SP4 - The missing pieces
- Thread starter GreyFox7
- Start date
When I'm working outdoors at a job site with the stylus or touch, I need to be able to hold the thing like a book. The SP3 is significantly less readable than my iPad outdoors, and the iPad is usable in either orientation.
albertan_bear
Member
GPS, GSM/LTE, 2x USB-C (instead of USB3, or 1x USB-C + 1x USB3)
Bluetooth 4.2 - enhanced security, lower power usage, greater speed packet capacity increasing by 10 times, and overall speed increasing by 2.5 times over previous implementations.
Mini DisplayPort 1.3 - increases overall transmission bandwidth to 32.4 Gbit/s. This bandwidth allows for 5K displays (5120×2880 px) in RGB mode, and UHD 8K television displays at 7680×4320 (16:9, 33.18 megapixels) using 4:2:0 subsampling at 60 Hz. The bandwidth also allows for two UHD (3840×2160 px) computer monitors at 60 Hz in 24-bit RGB mode using Coordinated Video Timing, a 4K stereo 3D display, or a combination of 4K display and USB 3.0 as allowed by DockPort. Display Stream Compression.
Rear RealSense 3D Camera with image scanning and measurement software + RealSense Snapshot.
Mini DisplayPort 1.3 - increases overall transmission bandwidth to 32.4 Gbit/s. This bandwidth allows for 5K displays (5120×2880 px) in RGB mode, and UHD 8K television displays at 7680×4320 (16:9, 33.18 megapixels) using 4:2:0 subsampling at 60 Hz. The bandwidth also allows for two UHD (3840×2160 px) computer monitors at 60 Hz in 24-bit RGB mode using Coordinated Video Timing, a 4K stereo 3D display, or a combination of 4K display and USB 3.0 as allowed by DockPort. Display Stream Compression.
Rear RealSense 3D Camera with image scanning and measurement software + RealSense Snapshot.
Athol Hill
Member
Tend to agree. With all the stuff happening on the design, people miss the underlying items like this that are fairly major and will have a big impact on real world performance. The 2015 Macbook Pro 15 has 4 channels with PCI 3.0 and it gets realworld (as opposed to theoretical maxes) benchmarks 1.4GB/s vs 600MB/s for the PCI 2.0 and I only get about 400MB/s on my Surface Pro 3 so it is a major deal, particularly when doing things like opening applications (think large applications, etc)
This is a nice comparison from Anandtech on how big it is.
In short: SATA III provides 6Gbps of theoretical bandwidth, or about 600MB per second once you take overhead into account. Two PCI Express 2.0 lanes provide about 1GB per second. Four PCI Express 2.0 lanes provide 2GB per second. And four PCI Express 3.0 lanes provide around 4GB per second (PCIe 3.0 has less overhead than older versions). Those theoretical increases don’t necessarily mirror the numbers you’ll see in the real world, but the Pro is decidedly faster than even the already-quick 13-inch Broadwell laptops.
You can see the comparisons in read and write speed between SATA2, SATA3, PCI 2.0 and PCI 3.0 here. While its specific to the Macbook Pro, Apple were early adopters of PCI for SSD so it gives you real world comparisons which won't be available on the Surface Pro 4 yet.
http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/new-chart-fix.001-980x720.png
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For me the most glaring omission is a USB-C port with USB 3.1 support. The USB-C port was something that I had taken for granted will be on the SP4. I am surprised that the media has not made a fuss about this omission. I really can't think of any reason for this omission. The lack of the LTE option too is a bit surprising for what is a mobile device. I know at least a few people who would buy one in a jiffy, if only SP4 had LTE.
