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Surface Pro 3 Handily Outperforms iPad Air 2 and Nexus 9
An anonymous reader points to an interesting comparison of current tablets' peformance, as measured with the Geekbench benchmarking tool, which boils down various aspects of performance to produce a single number. The clear winner from the models fielded wasn't from Apple of Samsung (Samsung's entrants came much lower down, in fact), but from Microsoft: the i5-equipped Surface Pro 3, with a Geekbench score of 5069.; second place goes to the Apple iPad Air 2, with 4046. The Nexus 9 rated third, with 3537. One model on the list that U.S. buyers may not be familiar with is the Tesco Hudl 2, a bargain tablet which Trusted Reviews seems quite taken by.
But does it run Linux?
The Surface pro 3 is a laptop equivalent. The ipad and the nexus are strictly tablets. I would never expect them to compare from a performance perspective.
Laptop out performs tablet.
I have both the ipad and surface pro 3. They are not comparable tools.
Comparing retail prices hint what might be the better performer here.
€ 999,- Surface Pro 3
€ 450,- Apple iPad Air 2
€ 350,- Nexus 9
Exactly. It's a very poor comparison of tablets (surprising for Which? magazine) as it's only looks at CPU performance. It doesn't consider the OS, graphics performance (ie GPU speed taking into account the number of pixels being pushed), or how real life applications perform either.
Arguably a far, FAR more important metric than performance for the majority of users, given that tablets are used mostly for media consumption, is battery life. I have a feeling that the Surface Pro 3 will trail the field badly here. (I don't know what the iPad series can manage these days, but a good Android tablet can manage close to 20 hours of screen-on time at a brightness of 170cd/m2.
i dont think it was ever a question. the surface pro line has always been the powerhouse.
I think its fair to compare pricepoints, and the surface pro and ipad air would be similar in that regard.
between the 2 i would personally take the surface, USB ports as well as the ability to run win32 apps and dual boot? sign me up
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
The i5 Surface Pro 3 with 128 GB of storage costs $1000.
The iPad Air 2 with 128 GB of storage costs $500.
So the Surface Pro costs 100% more for a 25% bump in speed? And we're spinning this as a win for MS?
The millions and millions of people who bought iPads and android tablets don't care that Microsoft has a heavy laptop replacement.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
The USA online price of Nexus 9 is in the neighborhood of $400, depending on storage configuration. Overall it's a great package, but google dropped the ball here by omitting the sd card slot. sd card is the only reason I bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab S instead.
IOW, who cares?
In any case, the spin is opposite to reality. The remarkable thing here is that an iPad Air2 nearly matches the performance of an I5 notebook replacement...
i dont think it was ever a question. the surface pro line has always been the powerhouse.
Considering it has a full notebook x86 CPU (and not a ultra-low-power one), while the iPad has a ultra-low-power ARM CPU, the Surface Pro should be fucking ashamed it only is 25% faster.
Oh, and since this is a SP with an i5, it costs at least $999. So much for price equality...
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
In these form factors, it's no longer a question of peak CPU performance. These processors all thermal-throttle to the point where none of them are going to be performing at peak while in these form factors. The same i5 in the Surface will provide significantly more performance when in another form factor (like a NUC).
Which is interesting in that it means today, the design of the device itself -- in terms of heat dissipation coupled with total system power -- is what determines performance, not which processor model you have.
Geekbench's own numbers put the iPad Air at 4528, only 10% off the i5. Which is astounding, because five years ago Intel's ULV CPUs were hitting 2000-2500 on the same benchmark while Apple's new A4 was 200.
The flagship ARM CPUs cost a tenth as much as Intel's chips, consume a fraction of the power, and have been roughly doubling performance every year while Intel has virtually plateaued*. If that trend continues, by the end of this year they'll have surpassed Intel on virtually every metric.
Of course, AMD reached pole position a decade ago until Intel's Core 2 decisively took back the lead. Intel may repeat history with Skylake; if not, the computer world could get a lot more interesting over the next few years.
(*on clock speed and IPC they're been scarcely improving 10% a year; IPW is increasing somewhat faster but still well behind ARM designs)
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
It's been interesting how ARM has been gradually getting closer to desktop performance, while Intel has been getting their TPD down. The real metric however is cost. For Apple or even MS, being able to shave another $200 off their price by ditching Intel for ARM is tempting. Now MS, having its bad experience with ARM is less likely to for it, whereas Apple is definitely at least internally testing desktop ARM chips. With their LLVM work and now Metal on Mac the change is a lot easier than their PPC--> Intel was. Now a quad core A8X or whatever their A9 is going to be should nudge it up past that last 25% or so and it would cost them way less.
It looks like MS dropped ARM too soon. That and they totally botched their transition. Looks like Apple is gonna pull it off and regular users may not even notice the switch. Just gradually converge from both ends til one day your laptop also runs iPad apps.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
surface pro 3 is not a tablet. it's a pc. And it's worthless without it's keyboard, everyone that owns one knows this.
Disclaimer, I own one.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I was about to post that. That's like putting the motor of a freakin' tank inside a BMW Mini car.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
all the antimalware programs you'd want on a PC
If you're trying to draw on the notion that only PC's get malware I have news for you...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It isn't about hardware specs as much as it's about UI and app availability.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Funny people comparing cost. Apple stuff was (still is expensive)... Surface Pro 3 is not cheap either. That being said, the evaluation was done on performance, not cost. Folks, you need to realize that the surface pro 3 is a full blown computer, not simply a tablet. I purchased a Surface Pro 3 last year. The device is solid. I prefer it over my apple macbook pro - don't kid yourself, the keyboard on the Surface is way better than the Apple MBP. It replaced my table, laptop and desktop computer(s). I purchased two docking stations which connect to my 30" dell monitors at home and work. I purchased the i5 with 8GB/256 SSD, the machine runs Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop perfectly. Battery is fantastic. I wish it had 4G/LTE built in, but it doesn't. As far as WiFi, it goofs up occasionally, but overall not too bad, but can get frustrating - it's been about a year and I would have figured a software update would have fixed that by now. Maybe it's just me. I wish the device had Intel's wifi for the wireless display stuff, but MS has some sort of device for wireless display, I haven't tried it, I'm not sure how good it is. Otherwise, having been using it for about a year now as my primary computer, I am super impressed by the device. Only thing that truly sucks in my opinion is using it like a laptop (not notebook) actually on your lap. It's top heavy and the keyboard can detach if you operate it this way, the device could easily fall and break. If you're on the fence, don't mind using Windows - take the plunge, it's pretty good. Besides, in a year you'll toss it anyways (we're always upgrading!) I hope the surface pro 4 works with the SP3 docking station. Waiting for folks to reply giving me a hard time because I actually like a Microsoft product - sorry, but it's a good device - and I've gotten over Windows 8/8.1 - I mostly 99.99% of the time just run in desktop mode - not a giant adjustment like folks claim. I agree, there should be NO adjustment, but MS is just trying stuff. They say they consulted with users while developing the Windows 8 interface, I'm not sure who those users actually are! As far as the OS - it's stable. I've had ZERO crashes/bluescreens/etc on the Surface over the year aside from one Windows update which made my heart skip a beat thinking the machine was cooked - i was just impatient. I am running Visual Studio/Adobe products/Office mostly.
Technically it was a tank analogy.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
According to specs the surface pro 3 weighs about 1.76 pounds.
Nexus 9 weighs about 0.961 pounds
Ipad air 2 with cellular weighs about: 0.98 pound (444 g)
Ipad air 2 with wifi weighs about Weight: 0.96 pound (437 g)
Macbook Air weighs about 2.38 pounds
still plays movies or shows ebooks for more than seven hours on a single charge. So, tell me why I need a new tablet? Even though I live in Seattle, my old iPad will still work for an entire flight to Miami. Why do I need a new tablet?
two very different machine for different use cases
In these form factors, it's no longer a question of peak CPU performance. These processors all thermal-throttle to the point where none of them are going to be performing at peak while in these form factors. The same i5 in the Surface will provide significantly more performance when in another form factor (like a NUC).
Of course Apple claimed they put a lot of effort into improving the sustained performance of the A8 over the A7, which already was better than other ARM chips. And it actually looks like they succeeded: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8666/the-apple-ipad-air-2-review/5
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
All my devices, a NUC, a Mozilla Flame and a Kobo run some variant of Linux. There's a laptop running XP donated to a family member...
they're still the evil empire but competition is a good thing if it forces Google and Apple to innovate. And not using any Apple/Google OSes myself, I'm not convinced separate form factors and ecosystems for Chrome OS/Android or OS X/iOS are necessarily the way forward.
So if I did ever buy a tablet, it'd probably be one with an open bootloader capable of quad-booting Debian/Firefox OS/Android/Windows as the mood suited. A stylus and a keyboard could be handy.
Oh, it's great for other things as well - Kindle, games, videos & photos, and several apps. Oh, and in my car, it works beautifully as an iPod. It's battery life is the best - unmatched by anything else I have - my iPhone, Moto-X, Ellipsis 7 and WinBook. I don't do FaceBook, but I have all 3 types of tablets, and this one is the best. The Winbook could have been great as well had they just put in 64GB of Flash drive instead of 32.
Why don't they put the AirBooks & the Mac Pros on this platform as well, and drive up the volumes? In fact, if they moved OS-X to the A8, both their OSs would be on the same platform, much like Intel. And then the Macs could run iOS apps as well.
Thankfully MS included a small whiny fan in the Surface3 Pro that cranks up every 30 seconds if you're doing something interesting. You can't get the same visceral experience of real mechanical sound effects on a Nexus or iPad.
If we're going to compare architectures on a tech site, can we at least acknowledge the fact that we're not using a credible benchmarking methodology? And linking to Which? Really?
Geekbench is basically useless for comparing different architectures. It's barely even useful for comparing systems on the same architecture. There's a big emphasis on crypto routines that are usually hardware accelerated and already orders of magnitude faster than IO on any system you care to name. A lot of their other tests are small enough to fit into L1 cache, totally hiding things like Intel's vastly superior branch prediction and memory pipe.
Comparing A8X and x86 performance is difficult, and I can't find any credible numbers out there at all. Browser benchmarks aren't a useful way to do this either, but they tend to show the surface pro as being at least twice as quick as the A8X. I'd expect an even bigger gap in anything with a heavy emphasis on floating point operations or memory bandwidth. ARM simply don't have anything that plays in the I5s league yet in terms of pure performance.
@mystuff: "But does it run Linux?"
How dare you criticise MICROS~1
All tablets are full blown computers. I have an old K6 II that runs a firewall here - not because I have to but because it can (and I am too lazy to change it).
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
If you're trying to imply that an iPad has as much malware "available" for it as a wintel tablet (which is basically just a pc), I have news for you, too.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Well, if we're going to get that deep into car analogies, all I can say is that that torque-to-weight ratio would be phenomenal... but you'd need to load down the front (*not* the rear, Hollywood; are you listening?!) with thousands of pounds of gold bars to get any traction... ;)
Computers (laptops, tablets) long ago surpassed the point where bench marks matter to most of us.
They are faster than we need them to be except for cutting edge stuff.
Of course each faction will tout a benchmark if it shows them in a good light or ignore it if it does not.
But it's meaningless noise. There are many other factors which have significant weight in the decision process besides performances on an arbitrary set of tasks.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I don't really think of it as a tablet but a better Macbook Air, and I have two Macbook Pro for music production, and a Mac Pro.
A $900 tablet is faster than a $500 tablet. Who would have guessed that you can pay almost twice as much for something that is 30% faster on certain benchmark tests. I actually like the Surface Pro 3, but this article is more of a fanboy blog post than a real review of a product.
"I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions."
all the antimalware programs you'd want on a PC
If you're trying to draw on the notion that only PC's get malware I have news for you...
Just got back from loading Windows and running bootcamp on my iMac. This after a 3 year vacation from Windows. A nice fresh copy of Windows, and it hasn't changed a bit. Update hell, security patch upon security patch, changing settings, programs not responding after an update.
The implication as I read it, is that yes, after enough updates, after enough protection from built-in vulnerabilities, that Surface Pro will indeed slow down. If I didn't have a device that only uses Windows software, there is no way I would put up with this shit. Because shit it is. It's been a week since I've installed Windows, and I've already spent more time chasing down stupid problems than the entire time I've had the Mac. And that is with 3 OS changes on the Mac side with nothing broken.
By the way - none of those problems had a thing to do with bootcamp - since I'm sure you'll claim that was the case.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
If you're trying to imply that an iPad has as much malware "available" for it as a wintel tablet (which is basically just a pc), I have news for you, too.
There is a reason why every time some malware shows up for Apple products, it makes the front page of tech news. There is so much on the pc side that it isn't news anymore. Just take a look at the updates on the Windows side.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Surface is the worst of both worlds, combined into a pricey and sucktastic combo.
It is kind of like the Escalade "trucks" You end up trying to figure who the hell wants that. They are bad as an SUV, bad as a truck.
And for the price of one, you can buy two machines that will actually serve their purpose well.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
To dam funny! +11
So a 20% difference in speed for a 30% difference in price. Good to know.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Once the Surface Pro 3 is running all the antimalware programs you'd want on a PC, THEN run the comparisons again, and I think you'd find the others quite comparable.
I dont have antimalware on the Linux or Windows partitions of my SP2, I use Chrome for browsing and dont download/open suspicious files, I take the same precautions on my Nexus and on iOS which is why I havent had any malware issues so what specifically should I be concerned about?
Using the surface, well it's like going back and using crayons.
Be nice if Microsoft would get into the 21st century. They don't even realize they suck.
Technically it was a tank analogy.
If it includes a car anywhere, it passes the minimum requirements for a "stupid slashdot car analogy."
Unfortunately, in this case it failed by being roughly appropriate and therefore not achieving full "stupid" status.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You are a fucking moron. The Surface Pro 3 uses a dual core, ultra-low power CPU too. It is not a full blown i5, it is a U series and it still significantly outperforms the iPad Air 2 tri-core CPU.
The processor alone uses more power than an iPad. If that is "low power", than that's sad.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
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