Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Here are the exact CPUs available for each version of Surface Pro 3:

• Intel Core i3: 4020Y – 1.5GHz, HD 4200
  http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Core-i3-4020Y-Notebook-Processor.102734.0.html
• Intel Core i5: 4300U – 1.9Ghz(2.9 turbo), HD 4400
  http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Core-i5-4300U-Notebook-Processor.98838.0.html
• Intel Core i7: 4650U – 1.7GHz(3.3 turbo), HD 5000
  http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Core-i7-4650U-Notebook-Processor.93177.0.html

WHAT’S THE COST/PERFORMANCE DIFFERENCES?
The reason this is interesting is that if you’re like me, you’ve been looking out of curiosity at the i5 vs i7.  Particularly the differences in CPU & Graphics performance. (And no one I know is looking at the i3 – including me – so I’m not even bothering to look at it)

So, check this out:

CPU Comparisons:
(Net-net: There’s singlecore & multicore performance improvement of at least 15% based on PassMark, due to the 15% higher turbo clock & complementary increased L3 cache.  It should be noted that Anandtech believes this difference would be greater for constant CPU intensive tasks.)

• http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-4650U-vs-Intel-Core-i5-4300U
• http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/857/Intel_Core_i5_Mobile_i5-4300U_vs_Intel_Core_i7_Mobile_i7-4650U.html

Graphics Comparison:
(Net-net: There’s a ~21% performance improvement based on 3dMark06, mostly due to having 2x the number of execution units)

• http://www.anandtech.com/show/7072/intel-hd-5000-vs-hd-4000-vs-hd-4400

Neither of these appear to impact battery performance… however there is a distinct $250 markup between the respective models of Surface Pro 3 i5 vs i7.  So that’s the tradeoff.

• 15% CPU + 21% GPU = $250