Microsoft could refresh its Surface Pro lineup with a faster Intel Tiger Lake CPU and Surface Laptop with both AMD and Intel options. Rumours have suggested that the next-gen Surface Laptop and Surface Pro will ship with upgraded internal hardware, but there won’t be any noticeable changes to the overall look and feel of the devices.
If the latest benchmark turns out to be correct, next-gen Surface Laptop might come with AMD’s Renoir, which is based on the Zen 2 CPU and Vega GPU microarchitectures.
This conclusion has been drawn after we spotted two unknown Surface hardware listed in the Geekbench 5 database.
Benchmark for a device codenamed “OEMWY” suggests that Microsoft’s Surface Pro 8 or Surface Laptop 4 (Business edition) could use Intel’s 11th-generation Tiger Lake CPU (i7-1185G7).
Intel Tiger Lake processor should give the Surface Pro 8 and Surface Laptop 4 some help making a dent in the market, thanks to the Xe graphics. The “Xe” GPU is based on Intel’s new architecture and it will replace the current GPUs found in its Ice Lake CPUs in devices like the Surface Pro 7.
Surface Laptop 4 with AMD Renoir
Another benchmark is for a Surface product with the codename “OEMGR OEMGR Product Name DV”.
The Geekbench entry states that the Surface Laptop is using outdated AMD Ryzen 7 3780U chip, but its “AMD Renoir” connection can be sussed out by the codename highlighted in the benchmark.
While the benchmark doesn’t bear the ‘Microsoft’ branding, we’re confident that these are Surface products. Microsoft has previously used the “OEM Product Name” codename for the Surface Pro 7, Surface Laptop 3, Surface Go and even Surface Duo.
Plenty of caution is still required around this rumour, as there is also the possibility that this Geekbench result could simply be highlighting Surface prototype.
