Yeah, if it could do that without overvolting it would be much more impressive. I’m waiting for the i7 skylakes to be available, and more importantly, to see if/when thunderbolt3 eGPU enclosures are a real thing.
Anandtech got all their 6700Ks (engineering and retail) to 4.3 while undervolting, though that’s admittedly not a huge gain over their 4.0 stock (! - Intel must be pretty confident about these things, haven’t seen a base clock this high since their P4s I think)
To be fair, I haven’t really tried to see how far it’ll go on stock voltage (1.2v). Most of the reviews were suggesting you needed upwards of 1.3v to hit meaningful OCs so that’s what I started with. Asus at least are claiming that even 1.4v is safe, though I’m not really willing to put that to the test.
I don’t really want to overvolt these days. The speed doesn’t matter for what I do (I’m still on an i7 920 right now!) and I don’t want the heat or noise.
Microsoft is planning to hold a massive hardware launch event in October, and will use the event to launch two new Lumia handsets, the Surface Pro 4, and a Microsoft Band 2. Story/rumour here.
I’d like to see a Surface 4 non-pro with a core M rather than a miserable atom. That would be a pretty neat option.
Also they need to make the price of a Surface 4 with keyboard $500. It can’t cost more than an iPad.
At first I thought it was a Surface Pro, and I was pretty excited.*
Then I found out it was the Tegra 3 RT, and my enthusiasm abated quite a bit.
Then I read all forty pages of this thread, and while watching wumpus and LMN8R turn on the RT was fun, it quickly became depressing. After all, I now own the thing.
It replaces a Dell netbook and a iPad 2 with a semi-busted digitizer, and to be fair, it’s better than both of those. I really like that it has full Office 2013, and the Touch Cover isn’t bad at all. The kickstand is pretty awesome, and having storage expansion options is great.
Now, for those very few diehards still using the RT–what can you actually do with the thing, beyond Office? I’ve installed Cover and VLC and Pinball FX2, and the last is an absolute dog. It’s cool that I can use the 360 wireless receiver, not so cool that the iPad2 clearly has a better pinball experience in both response time and framerate.
Any app or game suggestions are welcome. Hardware support for the RT ends April 2017; I can’t imagine the Store for RT will be around much longer after that, so I might as well load it up with software while I can.
*god help me, I thought it even might be one of the newer Pros. That’ll teach me to have hopes and dreams.
Re-reading the first few pages of this thread, I still hold the same opinions. I mean, when the RT first came out even then I said I couldn’t recommend it for everyone. But it’s still good for some specific purposes - browsing the web on a tablet with Flash, for those web sites which still require it (far more rare today than in 2012), watching videos on the 16:9 screen with the kickstand there, playing some simpler casual games that don’t run like crap, snapping Twitter side-by-side with something else, using Office, etc.
The Store will probably stick around for a while for RT. There’s still a lot of people on Windows 8.1. And it’s the same store between 8.0, 8.1, and RT.
That said, I can unequivocally recommend a Surface Pro or Surface Book to anyone as a full laptop replacement. I used a Surface Pro 3 for 18 months as my primary work device, and since then I’ve used a Surface Book. Especially now that the Skylake-induced sleep issues have been fixed.
I love reading back through threads like this where I take a really hard stand, that windows on ARM is dead at birth and nobody should buy it, and am proved so definitively correct beyond a shadow of a doubt a few short years later. I then go into Nostrastusser mode predicting <$500 windows tablets on x86 with all-day battery life coming out soon, and voila, the Winbook 8" tablet was available shortly after release for $60 in like 2014 at the low-end, and at the high-end the Surface 3 is $450 today.
The major point I got wrong was where I thought people would actually want these x86 windows tablets, because the windows app store never did take off. Surface Pros sell pretty well, but people primarily use them as laptops.
Being right is pretty awesome.
But yeah arm for Windows was always a bit of a head scratcher. Intel’s atom stuff is still super shitty perf wise though, even today. Apple caught way up with a9x since it was more than 2x faster than a8.
I thought of a “killer app” for my purposes, but MLB At Bat isn’t available for the RT any more. Sigh. As LMN8R noted, it looks like it’ll be a widescreen video player + Office device for the remainder of its lifetime. I would welcome casual games that didn’t run like crap at this point.
The funny thing is Cover is a best-of-breed app. It’s the best cbr viewer I’ve used, with a great UI, and it’s buttery smooth even on the RT. Portrait mode is fantastic. I’d imagine it’d be great to use on the newer Surfaces as well. If I could get two other apps for the RT like it, I’d be a happy man.
I am super annoyed that RT wasn’t updated to some version of Windows 10. Hell, it runs on a raspberry every pie.
I don’t have the inside scoop on that, but if I had to guess, the lack of an ARM update to Windows 10 is because Windows 10 Mobile (the only ARM version that currently exists) no longer has a desktop. So if you did a theoretical upgrade of a Surface RT or Surface 2 to Windows 10, sure you’d gain some features like universal apps and such, but you’d lose the Desktop and hence ARM version of Office RT.
For some people that would undoubtedly be a good thing, especially if it launched that way, but for the few people who still do use one of those devices? It would be a major step back. Especially if they rely on Office RT.
Late last year there was a minor update which brought a new Start Menu to RT, but that’s about it.
Yeah, my mother in law had no interest in the start menu, but I think she would enjoy Windows 10 Mobile. It would fit her needs.
The Surface Division has been springing leaks, which is a surprise considering how well they kept the Surface Book and Surface Studio secret.
VentureBeat has the leak on the SP5 (now renamed simply as “Surface Pro”). Looks very much like a “tock” refresh. Which is good, because if a potential Surface Book 2 is also a “tock” refresh, I’ll be happy. I just got a Surface Book a few weeks ago.
Finally! My 4 was getting cobwebs it was so old.
Great news. We need a refresh on the ones at work.
Look at you fancypants jerks with your refreshes. I’ve been like the little kid gazing longingly through the store window since these things first came out. :)
Some day!
Me too, Kevin. In fact, just yesterday I was looking at Certified Refurbished Surface Pro 3/4 models on Amazon. Ultimately, I was scared off by bad reviews of how ‘refurbished’ they are. :(
Oh, I don’t have one. I have a giant anchor that is a business engineering laptop. I hate it. But we have managers and some service leads that use surfaces. We keep a 2.5-3.5 year refresh on all laptop models as we lease them.