Re: Microsoft Surface Book
Ενα εξαιρετικό άρθρο που αποτυπώνει και ξεδιαλύνει το τοπίο σε σχέση με την περίφημη φράση της MS οτι το Book υπερέχει x2 του MacBook.
Ετσι για να αφήσουμε στην άκρη θεωρίες συνομωσίας και κυνήγι μαγισσών fanboyικου επιπέδου.
Surface Book vs. MacBook Pro: It isn't twice as fast. It's three times as fast
Microsoft figured out how to put a discrete GPU into the Surface Book, and it paid off.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2995...nt-twice-as-fast-its-three-times-as-fast.html
Microsoft claims its new Surface Book is twice as fast as its equivalent MacBook Pro. Well, we ran some benchmarks, and hate to say it, but Microsoft lied. The Surface Book isn’t twice as fast.
It’s three times as fast.
Read on for the details.
What Microsoft meant
First, let’s clarify what Microsoft meant when it said the Surface Book would smoke the MacBook Pro. The company specifically means the MacBook Pro 13 inch model. That’s a very important distinction, because the MacBook Pro 15 is a different class of laptop. It’s larger, heavier, and packs a quad-core CPU and fairly beefy AMD discrete graphics. For Microsoft to say the Surface Book out performed the MacBook Pro 15 would be absurd. It would be like Apple saying the MacBook Pro 15 outperforms, oh, an MSI GT 80 Titan SLI laptop in gaming. So the target for the Surface Book is the MacBook Pro 13. Microsoft even compares the two directly in its reviewers guide.
How I tested
For my tests, I had access to a 2015 MacBook Pro 13. But the only Surface Book I had with the discrete graphics chip had an Intel Core i7-6600U.
That's not a fair comparison, but I had a workaround. Microsoft had also provided a Core i5 Surface Book without discrete graphics. Microsoft is still pretty secretive about the GPU in the Surface Books, but I don’t believe it’s putting a different GPU in the higher-end models. I just plugged the Clipboard section with the Core i5 into the base with the graphics chip in it. Neat.
So for the record, I tested a Retina MacBook Pro 13 with an Intel Broadwell Core i5-5752U, Iris 6100 graphics, 8GB of RAM and PCIe SSD, and the latest El Capitan build. Its rival was a Surface Book with an Intel Skylake Core i5-6300U, GeForce graphics, 8GB of RAM and PCIe SSD with Windows 10.
First up were some CPU tests. Cinebench R15 is a cross-platform test that uses a real-world 3D rendering engine from Maxon. The test is pure CPU, so let’s see how Microsoft’s βtwice as fastβ statement holds up here.
The higher clocked chip of the MacBook Pro 13 again edges past the Surface Book’s CPU
Not what you expected, PC fans? Consider the CPUs. The MacBook Pro 13 uses a pretty high-wattage, dual-core 28-watt chip with a base clock speed of 2.7GHz. That means it sticks to 2.7GHz even when under a load, and it’ll Turbo Boost to 3.1GHz. The Skylake dual-core in the Surface Book is a 15-watt chip; its minimum clock speed is 2.4GHz with a Turbo Boost of 3GHz.
Even though the Skylake CPU is faster than the Broadwell CPU in the MacBook if all things are equal, the chip in the MacBook most likely runs at higher clock speeds all the time. If you want to peep the specs of the chips in use here, I’ve lined them up at Intel’s ARK for you to compare.
In pure CPU tests, it’s often a wash and the MacBook Pro’s higher clocked CPU has a speed advantage here
Was Microsoft fibbing!?
If you’re thinking Microsoft’s mouth was writing checks its hardware couldn’t cash, take a step back. Microsoft has never told me exactly what tests it used to determine the βtwiceβ boost (believe me, I asked), but I always suspected it was mainly built around the GeForce chip.
Of the many ground-breaking features Microsoft pulled off with the Surface Book, one of the crowning achievements is that GPU under the keyboard. You can see what a difference it makes in GPU-intensive benchmarks.
First up is LuxMark 3. It’s a test designed to measure the OpenCL performance of a chip. OpenCL stands for Open Compute Language, and it’s an attempt to move general purpose CPU chores onto the GPU.
For my test I ran the LuxBall load because other workloads crashed on the MacBook Pro 13. I wasn’t sure how this one would break, as Intel’s OpenCL performance has come a long way, but the result is certainly something that’ll make PC fans happier.
LuxMark 3 is a cross-platform OpenCL benchmark. I ran it on both of the graphics chips which is where OpenCL should run.
Heaven 4.0 performance
Next I ran Unigine’s Heaven 4.0 graphics test. The test was run at 1366x768 resolution with 2x AA, no tessellation and medium quality. I did this because the MacBook Pro 13 defaulted to many of those settings when started. On the Mac, the only graphics API is OpenGL, while the PC has DirectX and OpenGL. I opted for DirectX, as I don’t think it would have been fair to use OpenGL on the PCβWindows is all about DirectX, and it’s a big advantage for the platform.
Full disclosure: I ran the same test with different settings to see how the graphics in both stacked up. Most of the tests showed the Surface Book with the same big performance margin, though I could also find settings that would drag down both laptop’s performance so they were the same. Still, I think is a fair representation.
Surface Book also gets to wave good bye to the the MacBook Pro 13 in Unigine’s Heaven 4.0
Let’s try a real game
Tomb Raider really puts the MacBook Pro 13 at a huge disadvantage. If I were Microsoft PR, I’d pick this benchmark and start screaming.
The GPU in the Surface Book isn’t just about gaming. Sure, that’s a nice bonus over integrated graphics, but the GPU really plays to other applications that need more graphics performance. CAD/CAM users, for example, can use it, and other professional-level applications should see a nice bonus with the discrete graphics chip in the Surface Book. That’s why my last performance benchmark will be Adobe Premiere Pro Creative Cloud.
Premiere Pro has used GPU acceleration for years. It originally supported only Nvidia’s CUDA but has since added OpenCL. Luckily it runs on both platforms, too.
For my test I installed a Premiere Pro CC on both laptops, imported a 6.5GB 4K resolution .MOV video file, and then exported the movie to H.264 using the Vimeo preset at 1080p resolution with the maximum render quality setting enabled. On the Mac, OpenCL was used. On the Surface Book, CUDA was my choice because it’s an Nvidia chip.
The result? Another crushing blow in favor of the Surface Book. For a professional, less time spent rendering means more productivity. On the Surface Book, it was done literally minutes ahead of the MacBook Pro 13.
I leaned on Premiere Pro CC 2015 to encode a 4K H.264 file on both platforms and Surface Book pile drives the Macintosh.
Battery life
Despite having a smaller battery and a touch screen, the Surface Book edges past the MacBook Pro 13 in battery life while playing 4K video.
Απο όλα τα παραπάνω βγαίνει το συμπέρασμα οτι η αναφορά της MS πρώτα αφορούσε η σύγκριση με 13αρι MacBook όπως ειναι το σωστο βάση βάρους,φορητότητας,specs,αναλογίες διαστάσεων και κατηγορίας προϊόντων δηλαδη των ultrabook και οτι η υπέροχη βασιζόταν στην Nvidia κάρτα γραφικών οπου υπερέχει όχι μονο 2 αλλα 3 φορες στα συγκριτικά μεταξύ τους και σε αποδοση γραφικών πχ παιχνίδια αλλα και απαιτητικών εφαρμογών που αξιοποιούν την GPU.
Ακόμα και επίπεδο battery efficient και εκεί υπερέχει το Book.
Η μόνη ελαφριά υπέροχη του MacBook ειναι σε επίπεδο CPU πράγμα απόλυτα λογικό λογο υψηλότερο minimum χρονισμού και 28W TDP έναντι του αντίστοιχου Book στα 14W.
