Help! Will this graphics card cut it for me?

I travel all the time for work and spend a lot of time on airplanes, etc. I'm also what I'd consider a moderately serious gamer; maybe 8 hours a week when I get lucky and have time. Because of my work schedule and the fact that planes are one of the few places I have long uninterrupted blocks of gaming time, I like to try to consolidate all my gaming on a laptop with good battery life but not awful performance ( a very tough combination). So I don't generally get gaming laptops (too heavy for easy travel stowage and poor battery life) but usually good general purpose laptops with discrete graphics cards.

I've been seriously looking at this thing:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Microsoft-Surface-Book-Core-i5-Nvidia-GPU-Notebook-Review.153126.0.html
but I don't know enough about graphics cards to say whether it's good enough for what I want to do. (that link says it's comparable to an Nvidia 940M and I'd be getting the i7 6600U version if I get this).

Basically, there are two defining criteria for me:
1. Would this laptop let me play Civ V in native resolution? (I play a lot of Civ... )
2. If I splurge on this I'd want to use it for basically all my gaming; how does it compare to say a PS4 or Xbox One? For example would I be able to play the upcoming Deus Ex and Mass Effect games this year at 1080p on this graphics card (as I could of course do on the consoles)?

I'm by no means a graphics nut; if something runs for me at the resolution in question at non-slideshow framerate (mid 20-ish) I'll be happy. Cost is more or less no object for purposes of this question. And I know a desktop is infinitely cheaper/ I can build myself/ way better performance etc.; it's just that realistically, when I have time to actually play games, I'm far more likely to have access to my travel laptop than any other device.

 

I'm going to be frank with you, the 940M in that laptop is a pretty low end card. I'll run pretty much everything today sure, but rather poorly for the more intensive games. That said, regarding tomorrow's games (Deus Ex, Mass Effect, etc.) we won't really know until they're released but I wouldn't expect miracles.

Now with all that doom and gloom out of the way, it'll tackle Civilization V just fine. An important point to note, however is that gaming laptops can only use their dGPUs to the full extent when plugged up with a suitble power supply. Basically your 940M will be useless for gaming on battery, and you'll only really be able to rely on your iGPU (the HD Graphics 520). In that case you might be able to get by playing Civilization V, but possibly not at native 1080p. I hope you commonly fly planes with sockets.

 

To be really honest - you'd be wasting your money with the Surface Book.

The cheapest Surface Book with the i7 costs US$2000, while you can get a slightly heavier and slightly bulkier but significantly more powerful notebook for a lot less, for example the Clevo P640RE (which costs about US$1500 give or take depending on your configuration) and comes with an i7-6700HQ and a GTX 970M, which allows you to play much more than just Civ V at 60 FPS.

You mentioned:

No, never. The Nvidia GeForce GT 940M is a low-end discrete GPU, and the Surface Book has a native resolution of 3000 x 2000. That's ridiculously high. Even a GTX 980M would struggle to get 30 FPS at that resolution. You'd get nothing but a slideshow at native resolution, even with reduced graphics fidelity.

Next: understandably you consider battery life important, but longevity and gaming are mutually exclusive - don't expect to get decent battery life out of any notebook if you're gaming with it on the battery.

All in all - the Surface Book, like MacBooks, aren't worth it (to you) because:

Any gamer worth his/her salt knows these ultraportables get you nowhere.

 

Wow I didn't even check the pricing. I second SRSR333's statement.

 

Hmm.... I didn't realize the performance would be that poor (why I asked!) So to go the other direction for the moment , if I were to get or build a desktop for gaming, what's the least expensive configuration that could do say civ v in 4K? (Least expensive now because I wouldn't be able to use it as much, as above.)

 

What kind of battery life are you looking at for doing basic tasks like web browsing and Office stuff? From what I read, the P640RE doesn't really get great battery life. That's the sacrifice for having high end components and a small battery (but the laptop doesn't runs hot).

 

My current laptop battery has a 90 Whr capacity which is great. Unfortunately few of the competitors I've looked at come anywhere close.

 

If you want proper 4K gaming on desktop, I'd reserve $3000. I would recommend Tri-SLI GTX 980 Ti system, that would probably run you around 3000 or more.

Ridiculous? Yeah, 4K Gaming is ridiculous right now. It will be a few years before 4K gaming can be done at a reasonable budget. It's consistent if you really want 60 FPS gaming @ 4K with ultra/high detail, 2 way SLI 980 is not enough, 3 Way SLI and 980 Ti is recommended.

Stick to 1080p gaming with a GTX 970.

No idea why you thought 4K Gaming on desktop would be more cost efficient than 1080p gaming on laptop. It's way more expensive.

 

You don't necessarily need 3 way SLI for 4k gaming. 980 Ti can crank out 100 FPS+ in most games at or near max detail at 2560x1440 which is a little less than half the pixels as 3840x2160. But still, yeah, hardware has a way to go before 4k gaming is really achievable on a reasonable budget.

 

I feel anything more than 1080p gaming right now is pointless, even more so on laptops, where Windows 7/8/8.1/10 cannot do proper scaling, unlike Apple's implementation of OS X (something they've gotten correct, out of many fails).

@CaptainKoloth - just consider sticking to lower resolutions for a while. 4K is really just the domain of TVs, Netflix and Blu-Ray movies for now (i.e. pre-rendered stuff, just video files and transmitted content). Real-time rendering at 4K is just too expensive and ridiculous as @Zymphad put it, simply.

 

Honestly man, if time isn't of the essence; I would just wait on Pascal and see where they stack up against Titan sli's. I'm holding off on upgrading anything until I actually see what Pascal is capable of vs. the current top of the line.

 

Or as soon as next year, with a single Pascal flagship?

 

You mean this year. It's 2016 already. 2015 went without a single new GPU release from Nvidia.

And probably not. I don't believe that a single generation change can jump from using three ultra-powerful GPUs to a single one that can output the required performance. I don't mind being mistaken in this regard, though. However, I don't want to get my hopes up. I'll believe it when I see it.

 

I think the top end first release mobile Pascal will be 80-100% faster than the 980m. But that's still a far cry from 4k performance, more like slightly faster than 980 Ti.

 

Heh, I'll believe it when I see it, I doubt it will be faster than 980 Ti.

 

The GTX 980 Ti is about 60-80% faster than 980m and about 30% faster than the mobile 980. I would hope the flagship Pascal would outperform the mobile 980 by a decent margin.

 

Hmmm you said faster than 980 Ti. And I'll believe it when I see it. And 80-100% faster than 980M? Again I'll believe it when I see it.

980M isn't faster than a 780... It just isn't. 780 is 60 FPS consistent on Crysis 3 1080P ultra, 980M OC, I don't get that, not even close, more around 45-50.

GTX 970 destroys a 980M, if the user knows how to OC it. Core running 1500 easily and memory 7000? 980M can't compete at all.

 

Will be able to better help you if you post here and fill out the form:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/forums/what-notebook-should-i-buy.16/

 

Nvidia wouldn't have dropped the mobile 980, if Pascal wasn't going to live up to the hype.

I've been on this forum for a long time.

They doubted the 8800M GTX would be a huge leap.
They doubted the GTX485M would be a huge leap.
They doubted the GTX 680M would be a huge leap.
They doubted the GTX 980M would be a huge leap.

Nvidia only let us down once with an architecture/die change, that being with the GTX 480M.

It's time to BELIEVE.

 

I never mentioned anything about 780 or 970. Just that the 980 Ti is about 60-80% faster than 980m and about 30% faster than 980. They will at least meet, more likely exceed greatly, the flagship mobile Pascal to outperform the 980, which would put it in 980 Ti territory. Die shrink + optimized architecture could achieve that.

 

Actually this is all turning out to be more helpful than I had anticipated so maybe I can take this opportunity to ask another question. Basically I'm trying to figure out the importance of a CPU vs. GPU in the gaming performance I'll get. For example, I have an i7 3635 and a Radeon 8770M in my current laptop. One computer I was looking at on the low end had an i3-4130T and a GTX 860M. Now obviously the GTX 860M blows my Radeon out of the water, but it seems like my processor is quite a bit better than the i3 would be. How important is each of these in predicting how good my performance might be? Is it game dependent? Can a good CPU offload some of the processing a good GPU might otherwise do?

 

It depends on the application in question. If it's well-developed (and thus highly multi-threaded), then you'll see your CPU usage shoot up. For example, X-Plane 10's performance depends heavily on the CPU and not just the GPU. GTA V is also highly CPU-bound. On the other hand, highly GPU-intensive games like Call of Duty or Battlefield wouldn't be affected whether it be an i5 or i7, because the games are mainly single-threaded and just don't need the CPU to do much, if anything at all.

However, in your particular scenario, you might end up seeing some contradictory results, because the i3 really is quite terrible, and might be a bottleneck to the GPU. I'm surprised that such a CPU/GPU combination exists - which laptop is it?

Since you were considering buying the Surface Book (which, as already mentioned, is expensive for what it offers), you may have the budget to get a really high end laptop. US$2000 can fetch quite a fair bit. Perhaps even a P750DM with a GTX 980M, which is completely out of either the Surface Book's, or the GTX 860M's leagues.

 

980M wasn't a huge leap. 880M was viewed and still viewed as a failure, a rebrand. Initial Fermi and 580M were viewed as failures. 680M being a huge leap compared to 580M or 980M vs 880M are not good indications of "huge leap." Rather fixing a failure. Rather 880M should have had greater gains over 780M and 580M over 485M etc.

Also 980M is still not as fast as a GTX 780 desktop. Desktop 970 destroys 980M. Yet I am to believe the next gen will destroy a desktop 980? I believe next gen will finally beat a GTX 780. I believe next gen may match an overclocked 970 @ 1500 core and 7000 memory. I don't believe next gen will outmatch a GTX 980 Ti or a well overclocked GTX 980.

If I am wrong... It's good to be wrong in this case. I won't believe it until I see it. I'll be happy to have average 65 FPS in Crysis 3 @ 1080p very high with AA, but I have my doubts.

 

I suppose this is a good attitude to take. We don't mind being wrong about the GTX 1080M being a massive leap over the 980M, but we'll wait and see. For now, it sounds too good to be true.

As for me, personally, GPUs will have only truly advanced when mid-range GPUs can handle the latest games at high/very high settings at 1080p easily at 60 FPS.

For now, the 750 Ti/860M/960M/960 can't do more than 45-50, very occasionally hitting 55-60. Will Pascal be the architecture to break my mark? We shall wait and see.

 

Why do you find it hard to believe that the new Pascal flagship will outperform the current Maxwell flagship (mobile GTX 980)? It wouldn't make sense if it didn't.

 

GTX 980M wasn't a huge leap, when it was just slower than dual 880Ms?

Man, perspective. We aren't comparing the 980M to desktop chips, that's a strawman which has nothing to do with the discussion of past vs future mobile chips.