Microsoft may be getting ready to release a successor to the Surface Go 2, the company’s most affordable Surface tablet released back in May 2020. Roland Quandt from the German blog Winfuture.de spotted a Geekbench benchmark for a mysterious device that could well be Microsoft’s Surface Go 3.
Surface Go "3"?: new Microsoft hardware based on Intel "Amber Lake"-Y Pentium Gold 6500Y and Core i3-10100Y has been in testing since at least April: https://t.co/EdBD2wdU8X
— Roland Quandt (@rquandt) August 27, 2021
Even though the benchmark on Geekbench’s database doesn’t explicitly mentions the Microsoft and Surface brands, Quandt explains that the “OEMAL Product Name DV1.1” codename follows a pattern used in previous Microsoft products that leaked on Geekbench. Moreover, the two configurations of the new devices, which use a dual-core Intel Pentium Gold 6500Y processor with 4GB of RAM, and a more powerful quad-core Intel Core i3 10100Y CPU with 8GB of RAM are in line with what we could expect from a Surface Go 3.
The current Surface Go comes with either an Intel Pentium Gold 4425Y CPU or an Intel Core m3 8100Y, but the newer “Amber Lake” Intel chips that appear on the Geekbench benchmark should be much faster. In the single-core test, the Pentium Gold 6500Y CPU has a 62% higher score compared to the Pentium Gold 4425Y found in the Surface Go 2, and the multicore test also shows a 47% higher score compared to the older chip.
The Intel Core i3 10100Y model shows less impressive results compared to the Intel Core m3 8100Y found in the Surface Go 2, with a 4% higher score in the single-core test and an 11% higher score in the multi-core test. Benchmarks results don’t exactly tell what to expect in real-world usage, though, but keep in mind that these two Intel “Amber Lake” chips are low-voltage processors designed for fanless devices.
Microsoft is likely to announce new Surface devices this holiday season to go along with the launch of Windows 11, and an affordable Surface Go 3 may really make sense in the company’s Surface fall 2021 lineup. Microsoft is also expected to release a successor to the Surface Pro 7 which was released back in October 2019, and the company is also rumored to be working on a new Surface Book design that could take some inspiration from Apple’s latest iPad Pro tablets.
