As long as mine continues to work and the firmware fix stops my unit from turning on with the lid closed, I'll be happy. Besides, I will sell mine before the warranty is up and get a new tablet. I'm not sure I'll get another Surface because of the creaking screen. I'm sure if I brought my Surface Pro 2 into the MS Store, they will tell me the creak isn't bad enough to exchange. I keep wondering what would Apple lovers say if their 2 month old MacBook Airs were being updated with marginally better processors and graphics.
Surface Pro 2.5?
- Thread starter SteveBorough
- Start date
They'd be just as mouthy about it as Windows users.
Apple sources from a number of vendors for drives and there is always a lot complaining about not getting which one is "better."
I would definitely go online and exchange your SPro2 for another one due to a creaky screen. Here's the thing, you paid $1200 (depending on model) and you shouldn't have to settle for a device that is faulty. The creaky screen could be a result of it overheating. If you had the overheating problem, that is a legit reason for a return. Hopefully you will get a 4300 device back.
I whole heartily agree with the concept of returning a device if it is defective. I did it and received the same deceive back. Nothing more, nothing less. An upgrade would've been nice but I certainly won't begrudge MS for updating their hardware.
I will keep returning until I don't have a creaking screen. I can't imagine 6 months from now how bad this device is going to be if it can't even go 1month without getting so hot that the adhesive loosens. My replacement started squeaking within 1 day (HA)
EthanDavis
Member
DragonGamer
New Member
It would make sense that they used those CPUs only as a last resort because they couldn't take the demand. I highly doubt that Intel sells those possibly 15% more powerful CPUs for the same price like the 4200...
That would also explain why MS didn't advertise at all about the change.
But who knows.. maybe we will indeed see a "Surface Pro 2S" soon...
Gentlemen, some of you are overreacting here. Why avoiding the 4200u like a plague?
Both CPUs are identical pieces of silicon - based on the same architecture, introduced at the same time. The 4300u is clocked slightly higher and has some additional enterprise features that are completely useless if the platform doesn't support them. Which it doesn't. Heck, they are even priced the same - and Intel is well known for asking more for every bit of extra performance or a nice feature
You won't notice an increase of performance in games. The 15W power envelope doesn't allow these chips to fully utilise their CPU and GPU parts simultaneously. The same can be said about heavy, multi-threaded workload. The 4300u might benefit in single-threaded ops, however.
Rarely mentioned is the fact that the 4300u also consumes more energy - as someone already posted, it's around 3W under load. Which means shorter battery life and warmer and/or noisier device.
While I would go for a higher clocked unit in a desktop any day, Surface is a portable device and I do prefer an extra 30-45min of battery life that the 4200u provides, especially when it comes with almost no performance hit...
Both CPUs are identical pieces of silicon - based on the same architecture, introduced at the same time. The 4300u is clocked slightly higher and has some additional enterprise features that are completely useless if the platform doesn't support them. Which it doesn't. Heck, they are even priced the same - and Intel is well known for asking more for every bit of extra performance or a nice feature
You won't notice an increase of performance in games. The 15W power envelope doesn't allow these chips to fully utilise their CPU and GPU parts simultaneously. The same can be said about heavy, multi-threaded workload. The 4300u might benefit in single-threaded ops, however.
Rarely mentioned is the fact that the 4300u also consumes more energy - as someone already posted, it's around 3W under load. Which means shorter battery life and warmer and/or noisier device.
While I would go for a higher clocked unit in a desktop any day, Surface is a portable device and I do prefer an extra 30-45min of battery life that the 4200u provides, especially when it comes with almost no performance hit...
OP
SteveBorough
Member
Gentlemen, some of you are overreacting here. Why avoiding the 4200u like a plague?
Both CPUs are identical pieces of silicon - based on the same architecture, introduced at the same time. The 4300u is clocked slightly higher and has some additional enterprise features that are completely useless if the platform doesn't support them. Which it doesn't. Heck, they are even priced the same - and Intel is well known for asking more for every bit of extra performance or a nice feature
You won't notice an increase of performance in games. The 15W power envelope doesn't allow these chips to fully utilise their CPU and GPU parts simultaneously. The same can be said about heavy, multi-threaded workload. The 4300u might benefit in single-threaded ops, however.
Rarely mentioned is the fact that the 4300u also consumes more energy - as someone already posted, it's around 3W under load. Which means shorter battery life and warmer and/or noisier device.
While I would go for a higher clocked unit in a desktop any day, Surface is a portable device and I do prefer an extra 30-45min of battery life that the 4200u provides, especially when it comes with almost no performance hit...
Is anyone here running or attempted to run VMs on their 4200u SP2? I have not but this is one of my goals, once I finally get my replacement. The 4300u has virtualization features the 4200u doesn't and to me and for my job, this is a different product. A coworker (in another office) has just returned his SP2 8/256, 4200u because he said VMware desktop chugged (very slow) on it. He claims he's ran VMware desktop on 3 yr old laptops in the past with no problem. Just trying to learn more about this before I get my hopes up (again)
EDIT: Confirmation that my coworker only purchased the 4GB/128 Surface Pro 2, by no means enough RAM to run a VM comfortable (say allocating 2GB) but he had better success with the lesser spec'd machine his new surface replaced.
Last edited:
CreativeLemming
Active Member
Don't want to get your hopes up but I have the 4200 and am running Ubuntu under Hyper-V without any great complaints - I'm probably not running the same serious workloads that you need to fulfil your job (and probably a different guest OS) but it handles my needs as I'd expect from a device of this nature (my more serious work is done on my more serious machines that are intended or the job).
I wouldn't get your hopes up about the 4300u virtualisation feature (I think there's only one difference) as it's unlikely to improve the situation. VT-D is all about providing direct IO access to hardware that's not accessed by the host - the surface is a laptop without the ability expand and dedicate, say, a graphics card or network adaptor to a specific VM so this might sound like a great feature that will save you CPU cycles, but in practice it's probably of little benefit to any of us.
The rest of the changes (VPro/TXT) are aimed at enterprise security/remote management, and we don't even know if the surface is going to support this full feature set with all of the firmware changes (and maybe hardware support) that might involve.
I have to agree with others who don't believe this CPU hike is worth all the attention it's getting. Either Microsoft had (a) supply chain issue so switched to what is effectively the same silicon (within the context of the Surface form factor, same performance and same price), or (b) they made a decision to roll out features that enterprise customers are asking for in order to drive up sales. I find (b) unlikely as this would surely cause more confusion than it's worth if customers can't work out what device they've got.
I'll stop rambling...
MickeyLittle
Active Member
Gentlemen, some of you are overreacting here. Why avoiding the 4200u like a plague?
Both CPUs are identical pieces of silicon - based on the same architecture, introduced at the same time. The 4300u is clocked slightly higher and has some additional enterprise features that are completely useless if the platform doesn't support them. Which it doesn't. Heck, they are even priced the same - and Intel is well known for asking more for every bit of extra performance or a nice feature
You won't notice an increase of performance in games. The 15W power envelope doesn't allow these chips to fully utilise their CPU and GPU parts simultaneously. The same can be said about heavy, multi-threaded workload. The 4300u might benefit in single-threaded ops, however.
Rarely mentioned is the fact that the 4300u also consumes more energy - as someone already posted, it's around 3W under load. Which means shorter battery life and warmer and/or noisier device.
While I would go for a higher clocked unit in a desktop any day, Surface is a portable device and I do prefer an extra 30-45min of battery life that the 4200u provides, especially when it comes with almost no performance hit...
I posted this a couple days ago and it is reason enough for me and probably several others:
"I think the point of the 4200 or 4300 is more this than anything else for me. I will ebay my Surface Pro 2 in 6-10 months from now and I have a really good idea that when people in general (not experts mind up) are looking for the Surface 2 Pro and they see mine listed as 4300u 1.9 ghz and they see Joe Blow's listed as 4200u 1.6 ghz and we're both asking $800. Whose do you think they're gonna buy?"
Agreed, I would also say that for others of us that have been experiencing problems that keep getting told to wait for a firmware update, and then end up with more problems this is reason enough to go through the warranty replacement process to 1) get a device free from the problems we're experiencing and 2) that has a potential to perform better. In other comments around the internet the general consensus under everyday use is a faster more responsive device with no battery hit. Under extreme load, sure, but in those cases I'm probably plugged in and stationary.
