[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Surface Pro vs. PC gaming: We torture test the tablet's gaming prowess here

[groberts116]

Nice to know Surface Pro gaming ability isn't too shabby. I probably won't use my Surface Pro for a lot of gaming, but it's still nice to know. I'm expecting my Surface Pro to ship this week.

[thewazak]

Thanks, Alex
Nice to read an intelligent, generally positive article - from a real user rather than the usual iPCW churnalist!

[Hemo2]

I appreciate the review. I do hope to see a similar review though, running Adobe Lightroom as I'm very interested to see how it can handle this program when I'm doing photography processing out on the road.

The Surface Pro doesn't have nearly enough free space for heavy duty photography use, but it is intriguing for use on smaller projects.

[alxgermenos]

In the gaming department, I tried installing a bunch of emulators. Sadly, the resolution of the screen doesn't help, and you end up having zoomed places of the screen, instead of the whole monitor to start your games.

I'll try downsizing the resolution before installing, to see if it works better.

Has anyone succeeded on this?

[Kwiku]

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In the gaming department, I tried installing a bunch of emulators. Sadly, the resolution of the screen doesn't help, and you end up having zoomed places of the screen, instead of the whole monitor to start your games.
I'll try downsizing the resolution before installing, to see if it works better.
Has anyone succeeded on this?

I found for many games and even some adobe programs that running at the Suface default 150% DPI caused problems in the form of zoomed in screen and / or touch accuracy . Taking it down to even to 100% or even125% seems to help with nearly all issues. I would reccomend this as a first step.

[WinTard]

That was a good read. Thanks!

I'm still waiting for my (2) Surface Pro however...

~~~~~~~~
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
~ Hector Berlioz

Time is what we want most, but alas, what we use worst.
~ William Penn

Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.
~ Theophrastus, 372 BC-287 BC

[garak0410]

Here's my gaming experience. For sure, you will need the keyboard or Bluetooth keyboard/mouse. On battery power only, I tried Star Trek Online and Myst:URU and both ran exceptionally well. I played URU for about 30 minutes and the battery took a major hit though, so portable legacy gaming isn't going to be a strong suit. On a positive note, I installed both games on my 64 GB microSD card with no stuttering or slowness. So, the MicroSD card can easily be used as another drive to load programs on. Would be nice for a 128GB MicroSD to be released one day!

[garak0410]

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Here's my gaming experience. For sure, you will need the keyboard or Bluetooth keyboard/mouse. On battery power only, I tried Star Trek Online and Myst:URU and both ran exceptionally well. I played URU for about 30 minutes and the battery took a major hit though, so portable legacy gaming isn't going to be a strong suit. On a positive note, I installed both games on my 64 GB microSD card with no stuttering or slowness. So, the MicroSD card can easily be used as another drive to load programs on. Would be nice for a 128GB MicroSD to be released one day!

Oh, and one more thing...I had to lower down to Medium (125%) on most of these games (Back To The Future was another I didn't list)...the 150% was causing issues...

[ACocilova]

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Here's my gaming experience. For sure, you will need the keyboard or Bluetooth keyboard/mouse. On battery power only, I tried Star Trek Online and Myst:URU and both ran exceptionally well. I played URU for about 30 minutes and the battery took a major hit though, so portable legacy gaming isn't going to be a strong suit. On a positive note, I installed both games on my 64 GB microSD card with no stuttering or slowness. So, the MicroSD card can easily be used as another drive to load programs on. Would be nice for a 128GB MicroSD to be released one day!

Thanks for reading and inputting! I'm glad to hear that using the MicroSD slot worked for ruinning and storing games. That was definitely going to be the next thing I do, but figured the games wouldn't work well from the slower card.

[theoozzz]

guys.., im thinking to buy one of these hybrids... but im still not sure about its gaming performance... is it possible to play those online game like Dota 2 in surface pro or other hybrids? need ur advice.thanks

[Ocelotty1]

Have you tried with a Logitech unified receiver solution for Mouse & keyboard?

[aur0r]

How about the battery? how long is lasting before off or kind of warning showed up?

[ACocilova]

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How about the battery? how long is lasting before off or kind of warning showed up?

On the second page I mentioned it drained about half way in under an hour and died in less than 2 hours. That was while playing XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

[nyzma]

seriously you can't benchmark it with fraps because fraps is tearing down your frame per sec ,it's resource hungry software

most game right now have their own fps meter

[DixieLand]

The guys from examiner.com found a solution to the Surface Pro's battery life. All you have to do is reduce the Surface's maximum processor state on battery. You can get up to 6 hours of battery life.

http://www.examiner....-solution-found

[aur0r]

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How about the battery? how long is lasting before off or kind of warning showed up? On the second page I mentioned it drained about half way in under an hour and died in less than 2 hours. That was while playing XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

I see, I guess i missed it before.
So, still classic matter.

Btw, really nice review and thanks for the replied.

[MacNewton]

It maybe a long wait, The Surface Pro project could be killed off before they are giving the opportunity to manufacture Rev 2,

“I do not really see a long lifespan for Surface hardware, based on our channel analysis. I think we can assume [that] in the next six months, the Surface will come and go with not much trace of an impact. It was marketing for the point of selling Windows 8, but there has not been huge penetration and we see that OEMs are taking the role as hardware manufacturers,” he said, according to ChannelNomics.

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That was a good read. Thanks! I'm still waiting for my (2) Surface Pro however...

Your thoughts...

[MacNewton]

The Surface Pro is indeed a good game machine. For business, not so much...

Will the Surface Pro/ RT join the following companies and products that failed to become successful. Will history repeat itself for MicroSoft?

HP Slate 500, HP TouchPad , RIM PlayBook, HTC Flyer, Transformer by Asus, Kindle Fire, Coby 8.0, CrunchPad, Microsoft Courier, Wacom, Apple Newton, Lenovo U1, LCARS PADD

1) Can you name a few more?
2) How many did Steve Ballmer introduce to the public.
3) Will Steve Ballmer will be around to demo a new Tablet next year?

Thanks for your help.

[Dinosworld]

Quote

The Surface Pro is indeed a good game machine. For business, not so much... Will the Surface Pro/ RT join the following companies and products that failed to become successful. Will history repeat itself for MicroSoft? HP Slate 500, HP TouchPad , RIM PlayBook, HTC Flyer, Transformer by Asus, Kindle Fire, Coby 8.0, CrunchPad, Microsoft Courier, Wacom, Apple Newton, Lenovo U1, LCARS PADD 1) Can you name a few more? 2) How many did Steve Ballmer introduce to the public. 3) Will Steve Ballmer will be around to demo a new Tablet next year? Thanks for your help.

MacNewton what are you talking about? It's not designed to be a gaming machine the fact that it can handle these test is a marvel in unto itself. As far as business goes it can handle any windows software including productivity it weights 2 pounds it replaces my iPad and my MacBook Air all in one machine but by your comments it's good at playing games. It's an i5 processor 128 GB SSD and 4 GB Ram its not RT it's windows 8 pro. Oh yeah it's in a tablet. What's not to like and why isn't it good for business it's great for my work.