I've been going over a few things with my surface RT and in doing so, noticed a few things of interest.
Specifically, I was/am perplexed at Microsoft's use of the Tegra 3 processor, however this may not be as bad as we all had originally thought - I noticed in the performance monitor that the specs for the Tegra 3 don't properly align with any variant I was aware of. In addition, the device ID for the graphics unit is unique and I've been unsuccessful in locating additional information on it. See the attached snipits from my surface to see what I mean..
I then heard of this "tegra 3+" update, however the most recent mentions of this unit are many months old and very vague. Lastly, I came across the following link on NVidia's site:
Tegra 3 Super Chip Processors | NVIDIA
Notice the specifications section lists two processor lines, "tegra 3 on android" and "tegra 3 on windows 8". Most of the specs for the windows 8 variant are "na" or otherwise extraordinarily vague, but the most interesting sections relate to the fact that the tegra 3 within surface seems to lack the fifth "companion core" and instead of the gpu being listed as "ulp GeForce", we have "ulp NVidia".
So what can we take from all of this? I'm not entirely certain, but it appears to me at least, that we likely have a more potent graphics processor, improved cpu performance (no companion core scaling and 4MB L2 cache) and thankfully, Surface has been outfitted with the fastest memory supported (ddr3-l 1500).
I was searching all over for more info on this, so I apologize if this has already been discussed. If this is new to anyone, I would love for us all to dig a bit deeper into what's actually powering these wonderful tablets!
Specifically, I was/am perplexed at Microsoft's use of the Tegra 3 processor, however this may not be as bad as we all had originally thought - I noticed in the performance monitor that the specs for the Tegra 3 don't properly align with any variant I was aware of. In addition, the device ID for the graphics unit is unique and I've been unsuccessful in locating additional information on it. See the attached snipits from my surface to see what I mean..
I then heard of this "tegra 3+" update, however the most recent mentions of this unit are many months old and very vague. Lastly, I came across the following link on NVidia's site:
Tegra 3 Super Chip Processors | NVIDIA
Notice the specifications section lists two processor lines, "tegra 3 on android" and "tegra 3 on windows 8". Most of the specs for the windows 8 variant are "na" or otherwise extraordinarily vague, but the most interesting sections relate to the fact that the tegra 3 within surface seems to lack the fifth "companion core" and instead of the gpu being listed as "ulp GeForce", we have "ulp NVidia".
So what can we take from all of this? I'm not entirely certain, but it appears to me at least, that we likely have a more potent graphics processor, improved cpu performance (no companion core scaling and 4MB L2 cache) and thankfully, Surface has been outfitted with the fastest memory supported (ddr3-l 1500).
I was searching all over for more info on this, so I apologize if this has already been discussed. If this is new to anyone, I would love for us all to dig a bit deeper into what's actually powering these wonderful tablets!