Surface 3 announced, 499$ USD base price, features atom X7 and full windows 8.1 (not RT!)

[Zerzevoulis]

Yep keyboard and pen sold separately.

[Zerzevoulis]

I do not think its really worth it then

[GoodBytes]

Costco has a bundle deal. You can pre-order the Surface 3 for 100$ more than normal, but you have the pen (silver color), and keyboard (black) included. So that is 80$ savings.

http://www.costco.com/CatalogSearch?storeId=10301&catalogId=10701&langId=-1&refine=&keyword=surface%203

It must be noted you save a bit more if you buy it as a student, as it is 10% off everything.

[Opcode]

He've got information! Earlier today there was a AMA by teh Surface team on Reddit and here is are interesting question/answers.

 

Q: How is the eMMC performance in comparison to the SP3 SSD?

A: S3 eMMC is about 50% of SP3 SSD. If your workload involves heavy file transfers (like video editing) recommendation is SP3.

You can go here to view it all: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/31c0tu/we_are_panos_panay_and_the_surface_team_at/

Seems about right as the Surface 3 is limited to eMMC 4.51 that has a throughput of 1.6 Gbps (200 MB/s). Which isn't bad at all coupled with next to no seek time (definitely faster than any 5400 RPM HDD). Hopefully manufactures of cheaper end tablets take the initiative to move to fulfilling the 4.51 eMMC specification. The one's I'm interested in currently top out at like 50 MB/s which is just ridiculous.

[LAwLz]

Seems about right as the Surface 3 is limited to eMMC 4.51 that has a throughput of 1.6 Gbps (200 MB/s). Which isn't bad at all coupled with next to no seek time (definitely faster than any 5400 RPM HDD). Hopefully manufactures of cheaper end tablets take the initiative to move to fulfilling the 4.51 eMMC specification. The one's I'm interested in currently top out at like 50 MB/s which is just ridiculous.

Something to keep in mind is that 1.6Gbps is just the maximum bandwidth, not what you will actually get on an eMMC 4.51 chip. It's just like with 6Gbps SSDs. Not all of them saturates the connection.

[Opcode]

Something to keep in mind is that 1.6Gbps is just the maximum bandwidth, not what you will actually get on an eMMC 4.51 chip. It's just like with 6Gbps SSDs. Not all of them saturates the connection.

It's the bandwidth of the interface indeed. Although without it you're limited to say 104 MB/s with eMMC 4.41 so there's no hopes of seeing anything faster than double digit numbers. At least now we should see triple digit numbers out of Cherry Trail based products. Hitting the zone where eMMC is faster than mechanical hard drives.