Microsoft’s October 2 media event in New York City is just a few weeks away, but leaked Geekbench performance testing results seem to indicate what the company could have planned for a reveal. Although best taken lightly, the results show that the next Surface devices might get a slight boost under the hood with Intel’s Ice Lake processors.
As listed online, the Geekbench results showcase a new Microsoft device with the code name “OEMJL Product Name EV1.5A.” While strange for most consumers, this code name was previously used with the Surface Go, as pointed out by Windows Latest. It’s hard to confirm if genuine, but the listing adds to the rumor mill. This further hints that this test device could be either a new Surface or a refresh upgrade to the existing lineup.
The listing also shows that the specific processor on the test device was the Intel Core i5-1035G1. As per the results, this processor features four cores and eight threads, and a turbo frequency of up 3.60GHz. Considering the battery life improvements, and Gen 11 integrated Iris Graphics coming with Ice Lake CPUs, there does seem to be hope if the leak holds up to be true. With various variations of Ice Lake processors, this upcoming Surface could be a bit more efficient, and hold up better for more demanding tasks like light gaming.
While Ice Lake processors could bring big improvements across the Surface Lineup, it is important to note Geekbench results can be manipulated. However, these specific results were made public in June, and Microsoft’s event is not too far out. The timing also appears to be right, as we’re now in the middle of a refresh cycle for thin, and light convertible laptops running with Intel’s processors. We’ve also seen other laptop makers such as Dell and Razer announce devices with Ice Lake processors.
The Surface Lineup was last refreshed in March 2019 when Microsoft introduced a Surface Book 2 model with an option for a slightly more powerful Intel Core i5-8350U series processor. Before that, in October 2018, Microsoft revealed the Surface Pro 6. The Surface Laptop 2 was also revealed, but just like the Surface Pro, it did not feature Intel’s Whiskey Lake processors. Instead, these current Microsoft devices feature Kaby Lake-R processors.
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