The Microsoft Surface Tablet thread.

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finbarqs

Diamond Member
Feb 16, 2005
4,057
2
81
Now they're all back ordered :(. People need to realize how db this tablet is, and how crazy over priced it is!!!
 

dagamer34

Platinum Member
Aug 15, 2005
2,591
0
71
Now they're all back ordered :(. People need to realize how db this tablet is, and how crazy over priced it is!!!

"Overpriced" is a weird word through around when talking about other people, because it's all about establishing a value proposition. $50 for a smartphone is cheap but $50 for an app is expensive to most people, and yet we are talking about the same amount of money.

If people were buying solely on the factor of price, the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HD would be outselling the iPad. I don't think magical Apple brainwashing could convince massive numbers of people to spend almost three times the amount of money on a similar product.
 

BladeVenom

Lifer
Jun 2, 2005
13,540
16
0
Now they're all back ordered :(. People need to realize how db this tablet is, and how crazy over priced it is!!!

They weren't making that many of them, and then they also had a manufacturing problem. So selling out doesn't mean they actually sold in big numbers.
 

ponyo

Lifer
Feb 14, 2002
19,689
2,811
126
Interesting the screen is 5 point multi-touch instead of the standard 10. I wonder if that's OS limitation rather than hardware. If the rumor of Nexus 10 is true, Microsoft will be the only one offering 720p resolution on 10"+ inch tablet.
 

WelshBloke

Lifer
Jan 12, 2005
30,337
7,987
136
Interesting the screen is 5 point multi-touch instead of the standard 10. I wonder if that's OS limitation rather than hardware. If the rumor of Nexus 10 is true, Microsoft will be the only one offering 720p resolution on 10"+ inch tablet.

How many times do you need more than 5 points though?
 

ponyo

Lifer
Feb 14, 2002
19,689
2,811
126
How many times do you need more than 5 points though?

Not saying I need or use it. I was just surprised it was even mentioned in the MS spec page. 5 point multitouch is fine. But everyone is now using 10 point so it's just surprising to see 5 on a new 10"+ tablet.
 

Puddle Jumper

Platinum Member
Nov 4, 2009
2,835
1
0
Regardless of the games, it'll suck out the battery if it uses a decent GPU. Hence surface pro will use integrated graphics. Arm is actually better GPU equipped than pro

Not even close. While Intel's igps are rather slow from a pc standpoint the HD 4000 is still many times faster than the Adreno 320 and PowerVR SGX 543MP4 much less the even slower gpu used by Tegra 3.
 

Roland00Address

Platinum Member
Dec 17, 2008
2,196
260
126
Regardless of the games, it'll suck out the battery if it uses a decent GPU. Hence surface pro will use integrated graphics. Arm is actually better GPU equipped than pro

Intel HD4000 is an order of magnitude faster than anything you will see with arm as well as an order of magnitude faster than the intel atom gpu that uses powerVR.
The Intel HD4000 will also have much better windows drivers than any arm tablet out there.

There is a reason why intel is switching to a variant of intel hd2500 for the upcomming atom redesign that comes out in 2013. The upcomming atom redesign is called silvermont when refering to just the cpu cores and it will be 22nm and hopefully late 2013. When you refer to the entire soc chip and not just the silvermont cpu cores you call the platform valleyview.

Valleyview will have 4 ivybridge execution units. The intel hd4000 has 16 execution units, the intel hd2500 has a total of 6 execution units so vallewyview will have a lower clock version of ivybridge hd2500 with less execution units.

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That said you don't need much gpu horsepower to accelerate hd video. Being buttery smooth for the interface and playing games is another matter entirely but that has a lot to do with memory bandwidth as well as how the code is done not just gpu power.
 

BenSkywalker

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
9,140
67
91
Intel HD4000 is an order of magnitude faster than anything you will see with arm as well as an order of magnitude faster than the intel atom gpu that uses powerVR.

Order of magnitude? Comparing the HD4000 to seven month old ARM SoCs it is more like three times the performance.

The Intel HD4000 will also have much better windows drivers than any arm tablet out there.

I think that grabs the dumbest quote I've seen on these forums for quite some time. Intel has better graphics drivers then nVidia?
 

dagamer34

Platinum Member
Aug 15, 2005
2,591
0
71
Order of magnitude? Comparing the HD4000 to seven month old ARM SoCs it is more like three times the performance.



I think that grabs the dumbest quote I've seen on these forums for quite some time. Intel has better graphics drivers then nVidia?

He was specifically referring to ARM chips, which yeah, will probably be better than a driver written from scratch in the last year.
 

BenSkywalker

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
9,140
67
91
He was specifically referring to ARM chips, which yeah, will probably be better than a driver written from scratch in the last year.

He said the HD4000 would have better drivers then any ARM tablet, that is saying that Intel will have better graphics drivers then nVidia. That is absurd to put it mildly. G70 based T3 or Kepler based T4 GPUs on Tegra parts have extensive, and *significantly* more robust driver support under Windows then HD4000 already. nVidia has been building ARM based drivers for years, it isn't like they are treading some shocking new ground here. Further, even if they were, it would still be utterly foolish to bet on Intel's graphics driver team over nVidia's..... ever, for anything.
 

finbarqs

Diamond Member
Feb 16, 2005
4,057
2
81
But desktop apps requires desktop level performance. It better run Starcraft at a good fps and good quality :)
 

Roland00Address

Platinum Member
Dec 17, 2008
2,196
260
126
He was specifically referring to ARM chips, which yeah, will probably be better than a driver written from scratch in the last year.

That is my point. Furthermore tegra arm drivers for android or geforce drivers for windows are not the same thing as tegra arm drivers for windows rt.

And of all the arm manufactures tegra is probably the best competition when it comes to drivers.

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Order of magnitude does not have to mean base 10, all order of magnitude means is not the same scale and the amount of performance difference between intel hd4000 and any arm gpu is not going to be comparable.

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But hell whatever, I am not going to argue it won't be long till my point is proven that intel hd4000 will have better graphics than any of this generation arm including tegra 3. Soon we will have a game based off the unreal engine or some other universal engine on the windows rt tablet and you can compare implementations between the surface rt and the surface.
 

BenSkywalker

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
9,140
67
91
That is my point.

My point is that it was a profoundly stupid point. What device level architectural changes are their going to be between Android SoCs, and Win SoCs? What functional calls are changing between the nV cores utilized across the platforms? Without fundamental changes the drivers, while clearly needing to be custom, will be able to reuse existing code bases extensively.

Order of magnitude does not have to mean base 10

Were you raised in parts of Persia ~2000 years ago? While strict linguistics do allow for order of magnitude to mean something other then base ten, that usage is for those who don't use base ten as their norm.

But hell whatever, I am not going to argue it won't be long till my point is proven that intel hd4000 will have better graphics than any of this generation arm including tegra 3.

Who was arguing against a new 20W x86 APU beating a year old 1W ARM SoC? I missed that.