14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft unveiled the Surface Book earlier this week and the company revealed that those who need beefier GPUs can choose dedicated versions that are equipped with NVIDIA GeForce graphics, which obviously cost a little bit more, but provide increased performance for gaming or 3D modeling, for instance.
And yet, Panos Panay, the man in charge with the devices unit at Microsoft and who also presented the new Surface Book on Tuesday, hasn't said anything about the graphics card that's being used in the device, sticking to vague details that only revealed an NVIDIA GeForce unit.
NVIDIA, on the other hand, provides us with a closer look at what's hiding under the hood of the Surface Book, saying that it features “a Maxwell architecture-powered GeForce GPU nestled snugly into a detachable keyboard base.”
Possible configurations
Specifics are not yet available, but most likely, the Surface Book features an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M or GTX 850M, both of which were developed to be used in laptops and ultrabooks. The 950M is slightly faster than the 850M and uses a GM107 chip, offering features such as ShadowPlay, PhysX, CUDA, and SLI. It's DirectX 12-compatible, so it's the right choice for a Windows 10 device.
The amount of memory is not yet disclosed, but it's believed the graphics card comes with 1GB of video RAM, which although might seem very low, it's enough to cope with very demanding tasks thanks to optimizations implemented by Microsoft and NVIDIA.
Panay himself admitted that the Surface Book can play the majority of games and run the most demanding apps, but once again, only few details have been provided.
“This is for the gamer who plays League of Legends; this is for the architect who is building a building right now; this is for the scientist who is thinking about a cure for cancer. This is for the developer who wants to compile using the GPU and CPU at the same time and not lose a minute,” Panos Panay said.
If you want to purchase the Surface Book with an NVIDIA GPU inside, the cheapest costs $1899 and ships on October 26.