Surface RT/2 Performance Comparison

[Keith Wallace]

Exactly. This is what happened with Clover Trail. Intel hyped up it's ability to perform on par with ARM while still being power efficient. While Clover Trail-powered tablets were indeed almost as power efficient as the Surface RT the desktop performance was dreadful. I've seen a lot of benchmarks comparing Bay Trail to Clover Trail, and how much faster it performs etc. but if the Desktop is still as unusable then what's the point?

See, you're saying that Colver Trail was unusable, and since Bay Trail MIGHT be (to a degree we don't know), then we should dismiss x86 options, which is silly. Anandtech has something of a brief review of the Bay Trail Z3770 (AnandTech | The Bay Trail Preview: Intel Atom Z3770 Tested) . I'll just give a few quotes to convey what was said:

"While I don't believe Clover Trail was really usable in Windows 8's desktop mode (it was just too slow), the same is definitely not true for Bay Trail. With the exception of a few benchmark installs or loads that simply took forever, my Bay Trail experience was really quite good under Windows."

So we have a bit of confirmation that the desktop is usable, though not to a Haswell-level degree, of course.

"Looking back at Clover Trail vs. Bay Trail, the performance improvement is staggering. Intel improved performance by over 3x at this point."

This is in a Mozilla Kraken test (it's a Javascript benchmark), and the Bay Trail chip also demolished the 2012 iteration of Samsung's Exynos SoC (which was found in the Nexus 10).

"None of these games are really playable, but that doesn't mean others aren't. I was able to play Team Fortress 2 on Intel's Bay Trail FFRD (with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse of course) at reasonable frame rates. The system would chunk occasionally but for the most part it was relatively quick. Obviously Bay Trail's graphics are better suited for lighter tablet games."

That was when he tested it on Minecraft, Borderlands 2, and GRID 2. Now, Minecraft can be rather CPU-intensive, so that's not surprising. Borderlands 2 isn't the newest of games, so that kind of sucks, but it also has quite a lot of stuff to load in its open world. GRID 2's a rather-new racer, so I can't say expected it to be handled well by Bay Trail, either. However, the idea of mostly-smooth TF2 gives some hope that x86 games CAN be played, though on lower settings.

Regardless, this all says to me that the x86 experience is significantly better, and even if gaming isn't a meaningful option on Bay Trail (when it comes to current games), the thought that x86 support is reasonably-good, allowing for lots of usable legacy apps is nice. As I've mentioned before, the thoguht of being able to pop up Visual Studio for my Computer Organization class or Eclipse for my Android development class on a T100 (or something else running Bay Trail) sounds more appealing than a kickstand, but that's my preference.

If you truly can live 100% x86-free, and you REALLY like the Surface 2, by all means get it, of course. I just don't see ARM as my choice for anything beyond a smartphone until Windows RT can get things like NetBeans and Eclipse on it. I know it's highly unlikely Steam ever makes it (which sucks), but I think that Windows Store gaming CAN be enough to satisfy me (especially if it gets linked with the Windows Phone Store). It's just that total lack of productivity that gets to me right now.

EDIT: I'm reading through Anadtech's review of the Galaxy Note 10.1 right now (AnandTech | Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition) Review). They included the Bay Trail benchmarks in the review, meaning we have a comparison between the Z3770 (Bay Trail FFRD; the high-end Bay Trail option), the Z2760 (Galaxy Tab 3 10.1; the high-end Clover Trail option), and Samsung's new Exynos 5420 (which powers the Note 10.1 and the Galaxy Note 3 about to launch).

That review's pretty telling, in my opinion. On the CPU side, The Bay Trail chip DESTROYS the Clover Trail one,. It handily beats the Exynos SoC repeatedly. It beats the new A7 chip in multiple tests. It beats the Snapdragon 800 in all but one test. However, the Bay Trail chip lags behind the ARM offerings (usually by quite a bit) in the GPU tests. Considering the tablet gaming options at this time, it's reasonable to say that it will likely handle the Windows Store apps and games just fine, so I think those two articles give a fairly-meaningful assertion that Bay Trail is a viable alternative to ARM devices this time.

 

[Dos101]

See, you're saying that Colver Trail was unusable, and since Bay Trail MIGHT be (to a degree we don't know), then we should dismiss x86 options, which is silly. Anandtech has something of a brief review of the Bay Trail Z3770 (AnandTech | The Bay Trail Preview: Intel Atom Z3770 Tested) . I'll just give a few quotes to convey what was said:

"While I don't believe Clover Trail was really usable in Windows 8's desktop mode (it was just too slow), the same is definitely not true for Bay Trail. With the exception of a few benchmark installs or loads that simply took forever, my Bay Trail experience was really quite good under Windows."

So we have a bit of confirmation that the desktop is usable, though not to a Haswell-level degree, of course.

"Looking back at Clover Trail vs. Bay Trail, the performance improvement is staggering. Intel improved performance by over 3x at this point."

This is in a Mozilla Kraken test (it's a Javascript benchmark), and the Bay Trail chip also demolished the 2012 iteration of Samsung's Exynos SoC (which was found in the Nexus 10).

"None of these games are really playable, but that doesn't mean others aren't. I was able to play Team Fortress 2 on Intel's Bay Trail FFRD (with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse of course) at reasonable frame rates. The system would chunk occasionally but for the most part it was relatively quick. Obviously Bay Trail's graphics are better suited for lighter tablet games."

That was when he tested it on Minecraft, Borderlands 2, and GRID 2. Now, Minecraft can be rather CPU-intensive, so that's not surprising. Borderlands 2 isn't the newest of games, so that kind of sucks, but it also has quite a lot of stuff to load in its open world. GRID 2's a rather-new racer, so I can't say expected it to be handled well by Bay Trail, either. However, the idea of mostly-smooth TF2 gives some hope that x86 games CAN be played, though on lower settings.

Regardless, this all says to me that the x86 experience is significantly better, and even if gaming isn't a meaningful option on Bay Trail (when it comes to current games), the thought that x86 support is reasonably-good, allowing for lots of usable legacy apps is nice. As I've mentioned before, the thoguht of being able to pop up Visual Studio for my Computer Organization class or Eclipse for my Android development class on a T100 (or something else running Bay Trail) sounds more appealing than a kickstand, but that's my preference.

If you truly can live 100% x86-free, and you REALLY like the Surface 2, by all means get it, of course. I just don't see ARM as my choice for anything beyond a smartphone until Windows RT can get things like NetBeans and Eclipse on it. I know it's highly unlikely Steam ever makes it (which sucks), but I think that Windows Store gaming CAN be enough to satisfy me (especially if it gets linked with the Windows Phone Store). It's just that total lack of productivity that gets to me right now.

EDIT: I'm reading through Anadtech's review of the Galaxy Note 10.1 right now (AnandTech | Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition) Review). They included the Bay Trail benchmarks in the review, meaning we have a comparison between the Z3770 (Bay Trail FFRD; the high-end Bay Trail option), the Z2760 (Galaxy Tab 3 10.1; the high-end Clover Trail option), and Samsung's new Exynos 5420 (which powers the Note 10.1 and the Galaxy Note 3 about to launch).

That review's pretty telling, in my opinion. On the CPU side, The Bay Trail chip DESTROYS the Clover Trail one,. It handily beats the Exynos SoC repeatedly. It beats the new A7 chip in multiple tests. It beats the Snapdragon 800 in all but one test. However, the Bay Trail chip lags behind the ARM offerings (usually by quite a bit) in the GPU tests. Considering the tablet gaming options at this time, it's reasonable to say that it will likely handle the Windows Store apps and games just fine, so I think those two articles give a fairly-meaningful assertion that Bay Trail is a viable alternative to ARM devices this time.

I'm not saying to completely dismiss it, but if the overall experience is like that of Clover Trail then it's worth it to save up a bit more money for an i3 or even i5 tablet. You can quote all the benchmarks you want, but until there is an actual review of a Bay Trail powered tablet showing how the desktop experience is I'm maintaining my opinion. Clover Trail held the same promise when benchmarks were released before those tablets went on sale.

The only reason I can live without an x86 tablet is because I have a laptop and a desktop at home and a workstation at work, I don't need a tablet to fulfill what my other devices already do. That's just me though and many people need an x86 tablet. My point was though if the Desktop experience is still painful with Bay Trail then what's the point of it? Guess we'll wait and see how it performs in real life situations, not just synthetic.

 

[Keith Wallace]

And that's all fair, and I'll obviously do that same. While that wasn't a review, just a benchmark, Anand DID say that his experiences with the device showed a much-improved desktop experience, and that it wasn't a sluggish mess all the time. I'd imagine that there is also an implication that if Team Fortress 2 could be played on the thing (though with some stuttering), then the chip can handle general desktop activities like file navigation and running programs such as IDEs or non-Xbox Music media players.

I also agree that if the experience is terrible, the only real option is to upgrade to an i3 or i5 device. However, you'd have to point me to the i3 hybrid devices, because I don't know of any. If you jump from Atom to i5, you're talking about $400 to $900, which isn't really an option for many. You said you already have a desktop, but I don't see that as meaningful, as I have one two. That you already have a laptop? That's a matter of significance. That is something of the threshold where you start turning a tablet from a productivity machine to a luxury add-on, I think.

For you, you get a tablet for whatever reason. At the risk of putting words in your mouth, I'm guessing you just want a source of entertainment on a screen bigger than a smartphone, but you want greater portability than a full-on laptop. If you don't entertain yourself with x86 games much, then that works. However, in a case such as mine, I have just a desktop. If I get a portable device, be it a laptop or a tablet or a hybrid, I'll want more of a productivity machine, something that can be an extender of the work I do at home (or at school) on a desktop.

Now, from what I expect to happen in the computing space going forward, I believe most folks will be more on my side of thinking than yours. Rather than adding an entertainment tablet to a couple more work devices, they will look to tablets and hybrids as their primary devices, or they'll be secondary to a desktop (since a laptop can be somewhat redundant here). In those instances, I point to why Bay Trail would trump a Tegra or Snapdragon machine.

But what it really gets down to is a question of where the ARM tablets offer superiority over the x86 ones? As you mentioned, the desktop doesn't run well on Clover Trail (to the point of not being usable). On Bay Trail, it sounds like it will be usable, even if it happens to be imperfect. The question I have to ask is: what does that matter? Even if you aren't planning to use x86 applications, why pick the Atom device? You're picking between an imperfect desktop/x86 experience or none at all. It's not like there is a sacrifice in size (the T100 is actually smaller than the RT counterpart ASUS put out), battery life (Clover Trail had about the same 9-hour battery life as the RT machines, though we don't know what Bay Trail will do), or price (as I've mentioned elsewhere, the T100 is $350, while the Surface 2 is $450).

If it's something where you consider the design of the RT machines THAT much better than the Bay Trail machines, I guess that is what it is (though I think about that in-line with what I think about Mac users--that paying for prettiness doesn't make a whole lot of sense when productivity is severely hampered). I'm just not seeing the ARM advantage when it's put next to Bay Trail. Next to Ivy Bridge (and probably even Haswell), there are thermal- and energy-related advantages, along with the price point. Bay Trail eliminates those, though.

 

[mutant 9]

I was in the Chicago ms store today and the 2 looks and feels great. I will see if I can trade in my rt for it. The rt has the paint chipping problem so I will get it replaced, hopefully with the surface 2...

 

[rx74ray]

So how fast does Surface 2 perform when opening big Apps, like Office Apps? Here is a video I took at MS store. See it for yourself!

 

[Christian Kallevig]

Now that is what I want to see- the performance really looks better than the Surface RT by a mile.

 

[chrsdrshm]

Wow, Nice... thanks for that video! was hoping we would see IE and webpages loading in action.... but the speed its great!!

 

[juanitoriv]

I'm on the fence about RT/2 vs. Pro as well.. RT is hella cheaper with better battery, but I can run AutoCAD on Pro.. Now the onliest, yes I said onliest, thing that keeps me thinking RT is that I can use Remote Desktop (RDP). Which would be great for home or when I'm connected to WiFi. In fact, I rarely use my desktop anymore.

While the bubble burst of '08 has me out of my engineering world, I want back in.. This could mean having a device that can allow me to edit plans in the field, hello paperless..

I'm so confused!!

 

[WillysJeepMan]

Now that is what I want to see- the performance really looks better than the Surface RT by a mile.

Yes, the performance looks significantly better than the Surface RT running 8.0, but the difference doesn't appear to be DRAMATICALLY different from my RT running 8.1.

 

[HeyCori]

Does anyone know if the S2 could remote desktop full blown games? I have no idea if the Tegra 4 has that much power.

 

[juanitoriv]

RDP doesn't run the app/program, the host machine does all the computing. RDP access takes the mouse and keyboard, and puts the display onto your remote device. I routinely control/view my W7 machine with my WP7 HTC Radar. More functionality with various apps on my 8X, but I like to have my 8X ready and available (multi-Tasker).

 

[inteller]

wow....that's crazy better performance. PLEASE Microsoft just get the 5th battery saver core working on both!

 

[chrsdrshm]

wow....that's crazy better performance. PLEASE Microsoft just get the 5th battery saver core working on both!

Do we know for sure this isn't working? Or are we just the fact that it doesn't work in the RT? Just Curious...

 

[inteller]

it is not working on WoA at all.

 

[Keith Wallace]

Does anyone know if the S2 could remote desktop full blown games? I have no idea if the Tegra 4 has that much power.

You mean like run Splashtop and stream? I did that with PokeMMO once on my Lumia 920, haha. It's a novel idea, and it might work on a local network, though I'm not sure how intelligent it would be to add input lag to Internet lag from a remote one.

 

[Christian Kallevig]

Yes, the performance looks significantly better than the Surface RT running 8.0, but the difference doesn't appear to be DRAMATICALLY different from my RT running 8.1.

I'm running 8.1 on my RT as well, and I must say I am disappointed with the performance. It's still slow and very buggy. Some apps (especially Skype) continue to crash 2/3 of the time I run them, it will slow down to a near halt doing basic things like browsing the web (and not always on content-heavy pages), it often starts acting strangely and requires a reboot, when I wake it from sleep mode whatever app I had running won't resume properly... So yeah, it's made the thing worse, not better.

 

[HeyCori]

You mean like run Splashtop and stream? I did that with PokeMMO once on my Lumia 920, haha. It's a novel idea, and it might work on a local network, though I'm not sure how intelligent it would be to add input lag to Internet lag from a remote one.

Yeah, something along those lines.

 

[rx74ray]

I'm running 8.1 on my RT as well, and I must say I am disappointed with the performance. It's still slow and very buggy. Some apps (especially Skype) continue to crash 2/3 of the time I run them, it will slow down to a near halt doing basic things like browsing the web (and not always on content-heavy pages), it often starts acting strangely and requires a reboot, when I wake it from sleep mode whatever app I had running won't resume properly... So yeah, it's made the thing worse, not better.

I used to own RT, so I know how that is like. Seems like 8.1 has not addressed the under powered Tegra 3.

 

[inteller]

the Tegra 3 is -adequate- it could be better if they had the 5th battery saver core enabled cause they could bump the clock speed up a bit....but it is adequate. The problem now is the Tegra4 is a huge factor forward in performance it will make the Tegra3 look really old now.

WIth the exception of the 5th core, the original Surface is basically a showcase on the best the Tegra3 could ever be.

 

[Dos101]

I'm running 8.1 on my RT as well, and I must say I am disappointed with the performance. It's still slow and very buggy. Some apps (especially Skype) continue to crash 2/3 of the time I run them, it will slow down to a near halt doing basic things like browsing the web (and not always on content-heavy pages), it often starts acting strangely and requires a reboot, when I wake it from sleep mode whatever app I had running won't resume properly... So yeah, it's made the thing worse, not better.

For me it's a mixed bag. IE11 is a lot more solid than IE10, and I haven't noticed any lag outside of a few websites and apps. Outlook is still slow though and Office crashes regularly on me now. Part of me is hoping that it's because there are some patches (and possibly driver updates) coming when 8.1 gets officially released, or that the leaked RTM image I used is borked some how,but it might just be the hardware itself being so incapable of running Windows 8/8.1 smoothly.