The Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 (15-Inch) Review: AMD Ryzen Surface Edition
by Brett Howse on October 21, 2019 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- AMD
- Microsoft
- Surface
- Ryzen
- Surface Laptop
- Surface Laptop 3
GPU Performance: Vega 9
By offering a Vega-based GPU in its laptop products, AMD has raised the bar in terms of what kind of graphics performance should be expected in a thin and light design. Microsoft collaborated with AMD to create a unique variant of their normal Ryzen as well, offering one CU more in both the Ryzen 5, moving it to 9 Vega CUs, and the Ryzen 7, moving it to 11 Vega CUs.
As to how much extra performance that will bring, that is an open question; the absolute maximum is about 10%, but in reality, with the constraints of TDP and CPU speeds, it's likely not a huge jump over the normal Ryzen APUs found in other manufacturers devices. In reality, this is more about putting a stamp on the partnership that AMD has with Microsoft now, than a truly special processor in terms of graphics performance.
That’s not a big stretch either, since AMD already works with the Xbox team on their custom processors, and Microsoft’s Surface team has leveraged that relationship to not only give AMD a design win in an important product, but also providing the Surface team with a unique product that their competition won’t be able to utilize. Microsoft being Microsoft though still has a wide range of PC partners, and assured us that any Windows tweaks they have done to leverage this processor will be a benefit to any other laptops running Ryzen.
To see how the Ryzen 5 3580U handles GPU tasks, it was run through our Ultrabook set of gaming tests, along with a couple of additions as well to get a better feel for the GPU prowess. Gaming on a 3:2 aspect ratio device can be a bit of a challenge though, since not all games support the non-standard resolution, but if necessary you can manually set the device resolution to 1920x1080 to get around this. It doesn’t support 1366x768 though, but 1280x720 is available.
3DMark
3DMark offers a wide assortment of DirectX tests, from the gaming focused Fire Strike down to the mobile focused Ice Storm Unlimited. For the Surface Laptop 3, the Picasso platform from AMD offers a solid return on investment, often outperforming the Ryzen 7 2700U despite having a slightly weaker GPU. The extra CPU performance help to eliminate some of the bottlenecks that the original Raven Ridge APU was suffering from.
Fire Strike is the test which mostly favors GPU performance, since it’s the most complex scene, and the Ryzen Surface Edition squeaks past the Core i7-8650U plus NVIDIA MX 150 combination in the Huawei MateBook X Pro. That gap remains or grows in both Sky Diver and Cloud Gate, but the mobile focused Ice Storm Unlimited results shows how much quicker the Intel processor is in that highly CPU bound test.
GFXBench
AMD’s work on low-level APIs paid dividends for them in DX12, which is the API used in the latest GFXBench tests. Here the Ryzen Surface Edition pulls a noticeable lead over the previous generation APU, and unsurprisingly a wide lead over the integrated graphics on the 8th generation Intel parts.
Dota 2
Valve’s Dota 2 can be run on a wide-range of devices, including those with integrated graphics. It’s also very much a CPU bound game so it can really highlight CPU performance on an integrated APU with a shared TDP. In our first real-world gaming test, the Surface Laptop 3 is held back by the CPU.
Tomb Raider
The original Tomb Raider is quite old now, but makes for a good test for a new laptop with integrated graphics. The Ryzen 5 3580U manages to outperform the Rynen 7 2700U here despite the smaller Vega GPU on the Ryzen 5, but can’t quite match the Intel plus NVIDIA combo on the MateBook X Pro.
Rise of the Tomb Raider
The second installment in the new Tomb Raider series does leverage DX12, but even on our value settings is only barely playable on these devices.
Civilization VI
You don’t need a lot of framerate to play Civ VI, since it’s turn based and not reliant on lightning quick reflexes, but this game struggled with the 3:2 aspect ratio on the display and wouldn’t run at less than 1920x1080, meaning it was still unplayable on the Surface Laptop 3.
GPU Conclusion
The addition of an extra Vega core in the semi-custom Ryzen APU does help in some scenarios, but is still somewhat held back by the Zen CPU cores in real-world games. That being said, it still offers a big performance gain over any of the older integrated Intel GPUs. As expected, the semi-custom nature of this APU is more about highlighting the partnership than any truly revolutionary new product.
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Icehawk - Thursday, October 24, 2019 - link
I get that we always want the best but I honestly don't know why it's harped on about how this device "only" does ~315 which is about as fast as a SSD can handle anyway - 1G connects for a single machine just don't matter in real life. More important to me is how reliable the connection is, which according to this review is solid.Eliadbu - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
I'll give that the GPU is compelling but all other aspects of the APU are mediocre, especially the battery life which worse than average. I would like to see how the ice lake version compares to this APU.I think this machine proved why Intel still dominates the low power/thin and light laptops market.
Irata - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
Did you look at the system performance benchmarks? Ryzen 5 does pretty well there (second place overall in PC Mark 10) and the list does not include any Core i5, only core i7.The only laptop that has a higher score is the top of the line Surface Book 2 with an i7 plus nVidia dGPU.
The Ryzen model tested here is the base model, btw.
Yes, battery life could certainly be better (although they do not test how well it does under load), but Surface Book Ryzen us not the worst - there are Intel based models that do less well.
phoenix_rizzen - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
Yeah, if you consider this is the middle-of-the-road APU (R5) from AMD being benched against the top-of-the-line CPUs (i7) from Intel, it does really well. For most of the CPU benchmarks, it's right in the middle of the i7 pack. For most of the GPU benchmarks, it's better than the iGPU, as good as the MX150 dGPU, although not nearly as good (as expected) as the 1060 dGPU.Would be interesting to see how this APU compares to i5 versions of these laptops.
Would also be interesting to see how the R7 APUs compare to the i5 and i7 versions of these laptops.
Eliadbu - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
this is 8th gen, meaning we are comparing to the past products, you talked about r7 but from what I've seen we are talking 100-200mhz difference (so 5% difference at most ). also the TDP will get up as clock speed goes up which equal to more heat,worse battery life etc. many test that it did perform good is due the GPU as I said it is compelling but is it enough I would say no, and for testing battery life under load I would say while it might have some use cases most people will use the laptop on battery for basic tests like browsing the web, watch videos, edit documents or other light use programs. if the r5/r7 had lower price I would give it more favor but as it stands out it does not give us any discount, it may have been due Microsoft pricing tactics but it does not change the fact. also we need to see how it compares to ICL version of this machine. I would guess it would still have the better GPU but the gap would shrink significantly, and CPU would not be it strong side either.Potato Power - Thursday, October 24, 2019 - link
Microsoft puts a 46Wh battery inside. That explains why the battery life is only so so. Even my cheapy Zenbook has a bigger battery.sorten - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
Decent showing against previous generation Intel options, meaning it wasn't as far behind as I expected. Unfortunately for AMD, Ice Lake offers better than 2x the iGPU performance of 8th gen chips, and there will also be a minor bump on CPU performance, battery performance, and memory speed.Kishoreshack - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
People overreacting should understand this is the base model, for a base model it competes very we with top end models of last yearI would be really excited to see higher end models of surface laptop 3
AMD VS INTEL COMPARISON
Felt that surface should have integrated ZEN 2 ARCHITECTURE INTO THESE LAPTOPS
TheinsanegamerN - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
Except this "base" model has worse IRL GPU performance, worse batery life, and worse wifi. It is a step backwards. AMD GPUs are supposed to be better then intel, but the graphs here show that is not hte case unless power isnt a consideration.Kind of hard for MS to use ZEN 2 ARCHITECTURE APUs when they refuse to make them. AMD is just crippling themselves here.
Fulljack - Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - link
eh, it shows the igpu as the most powerful one, even beating mx150 which is a dgpu on some scenario. too bad the graph still hasn't show Intel gen11 graphics. so I don't get what do you mean by worse irl gpu performance.of course, as expected, it won't beat gtx 1060 due to sheer amount of difference both in tdp and die size.