cameras

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sauere
And this kids, is why people buy Macs to serve as a $1500 facebook machine.

------
gregschlom
I bought an Asus Zenbook UX303LN 2 weeks ago after my 13" MacBook Pro got
stolen, and while there are things that I miss from the MacBook (essentially,
the fantastic touchpad quality), I'm overall satisfied with my Zenbook. It's a
solid alternative to the MBP at a very attractive price. The only real issue
is the touchpad. While it's not bad, there are a lot of things that just don't
work as nicely as on the Mac. For example, if you try to rest your thumb on
the touchpad the cursor will stop moving. Little things like that.

~~~
seanp2k2
I don't understand why, after all these years, literally no other manufacturer
has been able to nail the trackpad like Apple. The first few "clickpads" I
used on laptops trying to imitate Apple were basically unusable, but even on
recent models I've played with in stores, they're always just....not quite
right to horrible.

~~~
johnchristopher
I believe the trackpad of my asus 1000he notebook is pinnacle of non-mac
trackpads.

Supported equally on linux and windows. Soft to the fingers, responsive and
precise. Two-fingers scrolling, wipe (kind), three-fingers scrolling, etc.

Only missing thing is pinch-to-zoom.

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fleshweasel
aaand this is why I don't respond when friends ask me which PC laptop they
should buy.

~~~
busterarm
you too!?

I used to at least be able to recommend ThinkPads but I can't even do that
anymore. I pretty much only have Macs left as an option at this point, but not
one that I'm super thrilled about. I mostly use VPS and a $600 _should_ be
fine.

~~~
spost
I'm a bit out of the loop, what's gone wrong with ThinkPads?

~~~
jdiez17
They've started messing with the keyboards. I don't find this an issue
personally (I'm typing this on a X1 Carbon 2014), but it bothers some people.

~~~
bluedino
The function keys missing is a pain. Moving home/end is a pain. People calling
and asking how to shut the caps lock off when there isn't even a caps lock
button is a pain (hint, double-tap the shift key)

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Havoc
Ignoring the trackpad angle...the idea of ramping up the CPU on scroll does
make some sense. If you think about smartphones...the first place people bitch
about lag is scrolling. Thats likely what the engineer was thinking about when
they linked trackpad to CPU like that.

~~~
AshleysBrain
No, I don't think it makes any sense at all. CPUs/OSs have built-in mechanisms
to automatically adjust frequency depending on the actual workload. If
scrolling involves a minimal workload then it should remain in low-power
state. This is a really power-hostile solution to solving a problem which
should be solved another way. At the very least, if this really is an
intractable lag problem (which I doubt - other manufacturers seem unaffected),
then the driver should call an OS API that says something like "latency-
sensitive user input has started/stopped", and then the OS makes the decision
about whether to boost the CPU frequency, or do something more sensible, or be
updated in future to use new hardware features to solve the problem even
better, etc.

This particular hack is just poor engineering. And users should at least be
given the choice between "drain my battery or add a bit of lag", if the
manufacturer can't figure out how to remove the need to make that choice.

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rquirk
Would this all be fixed by installing a linux distro on the laptop? A
different trackpad driver - if it works ;) - would do different stuff, and
remapping media keys is possible in most desktop environments.

~~~
tdicola
It's a gamble though, in my experience Linux support for native device power
management is very spotty. You might trade a crappy trackpad driver for no
sleep, no CPU throttling, etc.

~~~
mbq
Not really a gamble -- you usually can find reliable info about Linux support
on the internet, provided that the device is not too exotic.

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userbinator
The problem of smooth scrolling without much-increased CPU usage was solved
long ago, in the era of 8-bit systems, by rendering slightly more lines to the
framebuffer and simply changing the address in VRAM where the CRT controller
started reading the data for a frame. The CPU could then render the additional
scrolled-out lines in the background.

But it seems the common way to implement scrolling today is to either have the
CPU or GPU actually move the data unnecessarily; there's no easy way to do the
equivalent of adjusting the pointer to the window's data in memory so that the
windowing system can scroll without having to perform any data movement.

Asus' trackpad driver may be at fault for turning the CPU up to 100%, but to
me this is a sign of a deeper problem having to do with how inefficiently
applications are doing their scrolling, and the APIs that encourage this
inefficient way of doing it.

~~~
brigade
Well apps want to scroll more than just a static image. And it's only partly
the API's fault - OS X switched to overdraw only recently in 10.9, and without
any major change to API.

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Too
Seriously? Asus still have this problem? I remember fixing it by removing the
touchpad driver on a friends asus almost two years ago. The fan was always on
max because the driver set min cpu speed to 100% at every reboot.

I feel for the non tech savy people who don't know how to fix this and think
this is how the computer should be. No wonder normal people prefer ipads over
pcs.

~~~
busterarm
My friend spent like $3500 on his ASUS laptop and the touchpad never even
worked...and he had multiple hardware replacements.

I really just want a decent portable computer with no built-in input devices
and USB ports as an option. Maybe I'm crazy. We should be able to do this with
UEFI now.

~~~
Swizec
For $3500 why not just buy a Mac?

~~~
sz4kerto
There's no Macbook that's good for gaming, because of the OS and the cooling.
There are more and more games on Steam that run on OSX but the performance is
usually abysmal (e.g. Dota2 runs around 20% fps on OSX compared to Windows).
And they're just too thin to have a cooling that'd be suitable for gaming --
Asus ROG laptops are incredibly well cooled, really.

~~~
archagon
I disagree. I think the high-end Macbook Pro is one of the best gaming laptops
out there. The Nvidia chip is almost half as powerful as the AMD 6850 I used
to have in my desktop, which has a giant turbine fan and takes up two PCI
slots! Sure, performance in OSX is often poor, but BootCamp and often
Parallels solve this problem quite elegantly. It's not too different from
booting up a console, I think. Thanks to my Mac, I can travel the world and
also play Metro Last Light whenever I feel like. :)

(Caveat: it's almost been a year so it's starting to show its age in some new
games. But that's not really something you can get away from. I'm also
concerned that the next gen Macbook will only offer an integrated Iris Pro
chip instead of Nvidia switching. Don't get me wrong - Iris Pro graphics are
impressive, often performing at up to 66% of the Nvidia chip - but it will
almost certainly be a performance regression.)

~~~
dysfunction
Is the driver situation any better in Bootcamp for Nvidia than AMD? Bootcamp's
drivers for the AMD 6750 in my late 2011 MBP were usually many versions
behind, meaning some games it had the specs to handle wouldn't even run, and
there was no way to upgrade with the OEM drivers. I ended up removing Bootcamp
entirely to have more room for the now quite extensive selection of OSX-
compatible games on Steam.

~~~
archagon
I think it is, yes. I don't really follow driver updates all that much, but
Nvidia's GeForce Experience application routinely tells me about new downloads
(most recently a week or two ago). And it's not a proprietary Apple fork,
either: I downloaded GeForce Experience straight from Nvidia as soon as I
installed BootCamp and haven't had any problems with it.

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jmgtan
I'm using a Thinkpad (T440) at work and whenever I have to undock from my desk
I have to bring my mouse because I find myself always clicking the wrong
things.

Now I use an rMBP at home, and more often than not I actually play Diablo 3
using just the trackpad, maybe I'm just used to it, but I haven't used a non-
Apple laptop that has a usable trackpad.

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eddiedunn
Just put Linux on it. Seriously.

My sister and I have the same Zenbook, and while my trackpad runs like a dream
in Elementary OS, her trackpad is among the worst I've ever had the
displeasure of using on a laptop -- and this is solely due to the shitty
Windows drivers.

She's been nagging me to put Linux on her computer as well, and once Freyja is
released, I will.

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lnanek2
Honestly, this is the way Android went as well, with touches boosting
processors as well. Everyone is scrambling to try to scroll as smooth as
Apple, lol. The author seems kind of strange being against it, honestly. It is
usually hailed as a feature, not a bug.

~~~
wvenable
You don't understand; this doesn't boost the CPU on touch -- it changes your
power management settings so the minimum CPU state is always 100%.

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jthol
I have to give the CS rep some credit as he does seem to be trying to make
things better. It's more response than a lot of manufacturers would have
given.

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joelhaasnoot
To be honest - I wonder if this support tech knows what he's talking about.
The emails are signed "Asus Nordic" \- probably a support outstation that does
no real product development work, only support. He's trying to tell the
customer someone in Taiwan told him this and/or it got lost in translation.

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nathanb
FWIW, I have an Asus netbook running Linux, and the trackpad seems to work
fine and not exhibit this behavior. Reading the article, this seems to be a
Windows-specific issue (or, more accurately, an issue with the Asus Windows
driver).

Oddly, I also don't see the problem as described by the Asus engineers.
Perhaps it's because Linux power management is different enough that it
doesn't apply, or because it's a different processor type (dual-core Atom).

One would think they could at least make this a configuration setting so users
may choose whether to live with janky scrolling in order to not have gestures
turn the laptop into a space heater.

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jakobegger
Having just spent two days optimising the scrolling performance of my Mac app
I understand the reasoning behind this. Fluid scrolling is hard. And while
scrolling might be handled in part by the GPU, its still the CPU that renders
the text that you're scrolling. If you're aiming for 60FPS, you probably have
less than 10ms to render a screen when the user is scrolling quickly.

~~~
blkhp19
If you don't mind me asking, what optimizations are you making? I'm curious
about what it takes to get 60 FPS scrolling in a Mac app.

~~~
jakobegger
In my specific case, I'm displaying a table view with hundreds of rows and
potentially dozens of columns. The bottleneck was the slow text rendering in
App Kit. Text rendering is pretty fast when you render long strings, but there
is a lot of overhead when rendering many short strings.

My first step was to switch to using CoreText, a lower level API for rendering
text. This reduced overheads by around 50%.

My second step was to cache layout information for recently displayed strings
in a small cache. Tables often contain a lot of repeated values so this saved
a lot of time; in some cases up to 70%.

After these optimizations, my own code was no longer the bottleneck. I still
don't reach 60FPS on my 2009 Macbook Pro, but that was expected...

(Note: 60FPS scrolling is not a problem if your views are smallish, so that
they can be entirely cached on the GPU; the problem occurs only when your
views are very large and the users scrolls very fast so that the CPU can't
keep up with rendering tiles for the GPU)

~~~
blkhp19
I'm not too familiar with how a table view in OS X compares to UITableView on
iOS, but are cells reused? I feel that that optimization alone would at least
limit what needs to be rendered to what's on screen.

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maxwell2022
That's typically the experience I got with all Asus product I owned:
Disappointment !

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bananaoomarang
The sheer insanity of this... Wow. Just wow.

