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What Panos says about SP4 - "Nothing"

ptrkhh

Active Member
I doubt it would be worth the money. At that stage, you have a device that is no longer portable - you have a desktop. Probably better off building one.
Disagree. Assuming the dock will retail at anything less than $300, it would cost more to build a comparable PC. Core i3 CPU would cost $100 (2C/4T, comparable to SP3 CPU), the mainboard $50, 8 GB RAM $50, 256 GB SSD $100, PSU $50. If you want it to be as silent as the SP3 on light tasks, you need to spend $30 on an aftermarket cooler.

If you were to try running these games, or any decently specced game, on the Surface processors, the stresses of the high temperatures are likely to significantly shorten the lifespan of your device.

So you could do it. Play games like counter strike with good graphics, still struggle to run anything demanding a better CPU, but the stresses on your device would be immense.

I would go for the gaming desktop option with better ventilation, so that playing games isn't killing your computer.
As the iGPU of the is not used in such scenario, I don't expect the heat to be as bad as what we are seeing now. Sure, it will shorten the lifespan of the device than leaving it turned off while youre working with the desktop PC, but then again, the purpose of the SP3 itself is to be the only device that you use. Otherwise, we would be using a toy tablet and traditional laptop.

My guess, if they offer an external GPU that there would be enough people who would buy it, where their SP3 is their only device, and they'd be perfectly happy using the SP3 mode for certain funtions outside the house (by itself) and then docked with the GPU for gaming inside the home. Or vice-versa. :D
Count me in! I would love to own one device for everything. No more "Oh I forgot to copy it to my laptop!" kind of things, only one savegame to work with. Sure, the cloud will be able to replace that kind of problem at some point in the future, but for now it struggles with anything more than a hundred of megabytes.
 

Liam2349

Active Member
Disagree. Assuming the dock will retail at anything less than $300, it would cost more to build a comparable PC. Core i3 CPU would cost $100 (2C/4T, comparable to SP3 CPU), the mainboard $50, 8 GB RAM $50, 256 GB SSD $100, PSU $50. If you want it to be as silent as the SP3 on light tasks, you need to spend $30 on an aftermarket cooler.


As the iGPU of the is not used in such scenario, I don't expect the heat to be as bad as what we are seeing now. Sure, it will shorten the lifespan of the device than leaving it turned off while youre working with the desktop PC, but then again, the purpose of the SP3 itself is to be the only device that you use. Otherwise, we would be using a toy tablet and traditional laptop.


Count me in! I would love to own one device for everything. No more "Oh I forgot to copy it to my laptop!" kind of things, only one savegame to work with. Sure, the cloud will be able to replace that kind of problem at some point in the future, but for now it struggles with anything more than a hundred of megabytes.

None of the Surface devices have the CPU power I need to enjoy my games. I wouldn't need to build a comparable PC, I would need to build one that is much more powerful, and I have.

It can be the one device some people need, but it cannot handle all of the work I need it to, and for me, a GPU would not solve that problem. Steam cloud does transfer your saves though.
 

bluegrass

Well-Known Member
Curious. Is an i7 CPU slow compared to a gaming CPU? What CPU is needed for a good gaming machine? I assume that the latest X-Box gaming system plays some of the high end games very well. Does the X-Box have a much faster CPU than the i7. Forgive my gaming ignorance. I pretty much quit playing games after playing all the adventure games on my Radio Shack Model 1 back in the late 70's and early 80's.
 

ptrkhh

Active Member
None of the Surface devices have the CPU power I need to enjoy my games. I wouldn't need to build a comparable PC, I would need to build one that is much more powerful, and I have.

It can be the one device some people need, but it cannot handle all of the work I need it to, and for me, a GPU would not solve that problem. Steam cloud does transfer your saves though.
Clearly it wont replace such powerful computers anytime soon, that's for sure. Im not saying that *your* Surface has to replace *your* desktop PC. Point is, for many, the CPU performance of the SP3 is sufficient, and that's the demography that we are talking about here.

Curious. Is an i7 CPU slow compared to a gaming CPU? What CPU is needed for a good gaming machine? I assume that the latest X-Box gaming system plays some of the high end games very well. Does the X-Box have a much faster CPU than the i7.
This might surprise you, this is a fact, the laptop Core i7 (ULV model) is slower than the slowest desktop Core i3. Don't believe me? Here are the benchmarks:

i3-4130 http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?id=2015
i7-4650U http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?id=1955

Blame Intel for their good-better-best naming strategy, instead of actually tying the name to the performance itself.

Anyway, the problem with most games nowadays is they require multiple cores, since, as you mentioned, the defacto standard XBOX One actually has 8-core CPU. Some games are even poorly coded till the point that it ignores the first two threads, as the consoles reserve the first two threads for the OS and programs. And the Surface Pro? Intel's U-series line has always had 2 cores. Hopefully that will change with Skylake this year, following the Atom line (4C).

Moreover, some games are not even available on consoles (and we are seeing this trend now), part of the reason is because the game needs more power than what the consoles offer. Talk about the master race.
 

Liam2349

Active Member
Curious. Is an i7 CPU slow compared to a gaming CPU? What CPU is needed for a good gaming machine? I assume that the latest X-Box gaming system plays some of the high end games very well. Does the X-Box have a much faster CPU than the i7. Forgive my gaming ignorance. I pretty much quit playing games after playing all the adventure games on my Radio Shack Model 1 back in the late 70's and early 80's.


The i7 desktop parts are a lot more powerful than the i7 ultrabook parts. The i5s on the desktop are also much better than the i7 ultrabook parts.


The xbox uses an AMD chip, it’s an APU. An APU is the CPU with a good GPU on the same chip. AMD chips don't really stand up to Intel that well, and they used AMD for budgeting reasons (same with Sony and PS4). I know from trying to run BF4 on my SP3 that the xbox processor handles it a lot better.


The best high-end AMD chip you can get is the FX-8350. AMD does produce higher end chips still, but they are ridiculously expensive compared to what they provide - people only buy AMD chips because they are cheaper than Intel. The 8350 is pretty much as high as you would go on AMD - any higher and you buy an i5, and depending on the game, the i5 can be a lot better than the AMD offering. In super-intensive games like Arma 3, an i5 upgrade will double your frame rate over an FX-8350. In some other games, the added power of the i5 won’t make much difference.


The 8350 is years old now - they are so bad at competing with Intel in the desktop space that they have almost given up. AMD no longer designs any desktop CPUs, only APUs like those in the consoles, with much lower CPU performance than an i5. Personally this is quite worrying because in the PC gaming space, Intel has literally no competition these days unless you are doing a budget build, and even then going with AMD is questionable as the Intel integrated graphics continue to get better.


The xbox chip does run games, but the reason you see the games releasing at lower resolutions is due to the CPU. The CPU handles tasks like drawing players and running anti-aliasing on them. In the case of BF4, the xbox can't do this at 1080p so they have to lower the resolution. The GPU I believe is actually almost as good as mine, but the CPU is sub-par at best.


Arma 3 is a military simulation and uses the CPU to simulate everything. A game like this would not run at any acceptable settings on an xbox because the CPU won't keep up. If you want to run this game decently online, you need a good i5 as a minimum - nothing from AMD will run it well.


The i5 is pretty much the king of PC gaming. In some games, the 8350 can keep up but when you are really pushing it, the i5 will take a huge lead with its single-core performance advantage. In desktop gaming, the i7 usually has no advantage over the i5. In some games it gains a small boost from hyperthreading, in other games this causes a small drop in frame rate. Games have not really started to take advantage of hyperthreading yet.
 

CrippsCorner

Well-Known Member
If you look further down the AMA they give the same answers for Surface Pro 4, Surface Mini & Surface Phone! i.e. we ain't telling you shit :eek:
 

GoodBytes

Well-Known Member
Companies tend to never reveal product information about new coming up products until the are released. This for a variety of reasons, such as:
-> Hurt sales of the current product which may be affected for months until the new model is released.
-> Give information to competitors and could take faster action or have a competing product release about the same time.
-> Reduce the ability to properly control product information.
-> Lose on hype. Hype pushes sales.
-> People like to be surprised. Knowing everything reduces careness of a product.
-> Features and specs are not finalized. So mentioning something that won't make it is a PR nightmare. And miss information is carried, and people might buy the product expected the feature revealed but not there.
 
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