Pro 4 vs. Surface Book vs. iPad Pro...

[Foreverseeking]

I did catch the lol bit, and I think Panos did a great job, he really sold it and has a edgy way about him that really works. Still, whether the gpu is intended for games or software doesn't change the fact, that from the information gathered it's still not great, I'm not going to be developing my next unity game on here at least.

Still I love windows, and really love the new surface pro line (they have really finally cracked it since no.3) and love their vision of a future where all of our settings and apps come with us to new devices in a cohesive manner. I hope the book does well, to help MS on their way, I just can't see how it will. The surface pro 4 will still be the big hit seller, and I would bet a lot of money on that.

And to keep this on thread, vs IpadPro? Ipad is ios, it's a completely different class of product imo, and for productivity I would say anyone buying an Ipad over a surface pro is mad. For media consumption and ease of use, Ipad has it's plus points and I would recommend it over anything MS makes for my parents or older folk just looking to read online news and check a few emails. Everyone else, get the Surface Pro.

 

[GreyFox7]

from the information gathered it's still not great,

Great is a relative thing... it might be great compared to not having a discrete GPU.
The GPU is not my area of expertise however, if you think about heat, one immediate advantage is more thermal headroom. i.e with an i5/i7 integrated SoC the CPU and GPU are contending with each other in the same space with a limited thermal envelope, like having two heaters in a small room with one thermostat set to 100 degrees. Now we have just freed up the GPU thermal load and relocated it to a completely separate space so we can run the CPU harder and the GPU harder as well. To me that's a win win.

If you look at thermal imaging of a SP3 that heat is very localized right around the SoC and it defines the performance limit. Assuming the GPU is only equal to the integrated GPU, with the separation you will for the first time be able to realize a performance level in the Surface never before seen regardless of how it compares to anything else. Maybe there would be a slight loss due to communicating over a PCI bus vs locally within the SoC but there's no reason I can think of that this discrete GPU would be a "lowly" equal of the integrated GPU.

 

[macmee]

IF I upgrade I guess I'll get Sp4 i7, but I only want it if it fixes the cooling problems

surface book is unattractive to me if it has no kickstand and if its bigger or whatever. I want something that's a tablet first.

 

[callihan_44]

It amazes me when I go to any retail store how poorly the stock is organized and how many things don't work properly. And people in that department are usually just standing around picking their nose.

this is very true, I have never been in a Microsoft store so I depend on best buy and they seem to have revamped the Microsoft kiosk but most of the time the workers are still somewhat clueless.