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So some quick i5 or i7 advice? Return the i5 for i7.

double07

Member
Mine number was pretty much SF3 out of the box. No update. I guess I will do the update and retest it tomorrow.
 

double07

Member
@double07, it looks like your disk score is very low and that would hold your overall score down. The other numbers look about right.

I think, I know why my disc number is low. I just discovered that mine SF3 came with disc encryption on. I don't remember turning that on? I am disabling it as we speak. I am sure this have significant impact on disc performance but not yet proven.
 

bkydcmpr

Member
be77solo Wow having them both side by side and not seeing the difference is shocking. Doesn't make sense to me why MS would do such a thing.
as an electrical engineer, I'd say microsoft made a bad decision to put i7 in it. but from business stand point of view, it may be right, for most of the people, the specs in paper talks. as an end user, if you want the performance for the money, i5 won hands down. if you consider upgrade it next year, i7 may have better resell value. I don't even expect the "burst performance", it really didn't show the advantage.
 

mtalinm

Active Member
is it odd that there have been no major reviews of the i7? AnandTech did a nice writeup of the i3 but were apparently not sampled an i7.

I need the bigger disk so will probably get an i7, but I'd like to know what I'm trading off in heat or battery
 

GreyFox7

Super Moderator
Staff member
as an electrical engineer, I'd say microsoft made a bad decision to put i7 in it. but from business stand point of view, it may be right, for most of the people, the specs in paper talks. as an end user, if you want the performance for the money, i5 won hands down. if you consider upgrade it next year, i7 may have better resell value. I don't even expect the "burst performance", it really didn't show the advantage.
As a Computer Engineer id say they made the traditional tradeoffs that must be made on leading devices. Every Laptop ever made is a tradeoff between performance, heat, capacities, size and weight tablets and hybrids are no different.
 

bkydcmpr

Member
As a Computer Engineer id say they made the traditional tradeoffs that must be made on leading devices. Every Laptop ever made is a tradeoff between performance, heat, capacities, size and weight tablets and hybrids are no different.
when the capabilities of the 2 systems were trimmed to the same level, the trade off has gone too far. it's not that hard to figure that out.
 

GreyFox7

Super Moderator
Staff member
when the capabilities of the 2 systems were trimmed to the same level, the trade off has gone too far. it's not that hard to figure that out.
I'll wait for the complete analysis and tuning before making a final judgment, it might be a bit presumptive at this point. This appears to be firmware settings and changeable.

Intel engineers built the i5 for x performance @ 15w TDP and the i7 for x+y performance @ 15w TDP. If you throttle by z percent I'd still expect a y overall difference in performance. The Surface will dissipate w watts whether it has an i5 or i7 they are the same physical size. To say the i7 dissipates more heat than the i5 is to say that it violates the 15w TDP spec.

The i7 achieves its y performance gain even though it has a lower starting clock rate (1.7 vs 1.9) thru having larger on chip cache and other design enhancements.
 
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SP3, Core i5, 8 GB RAM

With disk encryption:
upload_2014-8-4_16-15-3.png


Stopped Disk Encryption, did a restart and testet again

Without disk encryption

upload_2014-8-4_16-15-40.png


Will do now a passmark test again.
 
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