The Surface 3 Review
by Brett Howse on May 4, 2015 9:00 AM ESTGPU Performance
The Surface 3 with the Atom x7-Z8700 pairs the Intel Gen 8 Graphics from Broadwell with the Airmont CPU cores of Atom. Unlike the Broadwell cores though, the Surface 3 SoC only has 16 execution units (EUs) as compared to 24 in Core M. The maximum frequency is also reduced to 600 MHz for these cores, as compared to up to 900 MHz in Core M. This is all necessary to keep the x7-8700 in the 2 watt SDP.
So performance will be a step back compared to Core M, but really this should be no surprise. The interesting comparison will be how it compares to Surface Pro 3 with Haswell Gen 7.5 graphics and of course to Bay Trail equipped tablets.
We will start with some synthetic tests and then move on to DOTA 2 to see how it performs on a real world game.
3DMark Tablet
The GPU upgrade is a big improvement over the ASUS T100's Bay Trail graphics, but the Atom GPU still can not compete with the fastest tablet SoCs out there.
3DMark Notebook
Comparing the Surface 3 to PC class hardware puts it in a pretty poor light when looking at GPU performance. Our 3DMark tests have the Surface Pro 3 with the Core i3 on average 40% faster than Surface 3. Comparing it to the Dell Venue 11 Pro with Core M, we find the Core M GPU is on average 47% faster, which is quite a gap. Let’s not forget though that the Surface 3 is a mere 2 watt SDP, whereas Core M is a 4.5 W TDP and the Haswell-Y in Surface Pro 3 is an 11.5 W TDP.
GFXBench Tablet (OpenGL)
As with the 3DMark scores, the GPU upgrade is significant, but still a ways back of the best tablet GPUs out there. Intel still has some work to do on this front.
GFXBench Notebook (DirectX)
We see a similar story with GFXBench on the notebook side. The 16 EUs in our Atom SoC just cannot compete against the larger and faster GPUs in Core.
Moving on to a real-world game, we use a custom DOTA 2 benchmark for our lower powered devices. It is a very popular battle-arena game, and the GPU requirements are not too demanding.
The GPU in the Surface 3 is really not enough to play most games, and even on our value settings, the Surface 3 is not a great experience for DOTA 2. The higher TDP of Core M lets it do ok in this test, but overall the Surface 3 is a long way back of even the Surface Pro 3 Core i3.
Storage Performance
Like most tablets, the Surface 3 utilizes eMMC storage rather than the SSD storage found on higher priced laptops and Core M tablets. It costs less, it is less complex, and it works. So expectations are that it will not be able to compete with the fastest solutions out there. But as a tablet, workloads should be less complex, at least in theory.
Unfortunately Microsoft shipped me the 64 GB version of the tablet, and due to PCMark 8 requiring a large amount of free space in order to perform its tests, it was unable to be run on this device. But we have run into this issue in the past, and we can turn to a couple of other tools to get a feel for how the storage performance is. Even though eMMC is slower than a good SSD, there is still different levels of performance based on the NAND in use and the controller.
I ran CrystalDiskMark over a 4 GB span and the results are below.
Surface 3 eMMC Storage (left) vs Surface Pro 3 Core i3 SSD (right)
Compared to a true SSD, the eMMC performance leaves a lot to be desired. In fact, most of the time when I was using the tablet and I found it slow, such as installing software, or loading programs, it was mostly disk bound. There are faster eMMC options available, but I will refrain from comparing it to other tablets since we do not have the same benchmarking tools for both.
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asfletch - Wednesday, May 6, 2015 - link
Reading and re-reading this review leads me to one conclusion - the Dell Venue Pro 11 7140 is a superb piece of engineering (if not design) and would be my ideal tablet, if not for the accursed 16:9 screen. It's also a deal-breaker on the T300 Chi. I guess I'm hanging out for a Core M SP4 (although I would prefer a slightly smaller tablet). Oh well.serendip - Wednesday, May 6, 2015 - link
Maybe I'm crazy... I use a Lenovo Miix 2 8" tablet with the older Bay Trail Z3740 as my main computing device and it's been good enough for more than a year. Office documents open fine, I can even run Linux VMs (mainly console stuff), the battery lasts 9 hours and with a portable keyboard, I have my office in under 800 grams.I paid a lot less than the Surface 3's price though. At $499, the Surface 3 is overpriced and the dock pricing is outrageous.
beggerking@yahoo.com - Wednesday, May 6, 2015 - link
mix 2 8" is great, but this is a 10-11".$499 is a bit high (should be sold for $299-399) but the build-in kickstand along..believe it or not, is so important that its actually worth the extra $100...
Yes i have Dell Venue 8, Miix 2, and insignia 8" and they all run great with 1-2 gb of ram and battery lasts forever, all cost < $250
accessories are always overpriced for any model.
Luc K - Thursday, May 7, 2015 - link
The Miix 2 10" actually also started at $499 (you see now discounts since it's > 1 year old device with last gen slower Atom CPU).domski - Wednesday, May 6, 2015 - link
How is pixel density related to backlight power consumption? The article implies the two are connected, but I don't see how.For an LCD, backlight power is usually just directly proportional to screen area and brightness. The pixel density may affect power consumption of the GPU and LCD driver hardware, and maybe also the liquid crystal matrix itself.
Is author (Brett Howse) mistaken? If not, can someone enlighten me about the connection between backlight power and pixel density?
Brett Howse - Wednesday, May 6, 2015 - link
I'm going to pull in a quote from another article which sums it up nicely:"The increase in number of pixels (and transistors powering the display—one for each RGB subpixel) comes with a corresponding increase in the percentage of light being blocked by the transistors and filaments. Thus, the percentage transparent area for each pixel is lower, necessitating a significantly stronger backlight when pixel density is increased."
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5688/apple-ipad-2012...
Brett Howse - Wednesday, May 6, 2015 - link
Also this is one of the advantages of IGZO TFTs is that the actual TFT (Thin Film Transistor) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin-film_transistor is less opaque, so more light gets through as compared to Amorphous Silicon TFTs which are the standard (and cheaper) way they are done.buevaping - Wednesday, May 6, 2015 - link
I looked at the Surface 3 at the store today. The sales guy and I were shaking are heads about entry level specs with 2 gigs of ram. "Why doesn't the Windows button not work?" "Oh It probably needs to be shut down and restarted." I don't need a touch device that badly.Luc K - Thursday, May 7, 2015 - link
You can disable the Windows button in the surface app. Not sure why you say 2 GB is major issue. Did you see any issues? Lots of tablets with Atom have 2 GB running 8.1.domboy - Thursday, May 7, 2015 - link
Thank you for the wonderful review. While it makes sense to compare the Surface 3 to current product offerings, especially the Pro 3, I am slightly disappointed that there is not much in the way of comparison to the products it replaces - the Surface RT/2. I realize most of the benchmarks won't run on Windows RT, but the web browser tests and the store version of 3DMark could have been run, as well as some sort of battery life comparison. I'm going to assume that perhaps this is because you don't have older Surface models on hand, but I know this data has been gathered in the past and I think it might have been helpful to include for Surface RT/2 owners that may be considering upgrading.I do think it's a compelling product just to get proper pen support and x86 compatibility, though the RT jailbreak went a long way for me to be able to live with the original Surface RT which is what this would replace in my case. I do know the Asus T100 is faster than the original Surface RT, but I don't know how it compares to the Surface 2 speed-wise.