HD 4000 on the Surface Pro, good enough to game?

(Just realised there was a section for the Surface so probably best to post this here..)

I've used the Intel HD Graphics 4000 on a few laptops and while it's decent for being an integrated GPU I don't think it will do well for games at 1080p.

In comparison to the HD 3000, the integrated GPU now has a larger cache as well that is shared with the CPU L3, but how much cache it has will be dependent on the Ivy Bridge CPU. The HD 4000 has upgraded the video decoder (MFX), increasing the number of execution units from 12 to 16 and adding support for DirectX 11 Shader Model 5.0.

Gaming benchmarks can be seen here: Intel HD Graphics 4000 Benchmarked - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

Sadly, the bad news is none of the top recent games are playable at 1080p at mid to high graphic settings. A few may be playable on low. The good news though is Fifa '13 should run smooth at decent settings!

Just going to say the same as your post. Most games will run decently at low settings. Besides that, however, it isn't a dedicated chip. Things will not run perfectly at high settings.

Even with a good graphics card, is a tablet really suited to gaming?

If anything they are probably worse than a laptop, as their primary performance indicator is the battery life. So everything is designed with efficency in mind, rather than performance.

That said, now we need to wait for an Alienware Pro tablet :)

Originally Posted by SnailUK

Even with a good graphics card, is a tablet really suited to gaming?

If anything they are probably worse than a laptop, as their primary performance indicator is the battery life. So everything is designed with efficency in mind, rather than performance.

That said, now we need to wait for an Alienware Pro tablet :)

Ehh, GPU is the main part needed for gaming. Sure a 1.6ghz DC will slow your FPS a little bit, but not nearly as much as going from a 560ti to a HD4000. A couple years ago, a review site determined that a 2ghz DC was the point of diminishing returns on a CPU for gaming. Anything over that helped but the increase was no where near as cost effective. Tablet would be fine for gaming. Get a USB keyboard/mouse combo and flip out the tablet stand and you are good to go. Can even set it up a bit off the desk to make it more ergonomic.

About the specs of an old HP laptop I had. I'll probably be running Aion on it. It won't be crazy-fast, but should definitely be usable.

I wonder if these thingies will let you upgrade their RAM? That tends to help integrated GPUs a bit.

I was wondering the same thing.. I'm interested in knowing if these Windows 8 tablets will run games like WoW and Diablo 3. I don't expect any of them to handle full or ultra graphics.. but if it's playable on low graphics.. enough for casual gaming while deployed or TDY that would be perfect.

I'm hoping to buy a device that I can use as a tablet or as a mid range laptop in a pinch.

I'm looking at the Ativ Smart PC and the Smart PC pro as I realy would like a screen larger than 10.6 but I understand the surface pro has very simliar internals.. also at only .5 inch difference it's still an option for me as well.

I can play Call of Duty, TF2 and other quite advanced games on my HD 4000 & Core i5 processor with pretty high settings, so I'd say it will be fine, the other hardware might provide a bottleneck though, but I don't see any issues.

The main thing that will turn people off the Surface Pro will be the price, it's in top end laptop price territory.

I'm also curious about WoW and Diablo 3 on this machine.

Its running one of the ultra low power i5's to save battery. On top of the fact that such a tablet already wont be able to handle absurd battery life. It has to have a heatsink and a fan to run. IMO you will be able to play most games at low settings without much issue. But that of course is assuming your hooked up to power, else you may crash in less than an hour or two.

I can see a keyboard and mouse being a necessity too, but how awesome would it be to control StarCraft 2 with your touchscreen??

As long as it can play Medieval Total War 2 without fuss I'll be delighted :D

I just need to be able to play the new SimCity. From what I've seen, you can play the game mostly with a mouse, so hopeful this translates well to touchscreen.

The required specs are an Intel 4100 integrated graphics, I've never heard of it, is the HD 4000 better? I pray it is.

Worse comes to worse, I'll install Theme Hospital to play during lectures :D

Just a quick update. I had the lenovo yoga 13 for a week or so trying it out. I believe it has the same processor and graphics as the surface pro will. It was able to run WoW at about medium graphics. I didn't care for playing it on such a small screen but it ran it much better than I expected. RAPED the battery though.. for something rated at an 8 hour battery life it lasted about 2 playing wow.

Originally Posted by DeWize1

Its running one of the ultra low power i5's to save battery. On top of the fact that such a tablet already wont be able to handle absurd battery life. It has to have a heatsink and a fan to run. IMO you will be able to play most games at low settings without much issue. But that of course is assuming your hooked up to power, else you may crash in less than an hour or two.

I can see a keyboard and mouse being a necessity too, but how awesome would it be to control StarCraft 2 with your touchscreen??

And I thought that the surface PRO runs on atom processor. Silly me.


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Diablo 3 is playable on my ThinkPad with Intel Integrated HD 3000 so it should be playable on Surface Pro.
Microsoft is trying to find a balance between performance and efficiency/size. Alienware laptops go all the way to use the best dedicated mobile cards available but they are huge and heavy and battery life sucks (while gaming) because of the cooling and power requirements of modern graphic cards. They are monsters and probably the best one is going to get in terms of performance in mobile gaming.
Intel HD 4000 was around what I expected as it is one of the best off-the-shelf integrated mobile graphic cards without making Surface a bulky device. And as it is off-the-shelf it should be stable and well supported. The performance is on par with the desktop version of HD 2600 XT, a classic graphic card optimized for gaming that I was still using to play Diablo 3 and Bulletstorm on my desktop until a while ago.
Tom's Hardware US

Originally Posted by theseusperse

I can play Call of Duty, TF2 and other quite advanced games on my HD 4000 & Core i5 processor with pretty high settings, so I'd say it will be fine, the other hardware might provide a bottleneck though, but I don't see any issues.

The main thing that will turn people off the Surface Pro will be the price, it's in top end laptop price territory.

Top End Territory?!?! Not even close. Try pricing out a fully loaded Alienware 18x or even a 14x. Surface Pro is about $5k cheaper.

I'm looking forward to Civ V on the Pro now that it has full touchscreen support. It had been rumored to run on it well, but I bet you have to be plugged in.

The Surface Pro is probably one of the cheaper Windows 8 tablet-PCs given its specs and capabilities.

Originally Posted by pdch

I'm looking forward to Civ V on the Pro now that it has full touchscreen support. It had been rumored to run on it well, but I bet you have to be plugged in.

Civilization is one of those games where quite frankly, framerate doesn't matter so much. I've got 5 running on an old Core 2 Duo that handles it at the lowest settings. Things definitely get slow when you get far into the game, but I suspect you'll have no such problem with the HD4000.

...And yeah, the touch stuff is pretty nice.

Wow, I didn't realise civ v had touchscreen support. I hope this means that more pc games will be adding touchscreen support, maybe an rts? definitely make the train ride more enjoyable.

Im pretty sure my laptop has a two graphics card and one of them is an HD 4 or 5000. Pretty sure that my laptop gave up on my other graphics card according to device manager and "can you run it" I don't game hard on it, but I can tell you that it will run games. If you search up video card benchmark and find HD 4000 you can compare it to other graphics cards. I can say in complete confidence that it will not run crysis on high nor will it run Planetside 2 or any other hardcore games. There is a game that I play on my laptop called freestyle street basketball. Runs just fine. Battery will always be an issue. Power and performance needs to come from somewhere
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WoW and Diablo 3 should both be able to run in max graphics on this machine. Seeing as how I have done it with SandyBridge i5 chips.

Intel's new CPU due in June in laptops has about double the graphics power. Is waiting worth it?

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I wouldn't expect a surface update for any new CPUs for atleast 12 months... so while I might wait for june, I would not wait till next February.

it wouldn't appear that OEMs are tripping overthemselves to make pro tablets... infact Im only familiar with 1 or 2 in existence so far, W700 and I think theres a Samsung, maybe not in the US? In any case, I wouldn't expect these to get updated so early in their product cycle.

Originally Posted by bauerbach

I wouldn't expect a surface update for any new CPUs for atleast 12 months... so while I might wait for june, I would not wait till next February.

it wouldn't appear that OEMs are tripping overthemselves to make pro tablets... infact Im only familiar with 1 or 2 in existence so far, W700 and I think theres a Samsung, maybe not in the US? In any case, I wouldn't expect these to get updated so early in their product cycle.

Correct, no Samsung RT for US of A. Asus has the Transformer Book, seems very attractive. The Lenovo Yoga also looks interesting.
MS is also the culprit in all this. They themselves have missed their own deadlines for selling the SurfacePro. It's taking them 8 months after unveiling to begin selling the SurfacePro.

afaik that was intentional to not compete with the OEMs at launch.

all the same, there are no rumors of upcoming pro tablets. Only thing I even know of is the Lenovo taichi... and that's still not a tablet.

Thus far, tablets seems to be highly proprietary, almost no customization available. good chance that swapping to even a relatively similar cpu would possibly require a redesign. These are being mass produced in a single configuration. To answer the question with just my opinion, you wont see haswell chips in these pro tablets any time soon.