Surface Pro 3 and Video Games

[Arsenic17]

I play skyrim on 1280x1024 on med-high settings and i get 30-40 fps. This is the sweet spot I think. I tweaked most of the settings, increasing textures to high, reflections to high, and view distance to about 75% of the way for all sliders. Overall I am happy. The resolution still looks great on 12'' screen. Now I know what I will be doing at work!

 

[xboxonthego3]

I play skyrim on 1280x1024 on med-high settings and i get 30-40 fps. This is the sweet spot I think. I tweaked most of the settings, increasing textures to high, reflections to high, and view distance to about 75% of the way for all sliders. Overall I am happy. The resolution still looks great on 12'' screen. Now I know what I will be doing at work!

Sweet I will have to try those settings! Thanks.

 

[Arsenic17]

Sweet I will have to try those settings! Thanks.

yeah just keep tweaking them. Pro 3 performs similarly to the pro one in terms of games.

Saw someone post above about playing with mods. Did you mean graphical? Don't even bother.

 

[chadthebuilder]

OK, tried Kerbal Space Program this morning, and was actually surprised at the results. It ran very smooth on medium settings with the Visual Enhancements mod for a few minutes without bad lag and around 30FPS. After a few minutes, it started throttling the system to keep it from overheating, and it started to lag. After removing the mods, and turning the settings to low, it still ran pretty smoothly even after throttling the hardware down.

All in all, it seems like it will work pretty well for someone who wants to play a game like KSP for maybe about 30 minutes at a time, and who don't mind the graphics settings on low.

It seems like the cooling system is going to be the devices biggest bottleneck.

Posted via Windows Phone Central App

 

[v0lum3]

As pointed out in this threat "To all those waiting for an SP3 with i7 for HD5000 and gaming you may be disappointed" on Tabletpcreview(cant link to it as WPcentral sees it as spam).
It seems the system is over-throttling, as it keeps the core temperature at 60 degrees Celsius with prolonged CPU/GPU activity like gaming. Compared to the Surface Pro 2, that keeps the system throttled at 80 degrees.
So in theory MS could fix this "performance problem" by updating firmware, since there is no point in keeping the system at 60 degrees when it can easily handle 80-90 degrees, leaving a lot of headroom for less throttling!

So im crossing my fingers that this is not a termal issue but a software/firmware issue, that can be fixed!
That being said, I am looking for portable and powerful, not gaming, so im keeping my preorder (Still 2 months of waiting though).

 

[garak0410]

Same here. If I'm playing a desktop game, I'll most likely be using a mouse on a flat surface too so might as well have it plugged into...

And not surprising, most desktop games make the fan kick on and the SP3 does get quite warm...

 

[KJones75]

OK, tried Kerbal Space Program this morning, and was actually surprised at the results.

Thanks, chadthebuilder. I just got my SP3 today so I will try it myself soon. I'm hoping it will perform at least as well as my old laptop so that I can sell it to help pay for my Surface.

 

[Brandon McLean]

yeah just keep tweaking them. Pro 3 performs similarly to the pro one in terms of games.

Saw someone post above about playing with mods. Did you mean graphical? Don't even bother.

yea maybe a few light graphics mods but I guess the default graphics would look good on a smaller screen anyway.

 

[hobbit25]

I have been playing around with a few games to see how the performance is, so far I have been pretty surprised.

Wildstar: Low/Med with 30fps
Supreme Commander 2: Low with 20-30fps
PAYDAY 2: Low with 15-30fps
CIV 5: Medium at native, unknown FPS but its very smooth
Trine 1/2: Both works really well
Tropico 4: Med with 30fps
Killing Floor: High with native at 40fps
Far Cry 3: Yeah i'm crazy but it works at low, native with 30fps.

Not exactly a gaming machine but slap a 360 controller on this thing and its a respectable gaming system when away from home.

 

[xboxonthego3]

I have been able to play Borderlands 2 on the low settings. It runs between 20 to 35 frames per second on avg. But on rare occasions will drop below 20 in random situations. The game is surprisingly very playable. Played with my brother (he has a Surface Pro 3 as well) over LAN. Having a blast!

 

[theefman]

Anyone try Marvel Heroes (www.marvelheroes.com)? Its free to play and could be a fun game to setup for group play.

 

[fc000]

As mentioned in another thread, I've tried World of Tanks. It runs at about 60-70 fps with the CPU hitting full turbo at 2.9 GHz, but after a few minutes, it throttles down to 1.1 to 1.3 GHz, and the frame rate hits 30-40 fps, the same level of performance as my Surface Pro 1 on the same settings. It's rather disappointing, and naturally it destroys the battery life.

 

[mozman68]

..the same level of performance as my Surface Pro 1 on the same settings. It's rather disappointing, and naturally it destroys the battery life.

Dissapointing from a gaming standpoint, but I think most people would rather have the larger screen, lighter weight, same ability to handle productivity programs/apps....I would never consider any surface model a gaming rig by any means and using that comparison as a factor on whether or not the SP3 is lacking in some way isn't fair.

 

[xboxonthego3]

Yeah the surfaces are not gaming machines. But in my opinion im not disappointed but actually surprised on what games it can play.

 

[fc000]

​

Yeah the surfaces are not gaming machines. But in my opinion im not disappointed but actually surprised on what games it can play.

While it's true, the Surface Pros aren't gaming machines (even though Microsoft themselves advertise it as a gaming machine), the previous iterations still functioned better as gaming devices. The Pro 1 gave you playable performance most of the time, and the Pro 2 was shockingly good at running games just fine at more than acceptable frame rates.

​To see the Pro 3, the first Surface Pro to be advertised by Microsoft as a realistic gaming machine run no better than a Pro 1 after a few minutes of gameplay is really disappointing. Hopefully, it's something that can be tweaked over time.

 

[Nikos Lygidakis]

Hi guys
Could someone try Heroes of newerth and tell me if playable? Only game I play and will judge whether I buy SP3 or not
Can you say Frame rate resolution and settings!
Thank you

 

[chuey101]

My contribution.

Play NBA 2k14 at 720p with no problems. No anti-aliasing, but I think otherwise setting were high! (crowd might have been medium or low)

Very surprised.

Also, titanfall, tried it again today after installing the beta May Intel HD 4400 drivers. I could actually play it on all low settings and 1024 x 768 (you need to go into Intel HD graphics manager to switch on "keep aspect ratio". Also need to switch resolution of sp3 to 1024 x 768 and then it shows up as native in the game.

Good luck!

 

[jrohland]

While not exactly a game, it has many of the same features; I found an old copy of my radio controlled flight sim app -- RealFlight G4. I assumed it would run well on my SP3 (i5/8/256) since it was built for machines about 5 years ago. It does run beautifully. I have all the graphical features cranked all the way up to maximum quailty. I uploaded a short video of me trying to fly a helicopter.

RealFlight G4 on Surface Pro 3 - YouTube

 

[Lars Panzerbjrn]

For top end games, so far I've just played Starcraft 2; and well, it did work. I'll be trying out Civ 5 later.

Both of these are relevant to my interests ^_^
May I ask which SP3 you tried them on?

 

[PhyscoAssassinX]

Hmm I wanted to try my hand at the New Dragon ball XV game but I think that's just wishful thinking