Its in line with it, the mechanical keyboard alone can for a bit..
For eveyone .. lol ...
Microsoft Windows 10 hardware event Oct 6th 10 am EST
Its in line with it, the mechanical keyboard alone can for a bit..
For eveyone .. lol ...
Silent_Buddha
Legend
It uses a GTX 960m (GM107), it isn't going to run a game at native resolution that uses more than 1 GB of memory at anything more than a crawl even if it had 8 GB of GDDR5 memory. A GTX 960m struggles to run a game well at 1080p at medium to high settings with 4 GB of memory. At the quality setting it needs to run well 1080p it likely isn't even really using more than 1 GB of assets. Push it harder to where it can use 2 or 4 GB? And your game likely slows to a crawl anyway.
More memory isn't going to do diddly squat in most cases for games with the level of dedicated GPU they used. And if they used something powerful enough to take advantage of higher amounts of memory, you'll likely see the battery life take a massive hit.
Again, it's not a strawman, this speaks directly to the purpose and design of the machine. It's an ultra-portable laptop that also happens to be an incredibly light 13.5" tablet which also happens to have really good battery life.
It is NOT a desktop gaming machine replacement "laptop" that gets but 10 hour battery life. It can't support a heftier GPU that would required beefier cooling in order to properly take advantage of more graphics memory and still offer basically all day battery life.
There are plenty of reasons.
It allows for power currents up to 3.0 A, double that of your standard USB 3.0 connectors, allowing the use of more power hungry external drives without the need to have those drives plugged into a separate power source. It would also allow for quick charging of mobile devices that supported it (like the Lumia 950) in emergencies.
It allows for the possibility of routing DisplayPort though it. Potentially removing the need to have a dedicated display out port on the machine.
It can offer Thunderbolt support allowing use of those devices.
It supports Ethernet as well as PCIExpress.
It's also significantly smaller than the full sized USB 3.0 ports on the Surface Pro 4. One of the reasons the device couldn't be made thinner is because of those ports. Personally I'd rather have had 2x USB Type C connectors with adapters for full sized USB 3.0 devices.
Like I said, I understand why it was chosen, I just find it disappointing they weren't more forward looking with regards to their USB ports.
Hell, the Surface Book at 7.7 mm thick obviously can't support full sized USB 3.0, thus it has absolutely no USB ports on the tablet section. If they had used USB Type C, they could have had USB ports both on the tablet as well as the keyboard dock.
Regards,
SB
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Silent_Buddha
Legend
Oh, and BTW - did anyone catch the product announcement that wasn't a product announcement during the live event? 
Regards,
SB
Gears of War 2 is coming to PC. Or at least it's running on Windows 10.
Regards,
SB
Oh, and BTW - did anyone catch the product announcement that wasn't a product announcement during the live event?
Gears of War 2 is coming to PC. Or at least it's running on Windows 10.
Regards,
SB
That vid? I thought it was just demoing the GPU intensive editing task in that program.
I rather the full size port than dongles . Its just more to loose and cary with . I don't actually need a thinner device it doesn't improve the device in anyway for me. lighter yes , thinner no .
Anyway the edram in the i7 does present an interesting wrinkle. I wonder if the extra ram will be better than the edram or vice versa .
With the 8 GB RAM version, it's only a $100 more than the i5/256 GB/16 GB RAM version.
D
Deleted member 13524
Guest
My Geforce GT 650M (GK107) uses well over 1GB when I play GTA V on medium/low settings at 1366*768, which the card does play at over 40 FPS. And it's a dirt-slow dedicated memory (~30GB/s).
Same goes for many other titles I tried recently (e.g. BF4, DA:Inquisition).
A massive hit is what will come when the card runs out of memory and needs to shuffle GPU data through the PCI-Express port.
Yes, it is the very definition of a straw man argument. Other examples would be:
- It's not a laptop dedicated to photography professionals so there's no need for a high quality calibrated screen
- It's not a laptop dedicated to music producers so there's no need for a decent sound codec or even stereo speakers
- It's not a laptop dedicated to number crunching simulators, so there's no need for more than 4GB RAM and a quad-core i7
- It's not a laptop for heavy typers, so there's no need for a mechanical keyboard.
The Surface Book is Microsoft's take at building a "no compromises" device, which is why there's a quad-core model, up to 16GB RAM and a dedicated GeForce GPU.
If the GeForce is to be extremely limited, then Microsoft would be much better off using a 35W Skylake with a GT4e.
D
Deleted member 13524
Guest
Some more info from hands-on impressions:
- Surface Pro 4 with Core M3 is fanless
- Display Manager only says "nVidia GPU". They're going out of their way to hide the GPU model, so there's definitely something fishy going on here. My guess is it's probably an unannounced model based on an existing GPU (GT 955M using higher clocked GM107?) or maybe a Maxwell 2 refresh of GM107 (GM207?) with color compression, HEVC, optimized efficiency, etc. Maybe even built on TSMC's 20nm after Tegra X1?
- Surface 4 Pro says "Liquid Cooling" but it's actually a form of Vapor Chamber.
- Surface Book has up to 3 hours battery in tablet mode, meaning the battery cells in the keyboard constitute 75% of the total power needed for those 12 hours.
- Surface Book can be charged independently without the dock.
- Surface Pro 4 with Core M3 is fanless
- Display Manager only says "nVidia GPU". They're going out of their way to hide the GPU model, so there's definitely something fishy going on here. My guess is it's probably an unannounced model based on an existing GPU (GT 955M using higher clocked GM107?) or maybe a Maxwell 2 refresh of GM107 (GM207?) with color compression, HEVC, optimized efficiency, etc. Maybe even built on TSMC's 20nm after Tegra X1?
- Surface 4 Pro says "Liquid Cooling" but it's actually a form of Vapor Chamber.
- Surface Book has up to 3 hours battery in tablet mode, meaning the battery cells in the keyboard constitute 75% of the total power needed for those 12 hours.
- Surface Book can be charged independently without the dock.
Ike Turner
Veteran
Interested in the version you go with. I'm kind of leaning towards the i7/8GB RAM vs the i5/16 RAM model.
D
Deleted member 13524
Guest
Info? What info? They say absolutely nothing.
They say it's a Maxwell GPU. Was a 3 year-old Kepler a possibility by some chance?
This is reaching Nintendo-levels of secrecy over hardware, and people are now thinking it's because of Nintendo-levels of disappointment.
Moreover, they're taking pre-orders but they still won't disclose the GPU?
Silent_Buddha
Legend
If you talk to a representative during the order process, they will tell you it is GTX 960m (GM107).
Regards,
SB
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Except it IS designed for all those uses and has been advertised as such. It is advertised as suitable for inking/sketching, music production/DJing, CAD/spreadsheet/professional applications, and specifically people that need to type a lot. As well as "light" gaming. Their example of a game that is suitable for the Surface Book was League of Legends. They purposely didn't use something like GTA V as an example of something the Surface Book was designed for. That would require compromises to the machine that would significantly impact the design of the device.
Again, this (GTX 960m) isn't something you're ever going to game at native resolution (3000x2000) on in anything but very simplistic games or severly reduced graphics settings and that has nothing to do with how much memory it has.
BTW - the GTX 960m was put in there for purposes other than "just" gaming. Many of the applications they used to advertise the capabilities of the device take advantage of CUDA for GPU acceleration. Like their Video processing/composition demo.
Regards,
SB
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Silent_Buddha
Legend
Apparently it actually lives up to that name. There's actually 2 cooling systems hooked up to the CPU. 1 heatpipe goes to a passive cooling system while the other goes to an active cooling system. Active cooling isn't supposed to activate for most normal workloads. So the majority of the time, the system should be completely passively cooled.
The system is also designed to dissipate far more than 15 watts. Can't wait to see Anandtech test this to see if that is the case. Even Surface Pro 3 would throttle at times. The hope here is that Surface Pro 4 should, in theory, never have to throttle while offering silent computer for the majority of the time.
Regards,
SB
So taking a closer look at different vids out there, this one from tested in particular:
It appears that the gap is there to allow the dGPU to vent heat. If you need utilize the keyboard dock in reverse "drawing" mode there has to be the space for the air to vent since the bottom doesn't have any vents.
I guess that means less heat on your lap when using it as a regular laptop, but also less heat on your arm if holding it on your forearm to sketch.
It appears that the gap is there to allow the dGPU to vent heat. If you need utilize the keyboard dock in reverse "drawing" mode there has to be the space for the air to vent since the bottom doesn't have any vents.
I guess that means less heat on your lap when using it as a regular laptop, but also less heat on your arm if holding it on your forearm to sketch.
I agree know that I've seen more of the breakdown shots. I think they could also have said liquid cooling and still be accurate, but I guess the fact that you dissipate heat two different areas and ways makes this a hybrid. Also, why lose an opportunity to get a good buzzword in....kidding.
Apparently, for most day to day tasks according to hands-on, the fan didn't kick in at all. Supposedly MS reps are saying it only needs to kick in for CPU/Graphic intensive tasks.
The cooling is interesting
I remember with the Surface pro 3 many people would use a little usb fan to help cool the system down.
With my surface pro 1 I had a fan that i'd point directly at the back of the system as that is where it would get the hottest and it actually dropped the temps down a few degrees.
here is the surface pro 3 with the fan trick
I remember with the Surface pro 3 many people would use a little usb fan to help cool the system down.
With my surface pro 1 I had a fan that i'd point directly at the back of the system as that is where it would get the hottest and it actually dropped the temps down a few degrees.
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Silent_Buddha
Legend
I think cooling might be one of the reasons they've ditched the old docks in favor of the seperate dock "box." The old docks would adversely affect cooling by insulating part of the device, thus holding more of the heat in. This wasn't as much of an issue with the Surface Pro 3s (active cooling) as it was with the Surface 3s, however. But even there I'd imagine they contributed a fair amount to increased heat and more frequent throttling.
With Surface Pro 4 being designed with passively cooled operation in mind that would be even more of an issue. Especially with the Core M version which is entirely passively cooled.
Regards,
SB
With Surface Pro 4 being designed with passively cooled operation in mind that would be even more of an issue. Especially with the Core M version which is entirely passively cooled.
Regards,
SB