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[Cute Dragon Here]

I was seeing it when applying Windows updates, which, admittedly, are not exactly a low CPU load kind of job.

Actually, some Windows updates involve a lot of processing time in the CPU. (I tend to open up Task Manager for some reason, and I've noticed that there's the occasional Windows update where the computer spends most of the time at high CPU usages with Windows module installers and/or related components - with minimal disk or Internet activity.)

 

[enMTW]

Actually, some Windows updates involve a lot of processing time in the CPU. (I tend to open up Task Manager for some reason, and I've noticed that there's the occasional Windows update where the computer spends most of the time at high CPU usages with Windows module installers and/or related components - with minimal disk or Internet activity.)

Oh, I know. That's what I was saying. Windows Updates are the most intensive things many PCs ever do.

 

[f0lken]

Seems more impressive as a headline than in reality. What's the profit like? We know the sales volume is low. Have they made back what they wrote off yet?

No doubt it could be a profitable little lifestyle business, but it's no Goliath.

MS keep $$$ losing bussiness just to have a foot on there, so if the Surface is profitable as it is already is, as little as that is, they will keep making them. But that is a moot point for this thread, this is not a sales thread and we are not MS investors (at least I am not).

At the end of the day an actual available Surface Pro today is still a windows machine with 4GB of ram and a core i processor, if MS suddenly stop producing them tomorrow it wouldn matter for the usage OP has in mind for it, it can still play tons of steam indies, is a perfect sized steam in home streaming machine, and it can handle a lot of demanding games by tunning them down on effects which OP already is aware of

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

Oh, I know. That's what I was saying. Windows Updates are the most intensive things many PCs ever do.

Mmm hmm.

I think it's probably best to describe the mobile CPUs as something intended to process things in high-speed bursts.

Out of curiosity, what would you consider throttling, the CPU not being able to maintain its base speed, or the CPU not being able to maintain the maximum speed for the current load? Personally, I would subscribe with the "base speed" level and would only consider that something has throttled if it ends up getting under-clocked relative to the base speed under load.

The quad-core Haswell i7 mobile processor in my laptop has no problems holding the base speed even at 100% CPU load (I once did some POV-Ray stuff in the past, and it now has full multithreading support. The kind of load that POV-Ray induces makes the CPU rather unlikely to maintain a speed that is higher than just slightly above the base clock on my laptop configuration. Said laptop has a single-fan setup.)

 

[enMTW]

Out of curiosity, what would you consider throttling, the CPU not being able to maintain its base speed, or the CPU not being able to maintain the maximum speed for the current load? Personally, I would subscribe with the "base speed" level and would only consider that something has throttled if it ends up getting under-clocked relative to the base speed under load.

The quad-core Haswell i7 mobile processor in my laptop has no problems holding the base speed even at 100% CPU load (I once did some POV-Ray stuff in the past, and it now has full multithreading support. The kind of load that POV-Ray induces makes the CPU rather unlikely to maintain a speed that is higher than just slightly above the base clock on my laptop configuration. Said laptop has a single-fan setup.)

I would agree with you there. The base speed.

Some laptops are better than others about throttling. The SP3 is very bad. Most laptops with DGPUs in a 'thin-and-light' form factor suffer from bad throttling, for reasons that are obvious (lower thermal headroom)

At the end of the day an actual available Surface Pro today is still a windows machine with 4GB of ram and a core i processorf

oh god no please don't get 4gb of ram please please Windows does not like being ram constrained very much at all

 

[ElNino]

oh god no please don't get 4gb of ram please please Windows does not like being ram constrained very much at all

My SP1 with 4GB of RAM and 128GB SSD are still running fine as my primary machine at home. In fact, I can't remember the last time I powered on my desktop PC as I prefer the SP.

 

[enMTW]

My SP1 with 4GB of RAM and 128GB SSD are still running fine as my primary machine at home. In fact, I can't remember the last time I powered on my desktop PC as I prefer the SP.

Wow. How many browser tabs do you generally run?

 

[ElNino]

Wow. How many browser tabs do you generally run?

I'd say around 4-10 at any given time with either IE or Chrome.

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

oh god no please don't get 4gb of ram please please Windows does not like being ram constrained very much at all

One probably shouldn't worry about RAM contention until there is visible paging.

Also, Windows is actually pretty good at managing memory use and keeping it low on low-memory systems these days. A system with less memory, but otherwise having the exact same configuration will probably have Windows and its own components taking less and less physical memory, for obvious reasons.

Heck, I'm probably going to say that Windows is tolerable on 1 GB systems, and mostly flies on 2. 4 or more is pretty much icing on the cake for most daily work and up to last-gen games. (Current-gen games have a RAM problem, though.)

 

[ElNino]

One probably shouldn't worry about RAM contention until there is visible paging.

Also, Windows is actually pretty good at managing memory use and keeping it low on low-memory systems these days. A system with less memory, but otherwise having the exact same configuration will probably have Windows and its own components taking less and less physical memory, for obvious reasons.

Heck, I'm probably going to say that Windows is tolerable on 1 GB systems, and mostly flies on 2. 4 or more is pretty much icing on the cake for most daily work and up to last-gen games. (Current-gen games have a RAM problem, though.)

I don't know if I would go that far, but I guess it depends on your usage. My work laptop has 3GB of RAM, and I run into memory issues pretty often when I'm working with large Oracle databases (along with everything else). Granted, that isn't an issue when I'm not doing work stuff but I would say that 4GB is a pretty solid target for any current computer.

 

[enMTW]

I'd say around 4-10 at any given time with either IE or Chrome.

Interesting, thanks.

One probably shouldn't worry about RAM contention until there is visible paging.

Also, Windows is actually pretty good at managing memory use and keeping it low on low-memory systems these days. A system with less memory, but otherwise having the exact same configuration will probably have Windows and its own components taking less and less physical memory, for obvious reasons.

Heck, I'm probably going to say that Windows is tolerable on 1 GB systems, and mostly flies on 2. 4 or more is pretty much icing on the cake for most daily work and up to last-gen games. (Current-gen games have a RAM problem, though.)

I was mostly saying 'no god' as it is non-upgradable. 4 is a problem for my use, but I generally run a few apps + around 15 tabs at all times [When I'm in Windows anyway. I mostly use my PC as a gaming machine]. More RAM is not very expensive at all (how much is another 4GB DIMM, $50?) and gives you a nice boost.

1 or 2 sounds great for XP but i couldn't imagine running 8/10 on it. :|

 

[kubus]

My SP1 with 4GB of RAM and 128GB SSD are still running fine as my primary machine at home. In fact, I can't remember the last time I powered on my desktop PC as I prefer the SP.

I could've written this post. Exactly the same here.

Haven't seen it slow down yet, though I use it primarily for browsing and watching video. Bought the Surface Pro 3 i5 today because I'm so satisfied with the SP1.

 

[bomblord1]

I could've written this post. Exactly the same here.

Haven't seen it slow down yet, though I use it primarily for browsing and watching video. Bought the Surface Pro 3 i5 today because I'm so satisfied with the SP1.

Any impressions?

 

[SerTapTap]

I could've written this post. Exactly the same here.

Haven't seen it slow down yet, though I use it primarily for browsing and watching video. Bought the Surface Pro 3 i5 today because I'm so satisfied with the SP1.

I wouldn't go that far (3 monitor desktop gaming PC with mechanical keyboard is a bit too good to ignore), but my Surface Pro 3 has insured I'll never buy another laptop or iOS or Android tablet ever again. Too good. Surprised how well the typecover works, and how "lapabble" it is with the stand/type cover magnet.

 

[megatronium]

Here is my post from this thread about Surface Pro 3: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=149378543&highlight=#post149378543


So much misinformation in this thread it's ridiculous. I own the i7 so I'll attempt to enlighten.

1. The Surface Pro 3 is not just a tablet.
2. The Surface Pro 3 that I have is not a step back from the Surface Pro 2.
3. The "throttling" issue occurs in any device with as thin a form-factor, including Surface Pro 2 and the new ultrabooks released such as the Yoga 2 (which the i7 SP3 outperforms despite the addition of the Broadwell chip)\
4. CPU intensive tasks (including games) will run the surface pro 3 "hot" which will kick the fan up. It never gets to the point that you can't hold it or "fry an egg" on it.
5. For sustained CPU usage, the SP2 will run a bit better than its SP3 equivalent.


I'm a multimedia artist running Adobe CS 2014 suite with emphasis on Premiere, AfterFX, Photoshop, Illustrator, Maya 2014, and zBrush. My SP3 handles all of these like a champ.

For more info on Surface Pro 3 go to Surface Forums.net

 

[kubus]

Any impressions?

I only ordered it today and delivery takes 2-4 days so unfortunately I can't share anything yet! Boyfriend upgraded from SP2 to SP3 about three weeks ago so I've used it a bit already, which is why I went and upgraded as well. New screen, pen, kickstand and better typecover are so good. It's hard to go back to my SP1 after borrowing his SP3 for a while.

I wouldn't go that far (3 monitor desktop gaming PC with mechanical keyboard is a bit too good to ignore), but my Surface Pro 3 has insured I'll never buy another laptop or iOS or Android tablet ever again. Too good. Surprised how well the typecover works, and how "lapabble" it is with the stand/type cover magnet.

Yeah didn't mean to imply that my Surface replaced my desktop pc, if I want to do any heavy gaming I'll still go back to that (don't really have a choice anyway) but I was really surprised how much I liked the Surface Pro. I can do everything with it, take it anywhere I want and it's comfortable to use. I actually sold my 15" Macbook Pro i7 yesterday, to fund the SP3 I've got coming this way now .

 

[Grief.exe]

Surface Pro 4 better be 16:9.

 

[megatronium]

Surface Pro 4 better be 16:9.

It won't be. 16:9 is only good for movies/games. The current form factor will continue forward as it's more akin to a notepad - that's the reason they made the switch.

 

[kazinova]

Are the SP 2 and 3 getting windows 10 support?

I'm curious how you think they possibly couldn't, seeing as Windows 10 is a free upgrade for everyone on Windows 7 and 8...

 

[Arttemis]

Another Surface Pro 1 owner here, and I absolutely love the device. This thing has nearly replaced pen/paper during lectures for taking notes due with the stylus and MS OneNote. It runs SolidWorks better than many of my classmates' computers.

And anything that's not too demanding, it plays just fine. My roommate plays LoL constantly on his SP2.

I'm planning on upgrading to a SP4 when it's discounted/clearance when the SP5 releases.

 

[StudioTan]

Surface Pro 4 better be 16:9.

No, I disagree. The SP3 aspect ratio is much better for a tablet. It allows both a bigger screen and more comfortable reading in portrait mode.

The only issue is some games not liking the resolution.

 

[bomblord1]

Another Surface Pro 1 owner here, and I absolutely love the device. This thing has nearly replaced pen/paper during lectures for taking notes due with the stylus and MS OneNote. It runs SolidWorks better than many of my classmates' computers.

And anything that's not too demanding, it plays just fine. My roommate plays LoL constantly on his SP2.

I'm planning on upgrading to a SP4 when it's discounted/clearance when the SP5 releases.

Sounds like you'll be waiting awhile lol

 

[xemumanic]

Surface Pro 4 better be 16:9.

I'm hoping for a Surface 4 Mini. Maybe with a Core M or i3. I want something a step up from my Dell Venue 8 Pro.