PC World - USA (2020-01)

80 PCWorld JANUARY 2020

REVIEWS MICROSOFT SURFACE LAPTOP 3 15-INCH (CORE i7)

machine, highlighted in blue, still smokes the

Surface Laptop 3’s Ryzen chip.

UL’s updated PCMark 10 suite also proves

that the Ice Lake Core i7 chip can hold its

own, though the scores are somewhat

clustered together. AMD’s Ryzen chips keep

up here, though.

One interesting bonus: Applications seem

to launch fast with the Surface Laptop 3, and

that might be because of the SSD Microsoft

chose. Using CrystalDiskMark 4.0.3, random

4K reads (using the 4KQ32T1 setting) on the

Surface Laptop 3 are a whopping 455.9

MBps, somewhat more than three times as

fast as the 133.8 MBps reported by the

Surface Laptop 2 and also substantially more

than the 279.2 MBps

reported by the

Surface Laptop 3

(Ryzen 7). Random

writes were 397.7

MBps. Sequential

reads were a blistering

2,266MBps, with

1,575MBps writes. The

Surface Laptop 3’s

responsiveness is

noticeable, and we

certainly didn’t expect

a sharp jump in SSD

performance versus

the Ryzen platform.

Maxon’s Cinebench

test stresses the CPU in

In our HandBrake test, the Surface Laptop 3 (Core i7) is the quickest, though

with AMD’s chips right on its heels.

MPerf icrosoft Surface Laptop 3 (Core i7-1065G7)

M(Core i7-1065G7)icrosoft Surface Laptop 3

MPerf icrosoft Surface Laptop 3 (Ryzen 7 3780U SE)

MPerf icrosoft Surface Laptop 3 (Ryzen 5 3580U SE)

Microsoft Surface Laptop 3

(Ryzen 7 3780U SE)

Microsoft Surface Laptop 3

(Ryzen 5 3580U SE)

Huawei Matebook 13

(Core i5-8265U)

Acer Sw(Core i7-8565U)ift 3 (2019)

HandBrake 0.99.0 Encoding (H.264)

(Seconds)

SHORTER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

2,893

3,280

3,028

3,507

2,973

3,498

3,230

3,734

rendering a fixed CGI scene, showing how

well the Core i7 chip performs under load.

Intel’s Ice Lake Core i7 again comes out on top,

showing how well the Surface Laptop 3 will

perform under computationally intensive apps

and utilities. Its single-core performance is 182,

compared to 152 for the Ryzen 7 Surface

Edition, a 20-percent increase in performance.

For our next benchmark, we use the

open-source HandBrake tool to transcode a

full-length movie into a format suitable for

viewing on an Android tablet. It’s basically a

prolonged CPU stress test to complement

Cinebench’s quick burst. Even with the

Surface Laptop 3 (Core i7)’s fairly constant fan,

it cools itself well enough to maintain its