Microsoft Surface Book Review > Performance: Benchmarks

Operation: Benchmarks

Let's accept a look at how the Surface Book, equipped with a Cadre i7-6600U, 16 GB of RAM, a 512 GB Samsung NVMe SSD and Nvidia GeForce 940M, performs in benchmarks. For all of these benchmarks, the Nvidia GPU was set to the preferred graphics processor unless stated otherwise.

In our CPU performance tests, the Surface Book'southward i7-6600U delivered small functioning gains over the final generation i7-5600U. In Cinebench and our x264 encoding benchmark, these gains were around vii percent, although at that place was a performance reduction in WinRAR. CPU performance is still well backside Intel's four-core mobile fries, only if yous're coming from a Cadre i5 Broadwell system like the XPS xiii, expect gains of around 25% in video encoding.

Cheers to the increased retention bandwidth available from DDR4 RAM, the Surface Volume dominates the retention bandwidth functioning charts.

With an Nvidia GeForce 940M within, the Surface Book records approximately double the performance of the organization with just integrated graphics. The GPU isn't the beefiest chip going effectually, and so a last-generation GeForce GTX 860M is around 45% faster, but it will suffice for nigh productivity workloads.

Is it possible to game on the Surface Volume? Well, information technology depends on what sort of games and quality settings you're willing to put up with.

High-performance games like Metro: Last Light and BioShock Space, even though they're not the latest titles, won't run at maximum quality settings on 1080p or the Surface Book'southward native resolution. But if yous're willing to turn down the quality settings to medium and reduce the resolution by effectually fifty%, games will begin to exist playable.

Lower-intensity titles, including Skyrim (at lower quality settings), the Lego series of games, and Portal 2, can run well on the Surface Volume with the dedicated graphics flake pulling its weight. The Surface Book definitely isn't a gaming car, even with the 940M inside, though it's more capable of the odd casual game than a similar laptop with only Intel's integrated graphics inside.