Earlier this month, Microsoft announced its answer to Apple’s MacBook, a luxury laptop that’s being called the Surface Book. The company billed the device as being twice as powerful as the MacBook Pro, and now some users are attempting to verify that claim.
While Microsoft was keen to detail certain selling points of the computer — we heard plenty about its 3,000 x 2,000 PixelSense display and the various advantages that its clamshell 2-in-1 design offers up. However, we didn’t hear specifics as to just what users could expect to find under the hood.
Thankfully, the Surface aficionados of the device’s dedicated subreddit have been working hard to find those answers. They’ve been heading out to test the Surface Book at Microsoft’s retail locations around the country, and they’ve been able to uncover some new information about the Nvidia GPU that’s being used.
These users found that the Surface Book uses a custom GPU, which is referred to as both 1347 and 134B. Based on its specs, it seems roughly equivalent to Nvidia’s GeForce 940M, according to a report from Hexus based on the findings shared via reddit. The GPU has 384 CUDA cores, a clock speed of 954MHz, and one gigabyte of GDDR5 memory.
Being that their research is being carried out on store display models, the Reddit users in question weren’t able to tear the machine to pieces to find out exactly what components are inside. Instead, they used system tools like GPUz and the Nvidia control panel.
The Surface Book is Microsoft’s first foray into building laptops, and early impressions seem positive. However, the fact that the company is keeping quiet about what’s inside the device might draw some criticism from the Windows faithful, given that PCs are known to foster modifications rather than lock users out of a system’s internal components.
The Surface Book will retail for $1,499, with preorders shipping on Oct. 27.
