Gaming on the Surface Book

[Gken]

Hey guys, I just wanted to give a small and quick review of the surface book for light gaming. I know I was really curious about this before I bought it, but I still bought it anyways. For reference I have the i7/8gb/dGpu version.

I have my ps4 for actual AAA titles, so I like to play rts and maybe some cs:go or other games that I'd rather ppla on a computer. So far I have played diablo 3, starcraft 2, and dota 2 on ultra maxed settings. A few settings above 1080 seems to be perfectly fine. I've played a few games at native resolution and while it is playable and looks absolutely fantastic i'd rather have the 10+ framerates back. I am quite surprised that it is perfectly playable on those settings.

The colors and screen is absolutely gorgeous and I certainly see why so many reviewers have been giving the pro 4 and book two thumbs way up on the screen accuracy.

The fan kicks in and stay on during these gaming sessions but although it does get hot, it doesn't quite get burning hot like my surface pro 3. The cooling seems to be really top notch on this iterations of the surface. The fan noise is noticeable but isn't particularly loud, almost sounds like my pro 3 when i've been playing netflix or hulu for too long.

On a side note, the keyboard on the surface book is one of, if not the best laptop keyboard I have ever typed on.

 

[mcf517]

Just curious, did you run into any issues with your mouse pointer in games? I've loaded xcom and rocket league from steam, and the mouse pointer is always shifted slightly higher by about half an inch of where it actually is registered with a game's UI. So if there is an onscreen button, it won't hi-light, or register clicks, unless the pointer is slightly below it. If I mess with the video options, sometimes it fixes it, but when I reboot the game, the problem presents itself again.

 

[Razor237xp]

I have played some wow and fallout 4 and the mouse seemed OK. I have xcom and will try to install and see how it works

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[zerospace-net]

I play Diablo 3 a lot on the i5/8gb/dGPU SB, and I dropped a few graphics settings down to get pointer speed up to snuff, but that's about it. It is actually playable at the native resolution, but I get a lot of cursor lag that way.

I also have let my husband play Mechwarrior Online on my SB, and he was blown away by how well it plays (especially compared to what little his Surface Pro 2 can do with that game).

 

[Mikegriffin84]

This happens if your windows screen scaling is too high... if it's above 100% this happens in some games.

 

[Mikegriffin84]

Go to system, settings, display and then use the slider to change the scaling to 100% that may fix your problem.

 

[mcf517]

Thanks for the tip. I'll try it out later today.

 

[AccentAE86]

Has anyone played Rainbow 6 Siege on the surface book with discrete graphics? My friend is looking for a laptop for no other reason than to play that game.

I tried it on my SP3 and it was brutal. 15fps at min detail and low res.

 

[Razor237xp]

Not sure how well that one will be , seems like a demanding game, min gpu is gtx 670 is shown in minimum pc specs for that game

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[Mikegriffin84]

Yeah that issue has nothing to do with the surface book hardware. It is a windows scaling issue that has been around a long time. It used to happen in some games windows 7 with certain games.

 

[gamer_stew]

I'm playing fallout 4 with low settings on my surface book. I reduce the resolution on my SB and everything works fine.... random gitters here and there but nothing that doesn't quickly correct itself.

 

[dirtyvu]

It's not scaling. It's because few PCs can run Diablo 3 at 3000x2000. Most gamers are happy with 1920x1080 with medium to high details. It's crazy to expect any notebook to render 3000x2000 at high frame rate.

 

[Mikegriffin84]

The problem he is having is not performance related it is scaling. His cursor does not align with text boxes correctly... that is a scaling issue PERIOD and this is for user: mcf517

 

[seneleron]

FWIW, I've found in HoTS and Diablo 3 that 1920 x 1200 on my SB aligns the mouse pointer correctly. I don't know if that would translate out to other games [and for AAA titles it may be too high resolution] but it's a baseline...

 

[Dush Ku]

is the base model much useless for gaming?
how does GeForce 6600 compare to the HD 520 onboard?

 

[Razor237xp]

I would say the Intel is a huge improvement over a 6600 that's a much older card I think

Posted via the Windows Central App for Android