Surface Firmware Updates

I have an AMD Surface Laptop 3 that I am very happy with. At the time I bought it, I saved several hundred dollars over getting the equivalent Intel one, so it doesn’t bother me that the performance and battery life is worse. The performance is still twice what my base model SB1 was and the quad core really helps keep things moving when I have multiple tabs open. What does bother me (and this complaint carries over from my other Surface products) is how Microsoft pushes firmware and graphics driver updates over Windows Update without any release notes. I haven’t had a problem yet with these updates, but it would be nice to know what version of the AMD driver I am getting so I can choose to defer the update if there are known problems with games or applications I am using. I tried searching for release notes and couldn’t find any.

Conversation 1 comments

  • SWCetacean

    Premium Member
    23 January, 2020 - 1:45 pm

    <p>There is an update history page for every Surface device (for SL3: <a href="https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4526150/surface-laptop-3-update-history&quot; target="_blank">https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4526150/surface-laptop-3-update-history</a&gt;), but it's not always updated regularly, or more precisely, it's only updated when the update hits general availability. On my Surface Pro 4, I would get updates without release notes since I'm in the Release Preview ring, then months later I would read that there was a new firmware update and it was the same version that I received way back when. They should have a separate update page for Insider firmware updates, just like Office has a separate list of updates that Office Insiders are getting.</p><p><br></p><p>With graphics drivers you can usually look up the version number and read the release notes online (though you might have to parse the release number from the full version string, i.e. Nvidia drivers will take only the last 5 digits of the full version string to form a release number like 417.91). </p><p><br></p><p>And AMD doesn't always provide the most detailed firmware update notes in general, coming from my experience with their chipset driver updates.</p>

    • remc86007

      23 January, 2020 - 3:05 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#515337">In reply to SWCetacean:</a></em></blockquote><p>I saw that page when I was looking for release notes, but the most recent update it shows is from November and I received firmware updates in December and just now in January. It didn't occur to me until I read your comment that I am still on the slow ring, so that explains why it's not on that page. I agree with you that there needs to be a update notes for insiders. I don't know how I'm supposed to know what to test for if they don't tell me what has changed.</p>

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