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Microsoft Lied: The Surface Book Is Not Twice As Fast As The MacBook Pro

by Felix Omondi
Microsoft Lied: The Surface Book Is Not Twice As Fast As The MacBook Pro

Microsoft unveiled its first official dispatch of Windows 10 devices in a little over three weeks ago; October 6th, 2015. The launch event was marked with a lot of chest thumping by the Redmond Tech giant, so much so that the Company went as far as throwing jabs at its biggest rival, Apple.Microsoft Lied: The Surface Book Is Not Twice As Fast As The MacBook Pro

Microsoft categorically touted its Surface Book (a laptop that transforms into a tablet) to be twice as fast as Apple’s MacBook Pro. That a hybrid tablet touts itself to be faster than the MacBook Pro sounded ridiculous, and most were skeptical about the authenticity of Microsoft’s claims.

Well, the guys over at HowToGeek.com took it upon themselves to check if the outrageous claim by Microsoft holds any water. They pitted the Surface Book vs. MacBook Pro and found out that the two machines perform almost equally. However, the MacBook Pro performs slightly better in terms of CPU and Geekbench among other benchmarks. That was despite the fact that the Surface Book tacks the newer Skylake processor that is yet to feature on Apple’s computers.

That being said the question of how did Microsoft reach the conclusion that the Surface Book is faster than the MacBook Pro. The guys at How To Geek say that when looking at graphics performance in the higher-end Surface Book that comes with extra powerful graphics cards tacked under the keyboard base.

According to PC World, the Surface Book is not twice as fast as the MacBook Pro, it is three times faster. They went further to make an essential distinction that Microsoft conveniently left out when stating their Surface Book is twice as fast at the MacBook Pro. PC World says that what Microsoft meant to say is, the Surface Book is faster than the MacBook Pro 13 inch model, and the same cannot be said about the MacBook Pro 15 inch model. It would be utterly absurd for Microsoft to say that their new device can outperform the MacBook Pro 15. To set the record straight always know Microsoft meant to the Surface Book versus the MacBook Pro 13 inch. You can read more on this at PC World website.

The guys at How To Geek said that PC World’s conclusion that the Surface Book is three times faster than the MacBook Pro 13 is an unfair assumption. The PC World editor who was reviewing the machines used the Tomb Raider video game frames-per-second as the benchmark. They faulted PC World for using the OpenGL on the MacBook pitting it against the more advanced DirectX on the Surface Book.

Guys from How To Geek said that a fair comparison would be the same game on Apple’s latest Metal API, which has the same tenacity as the Direct X. They faulted judging Direct X performance versus the OpenGL, and according to them, a fair competition would be the Metal API versus Direct X.

So according to How To Geek, Microsoft lied when they said the Surface Book is twice as fast as the MacBook (13-inch model). They also faulted PC World for pitting the two devices that have different graphic processor capabilities. Thus, in the real world according to How To Geek, the MacBook Pro is slightly faster than the Surface Book on almost every comparison except when playing video games. Gaming has traditionally been a Windows’ stronghold, and the state of gaming in the Mac world is virtually non-existent.

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