Surface Book i7: Powerful Enough or Do I Need To Go Quad Core?

[Made In Machines]

I produce vst heavy music on a very old 2008 macbook pro laptop I've been thinking of trying touch screen music producing and there aren't a lot of great options out there. The best option seems to be the surface book from what I can gather even though it's only duo core. I like the idea of playing in parts, sequencing, triggering clips and tweaking synths right on my DAW without any secondary interface getting in the way.

I recently saw a test which played the Live 9 Suite demo song and it used up 20-25% CPU. I was very disappointed because my 8 year old macbook pro managed the same thing using only 5% more CPU usage! I find my current laptop very lacking for producing music although I can do it with a struggle and without using CPU heavy things things like U-he Diva / Re-pro. I was expecting the surface book to offer 2.5x the performance of my current setup judging by geekbench but that didn't seem to be the case at all so what happened? Am I missing something?

I'm starting to think I should either get the new XPS 15 maxed out and put up with leaning over the keyboard when I want to do touch screen things (or get an external touch monitor) or get the new macbook pro for a whopping £700 more than the Dell.

Thank you in advance for your advice!

[ckam03]

The newest Surface Book is a quad core. XPS 15 is a great choice as well. Getting ready to put 32 gigs of RAM in this baby just because

[Made In Machines]

It's not quad core. Don't buy thinking it is.

It uses this processor http://ark.intel.com/products/88192/Int ... o-3_40-GHz
I don't think you can put 32GB of RAM in it either.

I managed to find out why the result seemed so off and it was Live's CPU meter. Here are the actually CPU results which should be just fine. It turns out the Surface Book i7 is about 2.5 - 3 times more powerful than my old laptop (which is more what I was expecting) so it should be adequate for my needs (although obviously a quad core would be preferable).

These are the results for the surface book Live 9 Demo song (playing scene 2):
Using the K-Mix USB audio interface on Surface Book i7 vs Core Audio OSX on Late 2008 Macbook Pro:

128 samples : 28%
Surface Book i7 256 samples : 25% vs Core 2 Duo :67%
Surface Book i7 512 samples : 20% vs Core 2 Duo : 60%

(Results plus or . 3%)

[DJ Warmonger]

The usage reported by Live is of a single core. DAWs can utilize more cores quite easily, so quad core should be no brainer if there's one available. After all, you're going to create more complex project that Live demo, aren't you?

[Made In Machines]

The problem is you can't get a quad core surface book or touch screen convertible laptop and I don't think it would be much fun reaching across the keyboard to touch the screen on an XPS 15

[chroma]

there are a few convertible quad-core i7s - they tend to be expensive & have very low battery life but they are pretty impressive - something like the vaio canvas Z for example.

i've been happy with touchable on an iPad connected to my mac so far... a bit more expensive but the iPad is lighter than the convertible will be, but can get the power of the MacBook pro. (disclaimer just in case: i work for apple, but this isn't official, just my personal experience).

[Kaine]

I produce vst heavy music on a very old 2008 macbook pro laptop I've been thinking of trying touch screen music producing and there aren't a lot of great options out there. The best option seems to be the surface book from what I can gather even though it's only duo core. I like the idea of playing in parts, sequencing, triggering clips and tweaking synths right on my DAW without any secondary interface getting in the way.

I recently saw a test which played the Live 9 Suite demo song and it used up 20-25% CPU. I was very disappointed because my 8 year old macbook pro managed the same thing using only 5% more CPU usage! I find my current laptop very lacking for producing music although I can do it with a struggle and without using CPU heavy things things like U-he Diva / Re-pro. I was expecting the surface book to offer 2.5x the performance of my current setup judging by geekbench but that didn't seem to be the case at all so what happened? Am I missing something?

The older Macbook pro's had decent chips in them and I would expect something of that vintage to pre-date the more recent trend of making chips for checking e-mail and watching Youtube.

The Surface pro normally uses "U" series chips and I don't think that's changed on the 4. It's the same low powered chip found in hybrid tablets and the 13" macbooks, designed for little more than keeping road warriors up and running their excel spreadsheets, it's obviously got some grunt in there but ultimately it's tweaked for battery life over performance.

The performance is maybe 40% less than one of the HQ series chips which is what you find in the 15" Macbooks and in most laptops.

Simply it's a form factor limitation, if you want to use something ultra slim and without the space to cool the setup easily, you have to expect to take a performance hit otherwise it would do nothing but overheat 24/7

[ckam03]

Maybe I'm thinking of the Surface Book 2 but I'm positive I read that they were updating it and adding a quad core.

[Kaine]

You can get quad core "U" series chips. The number of cores isn't the point, it's how hard Intel spec the chips to run and the point of "U" class chips is that they run cool and don't use a lot of power. I've got a quad core in my phone, but I doubt I'm going to get Ableton running on it anytime soon.

You want to be looking at "MQ" or "HQ" labeled chips.

[ckam03]

You can get quad core "U" series chips. The number of cores isn't the point, it's how hard Intel spec the chips to run and the point of "U" class chips is that they run cool and don't use a lot of power. I've got a quad core in my phone, but I doubt I'm going to get Ableton running on it anytime soon.

You want to be looking at "MQ" or "HQ" labeled chips.

Obviously. But you don't know whether or not it's a quad core U series and neither do I. I can't find the information so I'm probably not remembering correctly.

[Echoes in the Attic]

Maybe I'm thinking of the Surface Book 2 but I'm positive I read that they were updating it and adding a quad core.

Nope. No surface anything are quad core or have any plans to be. Except the surface studio or desktop or whatever it's called. But no portable ones.

[chroma]

You can get quad core "U" series chips. The number of cores isn't the point, it's how hard Intel spec the chips to run and the point of "U" class chips is that they run cool and don't use a lot of power. I've got a quad core in my phone, but I doubt I'm going to get Ableton running on it anytime soon.

You want to be looking at "MQ" or "HQ" labeled chips.

Obviously. But you don't know whether or not it's a quad core U series and neither do I. I can't find the information so I'm probably not remembering correctly.

i actually have never seen a quad series 'U' series (and they're not listed on intel's page here: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ ... essor.html which covers the 6/7 series - all quads there are HK/HQ, and all U are dual... unless it was a custom or something they used to produce but stopped? disclaimer again: i used to work at intel, but in xeon, so didn't know much about mobile).

the vaio canvas Z is a 4770HQ in a convertible, so that's at least one that i know exists, but they are rare.

that said, powerful enough is all relative... my current music laptop is a 2 year old macbook air (dual core i7 U). it may not be the most powerful machine, but it's powerful enough, and it's convenient in other ways (when I'm not using it for music, it gets incredible battery life).

[Kaine]

Obviously. But you don't know whether or not it's a quad core U series and neither do I. I can't find the information so I'm probably not remembering correctly.

It's a 6600U chip in the surface 4 and it's a dual core with hyper-threading. The may well not be any true quad "U"s out there (original post suggested it was, I wasn't looking to discuss that or took the time to look into it further), that wasn't the point I was trying to put across. My point is only that the "U" series chips are not the same as standard chips as far as performance goes. The 6600U pull less than half of a i5 6600 that would otherwise be found on a desktop and that tends to confuse people looking for a certain level of performance.

The "U" series chip benches like a high end i3 in real terms. If you just want to run some effects or record and edit on the fly, it'll do fine but if you want to write something bigger, I'm just saying be aware you going to be limited in some ways.

[Ben H]

If I were you, I would wait until the Surface Book 2 and the Surface Pro 5s come out. These are rumored to have the new Kaby Lake processors, which will run faster and cooler and also give a LOT more battery life.

Oh, if you DO plan on getting a current Surface Book instead, then the following site is VERY helpful.
http://surfaceproaudio.com

He tests the Surface Book and Surface Pro with different DAWS, VSTi's and effects. Demonstrating the sort of real-world results that you should be able to achieve.

Hope this helps.