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Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Studio 2 might get a massive performance boost

A mysterious laptop was spotted in an impressive Geekbench 5 benchmark, and many signs point to it being the next-gen Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio 2.

The test gives us the first bits of insight into the laptop’s specifications. If everything checks out, we’re going to see a huge performance jump in this upcoming generation.

The new Bing preview screen appears on a Surface Laptop Studio.
Luke Larsen / DigitalTrends

The Geekbench 5 test that the laptop was spotted in keeps things pretty ambiguous, but all signs point to this being the Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio 2. The device scored 2,564 points in single-core and 12,463 points in multi-core, but the scores aren’t the most interesting part here — it’s the specs that stand out.

First of all, the device comes with one of the best processors to be found in laptops, the Intel Core i7-13800H. While there are more powerful alternatives, like the Core i9-13980HX, those are intended for people who don’t need to worry about power consumption and battery life. For laptops like the Surface, the more power-conservative H-series is the way to go.

This particular model comes with six performance (P) cores and eight efficiency (E) cores, for a total of 14 cores and 20 threads. In the benchmark, the CPU almost hit 5GHz, but its base frequency is 2.9GHz. It’s unclear how much power the laptop was using, though; perhaps that score could be higher if the power spec allowed for it. We’re also seeing 64GB of DDR5 RAM.

The same laptop appeared in an OpenCL test, where it scored 81,285 points. The same benchmark reveals the GPU to be an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060M with 8GB of memory and a maximum clock speed of 2,010MHz.

The Surface Laptop Studio fully closed down in Studio Mode.
Luke Larsen / Digital Trends

All added up, this is an impressive set of specifications for the next-gen Surface Laptop Studio 2. The best available configuration for the current-gen model is quite far behind. With an Intel Core i7-11370H that only has four cores and an RTX 3050 Ti with 4GB of GDDR6 memory, it’s going to be left in the dust if the new model launches with the specs we’re seeing in this Geekbench leak.

This kind of bump in specs means that Microsoft might be preparing the laptop to serve a slightly wider audience. While the laptop is likely to maintain its hybrid design, it will have more powerful hardware.

This should make it much better-suited for creative work and even gaming, although the final result also depends on the resolution of the screen. Even if the RTX 4060 doesn’t turn out to be too impressive (the score makes it similar to an RTX 3060 mobile), these specs should be enough to support many kinds of games as long as you’re willing to be flexible with the settings.

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Monica J. White
Monica is a UK-based freelance writer and self-proclaimed geek. A firm believer in the "PC building is just like expensive…
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