Microsoft Surface Pro 3 Review

Name: Microsoft Surface Pro 3 Review
Brand: Microsoft

by Marco Chiappetta — Thursday, May 29, 2014, 12:00 PM EDT

We began our testing with SiSoftware's SANDRA 2014 the System ANalyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant. We ran six of the built-in subsystem tests that partially comprise the SANDRA 2014 suite with Surface Pro 3 (CPU Arithmetic, Multimedia, Memory Bandwidth, Physical Disk, Cache & Memory and Cache Bandwidth).

SiSoft SANDRA 2014

System Level Benchmark

All of the scores reported below were taken with the processor running at its default clock speeds (max boost of 2.9GHz) with 8GB of DDR3-1600 RAM and Windows 8.1 64-bit.

*Processor Arithmetic*	*Memory Bandwidth*
*Processor Multi-Media*	*Cache Bandwidth*
*Cache and Memory*	Physical Disks

The various SiSoft SANDRA tests we ran didn't yield any major surprises. The Core i5-4300U inside the Surface Pro 3 performs as expected, and puts up numbers right in-line with similar processors in the arithmetic, multi-media, and cache-related benchmarks. In terms of memory bandwidth, the Surface Pro 3 offered up about 18.5GB/s, which is also on-par with similar CPU / memory configurations. The Physical Disk benchmark, however, hints at one of the things that makes the Surface Pro feel so speedy during everyday use. The Samsung SSD integrated into our Surface Pro 3 transferred data at over 560MB/s, which is comparable to some of the fastest solid state drives currently available.

Tags: Intel, Mobile, Microsoft, Core, tablet, Surface Pro, HiDPI

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com