Surface Book 2 suffers from performance throttling, charging abnormalities, and slower response times

[Redaktion]

Though a visual delight, the new Surface Book isn't doing anything to buck the trend of notorious hardware headaches that has become the norm across the Surface lineup.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Surface-Book-2-suffers-from-performance-throttling-charging-abnormalities-and-slower-response-times.264060.0.html

[Pierrick Bignet]

Thickness and style choices were not done for mere visual appeal however. I completely agree on the weird PSU choice: that's a shame. But for the rest... That's the price to pay to have a unique device with a detachable screen.
I understand the critics here, but I feel as those considerations have been overlooked.

[Thesis]

The Kaby Lake R chips have throttled after the first run, but remained stable aftewards in other devices. But this is too erratic. An undervolt is absolutely necessary. Yoga 720 15" had the same problem and it was voltage to heat. Honestly, companies should have used the 28W chips instead of 15W. Or, they should have allowed long term consumption up to 25W. The new 13" Macbooks with Kaby Lake R will perform like a dream if Mac actually puts in a competent heating system, which they've struggled with.

[DanReyLop]

For comparison's sake, the dual-core i5-7300HQ commonly found on most entry-level gaming notebooks is just slightly faster with an average score of 515 points despite having half the parallel threads as the i7-8650U.

The 7300HQ is not a dual-core CPU. It's 4-core without hyper-threading. Same cores as the 8650U, just without hyper-threading. Plus, the 7300HQ is designed for 45W TDP so it's unlikely to throttle. A 15W part keeping up with an last year's entry-level 45W part is impressive, even if you want to paint the opposite picture.

[Dx]

The 15 has a newly designed screen and is great for gaming. I did some today. The 15 also has much better thermal limits and is downright fast. Benchmark of Dragon Age Inquisition netted 50 fps at full 3240 x 2160 resolution.  And the battery drain didn't happen yet for me. Just bear in mind that some of your experience with the 13.5 isn't going to be the same with t 15. And since the psu weighs far less than say the xps 15 psu there have been some choices made that I think are OK. Adding a slightly more powerful 120w psu option for gaming would fix any lingering concerns and still make the overall bag weight lighter for those who don't want the bigger psu. Similar concept to making the pen optional.

[edgineer]

If the problems are avoidable, this still seems like the best device money can buy.

My biggest remaining concern is if the USB type-C port works reliably enough to dock to my external monitor and USB devices at home (while charging). Please let us know if it is possible to use the displayport out functionality while charging and connecting USB devices at once! Thanks.

[Valantar]

For comparison's sake, the dual-core i5-7300HQ commonly found on most entry-level gaming notebooks is just slightly faster with an average score of 515 points despite having half the parallel threads as the i7-8650U.

The 7300HQ is not a dual-core CPU. It's 4-core without hyper-threading. Same cores as the 8650U, just without hyper-threading. Plus, the 7300HQ is designed for 45W TDP so it's unlikely to throttle. A 15W part keeping up with an last year's entry-level 45W part is impressive, even if you want to paint the opposite picture.

I was about to point out the same thing. 7300HQ is 4c4t 45W - "classic non-U-series i5", in other words. Traditionally, only U-series i5s have had HT, the rest (H-series, desktop) have been nCnT, not nCn*2T.

As such, a one-generation upgrade that reduces TDP by 66% and still mostly keeps up with its predecessor is extremely impressive. HT of course gives some added benefit here, but Intel HT typically increases performance per core by <25% (AMD's SMT implementation with Ryzen is far more efficient), but also increases power draw somewhat (though far less than the increase in performance). As such, what we're seeing here is indeed an impressive feat - not least in a passively cooled tablet! Remember, only the 15" version has a fan in the tablet part (but also runs the CPU in 20W cTDP-up mode).

Of course, it's possible that a 7300HQ doesn't actually use its full 45W thermal envelope, but that's beside the point here. It offers a 35W cTDP-down mode, but that requires lowering base clocks below  2.5GHz. We're effectively seeing low-end H-series performance in U-series form factors. That's very impressive.

Now, let's see what Ryzen Mobile with Vega Graphics (yes, that name is utter garbage) can do. Any news on a NotebookCheck review of that HP 360?

[mteechan]

For comparison's sake, the dual-core i5-7300HQ commonly found on most entry-level gaming notebooks is just slightly faster with an average score of 515 points despite having half the parallel threads as the i7-8650U.

The 7300HQ is not a dual-core CPU. It's 4-core without hyper-threading. Same cores as the 8650U, just without hyper-threading. Plus, the 7300HQ is designed for 45W TDP so it's unlikely to throttle. A 15W part keeping up with an last year's entry-level 45W part is impressive, even if you want to paint the opposite picture.

I was about to point out the same thing. 7300HQ is 4c4t 45W - "classic non-U-series i5", in other words. Traditionally, only U-series i5s have had HT, the rest (H-series, desktop) have been nCnT, not nCn*2T.

As such, a one-generation upgrade that reduces TDP by 66% and still mostly keeps up with its predecessor is extremely impressive. HT of course gives some added benefit here, but Intel HT typically increases performance per core by <25% (AMD's SMT implementation with Ryzen is far more efficient), but also increases power draw somewhat (though far less than the increase in performance). As such, what we're seeing here is indeed an impressive feat - not least in a passively cooled tablet! Remember, only the 15" version has a fan in the tablet part (but also runs the CPU in 20W cTDP-up mode).

Of course, it's possible that a 7300HQ doesn't actually use its full 45W thermal envelope, but that's beside the point here. It offers a 35W cTDP-down mode, but that requires lowering base clocks below  2.5GHz. We're effectively seeing low-end H-series performance in U-series form factors. That's very impressive.

Now, let's see what Ryzen Mobile with Vega Graphics (yes, that name is utter garbage) can do. Any news on a NotebookCheck review of that HP 360?

7300HQ only consumes ~30 watts @3.1GHz 4 cores, and that's even for AIDA64 FPU test.

[Valantar]

7300HQ only consumes ~30 watts @3.1GHz 4 cores, and that's even for AIDA64 FPU test.

Ah, okay. So "just" 2x the TDP, then. Not to mention that that figure most likely doesn't include uncore and iGPU, which falls inside of the 15W TDP of the newest gen chips. I'd say that's still a solid win for the new generation. The 8th-gen H-series chips will be interesting for sure. Wonder if we'll see 6-core in mobile, or just significantly higher base and boost clocks.