On October 22, Microsoft releases Surface 2, the second iteration of its Windows RT tablet. It's thinner, lighter and more powerful than its predecessor, but how will the Surface 2 compare with the latest Android and iOS devices?
Luckily, there's a benchmark for that! 3DMark is now available as a free app for Windows RT devices from the Windows Store. It includes the same benchmark tests as the Android and iOS editions making accurate cross-platform benchmarking easy and fast.
3DMark Ice Storm is a DirectX 11 feature level 9 benchmark, (the modern equivalent of DirectX 9), for testing Windows RT tablets and notebooks. It includes two 720p Graphics tests designed to stress graphical (GPU) performance and a Physics test to stress processing (CPU) performance.
Ice Storm Extreme raises the Graphics tests' rendering resolution to 1080p and uses higher quality textures and post-processing effects to create a more demanding load for the latest mobile devices.
Ice Storm Unlimited is a different type of benchmark, one designed to test the raw performance of the underlying hardware. Use Ice Storm Unlimited to compare different chipsets, CPUs and GPUs without vertical sync, display resolution scaling and other operating system factors affecting the result.
3DMark for Windows RT
