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Microsoft Surface Pro 3 Announced (12", 3:2 aspect ratio, new stand)
- Thread starter enzo_gt
- Start date
SerTapTap
Member
Steam in home streaming is fairly independent of the quality of the client, it's all on the server. Works perfectly fine on the SP3, especially with a bluetooth controller (ahem DS4 + DS4Windows), though note that resolutions are tied to the server PC not client--you'll probably be playing 1080p with minor/moderate black borders. I'm not sure how 1440p works on it, if it gets downscaled or just doesn't work--but nothing is 3:2 so you're going to get borders, just like with media content. IMO it's not a big deal, the SP3's screen is really good and while black doesn't QUITE fade into the bezel perfectly, it's easy enough to ignore.
You'll have minor compression artefacts on Steam in home streaming, but the input lag is amazingly small and that's what counts.
Also you can connect via mini displayport to a displayport/HDMI display and get 1:1 if you really want. It makes a great "instant console" with a mini DP to HDMI adapter, bluetooth controller and Steam Big Picture mode.
Reviews consistently point out the i5 as the best bang per buck. I went with he i5 and I'm quite happy, but I can't really comment on how the i3 works out. I have no complaints about the 4GB RAM, which really surprises me. I actually usually have under 70% RAM utilization.
WhiskerFrisker
Member
Damn Tap, maybe I should just get the 4gb i5 version. I want to future proof my Surface and get the 8gb 256 model. I went to the Microsoft store in NYC yesterday and I nearly pulled the trigger. I can get the aforementioned model with a type cover, carrying case, Office University, and the 2 year protection program for $1,350. Being a poor college student sucks
I did quite a bit with the steam streaming, works amazingly well.
WhiskerFrisker
Member
It's so far away. Hopefully that happens or maybe some deals from the Microsoft store on cyber Monday.
SerTapTap
Member
Damn Tap, maybe I should just get the 4gb i5 version. I want to future proof my Surface and get the 8gb 256 model. I went to the Microsoft store in NYC yesterday and I nearly pulled the trigger. I can get the aforementioned model with a type cover, carrying case, Office University, and the 2 year protection program for $1,350. Being a poor college student sucks
8GB i7 would probably be more future proof, but personally my plan was to try the i5 and get a higher spec one in a later iteration (saving some money for purchase 2 in the process). I don't think any of my present workloads are enough to really require 4GB RAM (helps that pagefile is SSD), though I haven't done any video editing/streaming on it yet (if I do it'll only be out of curiosity-- I have a monster gaming and video editing machine right in the middle of my living room anyway).
Only things I can think of that might push for more than 4GB would be photoshop and such (I don't really use those) and more recent games that have crazy ram/vram reqs...not sure you'll be playing those on a Surface any time soon without in home streaming. Dem AC Unity reqs...
WhiskerFrisker
Member
Hmmm, you think Microsoft will have a thing where one can trade in a SP3 for the next iteration? Your plan sounds pretty good.
SerTapTap
Member
Have they done that in the past? I was just thinking of selling it or handing it off to my parents. Though I dont' think they actually use any of the older PCs I've handed their way so far. Not sure the tablet/laptop would meet a better fate.
Septimus Prime
Member
The Amazon one works pretty well, I think, but it is a powered hub. Honestly, after reading through reviews for a lot of USB 3.0 hubs, I don't think there is a single unpowered one with good reviews. I'm actually still using the Amazon one; I'm daisy-chaining it off my dock, so it's like I have 7 USB ports now. It's really nice.
On another note, my MS Miracast stick came in the other day. I have it hooked up to a TV nearby so I can use it as a secondary monitor. It works pretty well and was really easy to setup for the SP3 (it was as simple as plugging it in, changing the input on the TV, and clicking a button on the SP3), but it does switch my Surface's display resolution to 1080p. I'll probably also try it on my 4K TV this weekend and see if that helps the problem.
WhiskerFrisker
Member
It seems like your parents will have an amazing tablet to use. I think I'll get the i5 128gb model and trade that in for the next surface. Hopefully they continue creating this fantastic product.
It's always funny see how confident people are in their own ignorance.
Can you use Miracast as an extended display or does it only allow for mirroring?
Septimus Prime
Member
I'm not sure yet. I only tried mirroring, but I'm going to give extended display a shot soon--possibly tonight. I'll post again once I try it.
LukasTaves
Member
Does surface get warm/hot when casting? How's the lag and image quality?
Well, I've had my Surface for two days now and it is without doubt the best, best designed, most productive gadget I have ever had. It has taken over for my 7" tablet and 15" laptop in no time. It crushes the laptop in every way, getting a good eight hours of battery life with heavy use (no video). I'm using Windows both in modern UI and desktop mode, the transition in 8.1 is great and seemless. OneNote is god tier. It's a game changer in terms of natural interfaces, the pen is that good.
But where it really shines is multitasking. You don't realize how much you miss multiple apps per screen until you walk away from Android and iOS. And want to do a simple thing like copy a file from A to B. The Surface Pro 3 is the best tablet ever. It's also a really good PC. I can already see myself getting every new version.
But where it really shines is multitasking. You don't realize how much you miss multiple apps per screen until you walk away from Android and iOS. And want to do a simple thing like copy a file from A to B. The Surface Pro 3 is the best tablet ever. It's also a really good PC. I can already see myself getting every new version.
Septimus Prime
Member
I didn't get around to checking out the extended display last night. I'll see about trying it out this weekend, though.
Lag and image quality feel good, though. I was using an old Samsung 1080p TV, and my home LAN is 802.11ac, and the image quality seems on par with using HDMI, but I didn't play any videos or anything; I just moved the mouse around a bit to make sure it was working at all.
My Surface (i7) gets kind of hot on its own, regardless, so it's hard for me to tell. I have a small USB fan blowing on it whenever it's docked.
Lag and image quality feel good, though. I was using an old Samsung 1080p TV, and my home LAN is 802.11ac, and the image quality seems on par with using HDMI, but I didn't play any videos or anything; I just moved the mouse around a bit to make sure it was working at all.
SerTapTap
Member
Yeah I don't think I can ever deal with a "tablet" without a real OS ever again. Already gave the Nexus 7 to my parents
I personally recommend the 128 i5 as the best balance, toss a 64 or 128GB microSD in for storage. Up to you if the immediacy/storage is worth it though, part of the reason 128 is fine for me is I have a giant desktop full of HDDs
WhiskerFrisker
Member
If I could I would get it. Not only for all of that storage space, but also the ram amount so that you're not left behind in the future. The i5 128gb is still a good choice so it's up to you.
Wait, they have different ram amounts? I thought they were the same aside from storage space.
It appears they do. I thought it was $200 for double the storage, but $200 for double storage and double ram? That's not bad.
WhiskerFrisker
Member
Yeah. The 64gb and 128gb models comes with 4gb of ram. The 256gb(i5 and i7) and the 512gb comes with 8gb of ram.
EatinOlives
Member
Does anyone know how to upgrade the surface's firmware? Microsoft's upgrade package just dumps a bunch of cat, inf, and sys files with zero instructions as to what to do, how to do it, or what order to do it in.
The Intel HD Graphics Control Panel also completely refuses to boot. Double click, wait wheel for 1 second, then nothing.
The Intel HD Graphics Control Panel also completely refuses to boot. Double click, wait wheel for 1 second, then nothing.
LukasTaves
Member
I see... Did you feel that you could use that to "dock" the surface to a external monitor and use it as a desktop or the lag felt too large for that?
Another way you could test is mirroring the screen and playing a video to see if there's a noticeable delta between both screens.
Thanks for the impressions, and sorry for troubling you with the questionnaire, btw
LukasTaves
Member
I always update from winUpdate, is yours not working for some reason?
Cheetos is Pretty Awesome
Member
Anybody else try New Vegas with their SP3? My copy runs like a turd for some reason, even lowering the resolution doesn't help..
SerTapTap
Member
FW should just be pushed down form windows update, had no problem updating it that way so far.
Septimus Prime
Member
No worries about the questions. To be honest, I only played around with it for, like, 5 minutes, so I didn't really do much at all. Text is readable, though, so I don't imagine it will have significant problems as an external monitor, but I'd have to use it more to find out for sure.I see... Did you feel that you could use that to "dock" the surface to a external monitor and use it as a desktop or the lag felt too large for that?
Another way you could test is mirroring the screen and playing a video to see if there's a noticeable delta between both screens.
Thanks for the impressions, and sorry for troubling you with the questionnaire, btw
I'm in the same boat. My replacement Surface has the October update failing to install but wont try again. I downloaded the firmware from Microsoft as well but it's not an executable. I'll just wait for Novembers patch tuesday.
Unknown Soldier
Member
AFAIK the stock Intel HD Graphics driver that ships with Surfaces doesn't include the control panel. This made me really angry because I couldn't turn off the stupid "Display Power Saving Technology" that makes the screen brighter and darker in the most annoying way possible while having no benefit to battery life whatsoever. I ended up downloading the driver from Intel and forcefully installing it using the .inf workaround to override the driver supplied by MS so I could access the control panel.
SerTapTap
Member
I thought you COULD turn that off, somewhere in display settings or something. Can't check, not at my surface. Or is that different from the (inaccurate/bad) ambient light detection?
LukasTaves
Member
What bothers me most on the Surface is the inability to disable hibernating after a few hours in connected standby XD
I understand it being enabled by default, but removing the option altogether? The only way around that I could see is to leave the surface plugged, I think it doesn't hibernate then, but they should give me the choice :/
I understand it being enabled by default, but removing the option altogether? The only way around that I could see is to leave the surface plugged, I think it doesn't hibernate then, but they should give me the choice :/
Unknown Soldier
Member
It's different from the auto-brightness
LukasTaves
Member
For general background tasks, while the device is sleeping, for instance, but not limited to:
- Updates
- Onedrive syncing (useful when you put a large file there, put the device to sleep and the file appears everywhere without the need to leave the surface on and running)
- Music playing while the device is sleeping
- Background downloads on IE (could be even more useful if Ms allows this for other apps)
- Alarms and timers
- Live tile updates
SerTapTap
Member
Ah.
That reminds me, how reliable is OneDrive? I've been thinking of throwing my full set of emulators/config files and all my documents (and music, if it fits) on there. I can just have Onedrive act as my "my documents" sort of folder right? The surface/desktop being out of sync is already slightly annoying
LukasTaves
Member
I used to do that, but there are some annoyances when doing that:
- If you set your the location of the documents/pics/videos folders to onedrive when you use the file picker within an app there will be a seconds delay before the files and folders appear. It's a strange bug, because if you don't even when you choose onedrive as default they appear instantly. This becomes extra annoying, because when it's taking it's time, even when you try to go to This Pc and then navigate to these folders, you be taken back to the onedrive folder.
- If you set your documents folder for multiple PCs (so settings and game saves for win32 apps are shared between multiple devices, and they change at the same time there will be conflicts (it generate duplicate files with the name of the device in the file name). This used to be an issue when onedrive was deadly slow to pickup changes and them sync... Sometimes I opened Visual studio on my work laptop in the morning, and then at night at home I realized the setting didn't updated on my desktop, and if I changed it again it would eventually get duplicated... Now onedrive improved a lot, but I haven't tested it...
I decided against it, because currently onedrive doesn't handle many small files changing every now and them, for instance putting a svn folder in onedrive is asking for perpetual high cpu usage, and duplicate files appearing everywhere. So as of now I'm using it only for actual data files and leave settings and working dirs locally.
The onedrive blog when posting about the subsequent increases in storage did say they are like the first part of the story that will be fully realized in Win10 (or something along those lines), so I think we will hear more about onedrive being even more integrated into windows 10 in the upcoming months...
EatinOlives
Member
Thanks, guys. I've been having a few hardware-related hiccups (wireless antenna stops working when waking from sleep sometimes, some touch pen jankiness, etc.) that I wanted to see if I could fix with a manual firmware update, but I guess I can keep waiting on normal winUpdates. I didn't know firmware updates to the surface were pushed through that.
I might try that. The Power Saving thing is exactly what I want to disable. It's really dumb thing they're doing, they darken the screen when the image displayed is bright in nature (e.g., white backgrounds, etc.) and make it brighter when the image is dark. It makes no sense and really screws up the contrast. It's like having a really shitty permanent version of TV dynamic contrast, which I despise on TVs.
WhiskerFrisker
Member
Which version of Office are you guys using? I just found out that you can't use Office University without an internet connection. That sucks for me because I would finish assignments on the train and requiring an internet connection destroys that. Also, my university's wifi sucks in some parts and I'd hate to lose information because of that. Is there a version that doesn't require an internet connection and works on the Surface?
Septimus Prime
Member
Okay, so I tried out the extended display with the MS Wireless Display Adapter, and works just dandily. The nice part is that doing that does not change my SP3's resolution to 1080p.
I still didn't really play any videos or do anything extensive with it, though. I just tried it out.
I still didn't really play any videos or do anything extensive with it, though. I just tried it out.
Steelyuhas
Member
Office 365 University? Definitely works offline, there's nothing special about that version that I'm aware of, just a good deal on O365 for students.
WhiskerFrisker
Member
Looking at the user review for Office someone said it requires an internet connection.So is the required internet connection just for OneDrive? Or perhaps that person didn't know what was going on? I would only use Word and PowerPoint.
Probably needs the internet just for initial setup and activation. How else are you going to get it, since there's no DVD or anything, right?
WhiskerFrisker
Member
That's what I originally thought. So it looks like I'll opt for Office 365 University then.
Does pro3 still suffer from BT/wifi throughput issue? it's starting to really piss me off (pro1). gotta buy a wifi dongle. It's really embarrassing how they cheapened out on the wifi with the crappy marvell controller and no separate BT. Any decent PC comes with separate bt and wifi -_-
SerTapTap
Member
Hard to say I guess. There have been several wifi updates, and less people seem to report problems with each one, but I don't believe I've ever had the wifi issue. Using 5 Ghz. Bluetooth never seems to have an issue either.