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Microsoft Says New Surface Pro is Faster Than 15" M3 MacBook Air
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Did you forget that everyone games on Windows? Literally nobody games on Linux/Mac.
And even figured out how to do facial recognition in that small of a space! Microsoft must be poaching Apple engineers - they figured out what Apple can't - how to fit a camera in a small space without notching the display. Amazing space age technology!
In 15 years, we'll be able to point to the vision pro and say this was the point when apple "jumped the shark" (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark)
ugh maybe if it was windows 10. 11 is awful constantly shoving Edge and Bing down your throat plus all the ads
Oh the truth is far worse than that, This is the"fruit" of the former Apple silicon designers behind the M1 who left Apple when they supposedly were told they couldn't develop server chips. Server chips in hot demand as they are the foundation of everything on the cloud and AI. What has made Nvidia as much money as they could ever want.
https://www.theregister.com/2020/02/14/nuvia_apple_server/Apple's iPhone chip designers mulled creating their own homegrown server processor for the Silicon Valley giant – but were shot down by Steve Jobs after they presented the idea at an internal meeting.
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Fast, to be sure, and competition is good for everybody. Intel, to be sure, should be sweating even more than they already were--they're losing the "It can't run Windows" dodge they've used as a crutch since... decades ago, really. Especially now that Microsoft is having to hold up a Qualcomm CPU to get a favorable comparison with Apple's hardware in terms of raw speed without massive power consumption.
But rather than taking Microsoft's word for it, here's an article with some actual cross-platform benchmarks across the Qualcomm X series (these line up with some other tests I found, and Qualcomm's own claims):
beebom.com
Short version, the X lineup is certainly very fast, and extremely competitive with Intel and AMD. Against Apple Silicon, the top-of-line X Elite X1E-84-100 is a hair behind the M3 lineup in single-core Geekbench scores, and about even with the M3 Pro in multi-core. Which is impressive!
It's also still 30% slower than the M3 Max at I think a similar TDP (one article said 83W for the top-of-line, although I'm not seeing anywhere Qualcomm publishes numbers of its own, not that Apple does either).
As for the M4, which you can't get in a laptop yet but is arguably a closer comparison for a CPU that's not shipping until next month, the X Elite is ~20% slower in single-core and right about the same in multi-core. Depending on TDP, that's not bad, but less impressive, especially since the M4 is (presumably) the bottom-end of (presumably) the coming year's lineup.
For Cinebench (CPU only, so not exactly a practical-real-world test but still a common comparison), the top-of-line X Elite is about 20% faster than an M3 Pro, and 25% slower than an M3 Max. Again, very respectable, especially for a first-try laptop CPU, but not earth-shattering.
On the 3d side, I had a little trouble coming up with 3D Mark Wild Life Extreme benchmarks in FPS (rather than score), but it looks like the M3 Max clocks in around 145 FPS with 30-core GPU and 190 FPS with 40-core (Unlimited, but since the X Elite was way down at 44 it shouldn't matter which version it was tested with). So, a solid 4x faster at the high end. Not sure about the M4, but extrapolating from scores to FPS a bit, that's in the ballpark of double the X Elite. So Qualcomm may have less to brag about on the graphics side.
But rather than taking Microsoft's word for it, here's an article with some actual cross-platform benchmarks across the Qualcomm X series (these line up with some other tests I found, and Qualcomm's own claims):
Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus: What's the Difference, SKUs, and Benchmarks
Qualcomm unveiled the entire lineup of Snapdragon X series chipsets including three Elite processors and one Plus processor.
beebom.com
Short version, the X lineup is certainly very fast, and extremely competitive with Intel and AMD. Against Apple Silicon, the top-of-line X Elite X1E-84-100 is a hair behind the M3 lineup in single-core Geekbench scores, and about even with the M3 Pro in multi-core. Which is impressive!
It's also still 30% slower than the M3 Max at I think a similar TDP (one article said 83W for the top-of-line, although I'm not seeing anywhere Qualcomm publishes numbers of its own, not that Apple does either).
As for the M4, which you can't get in a laptop yet but is arguably a closer comparison for a CPU that's not shipping until next month, the X Elite is ~20% slower in single-core and right about the same in multi-core. Depending on TDP, that's not bad, but less impressive, especially since the M4 is (presumably) the bottom-end of (presumably) the coming year's lineup.
For Cinebench (CPU only, so not exactly a practical-real-world test but still a common comparison), the top-of-line X Elite is about 20% faster than an M3 Pro, and 25% slower than an M3 Max. Again, very respectable, especially for a first-try laptop CPU, but not earth-shattering.
On the 3d side, I had a little trouble coming up with 3D Mark Wild Life Extreme benchmarks in FPS (rather than score), but it looks like the M3 Max clocks in around 145 FPS with 30-core GPU and 190 FPS with 40-core (Unlimited, but since the X Elite was way down at 44 it shouldn't matter which version it was tested with). So, a solid 4x faster at the high end. Not sure about the M4, but extrapolating from scores to FPS a bit, that's in the ballpark of double the X Elite. So Qualcomm may have less to brag about on the graphics side.
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Parallels for productivity apps on Windows 11 on ARM and Cross Over for games without a Mac port has worked well for me but admittedly Counter Strike 2 is about the only game I play that’s Windows only these days. I’ve got an X Box Series X for everything else I play. I did buy the Mac version of Disco Elysium because I got it on sale in Steam for next to nothing and play the Mac version of CS:GO as well.
They have uneven bezels. The sides are thinner than the top and bottom.
I'd have to get out my calipers but it looks like the top bezel is thinner than the notch in the MacBook Air. And yet Microsoft figured out how to put a biometric camera in there.
Anyone else remember the "funeral" that Microsoft held for the iPhone? Funny stuff, that.
Apple had no roadmap.
Microsoft is going all in on AI, today introducing a series of Copilot+ PCs that have AI-focused hardware. The new Surface Pro is one of the first Copilot+ PCs, equipped with Qualcomm's Arm-based Snapdragon X Elite processor.
Microsoft is already pitting the Surface Pro against Apple's M3 MacBook Air, and in marketing materials, claims that the Surface Pro has superior processing power and battery life. Compared to the 15-inch MacBook Air with 8-core CPU and 10-core GPU, the Surface Pro and other Copilot+ PCs with 12-core and 10-core processors offer 58 percent better sustained multithreaded performance (based on Cinebench benchmarks).
As for battery life, Copilot+ PCs support up to 15 hours of web browsing or 22 hours of local video playback. The MacBook Air models offer the same 15 hours of wireless web browsing, but only 18 hours of local video playback.
According to The Verge, Microsoft's demonstrations for media included several comparisons of the Surface Pro compared to the MacBook Air, and the Surface Pro came out on top in many of them. Windows PCs have struggled to keep up with Apple silicon in recent years, but it appears that Qualcomm's technology is catching up.
The Surface Pro is a 2-in-1 laptop that runs Windows, and it has an OLED display, much like Apple's newly launched iPad Pro models. It weighs under two pounds, supports Wi-Fi 7, and has advanced AI capabilities enabled by the neural processing unit.
Pricing on the Surface Pro starts at $1,000, but the version with OLED display and Snapdragon X Elite chip, 16GB RAM, and a 512GB SSD is priced starting at $1,500. Microsoft today also introduced the Surface Laptop with the same Snapdragon X Elite chip, with pricing that starts at $1,299.
The Surface devices will arrive to customers starting on June 18.
Article Link: Microsoft Says New Surface Pro is Faster Than 15" M3 MacBook Air
And they painted themselves into a corner with their architecture:
They can’t make consumer machines cheap enough.
-and-
They can’t make fast, expandable pro machines.
Love competition, apple needs a kick in the os development butt.
but this is terrifying: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...ure-will-record-everything-you-do-on-your-pc/
but this is terrifying: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...ure-will-record-everything-you-do-on-your-pc/
Lol you actually called Apple TV+ a failure.... that's hilarious.
The question is how many x86 apps can take advantage of the arm processor inside. Last I heard, Microsoft’s translation software is still subpar compared to Rosetta.
LOL, you make it sound like Apple spent 5 years doing nothing -- when in reality they have been releasing multiple iterations of a few highly successful products you might have heard of like AirPods, Apple Watch and this little thing called the iPhone.
Reality check: the Mac and iPad that they're supposedly neglecting add up to less than 15% of Apple's revenue. I love Macs too, but let's not delude ourselves into thinking they're Apple's bread and butter these days.
