Microsoft, just a day before Apple’s Pro (well sort of ) lineup announcement, introduced to the world it’s long speculated All In One “Pro” device. This new member to the Surface lineup is their new Surface Studio , which has Studio in it’s name and is targeted towards Professionals whom Apple seems to have forgotten.
Despite Microsoft’s aggressive hype about how it’s Surface Studio is “designed for the creative process” a few of it’s specs gave me a little hiccup especially for its price- starting at $3000 (well $2999, duh!)
The fact that it has a GTX 965M as a baseline option and GTX 980M as the top of line “dGPU” (which stands for Dedicated Graphics Processor Unit) option is the reason for my hiccup. By no means I doubt the performance of these GPUs from Nvidia, in fact, they were staple GPUs for some high-end notebooks launched in 2015 and they performed really well but they’re one generation older to the GPUs available at the time of launch of Surface Studio (as of October,2016).
(All 900 series GPUs from Nvidia are based on Maxwell architecture and their Mobile variant- like the GTX 980M and GTX960M are cut down version of their Desktop counterpart)
With such high price and just a touch of lack of Specifications to back Surface Studio up, Microsoft missed the opportunity to deliver what Apple or any other Manufacture couldn’t
What these specifications suggest that Microsoft’s R&D Division started working on Surface Studio back when afford mentioned 900 series mobile GPUs were the prime choice for a small form factor desktop/notebook- which by no means is a bad thing as the refined and a “very” new design is what Surface Studio stands for being unlike other AIOs.
At the same times this tells me that Hardware Team at Redmond didn’t pay close attention to the changing trends in the GPUs with Nvidia announcing fully unlocked GM204 core for the Notebook sector which basically means a full fledged desktop GTX 980 chip for portable form factor like that of a gaming notebook. Yes, I know that the GTX 980 present in a notebook means that it has a lower power envelope as compared to its desktop counterpart but that also means that these high performance chips were overall more efficient to fit in a notebook and perform better than a mobile GPU variant. For benchmarks and scores here are the performance charts:-
Source:- https://goo.gl/q2HRh1
Even comparing Desktop GTX 980 and notebook GTX 980, there’s only about 5% to 10% performance threshold (with 1% in this particular test)
Souurce :
Having established that, let’s touch upon the current scenario of mobile GPU market.
NVIDIA DECIDED NO M THIS TIME. Unlike 2015, Nvidia didn’t announce any GPU with “M” designation which all means that the current Pascal based mobile variants- GTX 1080, GTX 1060 and GTX 1070 are all slightly cut down (a dive in frequency, texture units, cuda cores etc.) version of their similarly named desktop counterparts.
And if Microsoft opted for Pascal based mobile GPUs they would have got a huge performance boost in terms of Graphics which would have meant better performance in Video Editing applications especially Adobe Premiere as Premiere benefits from extra graphics horsepower using Cuda acceleration.
This would have meant that slight changes to be made to overall power that Surface Studio draws but then this task must have been undertaken by the Microsoft’s R&D so they could have tackled this hinderance.
And Pascal based GPUs should have been the way to go for maximum performance.
(This is just one of the several performance numbers that I found online, google it yourself general consensus will be- Pascal GPUs are the winners)
Source : https://goo.gl/AdzlUe
Something else that I discovered about the Surface Studio was that it has what Microsoft is calling “Rapid Hybrid Drive” which sounds like a new storage technology and as it turns out-IT IS NOT.
I searched Microsoft’s website to find that what does it actually mean- No success. I tried Googling it and I got to know that it is like Apple’s Fusion drive with a moving mechanical Hard Drive and Solid State Drive component which is generally low in capacity. I wasn’t still sure, so, I turned to Youtube and watched a lot (A LOT!) of impression videos- none touched upon the Storage. Then I came across Austin Evan’s video and he briefly explained what Storage option Surface Studio actually comes with. And, it didn’t even turn out out to be Satisfactory according to current computing standards, Surface Studio’s price and how cheap Solid State storage technology has become. Surface Studio only comes with either 64GB of Solid State Storage coupled with 1TB of Hard Drive or a 128GB of Solid State storage with 2TB of Hard Drive. There’s no possible excuse for putting such meagre storage solution into what is a Professional device.
With m.2 SSDs coming in at so cheap and larger capacities too coming at a bang for the buck kinda prices, it’s a shame what Microsoft has chosen as a storage option.
Even Apple has learnt that if they’re not giving users top of the line specs in terms of Processor and or Ram, the storage speed could still improve the overall fluidity of the device, as it’s iPhone 6s has a NVMe drive (Sorce : https://goo.gl/4rV31q) and it’s new Macbooks having an amazing read and write performance.
Source:
But again this article isn’t Macbook Vs Surface Studio or Apple Vs Microsoft for that matter but one which focuses on where Microsoft’s Studio could let users down.
If Microsoft would facilitate the users with a Solid State (eMMC or NVMe would have a gone a long way to improve experience of Video Editors especially because a faster scratch disk keeps helps in maintaining fluidity in accessing footage. Microsoft just can’t give any justification for let down storage.
(Check this B&H Photo Article on How SSD can help with overall fluidity of a Machine (if you don’t believe me): https://goo.gl/KFZWHC )
So, this was my opinion on how Microsoft might just have missed by a mark on creating the best in class tool (Editing PC) for video editors. :(