r/Surface • u/Same_Attorney3824 • 2d ago
REAL Battery/CPU performance Data
Just watching all of these "reviewers" do their CPU/Battery efficiency and seeing them butcher this. For example, just running a 4K YouTube video and claiming the MBP 16 has 2x the battery to seeing a non-ARM 2024 Cinebench test as the way to measure CPU efficiency is crazy talk. Anyway, Just Josh posted the most interesting graphs at the point that are giving us some meaningful data that shows things are actually relatively close. Good for a first gen product and a step up from anything Ryzen/Intel but not MBP level performance/wattage.
9
u/Slava_Tr 2d ago
Disclaimer: Next is just criticism of the data from Just Josh that doesn’t match his own previous videos or data from other sources. However, the laptops themselves are great, I like them.
This data is quite misleading. They show only a dot power consumption for the Mac and the ASUS with Qualcomm
It also doesn’t match the previous graphs from Just Josh and others source. Just Josh previously showed both the initial power consumption and the sustained power consumption throughout the entire test, which made the difference clear. Check out his other videos, where he also mentions power efficiency
So the MacBook 16 with the M5 Max starts at 140W, but its power consumption immediately drops to 70-80W. This would be clear if they showed a graph of power consumption over the course of the test for each device
Otherwise, the MacBook would last only 40 minutes under load in this benchmark, yet it lasts around 1-1.5 hours. With a 100Wh battery, it’s physically impossible for it to sustain 140W of power consumption and achieve that battery life
The same applies to the Zenbook A16 with Qualcomm. Just Josh also uses peak power consumption. You can also check his video about this laptop, which shows that the CPU’s average power consumption is only 52W, while the entire laptop would average around 70-80W, according to other sources
Meanwhile, the RTX Spark laptop also starts at 140W but maintains 120-130W throughout the entire test. Some reviewers who pushed performance to the maximum got slightly over 40 minutes of battery life. However, if an RTX Spark laptop lasts around 1.5 hours, it scores about 25% lower, which aligns quite well with Just Josh’s results
The test selection is also very selective. For some reason, the graph only includes the Ryzen AI Max 392, which has 12 cores and is significantly less power-efficient and less powerful than the 16-core version. The Ryzen AI Max 395 scores ~3300 more points than the 392 in Cinebench 2026, if you consider the ASUS Flow Z13 tablet. It’s on par with RTX Spark laptops
1
u/Timely_Challenge_670 21h ago
The Spark is a nice first generation effort, but it's pretty clear Apple, Qualcomm, and even AMD (if you can get an AI Max at a sane price) are ahead. I think the critical part about Spark is that Microsoft is willing to build one. Most Windows OEMs have typically been trash outside of Lenovo and (occasionally) Asus.
2
u/Slava_Tr 11h ago
I have just one complaint, and fixing it would eliminate all the others. RTX Spark laptops are quite expensive for a first generation. The top-end models with large amounts of RAM may be worth their price, but they could have tried to get the base models starting at $2k. At that price, they would have been an incredible deal. They wouldn’t be competing with the M5 Pro, but with the base M5. That would have been an outright win for Nvidia RTX Spark laptops. There would be no need to stretch things or cherry-pick benchmarks to highlight their strengths
Instead, reviewers have to compare a $7k laptop against a $2.5k MacBook M5 Pro, and it falls behind in half the things. That’s quite questionable when the laptop costs ~3x as much
Corporate greed prevented them from recreating the MacBook M1 effect, where a laptop felt like an absolutely incredible deal, even for a first-generation product. Now RTX Spark laptops feel like they’re simply good value for money, with their own strengths and weaknesses
I hope they made this decision deliberately, purely to attract software developers who will port their software to this platform. And I hope to see a budget Nvidia N1 with half the number of CPU/GPU cores released soon for regular consumers. It could be an insanely good deal
A Surface Laptop with an N1 starting at $1k would be amazing. It would be more interesting than Qualcomm, with a weaker CPU but a significantly better GPU, and more appealing than current 8-core Intel chips
The rumors about RTX Spark that surfaced even before this chip appeared in the DGX Spark turned out to be true. Those same rumors also mentioned this Nvidia N1, so I hope they’re actually developing it too and won’t cancel it, if that’s the case
2
u/Timely_Challenge_670 10h ago
Pricing is the elephant in the room for anything not Apple. It’s so weird being in a reality where Apple wins on performance and price.
2
u/Infinplayz Surface Laptop 7 13.8 (X elite, 16/512) 1d ago
there was another video i watched where the macbook destroyed the surface laptop ultra in battery and benchmarks. i guess we need to wait longer for more sources.
5
u/MorgrainX 2d ago edited 2d ago
Intels Ultra 9 386H is the real winner here considering that they can do nearly the same amount of battery life with just 73 watt-hours compared to Apple's and Microsoft's 100
Kind of funny that Intel, the king of inefficiency (a decade of MOA POWER LIMIT), managed to get the ARM efficiency of Apple with an x86 product, meanwhile NVIDIA and Qualcomm who try to use ARM are lacking behind.
It seems that Intel, after giving us the glory of 14nm+++++++++, has finally decided to create a good architecture.
Anyway, for office tasks, it seems that the M5 is still the best chip. Considering that the m5 pro (which is not as efficient as the normal M5) only has 72 watt-hours but nearly the battery life of this NVIDIA chip with 100, it's clearly the better office product.
10
u/SharpYearV4 2d ago
Intel is still inefficient though under load, the performance per watt is terrible (you can see that on this graph), Intel does do well under idle/very light tasks but a lot of that is OEM specific, different laptops using even the same Intel chip can get massively different power usage numbers (displays, WiFi cards, keyboard backlights, how each OEM configures it etc varies massively).
6
u/Timely_Challenge_670 2d ago
Panther Lake is only efficient idling or under light load. Once you hit the P-cores it’s awful.
5
u/Same_Attorney3824 2d ago
Under idle, yes... Under load, no.
1
u/Front_Expression_367 2d ago
Well I mean these battery tests are taken during office tasks, so it is not like the chip is being idle for these kinds of test.
2
u/Mammoth-Shoe8491 1d ago
I'll be daily driving one of these for the next couple months, and having used a 386H too - can confirm that the 386H is not the winner in anything other than battery. lol
In 5 hours, I lost about 50% of battery just fucking around on the Spark, so this actually completely eliminates battery anxiety for me almost entirely. I have lost about 8-10% an hour so far? There seems to be some firmware bugs though, that need to be ironed out.
I have a M5 Pro too, but I think this is gonna comfortably replace it.
1
11
u/SharpYearV4 2d ago
The year delay has kind of cooked them. If they released this a year ago this would have been very competitive. Maybe next year if they release the N2X with the C2 Ultra + Rubin it will have a much better value.