Surface Pro 2 better wireless than original?

[jdthird]

With the way Apple has gone "50 shades of grey" with their new Mavericks OS and the IOS7 update, I'm dumping my Retina MB Pro and my iPhone and going back into windows. I have a Surface Pro I picked up out of curiosity last March since I used to be a Tablet MVP and wanted to see where they went with it, but I used it for little things, not as a main computer.

Now that I've had it with Apple, I'm looking at what I'll get for my real full time computer. I've been bouncing between one of the Lenovo Yoga machines or the Surface Pro 2.

However, I've been doing some testing of my "normal" activities on the Surface Pro that I have, and I was shocked to say the least that copying files to or from my Windows Home server in the basement is just totally unacceptably slow. My Macbook pro gets about 22 to 23MB/s writing something I'm copying from the server, and I can copy TO the server about 35MB/s.

The surface can't break 4MB/s either direction. Since I do a lot of work with my camcorders and MKV files that are upwards to 20GB, there's no way I could use this in real life as a computer.

Is there anyone out here with a Surface Pro 2 that had a Surface Pro 1 with the awful wireless speeds? Does the problem persist in the new model?

Thanks for any help. I'm all set to pull the trigger but I'd never survive if the SP 2 has the same horrible speed.

Thanks for any info!

J

 

[The White Falcon]

Something sounds like it's wrong on your SP if your speeds are that slow.

I know that Microsoft double the bus speed on the Surface 2 for the wireless receivers, but I'm not sure if they did so with the SP2. It's essentially a lot of the same hardware as the MBA (not sure on the wireless card, though).

 

[oion]

Well, some users have wifi problems on Surface Pro and most don't (first gen Pro got consistent 4.5/5 star ratings across multiple consumer review aggregates, so wifi issues don't appear entirely prevalent, but there are definitely multiple threads about it here since this is a "support/enthusiast" forum).

http://www.surfaceforums.net/forum/microsoft-surface-pro-2/6371-wifi-chip-sp2-2.html
http://www.surfaceforums.net/forum/...635-strange-thing-about-surface-pro-wifi.html

I've never gotten into networking tech; much too complicated and goes right over my head. The problem is that for troubleshooting purposes, there are just far too many possible environmental variables involved on top of the usual driver/router culprits.

 

[hypokondriak]

However, I've been doing some testing of my "normal" activities on the Surface Pro that I have, and I was shocked to say the least that copying files to or from my Windows Home server in the basement is just totally unacceptably slow. My Macbook pro gets about 22 to 23MB/s writing something I'm copying from the server, and I can copy TO the server about 35MB/s.

J

What router are you using? 35MB/s write speeds = 280mbps, and based on Smallnetbuilder's 5Ghz uplink tests there isn't a consumer router on the market that has touched 280mbps writes yet.

The R7000, which I own, hit 231 mbps but of course this is via an AC adapter and the Surface is an N. On my Pro 1 and the R7000 I can get around 80mbps average writes and 130mbps average reads to/from my 4 bay NAS. This is via a 5GB test file using the lan speed test utlity. Also of course each person's house / surroundings / infrastructure may result in slight differences than what I've hit.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/router-charts/bar/114-5-ghz-up-c


Also are you on 5Ghz band? My Pro on the 2.4Ghz band netted somewhat similar results to your 4MB (32mbps) results. My actuals above are on 5Ghz.

Sent from the SurfaceForums.net app for Windows 8

 

[hypokondriak]

Also it's probably worth nothing that in the same charts the Asus N66U (N900), which is probably the fastest N series router, hit 119mbps writes and 136mbps reads. So this would probably be the high point one could expect from an N series card, which both the Surface 1 and 2 have. Roughly 14.5 MB/s writes and 17MBis reads...

Sent from the SurfaceForums.net app for Windows 8

 

[jdthird]

Up until Mavericks I couldn't break 15MB/s with my wireless file copies. After Mavericks upgrade, I'm breaking 30 consistently shown both in the Menustats monitoring as well as Forklift's computations during file copies:



Even my Windows 8 VM in Parallels gets in the 20's.

I haven't seen any reason why suddenly OS X 10.9 more than doubles my wireless speed with my 5GHz Airport Extreme, and I'm really going to miss that when I change back to Windows, but the exact same files copied onto my Surface Pro 1st generation can't break 5MB/s on the same network...

I was just hoping after reading so many posts in so many forums about people with speed issues on the Surface Pro last spring, that maybe someone had already upgraded and could verify if they saw any improvement.

I've already disabled the auto tuning, killed IPv6, and bluetooth is also disabled. What I haven't tried yet was changing from WPA2 to another encryption method...

Anyway, thanks for any information if anyone has a Surface Pro 2 and can post what kind of speeds they get copying over 802.11n to a windows share.

John

 

[BillJ]

FWIW, my SP2 gets download and upload speeds about 60-80% faster on my home WiFi than my SP1 did. In the past week I have seen only one instance of WiFi becoming "limited" after sleep, and that resolved after disconnecting and reconnecting to the network. I am happy to be getting 23-24 Mb/sec download now. The SP1 usually maxed out around 15 Mb/s or so.

 

[hypokondriak]

Hey JD I'm sorry I provided you bad advice. Now I know what's going on - OSX has had a bug for awhile with AC wireless that was corrected in Mavericks. I'm pretty sure your Macbook has a 2x2 AC adapter and that's why you're seeing the speed increase.

As for the Surface, here is what comes to mind:

1. Surface Pro 1 and 2 do not have an AC adapter, and not including it on the 2 was a bit disappointing to me. However all my speed tests above were done after installing the latest drivers. You may want to try that:

http://drivers.softpedia.com/get/NE...iver-146924040136-for-Windows-81-64-bit.shtml

2. If you go with a dock or a USB 3.0 gigabit ethernet adapter you could also consider setting up an AC router in bridge mode down in the basement. At this point your data would go something like Surface Pro -> Gigabite Ethernet -> AC Router #2 ->AC Router #1 -> Server Hard drive. This would essentially get you AC speeds out of your Surface 2. However, it's and added expense but just wanted to float that option out there. If you have multiple machines down in the basement a side benefit is they might all see some performance increases hard wired into router #2.

Hope this helps.

Sent from the SurfaceForums.net app for Windows 8

 

[jdthird]

Hey JD I'm sorry I provided you bad advice. Now I know what's going on - OSX has had a bug for awhile with AC wireless that was corrected in Mavericks. I'm pretty sure your Macbook has a 2x2 AC adapter and that's why you're seeing the speed increase.

As for the Surface, here is what comes to mind:

1. Surface Pro 1 and 2 do not have an AC adapter, and not including it on the 2 was a bit disappointing to me. However all my speed tests above were done after installing the latest drivers. You may want to try that:

Download Marvell AVASTAR 350N Wireless Network Controller Driver 14.69.24040.136 for Windows 8 64 bit

2. If you go with a dock or a USB 3.0 gigabit ethernet adapter you could also consider setting up an AC router in bridge mode down in the basement. At this point your data would go something like Surface Pro -> Gigabite Ethernet -> AC Router #2 ->AC Router #1 -> Server Hard drive. This would essentially get you AC speeds out of your Surface 2. However, it's and added expense but just wanted to float that option out there. If you have multiple machines down in the basement a side benefit is they might all see some performance increases hard wired into router #2.

Hope this helps.

Sent from the SurfaceForums.net app for Windows 8

Not AC, just the 5GHz N that was in the 2012 Retina Macbook Pro model. If I get the surface I'd have the dock at work, but at home where I keep everything on a side table near my couch, I don't have any wall space available to run a Cat-6 to (great room, so all walls are quite a distance away). So at home I'd be limited to only wireless, which is why the wireless speed ends up being such a major factor for my use.

I'm a Best Buy Elite Plus member, so worst case scenario is I get one, try it, and it it won't even match what my Macbook Pro did prior to Mavericks, I can return it and wait for a Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro or a Thinkpad Yoga to become available (while I don't use a stylus much, I have grown used to it since my tablet MVP days with XP and Vista and when you need one, you really NEED one, and a finger just won't do, and that's the big downside for me for the Yoga 2 Pro, the lack of a stylus). But the bonus on the Yoga 2 Pro is that I can replace the wireless with a 5GHz one, something I can't do with the Surface Pro 2.

Decisions, decisions... I guess it's probably a good thing that there's not one company out there making the "perfect" machine since then there'd be no competition at all...

Thanks for the info

John

 

[Telstar1948]

Could you use an AC outlet as a hard-wired connection to your router? You know, the adapters that plug into a plug where your router is and the other one goes in the plug nearest your SP?