Nokia 2520 as powerful as Surface 2

[immortalmatt]

Hi,

Ive just been watching a youtube video of a chap connecting his surface 2 to an external monitor and doing multiple things at once (playing a game whilst a HD movie is playing on the surface). Obviously powerful. With the 2520 being a different processor, will it be as good at that at multi tasking? Will it be as snappy in windows too?

 

[Curtieson]

Hi,

Ive just been watching a youtube video of a chap connecting his surface 2 to an external monitor and doing multiple things at once (playing a game whilst a HD movie is playing on the surface). Obviously powerful. With the 2520 being a different processor, will it be as good at that at multi tasking? Will it be as snappy in windows too?

To be clear, it was a Surface 2 (not Surface Pro 2), right?
I'd expect quick similar performance out of the two devices.

• Surface 2 is powered by a quad-core 1.7GHz NVIDIA Tegra 4 processor coupled with 2GB of RAM
  
• Lumia 2520 is powered by a quad-core 2.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoC with 2GB of RAM.

 

[immortalmatt]

Yeah just the Surface 2. By the specs the 2520 should actually be a little faster with its higher clock speed?

 

[Curtieson]

Yeah just the Surface 2. By the specs the 2520 should actually be a little faster with its higher clock speed?

I've always tried to make it a rule of thumb to not compare clock speeds across chip manufacturers...they aren't all playing by the same rules, haha. A chip can come out of the box slightly 'overclocked'.

But yes, I'd agree it would appear to be slightly faster. However MS would have a better hardware/software connection that could make up the difference. Really, I wouldn't go in expecting to be able to even notice the difference without running benchmark tests.

 

[wapoz]

I just got one yesterday. Its nice but a bit unwieldy and awkward in the hand. Screen is gorgeous, but not great for reading books and comics (makes me miss my old touchpad).

I've noticed occasional stutter and lags here and there, but overall its a nice device. Not sure if its a windows problem, driver problem, or SoC problem. Overall I still like the tablet.

Also, what's a good win RT app for commenting in forums? The wpc app doesn't have forum access, and the keyboard seems to flip out when I try to comment through immersive IE.

 

[Armada]

I've always considered Qualcomm to be the Intel of the ARM world whereas NVIDIA is AMD. Qualcomm usually offers better per cycle performance but NVIDIA (at least claims) that it has better graphics performance. The Snapdragon on the 2520 is likely to be snappier and is a little more modern than the Tegra 4.

 

[jmerrey]

I imagine certain benchmarks would say one is slightly faster than the other, but I've gone from S2 to 2520 and back to S2 in the last few months. In day to day use, there is no discernable speed difference.