Microsoft is expected to launch the Surface Pro 8 and Surface Laptop 4 sometime in January sporting minor spec bumps. Images of the devices were spotted passing through certification recently, corroborating reports of a minor update. The Pro 8 and Laptop 4 are expected to be powered by Intel’s 11th-gen Tiger Lake processors, with the Laptop 4 also said to offer AMD versions, just like it’s predecessors.
Now, possible benchmarks of the devices have been spotted, hinting at the processor SKUs expected to make it to the Redmond firm’s offerings. The two benchmark listings refer to “OEMWY” and “OEMGR” product names, codenames that are similar to what Microsoft has used in the past for other Surface PCs. One of the listings sports a system with an Intel Core i7-1185G7 processor with Iris Xe graphics, while the other features an AMD Ryzen 7 3780U Microsoft Surface Edition processor.
It is possible that the device with the Intel part – which is a top-of-the-line Tiger Lake SKU – could be the 13.5-inch Laptop 4, the 15-inch business version, or even the Surface Pro 8. However, the more interesting of the two is the one sporting the same AMD processor as the Surface Laptop 3.
The “Renoir” codename and the much higher overall scores hint that the chip is possibly not the 3000-series offering, and could be a Zen 2-based processor, coming from the Ryzen 4000-series laptop CPUs. Interestingly, the numbers beat the generic Ryzen 7 4700U benchmarks. This could be due to the optimizations done by the company.
The Ryzen 5000-series laptop chips are expected to be launched early next year, so it seems less likely that those chips will make it to the Surface line. However, it will be interesting to see if the firm has any surprises in store for the Surface line.
The Surface Pro 8 and the Laptop 4 are expected to be launched without much fanfare sometime in January. There are murmurs of a possible black version of the Go 2 as well, accompanied by the expansion of the availability of the Surface Duo.
Source: Geekbench 5(1)(2) via WindowsLatest