Surface Pro 4 I5 Real World Gaming 4GB vs 8GB

Good Day All

I purchased an I5 4gb version last weekend, reloaded it via USB to have a fresh build.

Before you game you need to understand the following:
1. The SP4 will throttle based on power demand and temperature of the CASE itself (upper right hand side).
2. The level of throttling at room temp of 71 or 72 degrees room temp, is down to 12-13x multiplier. This is based on the GPU set at max performance (990 MHz).
3. The sp4 I tested is optimized for gaming with system and registry tweaks to provide best performance.

Battlefield 4. 41fps - Drops to 29 avg on MP with 64 players during throttle.
Marvel Heroes 2016 - 44 fps in hubs drops to 28 fps during throttle.
Star Wars Battlefront - MP 35 fps down to 22 during throttle (takes forever to load maps)

The 4GB of ram is a problem with these games. Its not a pleasant experience at times.

Reserved space for results of I5 8GB I just exchanged for.

Fine print (Yes a way was found to decrease the level of throttle. I will post more on that later).

Thanks!

 

Not sure who would buy a Surface and use it for gaming as it's not really suitable for current games. Nor I am sure why anyone would buy a premium priced machine with just 4GB RAM. Madness.

 

The Primary purpose isn't to game but if you travel or have to be away its nice to have a suitable machine that doesn't kill your knees like my Aw17 does. Thanks!

That reminds me.. need to update my sig. The m14 got sold for the AW17 almost 2 years ago now.

 

Did some gaming finally. Its tough to make a true comparison and be fair about it. The 8GB ram is such a huge difference. I also added an Artic USB fan and expansion to get a great angle. I can now stay at max turbo while gaming and GPU at max performance.

BF4 stays above 30fps even on the most intense maps with 64 players. Avg is 37fps on the maps I played on full MP sessions.
FIFA 2016 was very playable at 60fps (low settings). I did notice something strange, on replays and celebrations it would drop to 20fps and i'm not sure why.

I think we can all agree that your overall system is only as strong as the lowest common denominator. On the I5 4gb the ram itself is probably the biggest draw back. I'll keep testing more games as time permits.

 

Is there any reason you didn't go for the i7 with the iris graphics (double the GPU power of the i5) or the surface book with the dedicated Graphics (gt 940m about 2.5 times the power of the i5)

I have the AW 17 and the surface book; I find that i don't use the AW 17 as much as the SB is powerfull enough to rum my 3d modelling software and play any games on high settings.

 

I've seen all the artificial benchmarks for the 540. The real in game performance once the tablets are both cooled comes out to about 10 to 15 fps higher for the 540 in any given game. Example: large outdoor map, 64 players, bf4, the 540 fan cooled gets up to 60 fps unsustained and around 55 fps avg. on the 520 with the artic fan it gets around 50 fps unsustained and around 41 fps avg. same settings. So I'm ok with that. I can still get the 540 but just don't have a need to spend another 300 for 10 to 15 extra fps. I do appreciate the response though.