Microsoft Windows 10 hardware event Oct 6th 10 am EST

So in a lot of pics, the dock plugs into the power connection and not the USB or display port. Supposedly it's capable of running two 4K screens and can act as a USB hub.

microsoft-surface-docking-station.jpg


201501EOS_05bk.jpg


What kind of connection is this? Apparently it's compatible with SP3, SP4 and Surface Book---it's probably the reason they didn't go with a micro-SD plug or USB-C.

Thoughts???
 
BadTB25 said:
What kind of connection is this? Apparently it's compatible with SP3, SP4 and Surface Book---it's probably the reason they didn't go with a micro-SD plug or USB-C.

Thoughts???
Click to expand...

It's the proprietary power+data connector that was introduced with the Surface Pro 3. And yes, it's most likely the reason they didn't go with a USB Type C connector for charging which could have done the same thing. This allows their SP3 users to also use this new "dock." Just like the new Type covers and new Surface Pens are also useable by SP3 owners.

As to why they would go to the effort to make things backwards compatible with the SP3? These are professional, business, and enterprise machines first and foremost. Entities that like to continue using their 1-2 (or even more) generations old machines. And honestly the SP3 is still a really good machine, so there's no reason for an artist or business to feel like they have to abandon their machine just to take advantage of the new dock, fingerprint recognition or pen.

If this were Apple, they'd be all about trying to force their customers to upgrade. But Microsoft is all about trying to make things as easy as possible for professionals, small business, and enterprise customers. Which isn't always something your average consumer would see or even appreciate or indeed even need. After all, how many companies still attempt to make sure their OS supports applications or hardware that is over a decade old? And how many average consumers actually care about that? Hell you can't even install the latest OSX on Intel based Macbooks released back in 2006, less than a decade ago.

Sometimes though, I do wish Microsoft would stop supporting older hardware. :p I'd like to see the death of 32 bit. But that seems to be happening naturally with regards to gaming finally. At least with AAA titles.

Regards,
SB
 
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Costco will be selling these .

Looks like they have the big daddy 16gig 256/i7 Surface Pro 4
http://www.costco.com/Microsoft-Sur...indows-10-Professional.product.100234160.html

They also have a Surface Pro 4 i5 4gig


And they have a surface book bundle with the i5 /8 gig of ram
http://www.costco.com/Microsoft-Sur...indows-10-Professional.product.100234159.html

Anyone a member that can check prices ? I recall they were cheaper than even the educator discount at the ms store when the 3 pro and 3 regular hit.
 
eastmen said:
Costco will be selling these .
Click to expand...

Hopefully Sams Club will too. I don;t have a Costco membership. I'm hoping our exchange will also carry it for the tax free benefit although they are usually a little behind regular retail.

To remove that retail temptation, I'm forcing my self not to make a decision until at least a couple of weeks. Also, I believe that the i7 model is shipping in November instead of late October.
 
Silent_Buddha said:
It's the proprietary power+data connector that was introduced with the Surface Pro 3. And yes, it's most likely the reason they didn't go with a USB Type C connector for charging which could have done the same thing. This allows their SP3 users to also use this new "dock." Just like the new Type covers and new Surface Pens are also useable by SP3 owners.

As to why they would go to the effort to make things backwards compatible with the SP3? These are professional, business, and enterprise machines first and foremost. Entities that like to continue using their 1-2 (or even more) generations old machines. And honestly the SP3 is still a really good machine, so there's no reason for an artist or business to feel like they have to abandon their machine just to take advantage of the new dock, fingerprint recognition or pen.

If this were Apple, they'd be all about trying to force their customers to upgrade. But Microsoft is all about trying to make things as easy as possible for professionals, small business, and enterprise customers. Which isn't always something your average consumer would see or even appreciate or indeed even need. After all, how many companies still attempt to make sure their OS supports applications or hardware that is over a decade old? And how many average consumers actually care about that? Hell you can't even install the latest OSX on Intel based Macbooks released back in 2006, less than a decade ago.

Sometimes though, I do wish Microsoft would stop supporting older hardware. :p I'd like to see the death of 32 bit. But that seems to be happening naturally with regards to gaming finally. At least with AAA titles.

Regards,
SB
Click to expand...

I like that it is backwards compatible, but I think they should have made these into the Surface 3 as well for consistency. I'm guessing it has to do with the Surface 3 not being able to power the multiple displays.
 
BadTB25 said:
Hopefully Sams Club will too. I don;t have a Costco membership. I'm hoping our exchange will also carry it for the tax free benefit although they are usually a little behind regular retail.

To remove that retail temptation, I'm forcing my self not to make a decision until at least a couple of weeks. Also, I believe that the i7 model is shipping in November instead of late October.
Click to expand...
Yea , I really want to know the performance difference between the i5 and i7 . I was thinking about it and I might not really need the extra ram and could get away with 8 gigs instead of 16. I'm not sure its needed yet on a portable device

The 256/i5/8 gig is $1300 the i7 is $1600. Is the $300 extra worth it. The ram is $100 but i'm not sure its worth it in terms of price either. So many choices.

I was also interested in a 8 gig m3 for my gf but that isn't possible. It also sounds like the m3 isn't actively cooled . So the i5 might be worth it just for the fan cooling. So many choices.


We both have surface pros , I figure we can get 300 or so for each of them. So for me the $1300 would be a nice deal. Or even less with the educator discount.
 
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Code: 
Series Intel Core m3
Codename Skylake
Clock Rate 900 - 2200 MHz
Level 1 Cache 128 KB
Level 2 Cache 512 KB
Level 3 Cache 4096 KB
Number of Cores / Threads 2 / 4
Max. Power Consumption (TDP = Thermal Design Power) 4.5 Watt
Manufacturing Technology 14 nm
Die Size 99 mm2
Max. Temperature 100 °C
Socket BGA
Features Dual-Channel DDR3L-1600/LPDDR3-1866 Memory Controller, HyperThreading, AVX, AVX2, Quick Sync, Virtualization, AES-NI
GPU Intel HD Graphics 515 (300 - 850 MHz)
64 Bit 64 Bit support 
Hardware Virtualization VT-x, VT-d
Announcement Date 09/01/2015
Product Link (external) Intel Core m3 6Y30
Click to expand...

this is the m3 anyone know the i5 or i7 model ?
 
eastmen said:
Yea , I really want to know the performance difference between the i5 and i7 . I was thinking about it and I might not really need the extra ram and could get away with 8 gigs instead of 16. I'm not sure its needed yet on a portable device
Click to expand...

The biggest difference will likely be in games or anything that uses the integrated GPU significantly where Iris graphics with it's 64 MB of eDRAM will make a larger difference than the clockspeed would indicate. It will also give some applications a larger boost than just the clockspeed difference as well as they can take advantage of the 64 MB of eDRAM as L4 cache.

I'm not in a hurry so I'm just going to wait for reviews to show up. Anandtech is going to try to get the Core-M, i5, and i7 versions in to test and see how they compare against each other.

Regards,
SB
 
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Silent_Buddha said:
The biggest difference will likely be in games or anything that uses the integrated GPU significantly where Iris graphics with it's 64 MB of Edram will make a larger difference than the clockspeed would indicate. It will also give some applications a larger boost than just the clockspeed difference as well as they can take advantage of the 64 MB of Edram as L4 cache.

I'm not in a hurry so I'm just going to wait for reviews to show up. Anandtech is going to try to get the Core-M, i5, and i7 versions in to test and see how they compare against each other.

Regards,
SB
Click to expand...

That would be really nice. I don't need a lot of power . On the surface I tend to play more games like Civ and Xcom but Civ becomes a slide show late in the game if I put to many AI on .

I'm sure the i7 will be faster the question is if its $300 faster

Hopefully anand gets some 16 and 8 gig models so they can see the difference there also.
 
Silent_Buddha said:
It's the proprietary power+data connector that was introduced with the Surface Pro 3. And yes, it's most likely the reason they didn't go with a USB Type C connector for charging which could have done the same thing. This allows their SP3 users to also use this new "dock." Just like the new Type covers and new Surface Pens are also useable by SP3 owners.
Click to expand...

I'm betting it's a proprietary connector using Thunderbolt protocol, just like the Surface Book connection to the keyboard+GPU.
 
Mary Jo Foley reported that the Nvidia chip is a custom Nvidia/XboxTeam developed GPU. I dont think they did any magic per se but i think its highly optimized even with 1GB of RAM to perform well in that slim factor. There may even be some joint Intel Iris + Nvidia co processing going on. No one really knows yet.
 
I don't believe for a single second it's a custom chip, it's just a custom PCB+cooling for a GM107. If it's a new chip (e.g. GM207) then it will eventually be available to other OEMs. One single (very expensive and niche-ish) product from Microsoft isn't enough for nVidia to create a custom GPU for them.
1GB GDDR5 will be terrible no matter how much icing they put on it.

There's no Iris+Geforce processing going on because there's no SoC for the Surface Book with an Iris GPU for now. At the moment, only the Surface Pro 4 has models with the Iris 540.
This doesn't mean that DX12 titles with explicit multiadapter support won't make good use of the 24 Execution Units in Intel's iGPU, but that's something all Haswell/Broadwell/Skylake + discrete GPU laptops will be able to do.
 
BadTB25 said:
Here's a site that got a little bit more hands on than other sites.

http://www.lovemysurface.net/surface-pro-4-hands-on-review/

He does a bench marking compared to SP3 using the 25/4GB models of both. Find it odd that it list 5 threads though as I thought both only ran 4 threads on dual core chips.

He was also able to run some games.
Click to expand...

Something that worries me is they say there are no side buttons on the new pen. That's going to be an issue if true. That means there won't be an easy way to "right click," as one example.

Regards,
SB
 
ToTTenTranz said:
I don't believe for a single second it's a custom chip, it's just a custom PCB+cooling for a GM107. If it's a new chip (e.g. GM207) then it will eventually be available to other OEMs. One single (very expensive and niche-ish) product from Microsoft isn't enough for nVidia to create a custom GPU for them.
1GB GDDR5 will be terrible no matter how much icing they put on it.

There's no Iris+Geforce processing going on because there's no SoC for the Surface Book with an Iris GPU for now. At the moment, only the Surface Pro 4 has models with the Iris 540.
This doesn't mean that DX12 titles with explicit multiadapter support won't make good use of the 24 Execution Units in Intel's iGPU, but that's something all Haswell/Broadwell/Skylake + discrete GPU laptops will be able to do.
Click to expand...
I agree that it's not a custom chip. However, I think it could be a custom bin. As AMD showed with Fury Nano recently, you can improve performance/watt significantly by binning for the lowest power parts. I bet Nvidia's bin distribution is much better now than when GM107 launched 18 months ago, so I wouldn't be surprised if this part has better perf/watt.
 
Silent_Buddha said:
Something that worries me is they say there are no side buttons on the new pen. That's going to be an issue if true. That means there won't be an easy way to "right click," as one example.

Regards,
SB
Click to expand...

There is one button on the side along with the one on top. The image below is from MS official site.

abbc4916-6381-4233-93e9-2fff8268d1c4.png
 
OK, so it's not as bad. They just removed one button which is a bit of a shame (Surface Pen had 2 buttons + Magic button), but I'll live...probably. :p

Regards,
SB
 
Silent_Buddha said:
OK, so it's not as bad. They just removed one button which is a bit of a shame (Surface Pen had 2 buttons + Magic button), but I'll live...probably. :p

Regards,
SB
Click to expand...

I like that it looks more like a "pencil" than Apple's pencil. I have feeling I'm going to do a lot of doodling when I get this.
 
I got to play with the surface pro 4 today at the store , they didn't get the book in yet .

I held the 4 and a 3 at the same time and the 4 is lighter. We fired up fall out 3 on the surface pro 4 and 3 and the pro 4 stayed much cooler. We didn't have time to install fraps or anything as I was doing this on the display floor . I just used a thumb stick with it on it.

It was a 4 gig i5 6300U 2.4ghz

I have to say that playing with it , the improvement over the Pro 1/2 and the 4 is vast , its like a different device. Its amazing and I want one yesterday

My friend at the store told me the i7s wont hit till Nov and they most likely wont get the discount until January while the i5 and m3 may get them in Dec she said. So that might be another $150 or so in terms of price between the i5 and i7 . It could also bring the m3 down to a nice $750 price range.
 
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