Surface book will have 18W Gpu

[dodgeis4me]

Chat Transcript

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James G: Thanks for contacting Microsoft Store chat, my name is James G! How can I help you today?

You: what gpu is in the surface book?

James G: Hey!!! I'd be happy to assist you with the Surface Book today!

James G: That's a great question!

James G: As of right now the only information we have received on the Surface Book's GPU is this: a new unreleased NVIDIA GeForce graphics (GPU)

You: oh ok,,, thanks

James G: i5: Intel HD graphics (non-GPU) • i5/i7: NVIDIA GeForce graphics (GPU) The GPU in the Performance Base is · 18W optimized Nvidia® GeForce® with new Maxwell architecture · High performance GPU video memory – 1GB GDDR5 40 GBytes/sec · GDDR bus width – 64 bits · GPU speed – 993 MHz

You: ok thanks

James G: You're very welcome !

James G: Can we work on anything else for you this evening

 

[dodgeis4me]

I just checked with online chat again and they had the same info.... so they must be looking at the same specks

 

[aork]

That's pretty disappointing. Looks like it'll be about half as powerful as a GTX 950M with half the TDP and half the bandwidth.

 

[GreyFox7]

That's 18 more watts of power than any device without a discreet GPU (If it's accurate).
Disappointing? yeah it should have a liquid nitrogen pump in there so you can get a full 100W 200W of heat dissipation.

 

[dodgeis4me]

That's 18 more watts of power than any device without a discreet GPU (If it's accurate).
Disappointing? yeah it should have a liquid nitrogen pump in there so you can get a full 100W 200W of heat dissipation.

That is a good way to look at it....i just hope it is much better than the i7 iris graphics

 

[leeshor]

That's why I still sell desktops.

 

[kc912]

I think people may be comparing it to a gaming laptop of a similar price which is a big mistake. It's well behind in terms of performance but that's not what you pay for with the Surface Book. You're paying for the ingenuity and versatility of the device.

 

[GreyFox7]

That is a good way to look at it....i just hope it is much better than the i7 iris graphics

That i7 chip is 15W shared between the CPU & GPU.
Maybe the GPU gets 12 & CPU 3 or 10:5 vs 18 for the GPU and up to 15 for the CPU.
If it doesn't outperform they used the wrong GPU to burn 18W with.

Then maybe they use both at the same time in an implementation of Dynamic Load Balancing of Heterogeneous GPUs.

 

[GreyFox7]

Here's a single data point for consideration.
Looking at Compubench Ocean Surface Simulation comparing the Iris 540 to an Nvidia GPU
CompuBench - performance benchmark for various compute APIs (OpenCL, RenderScript)

Intel i7-6650u iris 540 scores 320 frames per second (median)
Intel generic iris 540 scores 184 fps that's a big range depending on implementation.
Likewise the NVIDIA GPUs vary all over the place depending on implementation.
NVIDIA GTX 960M . . scores 800 fps
Couldn't find a 950M entry. but it appears a common implementation of this runs 50 watts.
Lets estimate 950M at 600 fps
NVIDIA GTX 945M scores 380 fps

It's gong to be real interesting to see what level of performance they can squeeze out of it and I wouldn't draw a conclusion from any of this.

As stated above the i7 CPU has 15W to share with it's GPU which will be the limiting factor for the combined performance vs whatever they configured for the dedicated GPU. Given some of the other data leaking out seems to be wildly inaccurate I will wait until Anandtech and other get a crack at deciphering what's real.

 

[nogridbag]

There's some preliminary benchmarks of the Surface Book on reddit (using Unity's webgl benchmark):

My MS store has a DGPU surface book. What tests can I run? • /r/Surface

 

[mva5580]

I don't know man.....my initial plans were to get the $1,900 model with the GPU but the more I see on it, the less of a point I see to it.

My plans with it were solely for getting better performance out of games like Civilization, Crusader Kings, Cities Skylines, stuff like that, but from the things that are being posted I'm not convinced it will make much of a difference. It almost seems like the GPU in the Surface Book is going to be really close to the equivalent of the i7 Iris graphics. I may just end up going Surface Pro instead; better specs for cheaper.

 

[nogridbag]

I was thinking the same thing. SB fits my needs better, but I get more value for my money with the SP4. Then again, the larger SB display is probably most beneficial to me. Argh! Microsoft didn't make it easy on us.