Leaked Surface Go 3 benchmarks reveal the vastly improved performance of Microsoft's upcoming Windows tablet

When Microsoft released the Surface Go 2 (from US$360 on Amazon) in May 2020, even its top of the line configuration with an Intel Core m3-8100Y processor was often overlooked due to its lack of performance. A Geekbench entry now suggests that Microsoft is working on the Surface Go 3, which will supposedly receive a much needed performance boost from Intel's Amber Lake CPUs. The benchmark reveals two configurations that are listed under the codename "OEMAL", which is reminiscent of codenames that Microsoft has previously used for Surface prototypes.

According to these aforementioned Geekbench entries, the Surface Go 3 will be equipped with an Intel Pentium Gold 6500Y and an Intel Core i3-10100Y, both of which have two cores and four threads, an integrated Intel UHD Graphics 615 GPU as well as a low TDP of only 5W. The 3.9 GHz clock frequency of the Core i3 model is 500 MHz higher than that of the Pentium Gold variant, and it features 8GB of RAM instead of 4GB on the supposedly cheaper configuration. The benchmark also reveals that the Pentium Gold 6500Y's single-core performance is 62% better than the Pentium Gold 4425Y in the Surface Go 2, whereas the improvement in the multi-core test amounts to 47%.

This means that the baseline Surface Go 3 could receive a much needed and definitely noticeable performance boost in comparison to its predecessor. The performance increase for the Core i3 model on the other hand amounted to only 4% and 11%. Besides the fact that these prototypes apparently run on Windows 10 Pro instead of a preview version of Windows 11, the Geekbench entry does not provide any further information on the improvements of the new Surface Go 3 tablets. Rumors say that it could be announced at Microsoft's big launch event in October, which will possibly also include the reveal of the Surface Duo 2 and Surface Book 4.