If you read page 4 of my Skylake Core i7-6700K review, you’ll see that the desktop chip with its Intel HD 530 graphics-a step down from the Surface Pro 4 with the Core i7-pushes 54 fps in Tomb Raider when set to normal and at 1366×768 resolution. The highest end Surface Pro 4 uses Intel’s Iris Graphics with 48 execution units and should offer rather decent performance. Your CPU choice on a new Surface Pro 4 will matter more than on the Surface Book. Unlike the Surface Book, here you should choose wisely. While the CPUs in the Surface Book don’t differ dramatically, the SP4’s brains matter far more. What about the CPUs in the Surface Pro 4? Most of you won’t notice the difference unless there’s some other key difference between the configurations that I’m missing. Therefore, you’d probably be fine buying the Core i5 version of the Surface Book with discrete graphics and 256GB SSD for $1,900 instead of shelling out $2,100 for the Core i7 Surface Book with discrete graphics and a 256GB SSD. (Yes, and like a meteorologist, you can’t hold me to it unless I’m right.) With the Surface Book, both CPU models will support vPro which enables manageability in a corporate IT environment.įrom a pure performance perspective, based on how previous Intel model numbers have gone and my testing of the desktop Skylake chip, I predict that you might see a 15-percent difference between the two based on CPU-intensive chores.

For example, some Core i7 chips may contain its vPro technology, while some Core i5 CPUs may not. Sometimes Intel turns features on or off based on where it wants the chip to fall in its performance hierarchy.

Surface 4 pro specs