Surface Pro 2 Gets Teardown Treatment

[JMcEntegart]

Before you buy, check out what's inside the Surface Pro 2!

Surface Pro 2 Gets Teardown Treatment : Read more

 

[CaedenV]

... I thought the pro2 used LPDDR3? The rest of it isn't exactly unexpected. MS is not exactly known for making things that are fixable.

 

[sean1357]

i5-4200U dual-core (4 threads) 1.6Ghz looks very good to compare with A7 dual-core 1.3Ghz. They all run 64bit..

I want to see the performance of these two????

 

[the1kingbob]

Why is the source Toms; shouldn't it be iFixit?

 

[rishiswaz]

I hope that the DDR2 was a typo, I thought Intel processors don't have DDR2 support in the IMC anymore.

 

[therogerwilco]

These Ifixit guys should rename their site to ITriedToFixIt. They're such a joke. They prefer glue to screws.
Screws ALWAYS > glue.

 

[therogerwilco]

Sean1357, my Surface Pro 2 scored 44,000+ on 3dmark (mobile version from Windows Store) The Ipad 4 scored 10,000+. Another A7 (I think Samsung product) scored ~12,000+

 

[jimmysmitty]

... I thought the pro2 used LPDDR3? The rest of it isn't exactly unexpected. MS is not exactly known for making things that are fixable.

I am pretty sure its LPDDR3 as well since the i5-4200U only supports DDR3.

Probably a typo.

 

[jimmysmitty]

That has to be a typo. The i5-4200U only supports DDR3 and LPDDR3.

Either way the Pro 2 looks nice. I would like to see battery life.

Sean1357, This is a full blown x86 CPU so the Apple A7 wont beat it in raw performance. Battery life it may but not in performance.

 

[InvalidError]

I hope that the DDR2 was a typo, I thought Intel processors don't have DDR2 support in the IMC anymore.

DDR2 on Haswell certainly sounds highly unlikely since Intel has not made DDR2-based mainstream CPUs in two or three generations already.

 

[jimmysmitty]

I hope that the DDR2 was a typo, I thought Intel processors don't have DDR2 support in the IMC anymore.

DDR2 on Haswell certainly sounds highly unlikely since Intel has not made DDR2-based mainstream CPUs in two or three generations already.

The last generation to support DDR2 was the 45nm Core 2 series as it had a motherboard based MC. Once they went to a IMC (with first gen Core I) they moved to DDR3 only.

 

[back_by_demand]

It is a typo guys, don't you read the rest of the site? Proofing is atrocious, if present at all.

 

[damianrobertjones]

Tom's Hardware STILL hasn't even bothered to run a review or article on the Surface and Surface Pro 2 release. Pants.

 

[back_by_demand]

Tom's Hardware STILL hasn't even bothered to run a review or article on the Surface and Surface Pro 2 release. Pants.

Reason 1 - They are notoriously late at reporting anything, so an indepth review is out of the question

Reason 2 - Other sites get one delivered early and review in advance, but Microsoft doesn't give one to Tom's because it is almost as bias against MS as Cnet

Is it 1, 2 or both?

 

[danwat1234]

LPDDR3 according to the ifixit site, so yeah, DDR2 was a typo fo sho

 

[sykozis]

Sean1357, my Surface Pro 2 scored 44,000+ on 3dmark (mobile version from Windows Store) The Ipad 4 scored 10,000+. Another A7 (I think Samsung product) scored ~12,000+

You can't compare x86 and ARM processors. Even with benchmarks, it's not possible to get an accurate comparison. The architecture is completely different and as a result, the instruction set is completely different as well. Since neither can run software written specifically for the other (excluding web-based apps), you simply can't compare them.

 

[InvalidError]

You can't compare x86 and ARM processors. Even with benchmarks, it's not possible to get an accurate comparison. The architecture is completely different and as a result, the instruction set is completely different as well. Since neither can run software written specifically for the other (excluding web-based apps), you simply can't compare them.

Of course you can compare them: what matters at the end of the day is how quickly they can get a given set of tasks done within a given cost, space and power budgets. It does not really matter what the architecture or instruction set is. If your architecture does not have libraries as tightly optimized as another, that simply becomes part of your platform's handicaps and one more item to add to the list of things to look into if you want your platform to perform better in that particular type of applications.

As long as a given platform can run applications that matter to normal people or even specific crowds, benchmarking that application across all eligible platforms is as valid a benchmark as any other for their respective crowds.

 

[stevejnb]

Tom's Hardware STILL hasn't even bothered to run a review or article on the Surface and Surface Pro 2 release. Pants.

Reason 1 - They are notoriously late at reporting anything, so an indepth review is out of the question

Reason 2 - Other sites get one delivered early and review in advance, but Microsoft doesn't give one to Tom's because it is almost as bias against MS as Cnet

Is it 1, 2 or both?

Demand, do you have any notable evidence of this anti-MS bias from the reporting side? Serious question - I just don't think I've seen much - and what I have seen, I've seen mirrored in articles about the other big players in the industry. They make some snarky "biased" comments about MS, Google, Apple from time to time, but I don't see a systematic singling out of one to be targeted. I actually thought their coverage of the initial Surface events was pretty good - and most of the other stuff you can just chalk up to Tom's being slow.

 

[rishiswaz]

Tom's Hardware STILL hasn't even bothered to run a review or article on the Surface and Surface Pro 2 release. Pants.

Reason 1 - They are notoriously late at reporting anything, so an indepth review is out of the question

Reason 2 - Other sites get one delivered early and review in advance, but Microsoft doesn't give one to Tom's because it is almost as bias against MS as Cnet

Is it 1, 2 or both?

Demand, do you have any notable evidence of this anti-MS bias from the reporting side? Serious question - I just don't think I've seen much - and what I have seen, I've seen mirrored in articles about the other big players in the industry. They make some snarky "biased" comments about MS, Google, Apple from time to time, but I don't see a systematic singling out of one to be targeted. I actually thought their coverage of the initial Surface events was pretty good - and most of the other stuff you can just chalk up to Tom's being slow.

To me the bias is not as much in the content in the articles but rather the amount of positive vs the amount of negative articles for every company.

 

[stevejnb]

Fair enough rish. Even in that case though, I don't see a ton of really negative articles about MS. The comments and the general user mindset of "we'll crucify MS for doing something even if we give other companies that do it a free pass" is all but impossible to miss, but I haven't really noticed a higher concentration of negative articles about MS. I don't really count them, but I notice a *definite* tech bias for Apple and against MS on NBC, while not really here.

 

[rishiswaz]

That is funny because if you didn't know Microsoft and NBC worked together to create MSNBC...

 

[stevejnb]

Heh, actually, I'm entirely aware of that. I'm actually curious to know whether they had the same biases when MS owned a big part of them them, or whether a pretty strong anti-MS sentiment didn't crop up until they parted ways.

 

[rishiswaz]

I don't think they left on bad terms though so maybe they are just drinking everyone's kool-aid besides Microsoft's.

 

[rishiswaz]

I don't think they left on bad terms though so maybe they are just drinking everyone's kool-aid besides Microsoft's.

 

[jimmysmitty]

I don't think they left on bad terms though so maybe they are just drinking everyone's kool-aid besides Microsoft's.

Not sure its kool-aide drinking but if I remember correctly, THG moved to WIndows 8 as a test platform pretty early on.

As for their lateness, its mostly the new articles. They typically have reviews (legit, not pre NDA) the same day or sometimes before some of the other major hardware sites.

As well, THG is a mostly hardware focused site, not that the Surface isn't but its more a combination of hardware. There are rarely reviews on Android phones but always reviews on the latest CPU/GPU etc.