The Surface 3 Review
by Brett Howse on May 4, 2015 9:00 AM ESTSystem Performance
Since the Surface 3 is a tablet that can replace your laptop, comparisons will be made between both devices. Because the new tablet is running full Windows 8.1 x64, it is possible to run the full benchmark suite that we have for laptops. On the tablet side, there are not a lot of cross-platform benchmarks so the only thing that can really be used is browser based tests. It is not ideal, but we have to work with what we have.
To summarize the Surface 3, it is powered by the top model of the latest Intel Atom 14nm stack. The Atom x7-Z8700 is a quad-core processor with a base frequency of 1.6 GHz. The CPU can turbo up to a maximum of 2.4 GHz, and all of this is done within a 2 watt Scenario Design Power. The review unit that I received is the $499 unit, so it only has 2 GB of LPDDR3 memory rather than the 4 GB offered on the higher priced model.
For comparisons against tablets, I have selected a sampling of several devices that have already been reviewed. Some of the devices are running on ARM processors, and several of the Windows ones run on Intel Core M, with a few more running on previous Atom architectures. To compare this device against any other device we have tested, please check out our Mobile Bench.
Tablet Performance
Since we just have web benchmarks to compare against other platforms, it does make it difficult to get a true feel for how Atom compares to the best, but when comparing to ARM processors it is fairly competitive. All of the web benchmarks are done using Chrome (hopefully we can switch to Microsoft Edge soon) because IE 11 has pretty awful javascript performance. Atom is a long ways off of the Core series in the Surface Pro line, and well back of the Core M powered Dell Venue 11 Pro tablet. There is a big jump in performance compared to the Bay Trail ASUS T100 and HP Stream 7. That is important since Cherry Trail is not a big architecture update, but mostly a process shrink, so the 14 nm processes can keep everything running at higher frequencies in the same power envelope.
Laptop Performance
By attaching the keyboard, the Surface 3 becomes a pretty reasonable laptop, so to see how much of a performance drop off there is with tablet class parts, the Surface 3 was run through our Laptop suite as well. The Atom is also equipped with eMMC storage, and some of the tests like PCMark take storage into account. Other benchmarks like Cinebench and x264 are CPU only. To compare the Surface 3 against any other laptop we have tested, please use our Laptop Bench.
PCMark
PCMark 8 from Futuremark has several benchmarks within it, all with the goal of simulating real-world use cases for each of the scenarios. It includes Home, Creative, Work, and Storage benchmarks. The workloads generally include both burst and sustained performance. The Atom can’t compete with the bigger Core pieces, but it is actually surprisingly close to the Core i3 Surface Pro 3. I think this is less about Atom and more about how handicapped Core i3 is with its lack of Turbo.
TouchXPRT
TouchXPRT 2014 is a benchmark that has a lot of burst workloads. The tasks are quick, but heavy, and it gives the processor a quick chance to cool off between each one so normally it is good about not running into throttling behaviour. The Atom processor is a long way off of the Core series here, with the exception of the i3 Surface Pro 3 which has no turbo capability. However there is a good bump in performance over the previous generation Atom in the HP Stream 7.
Cinebench
Cinebench is purely a CPU task, and it loves Instructions Per Clock (IPC) and frequency. There are two modes here with a single CPU run and all core run. It is still a long ways back of the Core i3 Surface Pro 3 on this test, and despite the Atom processor having four physical cores and the Core processors having only two physical and four logical cores, it is still not enough on the multithreaded run to really close the gap, although it does slightly. Looking at version 11.5 of this test, we have more data going back to older devices, so there are scores available from the ASUS T100 and there is a bump in performance compared to Bay Trail.
x264
Once again this is a benchmark that prioritizes good IPC and frequency, along with multiple cores. The Atom struggles here compared to Core, which at this point should not be a surprise.
So clearly the new Cherry Trail CPU cores are not a giant leap in performance over Bay Trail, but like Haswell to Broadwell, there is a decent bump and the better manufacturing process helps increase overall performance due to the additional thermal headroom in the same power envelope. However when comparing it to the ARM competition, we only have a few data points but it does seem to be about on par with the top ARM CPUs at this time. Comparing devices across different operating systems is always difficult though.
Using the device day to day as a tablet though, performance was good. Yes, it could be better, and devices that use Core M are going to be able to run circles around Atom, but at the cost of additional heat. One of the nicest surprises of using this tablet was that it just never got warm at all, and the same cannot be said of any of the passively cooled Core M devices. Sure, when running very heavy benchmark loads, there was a bit of heat on the back, but it was never much more than around 30°C or so.
My experience was that when the Surface 3 felt slow, it was often not CPU bound but disk bound.
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Alexvrb - Monday, May 4, 2015 - link
Actually in many regards the Surface 3 has the superior display. Sorry! Also in terms of SoC performance, the CPU side of the x7 is great and very competitive. If you're looking for 3D performance it's not as impressive but this would not be the best device for that workload - you'd be better off with a laptop/hybrid or a Surface Pro!Speedfriend - Tuesday, May 5, 2015 - link
"And people buy it because it doesn't run windows, too."Increasingly people don't buy the Ipad if the plummeting sales are any indication. My iPad stay on the sofa for basic web browsing, email and videos. Anything else I have to get my laptop for, becuase the iPad is basically pretty useless. And having recently bpought a cheap Android tablet to carry to work to watch movies on, I have realised that an iPad offers nothing that a cheap Android tablet can't do. I will never buy another iPad, it is just an overpriced toy. I wil buy a Surface though as it can actually replace my laptop for almost every task.
romprak - Tuesday, May 5, 2015 - link
The iPad is showing its lack of utility even in Apple's lineup, where large phones handily do most of the stuff an iPad used to be relied upon, and cheap tablets do web browsing as well as an iPad. Tablets are great for families, but why buy a $500 tablet for your child, when devices that can do almost as well are available for much, much less - and your children are unlikely to care too much whose logo is on the device?Apple is in trouble with the iPad, they need to either update the OS or come up with something killer for it.
In contrast, my family can use a Windows machine for all sorts of stuff - from programming (my 10 year old son is programming now), all the way to playing games on Steam. So, why iPad? Seems superfluous.
akdj - Tuesday, May 12, 2015 - link
I wouldn't call the 'slack' quarter sales of 17 million iPads 'trouble for Apple'. They sold more iPads then every Surface sold in aggregate, since its birth....last ¼ Alone! And that's six months post release.I like the SP3 Pro, I think MS nailed it. Surface 3 looks like a very nice step forward. That said, Apple HAS updated the OS and as an ambidextrous user or both Windows and OS X, I've found the continuity/handoff features built into iOS 8/OS X 10.10 to easily be the biggest advancement in some time --- especially between devices; phone, tablet and desktop or notebook.
Funny thing, I've got a ten year old as well. Also coding right now --- and I'm learning with him. He's building a cross platform app for his science fair.
He's coding on iOS only. Although he's got access to the iMac and MacBook Air, he's much happier learning both Objective C/Swift on iOS, using the free university lectures, notes and information along with a couple very excellent 'touch' coding 'apps'
It's funny to listen to rehashed arguments about the iPad and how it's for the couch potato only. I've flown 22 hours since Saturday morning, around Alaska with tourists looking to fish, shoot stills or motion, capture audio or wrap production in other areas of the state. My iPad is my kneeboard; plans my flights and files my plans, distributes weight and balance of the A/C, shows me real time weather, traffic, and up to date Jep charts and plates. It's been invaluable as a 'display' for small field edits, using as a remote viewfinder to capture sketchy wildlife and there's never a concern with battery life.
I do enjoy reading on the iPad, creating, invoicing clients or paying my utilities. I can take calls, use MS Office (whoever said it's a stripped version obviously hasn't used iOS Office, it's amazing!) Dropbox or iCloud, Box or Google Drive (I've found many Google apps to be better on iOS than my Android devices, currently using a Note 4), as well a plethora of powerful apps like iMovie, GarageBand, Pages Numbers and Keynote...all optional, none are bloated. iOS takes up a ½ dozen GBs, not two dozen! And if the RT3 suffers this much graphically, there's a LIMIT on 'all those X86' programs that actually WILL run on the rig
Sure, you'll be able to run CS3 efficiently and it sounds like games from a decade ago might work, but Iike the iPad, you're not gonna be manipulating 50megapixel Raw images nor creating killed effects in AE or transcoding video any faster. There's a trade off either way and IMHO, it's cool to see this significant a jump in performance on the new RT
I was also impressed with the SP3. That said, the iPad Air 2 is one helluva tablet at one pound and using TCAS and ADS-B with three dimensional moving maps with weather and traffic, GPS and nav aids that were easily 50-60 pounds for each pilot to carry around or avionics to add... Now in less than a one pound package, it's definitely NOT in trouble.
I think it's such an excellent device --- my original as well as iPad 2 are working great and the kids love them...most folks aren't updating them like phones. They're still selling nearly a 100,000,000 a year! That's hardly trouble. Even if the slip YoY spooks you, just remember how many are already out there, that the mini is only two and half --- 1 ½ with retina, and the Air 2 was the tick. Not that tock...yet they've managed to sell more in their worst quarter than every other tablet manufacturer combined! (Not to mention their mind blowing 6 & 6s sales, I'm sure their just fine canabalizing their own iPad sales with 6 and 6+ sales which are also pocket computers).
Times have changed and 'most' folks have everything they need in today's tablets. Today's smartphones. Regardless of which OEM they've decided on. Once they're happy, it's kind of a pain to 'change over' and these are extremely personal devices when compared to the home computer
Sorry about the length. But I enjoy and love using both OS X and (one of about six or seven dolts that enjoy using) Win 8.1. I've also used Android since 08 (still have my Xoom!) and iOS since '07. I currently use a Note 4 and 6+. Biz. Personal. As much as I enjoy Windows, OS X is certainly the 'go to OS' in our house.
Not to mention, OS X comes complete with training wheels for someone like romprak. It's called Bootcamp and you're welcome to install any OS you'd like. Unlike Windows.
bobjones32 - Monday, May 4, 2015 - link
For your claim of better performance, how well does the iPad run Win32 apps?mkozakewich - Tuesday, May 5, 2015 - link
That's not performance, that's functionality. If the exact same chip magically supported dual-booting x86 Win10, I'm sure it would do slightly better. That's not the power of Atom, though. It wasn't designed to blow everything else out of the water. (I'm sure it'll get better power characteristics on heavy load tests, for instance, because of its conservative power use.)What it all boils down to: This is a great device. It's different than an iPad, though, and different people will need different things from it. I feel a premium tablet can live at $500-$600, but a slightly-compromised tablet that runs Windows and is only truly complete with a $120 accessory will need to sweeten the deal to have obvious value to the common consumer.
It's a close game, but Surface needs a nudge. I suppose it'll get that in a couple months when it goes on sale for a bit.
MrTetts - Tuesday, May 5, 2015 - link
I never understand people who say this device is overpriced.. I just don't. For what it does, I would say it is very well priced.Stevegt87 - Thursday, May 7, 2015 - link
While the surface 3 is more capable than an ipad. A new ipad runs 100% of ipad software perfectly. Surface 3 is low on cpu/gpu/ram/disk for much of the desktop experience that it enables.Stevegt87 - Thursday, May 7, 2015 - link
Game are made to run perfectly on an ipad. Games will humble surface3augiem - Monday, May 4, 2015 - link
This thing is already $100 cheaper than a 128GB Air 2, does WAY more, has more memory, etc. How cheap is cheap enough? Would you really want them to sacrifice something like build quality, screen quality, or other necessities to reach a price point lower than this? They do have to stay in business after all. Running full Windows in the tablet space is completely unheard of and adds far more than $50 worth of value to this product compared to its competition.