Oh, I’ve been praying for that for a while now. I think its quite stupid in case of the 15-inch Laptops 3-5 all having the same specs as the 13 inch models.
Like for the 13-inch Model, a 15w i5/i7 with Iris XE is fair.
But the 15-inhcer should at least offer 28w i5/i7 with at least a GTX 1660 or something
Or even if they opted for a 35/45w with RTX 4060-4090…the Laptop line because it is just a Clamshell, would be the easiest to engineer those specs around.
However I think they would likely not facilitate a Tablet mode. Like if they offered a Laptop 6 with a Yoga style hinge (which is largely the most popular 2-in-1 method) that might eat into the Pro sales.
Lol, I had one of those Viao Z Flips. Slick machine but it sounded like a jet engine taking off it you so much as looked at it. Maybe cooling systems have improved, but you can’t cram too much into too small of a space without some compromises.
So anecdotally and observationally, I don’t see a strong need/push for a more powerful studio/laptop type device, but we do hear frequently from our customer base that they’d be interested in a more powerful Surface Pro option.
And we’ve heard discussion that MS believes that with 13th gen Core I and onward, that’s looking more viable due to the use of BIG/little architecture only improving, especially now that Windows deals with them properly with the new scheduler.
In other words, we hear far more lately about “scalable” and “adaptable” in the language that MS uses with some of our corporate customers.
Plus “simplifying” the product line is once again a hot topic among the wall street folks.
I’ve always felt the SP line always slightly underperformed (at closer to 15W) of its rated 28W TDP. I understand for technical standards reasons (eg. TPM and TB4) they stick with the Intel platform over AMD, so I really hope 13th-gen scalability promises pan out.
Anecdotally, did your users find the Surface Book to have adequate performance? Was it mostly price (and somewhat awkward detach mechanism) that held back Surface Pro “power users” from switching?
Yes to both, though partially it was also that the perception that the performance jump wasn’t enough to justify the price and the other trade offs of the book such as weight/bulk and the awkward detach hinge which more than a few “power users” broke during their time with the books.
And BTW adoption of TB has partially addressed the power performance conundrum by providing some addition graphics options via a TB dock
I’m pretty happy with the i5 iGPU version, but it’d be nice if they at least offered a version with obnoxiously powerful CPU that could actually use all that cooling prowess. It’s easy to upgrade my eGPU, the CPU not so much.
Looking at the consumer side first — the Pro 8 also has commercial options for business — there are Core i5-1135G7 and Core i7-1185G7 quad-core chips available. These are both 10nm with a maximum 28W TDP, capable of hyper-threading for a total of eight threads.
But of course these are just numbers. My main point was you often need to go that extra mile (shoutout to @Cbutters) to squeeze out the full performance of the chipset, compared to other OEM implementations.
Would be nice to see a larger Surface Pro (eg 14") as well. Then it could also provide more performance (/more room for cooling), ports and/or battery life. I especially would like to see a microsd port again.
Not exactly. I think its just a matter of how Intel is advertising that fact. Here’s a comparison of the 10/11/& 12th generation i7 CPUs in the Pros 7,8, &9
That 11th gen is the only one that doesn’t have a listed TDP or Base Power.
But given the marginal TDP-up from 25w to 28w between 10th and 11th gen, I’d wager that 11th gen core is indeed a 15w processor that can just turbo to 28w depending on thermals. But that 12th gen is def back to the 15w. However its turbo performance can scale considerably higher, likely as a benefit of the new core structuring. But doubful it could sustain that power for too long.
Yes, that’s what I’m referring to. The tweaking/effort needed to hit the TDP-up value is often higher for Surface devices than other OEMs.
This is anecdotal of course, but I’m guessing MS has developed its own testing methodology that favours tightly controlled voltage/freq curves. This differs from say Dell, who favours very high turbo behaviour, while HP is a little more balanced.
Just interesting to note how different OEMs tend to utilize the TDP spread.
That matches what we’ve heard off the record from various intel engineers that the OEMS aren’t fully exploiting the asynchronous cores and updating their cooling solutions to best take advantage of 12th gen and later Core I designs.
They will even point to how much better Apple is doing it with their M designs though you could argue that might be hitting some limits of it’s own with the M2 max et. al.
However, several replies on reddit suggest that MS has postponed the release until fall this year, and someone quoted a Windows Central podcast with Zac Bowden who says this year´s spring refresh of the Surface line will not take place:
Go to 29:40 in the video to get to the discussion about the (supposedly dropped) MS Surface spring release.
Nothing really new from the spring leaks. However given Microsoft going all in on AI/Copilot, I wonder if they will opt for a dedicated NPU tacked on to the Intel chipsets or rely on some method of Cloud computed AI.
True, although the current rumors seem to be a spec bump which I am fine with since the design of the SLS (except for the ports) was very good. Its just that the cpu made little sense (/quad core). Both 12th or 13th gen cpu would fix that.
