Bought Surface Pro 3 for gaming...

[Bh7812]

Hey everyone,

This list will be a lot shorter than my first post on the SP3 General board!

I'm picking up an i5 256 from Best Buy later today. I bought it so I could play some of the PC games that aren't on consoles. Reading up on it it seems the SP 3 can run almost any game I throw at it reliably, with a few special exceptions. Based on the model I'm getting, can I play the following games comfortably on it...

Final Fantasy 8 and 3 PC? Final Fantasy 14?
Alan Wake?
RPGs like Skyrim, the new Divinity, Baldurs Gate games...I'm hearing Diablo 3 will work. All the big western RPGs?
Witcher 1 and 2-reallyyyy wanting to play these!!
Much older games that are on GOG?
Legend of Heroes Trails In The Sky trilogy? Played Trails 1 on PSP and intend to do Second Chapter on Vita when it's released but should it go PC only I want to be covered.
What about the You Don't Know Jack games? I bought them all on Humble Bundle a while back..run great on my PC. I'm guessing no because of Windows 8 if they're compatible though I'll buy a keyboard ASAP!

I also want to do emulation-I know the ins and outs and not dumb enough to discuss specifics on forums I just want to strictly know what systems my i5 256 should be able to emulate comfortably.

Will the 256 be plenty enough or should I look at an i7 later today? Tell me the former cause I don't need a reason to spend any more money! Haha

 

[jollywombat]

Not entirely sure why you would purchase the surface for gaming specifically, can get a FAR better system designed around that for cheaper than the price of the SP3.

That being said, yes, you can do some gaming on the SP, but have to realize its not designed with that in mind, so will have to use very low graphical settings and resolutions to maintain a playable framerate, especially with the newest games which do not always play nice with the intel GPU.

I would suggest the i7 version if you are going to want gaming, faster CPU, and it will have the intel 5000 GPU in it for a little extra graphics power vs the 4400. Costs more, but if you want semi-reasonable frame rates on new games, that would be your best option aside from getting an actual laptop that was designed with gaming in mind for 5x better gaming performance.

 

[Bh7812]

Well, I'll take a closer look at the i7 then. But, it sounds like from what people are saying between my two threads is if I want gaming I really should buy an actual laptop that will be able to run what I want to play easily. I'll do some looking around and research, since this forum is for Surface talk I was really hoping it would be a good machine for that but oh well.

 

[Kif]

It's an awesome machine but not for gaming. It could be an awesome gaming machine like an iPad but developers would need to optimize games for it and that's just not going to happen at this point. Sorry.

 

[GreyFox7]

It's an awesome machine but not for gaming. It could be an awesome gaming machine like an iPad but developers would need to optimize games for it and that's just not going to happen at this point. Sorry.

Compared to iPad Air performance even throttled the i5 will score significantly better. around 25000 vs 15000 on 3DMark. if you don't want the variance use a utility throttle back to start with.

 

[Kif]

Compared to iPad Air performance even throttled the i5 will score significantly better. around 25000 vs 15000 on 3DMark. if you don't want the variance use a utility throttle back to start with.

It's not doubt the SP3 is a better performer through and through. However since Apple is closed ecosystem everything is optimized to run on iPad's and iPhones. It's not likely any games will be optimized to run on SP3 so I think gaming would be a hit or miss experience. More a miss experience for any serious gamers.

 

[GreyFox7]

It's not doubt the SP3 is a better performer through and through. However since Apple is closed ecosystem everything is optimized to run on iPad's and iPhones. It's not likely any games will be optimized to run on SP3 so I think gaming would be a hit or miss experience. More a miss experience for any serious gamers.

Totally agree with that.

 

[kundas1]

AAACTUALLY!! Modern Combat 5 Blackout is optimized for the Surface 3 I been playing it for the last 2 weeks and it is very fun! nothing like COD and battlefield but still very enjoyable! there is also asphalt series and I am positive there will be many more games optimized for the SP3 in the near future!

 

[hertsjoatmon]

Witcher 1 and 2-reallyyyy wanting to play these!!
Much older games that are on GOG?

I also want to do emulation-I know the ins and outs and not dumb enough to discuss specifics on forums I just want to strictly know what systems my i5 256 should be able to emulate comfortably.

Will the 256 be plenty enough or should I look at an i7 later today? Tell me the former cause I don't need a reason to spend any more money! Haha

I run Witcher 1 enhanced edition on my SP2 (8gb ram) with no issues at 1366 x 768. The machine runs hot though. Your biggest issue with gaming will not be the machines peek performance but the fact that it throttles the CPU ones the temperature has hit threshold.

To counter this I've undervolted my processor as well as limited the voltage that can be used in turbo boost. My peek performance is reduce, but as I almost never reach 80deg now I have a constant frame rate instead of one that will go from high to low as the machine switched from turbo boost to throttled.

Older games wont have any issues with the hardware bu you need to know if they have been patched to run on windows 8 as some old games will no longer be supported.

You should have no issues with emulation depending on what your trying to emulate. I had Android running stable with reasonable performance, but soon realised there werent many apps that I wanted to play that were currently working with the emulator.

I still use my DS for older ninendo emulation and my PSP for PSX emulation but I am tempted to switch back to PC emulation with my surface and an XBOX controller, particularly for the PSP as the battery life is poor on that machine. I was also running iGBA on my iphone but my Moga controller broke far too easily so I've given up on emulation on IOS.

Note: I do not promote pirating. As a 30 year old I have 100s of old games in my loft that I still love to play but do not have the space to keep all of my old machines plugged in, especially the ones that require your digital TV to be analogue tuned as it is poor at best in getting a good picture.