Microsoft Surface Book announced at Microsoft 2015 Hardware Event - NVIDIA GPU, Lastest Intel Chips

[hpe]

true, but would you really want something like this for developing cuda applications?

also true. And my reply would be twofold.

As a main development tool? No.

As a secondary too while on the go, like on the train or so? Absolutely

On a side-note, it might be good to develop on something that is not the strongest machine out there as that might lure you into believing that the performance of your application is better than you might think. Say you develop with an 8-core machine with Titan-X, you're happy with the performance. Your customer with a 4-core and a 960X, might be less than happy.

[Ex14]

abit more info about the gpu

Thurrot's a great microsoft source, but he's not too good with hardware so....take it with a grain of salt 

For those that are curious about what this extra GPU adds to the setup, Microsoft tells me that it is a custom NVIDIA GPU designed specifically for Surface Book and is based on the Maxwell architecture. The chip has 1GB GDDR5 memory which should be enough for most activities but for those looking to do serious gaming on this machine, this chip may not offer everything you need. 

https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/microsoft-surface/6742/microsofts-surface-book-has-a-custom-nvidia-gpu

 

looks like its really a 1GB card
 

According to a report by Microsoft News, the Surface Book includes a Maxwell architecture-powered GeForce GPU with 1GB of video RAM. The GPU should be somewhat similar in performance compared to the Nvidia GeForce 950M.

http://www.winbeta.org/news/surface-book-includes-optional-nvidia-maxwell-geforce-gpu

[d3sl91]

Well, whatever the chip is, you will need to lower the screen resolution to get any sort of gaming performance. 

[AlTech]

Why wouldn't it run VS? It is a full PC so of course you can

Microsoft advertises the surface pro 4 core i7 version for VS.

 

I know it can technically run it but it'll probably lag.'

 

This isn't targeted at you.

Oh and thanks mod for the warning post really appreciate it! I wanted to give LTT forums a chance but it appears the internet censors anything it doesn't like. That's what you do if you want to make your userbase disappear.

[GoodBytes]

Microsoft advertises the surface pro 4 core i7 version for VS.

 

I know it can technically run it but it'll probably lag.'\

My Surface Pro 2 Core i5 4300U run VS above and beyond with a fairly large solution with projects fill top to bottom of a 1080p the screen.

Compiling speed is fine considering the ultarbook form factor. Sure it can always be faster, but it's not awful by any stretch.

[Commander Llama]

My Surface Pro 2 Core i5 4300U run VS above and beyond with a fairly large solution with projects fill top to bottom of a 1080p the screen.

Compiling speed is fine considering the ultarbook form factor. Sure it can always be faster, but it's not awful by any stretch.

 

I pre-ordered my Type Cover today but I'm still torn between i5/8gb/256 and i7/8gb/256. May just need to see some reviews and benchmarks. I'll be running some IDEs and also VMing on Linux. Thankfully the i5 has all the virtualization of the i7, so it comes down to is the performance boost worth $300? Excited to find out!

[GoodBytes]

I pre-ordered my Type Cover today but I'm still torn between i5/8gb/256 and i7/8gb/256. May just need to see some reviews and benchmarks. I'll be running some IDEs and also VMing on Linux. Thankfully the i5 has all the virtualization of the i7, so it comes down to is the performance boost worth $300? Excited to find out!

Well the i7 has better Intel GPU. Another thing to see is throttling level. So we have to see how well is manages heat. If you only need burst of performance, then it should be non issue. If you need longer or more often, it could be an issue like the SP3, where many noticed (although that looked like solved with the much improved heatsink).

[Dabombinable]

After having a bit of a think about it, I could probably recommend either the Surface Pro 4 or the Surface Book to my Mum as an upgrade from her Asus U38N and her Transformer Prime (Tegra 3, 1GB RAM, 64GB storage).

[Commander Llama]

Well the i7 has better Intel GPU. Another thing to see is throttling level. So we have to see how well is manages heat. If you only need burst of performance, then it should be non issue. If you need longer or more often, it could be an issue like the SP3, where many noticed (although that looked like solved with the much improved heatsink).

 

The GPU isn't make or break for me. I won't be doing much real-time rendering (desktop would obliterate that kind of work) on mobile, and gaming, meh. Any games I would dick around with, I think either i5 or i7 would both make the cut.

 

The thermals will be the make or break. A lot of people have commented that although the i7 SP3 is faster in bursts, the i5 SP3 often won out because it didn't heat up as much and thus, did not throttle as much/quickly. In  the MS presentation they seemed to make a point of commenting on the better thermal design, now the professional and user reviews can test the truth of it.

[Commander Llama]

USB Type C?

No.

 

SP4: 1 USB 3.0

SB: 2 USB 3.0

[AlexGoesHigh]

The GPU isn't make or break for me. I won't be doing much real-time rendering (desktop would obliterate that kind of work) on mobile, and gaming, meh. Any games I would dick around with, I think either i5 or i7 would both make the cut.

 

The thermals will be the make or break. A lot of people have commented that although the i7 SP3 is faster in bursts, the i5 SP3 often won out because it didn't heat up as much and thus, did not throttle as much/quickly. In  the MS presentation they seemed to make a point of commenting on the better thermal design, now the professional and user reviews can test the truth of it.

Just looking at photos the SP4 cooling is vastly superior, they added 2 heatpipes one that leads to a flat but wide and tall passive heatsink and another to a blower fan, according to them the passive heatsink does 60% of the cooling and its good enough to not use the fan until its on loads more demanding that web browsing or word, and even on full load the fan shouldn't be as loud as the SP3 while being good enough to not throttle, here's some photos of the innards the press took during the event.

 

SP4

 

SB main tablet zone

 

SB GPU PCB inside the keyboard

 

These are from Anandtech hands on: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9696/windows-10-devices-hands-on

[Builder]

I see it as Microsoft is reinventing themselves much like Apple did after Jobs came back to Apple.

 

I agree, there are a lot of parallels. Unfortunately their software design leaves much to be desired. If the Surface Book ran OS X instead of Windows there's a chance I'd consider buying one as my next laptop, but there's something icky to me about the fact that it doesn't close all the way and I don't know what I'd do with the tablet portion.

 

The problem with this product is that it's gorgeous but the market for it is very small. Most PCs are bought for far less than $1499, that's a price range currently dominated by Apple. Apple also completely dominates profits across the board for traditional computers (well mobile too but that's less relevant) so Microsoft will have to win over a group of people who tend to buy Apple products.

[GoodBytes]

Sure, but people said the same for the Surface Pro.. yes it took 2 iteration, but now it passed from a limited niche market (engineers on the go, doing onsite work), to this massive billion dollar income to Microsoft, and people want it. I expect the same for the Surface Book

[Dabombinable]

I agree, there are a lot of parallels. Unfortunately their software design leaves much to be desired. If the Surface Book ran OS X instead of Windows there's a chance I'd consider buying one as my next laptop, but there's something icky to me about the fact that it doesn't close all the way and I don't know what I'd do with the tablet portion.

 

The problem with this product is that it's gorgeous but the market for it is very small. Most PCs are bought for far less than $1499, that's a price range currently dominated by Apple. Apple also completely dominates profits across the board for traditional computers (well mobile too but that's less relevant) so Microsoft will have to win over a group of people who tend to buy Apple products.

All iPads are useless for productivity, just like the Macboom and Macbook Air. The Microsoft Surface range isn't and the newer ones don't need stripped down ports that are shit compared to the full version.

[Builder]

All iPads are useless for productivity, just like the Macboom and Macbook Air. The Microsoft Surface range isn't and the newer ones don't need stripped down ports that are shit compared to the full version.

 

Useless for productivity? MacBooks? Pardon me while I chuckle this mouthful of Diet Coke back into the can.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alright, I'm good. The MacBook Air is widely considered by technology reviewers to be one of the best if not the best laptop ever made, and it's wildly popular among students and developers. All of my developer friends have Macs, and probably 60% of them have MacBook Airs. There are many reasons for this; the first of which being that Apple's productivity suite is 100% free with the purchase of a new Mac these days and costs under a hundred bucks in total separately. The same can't be said for Office. Also, every OS X update is free, and you can get updates for a ridiculously long period of time. El Capitan, the current iteration, supports iMacs going back to 2007. Out of the 350 students at my school, 290 of them have MacBook Airs, 10 have MacBook Pros, 49 have Windows laptops, and one guy has a Surface Pro 3.  (I know him, he's a nice guy, but a total Microsoft fanboy) These are numbers from a poll I ran at the end of last year.

 

It's undeniably a tight market, and the current problem is that too many people already have laptops and they don't upgrade them with anywhere near the frequency that they do with iPhones. Furthermore, the new iPad Pro actually benchmarks better than the new MacBook does, and it's running an ARM processor. If Apple continues on their meteoric pace of speed increase, they could have ARM chips in all of their laptops within five years. Current iPads are also not upgraded frequently.

 

Let me emphasize that I think the Surface Book is an excellent piece of hardware, just like how I think MacBooks are great hardware as well. However, Microsoft needs more than that. Microsoft needs to be a little better than Apple at everything, or way better than Apple at a few things. The Surface Book is neither. It's great for a Windows PC, which unfortunately is a low bar. Windows PCs are a market rife with commodification, and that's why I'm worried about the Book's market prospects. Surfaces are nowhere near as popular as Mac or even PC laptops as productivity tools, and Surface Pros are nowhere close to competing with MacBooks in the premium productivity market. Hopefully the Surface Book will be close. Apple needs competition that currently nobody is giving them.

[GoodBytes]

The only real reason why you dev friends have an Apple computer, it is because they it for iOS development.

Apple laptops are good consumer level systems that is all. It can compete, and never done so business class systems.

 

Apple has students popularity because it is the easy choice for them for a quality laptop, and Apple has aggressive discounts for students, and give iMacs to schools for free if they sign exclusivity deal, even though Apple computers are near impossible to setup in an enterprise environment (no domain system like system). School signs as people have this image that they are good machines and does good school marketing.

 

Apple also makes deals with universities. Forcing for some programs for students to get an Apple computer in order to use a custom made software (which Apple funded partially), that are MacOs only, and you can't get it anywhere beside the school computer store with the MacBook Pro or Air

[Dabombinable]

Useless for productivity? MacBooks? Pardon me while I chuckle this mouthful of Diet Coke back into the can.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alright, I'm good. The MacBook Air is widely considered by technology reviewers to be one of the best if not the best laptop ever made, and it's wildly popular among students and developers. All of my developer friends have Macs, and probably 60% of them have MacBook Airs. There are many reasons for this; the first of which being that Apple's productivity suite is 100% free with the purchase of a new Mac these days and costs under a hundred bucks in total separately. The same can't be said for Office. Also, every OS X update is free, and you can get updates for a ridiculously long period of time. El Capitan, the current iteration, supports iMacs going back to 2007. Out of the 350 students at my school, 290 of them have MacBook Airs, 10 have MacBook Pros, 49 have Windows laptops, and one guy has a Surface Pro 3.  (I know him, he's a nice guy, but a total Microsoft fanboy) These are numbers from a poll I ran at the end of last year.

 

It's undeniably a tight market, and the current problem is that too many people already have laptops and they don't upgrade them with anywhere near the frequency that they do with iPhones. Furthermore, the new iPad Pro actually benchmarks better than the new MacBook does, and it's running an ARM processor. If Apple continues on their meteoric pace of speed increase, they could have ARM chips in all of their laptops within five years. Current iPads are also not upgraded frequently.

 

Let me emphasize that I think the Surface Book is an excellent piece of hardware, just like how I think MacBooks are great hardware as well. However, Microsoft needs more than that. Microsoft needs to be a little better than Apple at everything, or way better than Apple at a few things. The Surface Book is neither. It's great for a Windows PC, which unfortunately is a low bar. Windows PCs are a market rife with commodification, and that's why I'm worried about the Book's market prospects. Surfaces are nowhere near as popular as Mac or even PC laptops as productivity tools, and Surface Pros are nowhere close to competing with MacBooks in the premium productivity market. Hopefully the Surface Book will be close. Apple needs competition that currently nobody is giving them.

Macbook 2015. Macbook Air 2015. Adobe Premiere running under Windows with dGPU acceleration. 

[Builder]

The only real reason why you dev friends have an Apple computer, it is because they it for iOS development.

Apple laptops are good consumer level systems that is all. It can compete, and never done so business class systems.

 

Apple has students popularity because it is the easy choice for them for a quality laptop, and Apple has aggressive discounts for students, and give iMacs to schools for free if they sign exclusivity deal, even though Apple computers are near impossible to setup in an enterprise environment (no domain system like system). School signs as people have this image that they are good machines and does good school marketing.

 

Apple also makes deals with universities. Forcing for some programs for students to get an Apple computer in order to use a custom made software (which Apple funded partially), that are MacOs only, and you can't get it anywhere beside the school computer store with the MacBook Pro or Air

 

I'm a developer myself, asshole, in case you didn't get the hint. I use a Mac. Look at Hacker News for a while and you'll see what I mean. Everyone in Silicon Valley is using Macs. DHH and Paul Graham have written numerous articles about this. The Mac is the most popular computer among Silicon Valley startups because of its versatility. My friends are not just iOS developers, they're Android developers, web developers, and several of them are research-focused computer scientists working in the domains of type theory and formal verification. 

 

Yeah, Windows Active Domain is really something else. No, Apple can't really compete with it, but especially at BYOD companies, Macs already dominate. Apple has already nailed corporate at BYOD shops, because everybody wants to use Macs. They're working with IBM to get them into more traditional enterprise environments. 

 

Macbook 2015. Macbook Air 2015. Adobe Premiere running under Windows with dGPU acceleration. 

 

Uhm...yes?

[Dabombinable]

I'm a developer myself, asshole, in case you didn't get the hint. I use a Mac. Look at Hacker News for a while and you'll see what I mean. Everyone in Silicon Valley is using Macs. DHH and Paul Graham have written numerous articles about this. The Mac is the most popular computer among Silicon Valley startups because of its versatility. My friends are not just iOS developers, they're Android developers, web developers, and several of them are research-focused computer scientists working in the domains of type theory and formal verification. 

 

Yeah, Windows Active Domain is really something else. No, Apple can't really compete with it, but especially at BYOD companies, Macs already dominate. Apple has already nailed corporate at BYOD shops, because everybody wants to use Macs. They're working with IBM to get them into more traditional enterprise environments. 

 

 

Uhm...yes?

You don't seem to understand the difference hardware acceleration makes when it comes to productivity orientated tasks.

[Builder]

You don't seem to understand the difference hardware acceleration makes when it comes to productivity orientated tasks.

 

How many times do I have to fucking say it?

 

Let me emphasize that I think the Surface Book is an excellent piece of hardware, just like how I think MacBooks are great hardware as well.

 

I'm not making the argument that it's not good hardware, I said I had a few niggling doubts about the design and significant doubts about its market potential.

[GoodBytes]

startups makes iOS apps. Also like to use Java, as it is multi-platform, because they don't know the future of the market, despite ten fact that performance isn't there, and too cheap to buy Visual Studio. Also, you'll be surprised by the number of dev that doesn't know about hardware

[Ex14]

Alright, I'm good. The MacBook Air is widely considered by technology reviewers to be one of the best if not the best laptop ever made, and it's wildly popular among students and developers. All of my developer friends have Macs, and probably 60% of them have MacBook Airs.

This is true. Until Recently, even myself, whenever I would have to recommend a thin and light laptop that's decently priced, Macbook Air was one of them, especially if the person could use/get used to OSX. But that's probably only to Students. And I probably wouldn't recommend that if anyone plans to use it out side of just school (document/light) work. Thats probably where I think alot of people are kinda skeptical about your statements. If it was just editing line of code or for potentially just website code I can believe that. But if you;re talking about compiling apps etc....Thats kind a tough pill to swallow. It must be pretty excruciatingly slow to have to wait for a Macbook Air to try and cope with that workload. Heck neither I nor any of my Mac using friends would trust an Air to run Lightroom smoothly, granted thats a different workload.

 

Also recently there's been a slew of high quality laptops from OEM partners that not only match the Air's Weight and price, but also are much much faster machines when compare to the air and/or have much better screens than the Air (which i believe we all can agree is a PoS) So forgive me when I say your opening statement reeks of fanboy-ism. (a made up word i know)

 

There are many reasons for this; the first of which being that Apple's productivity suite is 100% free with the purchase of a new Mac these days and costs under a hundred bucks in total separately. The same can't be said for Office. Also, every OS X update is free, and you can get updates for a ridiculously long period of time. El Capitan, the current iteration, supports iMacs going back to 2007. Out of the 350 students at my school, 290 of them have MacBook Airs, 10 have MacBook Pros, 49 have Windows laptops, and one guy has a Surface Pro 3. (I know him, he's a nice guy, but a total Microsoft fanboy) These are numbers from a poll I ran at the end of last year.

Yes Apple Productivity suite is free... but how many people in the real working world are actually using it? Heck at the Ipad Pro event Microsoft was invited to give a demo of THEIR Productivity suite for the iPad Pro. I think that speaks volume on whose productivity suite is actually better viewed (and conversely, used) in the market.

You do know that if you want to talk about compatibility wise, Windows PC would have probably got MacOSX beat right? Ignoring the fact that each upgrade was paid (due to differences in business models) OLD, and I mean really old hardware are able to run 10 with majority of the issue mostly being driver related Don;t believe me? heres a link so bringing up backwards compatibility.... haha idk man thats digging your own grave, esp since Apple switched Architectures to Intel from power PC.

 

 

It's undeniably a tight market, and the current problem is that too many people already have laptops and they don't upgrade them with anywhere near the frequency that they do with iPhones. Furthermore, the new iPad Pro actually benchmarks better than the new MacBook does, and it's running an ARM processor. If Apple continues on their meteoric pace of speed increase, they could have ARM chips in all of their laptops within five years. Current iPads are also not upgraded frequently.

This kinda worries me, especially since alot of news reports have been about it. I would not for the life of me take a benchmark to mean everything for a processor. Firstly, you do realise they run  different Instruction sets, which would mean total incompatibility between all the software that runs on it and those that run on Apple's ARM processor. What does it really mean? All the tools you're using, nope, no go at all. Secondly, You do know the Macbook (Benching wise) is a PoS right? It throttles like crazy, and I do believe reviewers have called it out for it's slow performance. Using it as a performance benchmark is a pretty big advantage for ARM processors if I were to call it. 

Largely I believe this to be Apple's messaging at the event/reveal as well that they see the iPad Pro as a creative productive machine. But make no mistake. Its still way off, especially for serious content production. You;re welcome to prove me wrong and in the next 5 years try editing a D810 or similar specced camera RAW file or 4K  Footage from a ARM equipped anything as a daily driver for work.

I'm also address Mac's Popularity  that you have pulled up several times, Especially when students or younger crowd/audience is involved. If you think that the Mac book craze is not in part due alot to popular culture and opinion, Then I'm gonna stop right here, cause I would know you're not interested in having a logical and factual discussion. Lets not kid ourselves and say that people don't see Apple computers as some kind of fashion or status statement. With Apple's Marketing campaign over the years, how can you argue against that? "From the Mac is cool Pc aren't" and so on. HEck I think apple is the only company that actively advertises its computers as a desired product rather than a functional one like how the others market theirs.

As a final word YEs I do think Apple's Hardware is top notch, with some innovations being made (PCIE SSD in a phone wowee but thats also a different matter), But to blindly call it the best due to popular opinion, when the audience mostly don;t know what a computer is about and just following the trends? I think if you're trying to be factual and logical in the decision process I think most developers would rather Linux than a mac or windows. HEres another fun read its 4 years old But Valid points have been brought up about it.

[d3sl91]

 

I'm also address Mac's Popularity  that you have pulled up several times, Especially when students or younger crowd/audience is involved. If you think that the Mac book craze is not in part due alot to popular culture and opinion, Then I'm gonna stop right here, cause I would know you're not interested in having a logical and factual discussion. Lets not kid ourselves and say that people don't see Apple computers as some kind of fashion or status statement. With Apple's Marketing campaign over the years, how can you argue against that? "From the Mac is cool Pc aren't" and so on. HEck I think apple is the only company that actively advertises its computers as a desired product rather than a functional one like how the others market theirs.

As a final word YEs I do think Apple's Hardware is top notch, with some innovations being made (PCIE SSD in a phone wowee but thats also a different matter), But to blindly call it the best due to popular opinion, when the audience mostly don;t know what a computer is about and just following the trends? I think if you're trying to be factual and logical in the decision process I think most developers would rather Linux than a mac or windows. HEres another fun read its 4 years old But Valid points have been brought up about it.

 

I want to slap an apple sticker on that surfacebook. I would, actually, if I got one. I mean, If anyone I'm talking to wants a macbook, I will hardly advise against it, as, its not a bad machine. But after getting into "why", that's when I start getting annoyed. Because, the number of people with a legitimate reason versus those who don't is... a bit off.

 

I have a macbook pro for work... on purpose. I wanted to learn OSX and the apple ecosystem. But I am already, after 2 years, completely bored of it, and would rather use something running windows. Because... theres nothing OSX-only that I use. In fact, some of my newer endeavours (software defined radio, for example) has a much better windows program selection that mac. Better as in, dozens versus one or two. 

 

If this wasn't a work machine, I'd be dual booting windows 10 right now. I wish I had the extra money to buy a really nice windows laptop, but, hard to justify when I have this macbook already

[AlTech]

That Surface Book looks sooooo nice.

It's way too expensive for me but it seems so good.

I'll find a way to get my parents to buy it.

[MG2R]

The only real reason why you dev friends have an Apple computer, it is because they it for iOS development.

Apple laptops are good consumer level systems that is all. It can compete, and never done so business class systems.

More than half of my company's work force prefers to run a Macbook Pro instead of a Windows/Linux-based machine, with more people being convince of them every day . How's that for competing in business?

I'll happily keep running my Thinkpad though...

 

 

Apple also makes deals with universities. Forcing for some programs for students to get an Apple computer in order to use a custom made software (which Apple funded partially), that are MacOs only, and you can't get it anywhere beside the school computer store with the MacBook Pro or Air

I'd like to see some credible sources confirming this.

 

 

startups makes iOS apps. Also like to use Java, as it is multi-platform, because they don't know the future of the market, despite ten fact that performance isn't there, and too cheap to buy Visual Studio. Also, you'll be surprised by the number of dev that doesn't know about hardware

Many different startups make many different things. This is a very narrow view of a very broad industry...