Some Thoughts About Surface Book 2 and Gaming (Premium)

Microsoft has always promoted performance as a key reason to choose Surface Book. But previous generation devices, even Surface Book with Performance Base, fell short of what one might expect of a real gaming PC. Does Surface Book 2 finally deliver on this promise?

Brad has the answer, at least from the perspective of his 15-inch review unit. Here, I’d like to discuss how Microsoft got to this point. And whether the firm has finally come through on its Surface Book performance promises.

As you probably know, Surface Book has always shipped with powerful Intel Core i5 and i7 mobile processors. So this question largely rests on the quality of its graphics hardware. And that hardware has evolved from anemic to capable over the past few releases.

Announced in October 2015 the first-generation Book was billed as “the ultimate laptop.” It shipped with 6th generation Intel Core processors—was, with Surface Pro 4, the first PC to do so—and could be configured with up to 16 GB of RAM and (eventually) 1 TB of solid-state storage.

Aside from the design, which is still rightfully controversial, the most confusing thing about this device was that higher-end models could be configured with an unnamed and poorly-described NVIDIA GeForce discrete graphics processing unit, or dGPU.

During the product introduction, Microsoft’s Panos Panay said that Surface Book was essentially the combination of Surface portability with Xbox graphics performance.

And, sorry, but that was patently untrue. That no-name NVIDIA GeForce dGPU turned out to be a variant of a low-end—and, even for 2015, out of date—NVIDIA GeForce 940M with 1 GB of dedicated RAM. As I noted in my review, a Surface Book with that dGPU did significantly outperform those without in 3D and other graphics-heavy applications. But it was no gaming PC.

A year later, Microsoft released a new Surface Book model called Surface Book with Performance Base. This device was essentially identical to previous Books, but it featured a raised keyboard to accommodate more battery and, more important, a vastly improved NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M GPU with 2 GB of RAM, plus a new system for cooling it all.

According to Mr. Panay, Surface Book with Performance Base provided “two times more graphics” than its predecessor, “doubling the performance.” And in my examination of its gaming prowess, and in my review of Surface Book with Performance Base, I wrote that new device was, indeed, must better than the first GPU-based Surface Book.

And it could game. Sort of.

“Compared side-by-side with a beefier gaming laptop, the dGPU in Performance Base shows its age,” I wrote. “This isn’t really a gaming rig, of course, and it cannot handle 4K resolutions at all: The performance of this device at such resolutions was about 1/10th that needed to meet the requirements of HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, for example.” My recommendation was that gamers look to real gaming laptops.

So what about Surface Book 2?

With this second-generation Book design, Microsoft is now offering two devices, one with a 13.5-inch display, like previous versions, and one with a bigger 15-inch display.

Both come with gaming-quality graphics that Microsoft says meet the requirements for Windows Mixed Reality Ultra, meaning that you’ll get the highest-quality frame rates. More specifically, the 13.5-inch Surface Book can be configured with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 dGPU with 2 GB of RAM. And the 15-inch versions all ship with an even more impressive NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 dGPU with 6 GB of RAM.

I only have a 13.5-inch Surface Book 2 for testing, and the review unit features a quad-core 8th-generation Intel Core i7-8650U processor, 16 GB of RAM, and that NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 dGPU with 2 GB of RAM. The 13.5-inch display has a native resolution of 3000 x 2000.

I also have a few gaming laptops I can use for comparison purposes. The one that matches Surface Book 2 the most closely is a 15-inch HP OMEN with a quad-core 7th generation Core i7-7700HQ processor, 16 GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 dGPU with 6 GB of RAM. The 15-inch 4K display runs at 3840 x 2160. And while it’s a beast, it is bested by a higher-end 17-inch version with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 dGPU with 8 GB of RAM. (And there are OMEN X laptops that are even more powerful, too.)

No, they’re not directly comparable. But Surface Book 2 has a lot more in common with modern gaming laptops than it does with Surface Book with Performance Base from a gaming performance perspective. And I think the comparison is interesting regardless.

I’ll have more to say on this topic when I publish my final review, but I can tell you now that my testing has included both real-world game play and benchmarks. And I don’t feel like I’m ruining the surprise by stating here that Microsoft, even in the less powerful 13.5-inch Surface Book 2, has really achieved a nice balance between portable productivity workstation and portable gaming rig.

More soon.