Microsoft launches Surface Pro 6, Surface Laptop 2 and Surface Studio 2 and more | What a shame

[Drak3]

2 minutes ago, mynameisjuan said:

And no it wont be bottlenecked if it the display is connected to the GPU

That's when the bottleneck is the worst.

[Trixanity]

1 hour ago, D13H4RD2L1V3 said:

So the laptop and tablet has no USB-C. 

 

When many other laptops, even cheaper ones, have at least one.... 

No USB-C because they haven't redesigned the chassis. Most companies want to squeeze as much profit out of a design as long as possible. Costs a fair bit to R&D and when you're already creating thousands if not millions why not reuse it?

57 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

They basically have. But nobody is using them yet.

They're not officially launched till the 9th of October.

 

On-topic: You'd almost think Microsoft has a deal with Intel and Nvidia so that they'll pick up lots of last gen chips for pennies in exchange for getting rid of their stockpiles. They keep shipping outdated hardware. I can't explain it any other way.

[Drak3]

4 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

I can't explain it any other way.

R&D. Microsoft might just have a long cycle.

[mynameisjuan]

14 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

That's when the bottleneck is the worst.

No thats when the bottle neck is the least. Its when you try using the GPU on the main display and it has to waste bandwidth to trunk it all back.

[AlTech]

1 minute ago, GoodBytes said:

Also there is no mobile chip of the RTX line

With Nvidia there is no "mobile chip" in the 10 series or 20 series.

[Trixanity]

3 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

R&D. Microsoft might just have a long cycle.

Most of the hardware is made to be drop-in replacements. Of course that's an oversimplification but Intel usually works towards allowing partners to not have to redesign boards, chassis and cooling as much as possible.

[Drak3]

1 minute ago, mynameisjuan said:

No thats when the bottle neck is the least. Its when you try using the GPU on the main display and it has to waste bandwidth to trunk it all back.

You should have made it clear that you meant external display then.

[mynameisjuan]

2 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

You should have made it clear that you meant external display then.

Oh, mah bad

[Drak3]

3 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

Most of the hardware is made to be drop-in replacements. Of course that's an oversimplification but Intel usually works towards allowing partners to not have to redesign boards, chassis and cooling as much as possible.

Look how well that worked for Apple.

[Nowak]

So the Pro and Laptop still have a single USB port. Boo.

 

28 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

You complain about lack Type-C, but your desktop doesn't even have one, nor is most motherboards, let alone the latest computer cases.

I'm not AluminumTech but my laptop and desktop have USB-C. So does my phone and Nintendo Switch. Thicker devices than the Pro and Laptop have USB-C. The Book 2, another Surface device, has USB-C. What is Microsoft's excuse? Because "it's not thin enough to justify USB-C" is a shit excuse.

[AlTech]

 

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Your phone? Unless you got select premium phones, it is on USB Micro, and even then, your phone came with a USB Type A to USB Type-C cable, just in the case you want to plug your phone to the PC.

No?

 

Only low end budget devices are stuck on Micro USB. Mid range and high end are USB-C. The only devices without it are practically the $79-99 phones.

Quote

 

You complain about lack Type-C, but your desktop doesn't even have one, nor is most motherboards, let alone the latest computer cases.

Actually I do. I have 2x USB-C ports on my motherboard.

[AlTech]

4 minutes ago, NowakVulpix said:

So the Pro and Laptop still have a single USB port. Boo.

 

I'm not AluminumTech but my laptop and desktop have USB-C. So does my phone and Nintendo Switch. Thicker devices than the Pro and Laptop have USB-C. The Book 2, another Surface device, has USB-C. What is Microsoft's excuse? Because "it's not thin enough to justify USB-C" is a shit excuse.

My laptop and desktop and phone have USB-C at this point.

 

The only device I have which isn't USB-C is my Samsung Tablet from 2016.

[Nowak]

1 minute ago, AluminiumTech said:

My laptop and desktop and phone have USB-C at this point.

 

The only device I have which isn't USB-C is my Samsung Tablet from 2016.

So he's wrong about your desktop not having USB-C then.

[PlayStation 2]

So basically, for the Surface Studio 2, buy an iMac 5K.

Sure, I like that 3:2 display and the fact that it's touchscreen, but for that kind of money, a very similarly equipped iMac 5K (mind you that has a 7700K but a Radeon Pro 575) costs significantly less in USD. Also, that leaves more money for a good drawing tablet rather than betting your chips on the Surface Studio's screen to be the drawing tablet.

[GoodBytes]

20 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

With Nvidia there is no "mobile chip" in the 10 series or 20 series.

They are mobile chips. These chips consume less power than their desktop counterparts. The 10 series laptop might deliver similar performance to their desktop version and their marketing team decided to remove the "mobile" name from the model, but it is still a mobile chip. The 10 series mobile chip came out later than the desktop 10 series models.

 

Could this happen with the 20 series as well? Maybe... I don't know what the company is working on, and if they can do it. But at this moment in time, there is no mobile version of the 20 series. It consumes a lot of power, and needs a large cooling solution, larger than the 1080/1080Ti. It won't fit in the system.

 

Also, no gamer will buy it in any case. You just want it to have fancy specs, just to have fancy specs, ignoring the target market of the device which doesn't care about it. Slap the crazy price from Nvidia for the 20 series, all for what? For a GPU that is a tad faster just to get a feature that the target audience will never use? Yay?!

[AlTech]

Just now, GoodBytes said:

They are mobile chips. These chips consume less power than their desktop counterparts.

Only because they are slower clocked desktop chips. That's essentially what the laptop 10 series is.

Just now, GoodBytes said:

snip

You didn't address my comment on having USB-C.

[GoodBytes]

14 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

 

No?

 

Only low end budget devices are stuck on Micro USB. Mid range and high end are USB-C. The only devices without it are practically the $79-99 phones.

Oh yea. So you'll buy a new Surface Pro, new phone, new USB flash drive, new adapters, and all that.. just because of USB Type-C? I know it is a cool plug to have, but I doubt it changed your life to this point.

 

14 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Actually I do. I have 2x USB-C ports on my motherboard.

On the back, where you need to crawl under your desk to plug something 'cause the whole thing is an after thaught to check the boxes of features... might as well not have it.

[Drak3]

14 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

So basically, for the Surface Studio 2, buy an iMac 5K.

Sure, I like that 3:2 display and the fact that it's touchscreen, but for that kind of money, a very similarly equipped iMac 5K (mind you that has a 7700K but a Radeon Pro 575) costs significantly less in USD. Also, that leaves more money for a good drawing tablet rather than betting your chips on the Surface Studio's screen to be the drawing tablet.

A comparable drawing tablet costs almost as much as the Surface Studio: Wacom.

[GoldenLag]

7 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

A comparable drawing tablet costs almost as much as the Surface Studio: Wacom.

@Dan Castellaneta  also not to mention the Surface studio isnt meant to rival the iMac. its a whole different product. HP solutions that rival the iMac in that regard. 

 

again, different target audience. im not saying its unfair to compare them, im just saying they are very different products

[Sniperfox47]

7 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Oh yea. So you'll buy a new Surface Pro, new phone, new USB flash drive, new adapters, and all that.. just because of USB Type-C? I know it is a cool plug to have, but I doubt it changed your life to this point.

 

On the back, where you need to crawl under your desk to plug something 'cause the whole thing is an after thaught to check the boxes of features... might as well not have it.

You act like just because not everyone device has USB-C it doesn't have value add.

 

Not every device has Surface Connect. Not every device has Mini DisplayPort.

 

The fact of the matter is there's not really any legitimate reason at this point to not swap out the Mini DisplayPort port on the Surface Pro with a USB-C port with DisplayPort Alt-Mode other than to subtly encourage people to buy the first party adapter.

 

I don't agree with, but can understand, keeping the surface connect port. It's functionality overlaps pretty cleanly with Thunderbolt 3, but it does have some extra bandwidth and ensures compatibility with older chargers.

 

But mini DisplayPort adds *nothing* to these products over what would be added by a second USB port that optionally supports video as well.

[AlTech]

16 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Oh yea. So you'll buy a new Surface Pro, new phone, new USB flash drive, new adapters, and all that.. just because of USB Type-C?

The phone I bought in late 2017 had USB-C and I would not buy a new phone without USB-C.

 

Nobody is selling USB-C flash drives but I rarely use USB flash drives anyways.

 

I did buy an adapter for USB-C to HDMI 2.0 and I am probably gonna buy a USB-C to DP 1.4 adapter as well later in the future.

 

When it came time to buy a new laptop in june/july 2018, I wasn't willing to buy a laptop which was stuck in the past and USB-C was a must.

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I know it is a cool plug to have, but I doubt it changed your life to this point.

It's not that I'm buying new devices for the sake of USB-C. I needed to buy new devices and thus I chose not to go backwards and chose to buy something with USB-C.

 

At this point if you're using a phone with Micro USB or a laptop without USB-C you have to wonder when you're gonna upgrade because the world is adopting USB-C whether you like it or not.

 

 

 

Honestly, I want Intel and AMD to incorporate USB-C more heavily in their next chipsets to go from 2 USB-C ports to at least 4-6 ports per chipset. At some point in the future I would hope everything moves away from USB-A to USB-C. And USB-B can also die off.

 

Initially I hated Apple's approach with 4x USB-C ports on the 2016 MBP, but I've come to appreciate it as without forcing the change, USB-C would never have begun to take off as much as it has been.

 

And by the way, no offense but it's hard to take you seriously when you're defending Microsoft like this. I know I used to defend them but eventually I saw the light and I realized they weren't making quality products anymore and so I stopped supporting them.

Quote

 

On the back, where you need to crawl under your desk to plug something 'cause the whole thing is an after thaught to check the boxes of features... might as well not have it.

Are you saying that having the majority of USB-A is an afterthought as most USB-A ports are on the back?

[Drak3]

1 minute ago, GoldenLag said:

@Dan Castellaneta  also not to mention the Surface studio isnt meant to rival the iMac. its a whole different product. HP solutions that rival the iMac in that regard. 

 

again, different target audience. im not saying its unfair to compare them, im just saying they are very different products

Actually, there is quite a bit of overlap between the two. The Studio's entire target audience is the audience that favors iMacs paired with Wacom, as they're popular in that niche for supposed stability, color reproduction on the main display, and on the security front (in other words, non techie graphic designers).

[GoldenLag]

21 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Actually, there is quite a bit of overlap between the two. The Studio's entire target audience is the audience that favors iMacs paired with Wacom, as they're popular in that niche for supposed stability, color reproduction on the main display, and on the security front (in other words, non techie graphic designers).

some overlap is to be expected, but there is a shift in target adudience. the power it offers isnt better than HP solutions, but it trades that with a flexible touchdisplay. 

 

also iMacs are favored for non-techy videoproduction even though their cost is quite a bit higher than other solutions

[Sniperfox47]

40 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Honestly, I want Intel and AMD to incorporate USB-C more heavily in their next chipsets to go from 2 USB-C ports to at least 4-6 ports per chipset.

I do want to point out that nothing about USB-C is really specifically supported in the Chipset.

 

Intel's Flexible IO on their laptop chips support up to 4 USB 3.1 ports for normal low end u-series SKUs and 6 for "premium" SKUs. It really doesn't care about what kind of port you hook up to as long as you mark it properly. (Edit: The exception to this is if you want a dual-role Type-C port that can run as both host and Guest. Flexible IO only supports 1 USB port with Dual Role.)

 

If you want to have any alt-mode support over the port, you need a separate Mux chip, and if you don't you're going to need a Type-C controller near the port anyways. These chips are fairly simple and can be tiny making them a far better option than literally running three times the traces from the Chipset (9 lines for USB 3.1, vs 24 with USB-C between the redundant lines for reversability and the communication and sideband lines.

 

Ultimately the reason that most premium laptops don't have more than 2 USB-C ports is the same reason that previous laptops didn't have more then 2 USB 3.x plus 1 USB 2.0. There's limitations on the total amount of IO that you can have coming off these mobile CPUs because of the integrated PCH. This is known as Flexible IO on the Intel side, and means that if you want to take advantage of more USB lanes you're losing out on SATA, PCIe, i2c, or other connections needed for high speed internal components.

 

That all being said and having seen the layouts of the Surface Pro pcb, I cannot fathom why they wouldn't be able to run a second set of USB lines alongside DisplayPort to a TypeC mux chip for a USB-C port replacing their DisplayPort Port. Hell with a bit of rearranging they could probably even cram Power Delivery in there, although I'm not sure if there would be issues of using that alongside Surface Connect. I don't know much about the way Surface Connect handles charging.

[soldier_ph]

Once again they have released new devices that really look good and if you see them out in the wild you think to yourself: damn, what a nice device but then immediately comes to mind that these new devices are already obsolete at their launch and that for some reason MS doesn't include Type C with TB3 or HDMI, which are normal standards unlike mini DP. IMO