Surface Pro 2.5 i5 4300U 1.9 Ghz 2.5 Ghz

For anyone interested in comparison.  The differences are negligible.

http://ark.intel.com/compare/75459,76308    

Actually, the difference is mindblowing given that the original SP2 was the 4200U at 1.6 GHz with turbo boost up to 1.9 GHz instead of the max allowable turbo boost of 2.6 GHz. The SP2 with the 4300U is at 1.9 GHz but turbo boosts up to 2.5 GHz (in fact, my 4300U SP2 goes up to 2.7 GHz under full load - unfortunately, I didn't check this with my old SP2 that I exchanged) instead of the max allowable 2.9 GHz.

That's a 31.6% clock speed increase using the listed limits. That's truly a significant bump not to mention the 10% graphics clock speed boost and the additional security and virtualization features.

http://www.winbeta.org/news/replacement-surface-pro-2-devices-being-sent-out-upgraded-specs-includes-newer-cpu

Has anyone experienced shutdown issues with their surface pros? I had 3 surface pro 2s (all with the 4200u) and they often would not wake up from sleep mode and required a hard reset.

now i have an asus zenbook with a 4200u and it also shuts down randomly and has issues. it's the same error in the event log every time, kernel power error or whatever.

so my question is, anyone with a 4300u have these issues? i'm starting to think the 4200u is the culprit. i'm not impressed at all....

For anyone interested in comparison.  The differences are negligible.

http://ark.intel.com/compare/75459,76308    

Actually, the difference is mindblowing given that the original SP2 was the 4200U at 1.6 GHz with turbo boost up to 1.9 GHz instead of the max allowable turbo boost of 2.6 GHz. The SP2 with the 4300U is at 1.9 GHz but turbo boosts up to 2.5 GHz (in fact, my 4300U SP2 goes up to 2.7 GHz under full load - unfortunately, I didn't check this with my old SP2 that I exchanged) instead of the max allowable 2.9 GHz.

That's a 31.6% clock speed increase using the listed limits. That's truly a significant bump not to mention the 10% graphics clock speed boost and the additional security and virtualization features.

http://www.winbeta.org/news/replacement-surface-pro-2-devices-being-sent-out-upgraded-specs-includes-newer-cpu

My surface pro 2 with 4200u has no problems turbo boosting to 2.6ghz (at least this is what task manager shows) and it shows in device manager as 1.6ghz to 2.3ghz.

I have a 4200u and it has occasionally frozen on sleep, when I check in the event log I see the following. However I also noticed that the CPU was high at the time 30%, due to another bug between a conflict of SD card and audio drivers. Did you notice if your CPU was high when you did your shutdown ?, do you use an SD card ? Perhaps removing it for a while and testing sleep....

: The embedded controller (EC) did not respond within the specified timeout period. This may indicate that there is an error in the EC hardware or firmware or that the BIOS is accessing the EC incorrectly. You should check with your computer manufacturer for an upgraded BIOS. In some situations, this error may cause the computer to function incorrectly.

Followed by on restart,

: The embedded controller (EC) returned data when none was requested. The BIOS might be trying to access the EC without synchronizing with the operating system. This data will be ignored. No further action is necessary; however, you should check with your computer manufacturer for an upgraded BIOS.

My surface pro 2 with 4200u has no problems turbo boosting to 2.6ghz (at least this is what task manager shows) and it shows in device manager as 1.6ghz to 2.3ghz. 

Well that is most interesting then. I've been doing some stress testing to see what happens under full load, and pure CPU stressing has it throttle once 80 degrees celcius is hit such that it levels off to 2.4-2.5 GHz. CPU + GPU stressing has the CPU downclock to 2.0 GHz. Both tests were performed with HeavyLoad (http://www.jam-software.com/heavyload/) while temperature was monitored with Core Temp (http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/).

These results and the above comment on the 4200U would indicate that, under real world situations of 100% sustained CPU usage, there probably wouldn't be any discernible difference then due to the throttling of the 4300U. Even if you could hack to unlock the clock speed/throttling, you'd either run your system dangerously hot or you'd still want to throttle it.

I'd be interested to see what similar tests with the 4200U would produce.