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Microsoft Surface Pro - Gaming Thread!

Damon Bennet said:
its considerably thicker and heavier, compared to the RT or ipads. also has less battery life and a fan! i guess this is the price (and $999, lulz) you pay for ultrabook specs
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Define "considerably"?

It's a "bit" thicker and a "bit" heavier. You can also buy it for $899.

LULZ
 
Stinkles said:
Define "considerably"?

It's a "bit" thicker and a "bit" heavier. You can also buy it for $899.

LULZ
Click to expand...

For a tablet or any portable electronic, I think it's more than fair to call a nearly 50% increase in thickness and over 30% increase in weight (especially when the RT isn't even the lightest tablet to begin with) as "Considerably" thicker and heavier.
 
Rodney McKay said:
For a tablet or any portable electronic, I think it's more than fair to call a nearly 50% increase in thickness and over 30% increase in weight (especially when the RT isn't even the lightest tablet to begin with) as "Considerably" thicker and heavier.
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The context is the original object. The Surface Pro is indeed heavier and thicker than the RT, but I am literally (outside of typing this) holding both in my hands right now and if I close my eyes I have an object that's 1.5 pounds versus 2 pounds - it doesn't feel different because I'm simply not sensitive enough to sense any significant difference.

Now over a couple of hours? Or reading it like a book? Then I'd notice it a lot more.
 
JWong said:
Semantically, yes it is, but when people see the price tag, they won't even consider it if they are buying a tablet.

It's an Ultrabook with the keyboard separated.
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Of course, that's exactly what the Surface Pro is.

The Surface RT can be compared to other tablets if that is what you are looking for.
 
I've been playing a bunch of point and click adventure games on the surface and it's been awesome. The only issue is most of the games have to be ran in a window to be able to use the touchscreen.

I was playing Curse of Monkey island last night and it was great.
 
when do we expect a Gen II Surface Pro with these new Intel chipsets in them?

They're supposed to offer significantly better graphics performance and battery life...
 
Back on topic, for people with a Surface Pro (or other portable touch screen core device) what games are you playing that seem well suited for this device? Any that work well with touch support?
I have a Lenovo Helix, but any gaming discussion pertaining to the Surface Pro should work for me
 
Rayman Origins runs and looks great. I hook a wireless 360 adapter to the Surface Pro to play. It will actually run most games that are out, it's just a matter of how nice you need your games to look.
 
I'm typing this from my Razer Edge Pro. I've been using it for two weeks now and I'm very happy with it. It's great at home on the dock, I use it as a Steambox.

I've played through Assassin's Creed 3, NFS Most Wanted, DMC, Walking Dead with my Xbox gamepad and it feels great!

It's not replacing my iPad Mini. I still use that as my primary "on the go" device. However, when I need to take a proper computer with me, it's great. So basically this is replacing my laptop.

I'm really happy with the performance as well. I can play any game on mid to high detail currently (I'm happy with stable 30fps).

Having a mobile Steambox is really sweet. It feels a lot more flexible than playing on a console.
 
mhayze said:
Back on topic, for people with a Surface Pro (or other portable touch screen core device) what games are you playing that seem well suited for this device? Any that work well with touch support?
I have a Lenovo Helix, but any gaming discussion pertaining to the Surface Pro should work for me
Click to expand...

How's the Helix? That thing looks incredible.
 
Has anyone tried SimCity or StarCraft 2 on the Surface Pro? I'm tempted to pick one up to play them on the sofa (I'm well aware they are both online-only).
 
This look pretty cool, and I was thinking about picking one up as a replacement for my iPad 2, but that price is just too steep. Maybe they'll do a yearly hardware cycle like Apple and I can get one used.
 
JaggedSac said:
How's the Helix? That thing looks incredible.
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I like it a lot' and I'm glad I waited instead of getting the surface pro. I get close to 9 hours in clamshell / docked / power saver mode, and the tablet alone feels about as heavy as my iPad 3 + cover. It is blazing fast too, in some tasks that make the iPad feel a little slow. The widescreen aspect is great when watching videos but a little awkward in landscape mode. I got mine in i7 / 8gb / 256gb spec and it can run VMs / appliances / demos, which is great, and the extra RAM makes development much easier. Screen is excellent - feels very retina like. I am used to w8 so no surprises (pro tip: use Start8) there except for touch / pen support. OneNote is a killer app for those who use it. I've given up pen and paper notes for many years now, and while one note on the iPad is ok, this is truly amazing in comparison. After messing around with capacitive stylii trying to make the iPad a productive device, I'm really pleased with how this works.

I haven't had a chance to use it much with Sketchbook and Photoshop, but I'm looking forward to it. The keyboard dock is an excellent bit of engineering - the best yet for a dock able device I've used, and I've used a lot. Full thinkpad keyboard, which is great.

Games are a little trickier. I'm considering getting a dual shock or Xbox controller to see if that works, as I'm hoping to clear some steam backlog while I'm on the road, or possibly load up,some emulators.
 
well since no one mentioned it

i dont really play games on my surface since i have a good desktop, but i have dota 2 on my surface pro because i play it sometimes when i'm at friend's house
1600x900 everything at low, runs pretty well
from what i can tell, it is 30+ fps most of the time
 
I have a surface pro, and I will say that using the digitizer stylus makes playing games like Disabled and Torchlight bearable for me. I'll probably end up trying LOL now.

I will say that as soon as a Surface Pro with Haswell/HD5000 comes out it will be VERY delicious. If it has Cintiq/unctuous screen (for tilt sensing = much more accurate) I'll buy it all over again.
 
Yeah, Civ 5 is pretty neat on it. However, I still prefer K&M.

It has pretty much become my go-to machine for LAN Parties. It runs everything I would want it to.
 
Greyface said:
Nice writeup, mhayze. How much is that setup costing you?
Click to expand...

My company paid about $2k for it I believe. Prices should drop once demand stabilizes - Lenovo, much like Dell has frequent direct sales and people with corporate acts get good discounts. In base i5 / 128gb / 4gb guise - comparable to a top spec surface pro + keyboard it would be around 1450. Lenovo is not yet selling it on their website, letting businesses have it first I assume.

Good tip regarding Civ 5 - although I need to get at least one or two games off my backlog before I try a big timesink like civ 5.
 
I'm very excited about a Haswell version of Surface Pro, but it is probably a ways off. The 22nm Haswell is going to deliver 8-10 hrs. battery. Not sure if I can wait but Surface Pro is high on my list for next computer. I love the build quality on the current Surface and the snap on keyboard covers are cool, if they would make a desktop dock accessory I would be in heaven.
 
Based on preliminary information that I've seen about Haswell, it's not a magic bullet. It's built on the same process as Ivy Bridge, and it's main benefits will be:

- Better idle state power management. This means that when your computer is idle, it uses less power
- Better sleep mode power usage. When your laptop / tablet is in sleep mode (the equivalent of shutting the lid or pressing the sleep button) it will be using less power - comparable to hibernate, but with the option of allowing background processes to check things occassionally
- Better GPU, but only when in high power usage modes. On battery, things are only 10-20% better from what I've read

The rest is less impressive. The most promising thing I've read yet is that in Intel's reference platform, overall power usage from all 3rd party devices is way down. This is a much bigger factor overall than people realize. In many cases, its the combination of all the other crap besides the CPU that is eating a lot of power. ARM SOCs are systems on a chip, and the amount of 3rd party silicon on a typical ARM tablet or smartphone is much lower than a typical Ivy Bridge computer.

The new methodology of measuring power draw (average vs peak TDP) for Haswell makes it look on paper like Haswell has a much bigger drop in power usage than it actually does. If you are actually using your laptop or tablet to do something active, it will not be able to double battery life or halve power usage compared to an identical Ivy Bridge platform, by itself. It will be a nice bump though, especially if implemented in conjunction with some of the 3rd party enhancements shown on the intel reference ultrabook design. I hope people are tempering their expectations so they are not disappointed. For a CPU built on the same process (22nm) as Ivy Bridge, it's improvements are impressive.
 
So, how's everyone's Surface Pro doing after the Steam Sale?? :)

So far I got:

FTL
Fez
Dyad
Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit
Super Hexagon

...oh!.. and thanks to Amazon's discount today ($9.99) and a promotional credit I had, I was able to get FIFA 13 for $4.99 !!...

I recently purchased the Steelseries FREE Mobile controller, a very small & lightweight Bluetooth gamepad that has so far worked great for all these games and other emulators I got around... My Surface is seeing lots of gaming these days! and it's more than ready for my summer travel plans
 
I think after a few generations of this ms might have a desirable product. I like the os and the specs are really good. It's kinda thick. Still I have trouble finding tablets desirable in comparison to laptops.
 
Have been playing Antichamber on my Surface Pro. It's awesome. :D
 
I recently bought a USB3 key (this one - does about 180MB/s R&W) and put steam + games on it, so that I don't feel bad about taking up space. Diablo 3 works pretty well - I'm going to look into putting more of my active Steam library on the key as well

I hope after the console release of Diablo 3, they optionally allow users to apply the same control scheme on the PC to make it easier to play with a gamepad - would make tablet use much nicer.

I'm still looking for more suggestions on games that are touch compatible - i.e. no mouse or gamepad required at all.
 
mhayze said:
I recently bought a USB3 key (this one - does about 180MB/s R&W) and put steam + games on it, so that I don't feel bad about taking up space. Diablo 3 works pretty well - I'm going to look into putting more of my active Steam library on the key as well

I hope after the console release of Diablo 3, they optionally allow users to apply the same control scheme on the PC to make it easier to play with a gamepad - would make tablet use much nicer.

I'm still looking for more suggestions on games that are touch compatible - i.e. no mouse or gamepad required at all.
Click to expand...

What are your temps like while gaming? I am thinking of picking one up if they refresh the processor. I want to play CSS or Global Offensive on one so bad haha.
 
So installed 3 games on mine last night. Kotor didn't run at all, Hotline Miami crashes on startup and Doom ran so slow I had to kill the process at the menu screen.

Was reading on Steam forums and it seems an Intel driver update fixes Kotor so hopefully it'll fix some of the other stuff. Not a great track record so far, though.
 
Just got mine. I've been underwhelmed so far. A lot of standard Windows programs don't work well with touch, forcing you to scramble for a mouse and keyboard. Particularly disappointed that Firefox doesn't work as well as it should so I have to resort to the Metro IE, which is really good, except I want all the plugins that I miss from Firefox.

Anyway, games! I've installed Steam and am downloading Civ V at the moment. I hope the touch controls are as good as a lot of people are saying!
 
I tried my Humble library with Alan Wake, Limbo, and others and they all didn't work. I'd avoid this product if you want a real gaming device.
 
Personally, I think modern gaming and Intel HD 4000 (or any Intel integrated graphics chip really) don't go together well. All I'm seeing is games running on low(est) settings and dipping under 30 all the time. Could be great for older, less demanding games though.
 
Tangeroo said:
I have. It plays just fine in 720p. Around 20-30fps (which is fine for a TBS game).
Click to expand...

Hmm that's interesting. I tried the demo on my Samsung Ativ Pro, which as far as I can tell has the exact same specs as the Surface Pro, but thought it ran like a dog. Though the most annoying thing is that it doesn't have touch screen controls. I really wish devs would include them, especially when they have an iPad version of the same game.
 
So the Intel driver package definitely helped.. Hotline Miami runs fine and Kotor actually launches but now I have some annoying scaling issue. Fullscreen games just show the top left portion of the screen zoomed in and cut off the rest - very annoying. Sigh, trying to like this product...
 
I finally got my Surface Pro yesterday, and I'm really liking it so far. I mainly got it to draw with (since I wanted something like a Cintiq, but portable), but I have installed a few games from my Steam library like Shadowrun Returns, and have been enjoying playing games on it as well.

I haven't got to spend more than an hour with it, however. This weekend I'll be able to really mess around with it and see what it can do.
 
Just got a Surface Pro.

Able to get SF4 working pretty well at decent framerates.

Civ V with touch controls I hear is great so I will try that out tonight :)

(Non gaming related.. Chromecast works great!)
 
Will wait for the Surface Pro 2. I was broke during the launch of this so I might as well wait a year or so for the SP2
 
I've been eyeing the Surface Pro for a while, mainly because my notebook is getting pretty long in the tooth and I've been itching to grab a tablet. It's good to know it can handle some less demanding games, so I might pick one up. I'm pretty curious about performance with other app usage, though.

I'm looking at one to enable a little on-the-go programming and design work, on top of some low-power gaming. So, image manipulation programs, visual studio, music creator touch, and connections to VPNs. Reviews have been pretty sketchy on real world load time and performance for the Pro. Any words?
 
Again I have an Ativ Pro, but I think it has the same specs, and photoshop et al. work fine. The intel HD4000 is very capable, it just seems like few games are optimized for it.
 
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