Microsoft may be working on new Snapdragon-powered Surface laptop to rival Intel, AMD

Microsoft's next Surface device has a model number “EV2”, which indicates that this Surface product has already entered the hardware testing stage, as EVT stands for Equipment Verification Testing.

Microsoft’s Surface lineup is quite popular among PC users, and the next product in it may give customers another reason to love the Surface devices. Microsoft seems to be working on a new Surface product, possibly a laptop, that will use a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset faster than some Intel and AMD chips available on Surface laptops. The name for the Surface product is not clear, but it has already cropped up on the Geekbench benchmarking website.

The listing shows the next Surface device has a model number “EV2”, which is in line with previous models. This model number also indicates that this Surface product has already entered the hardware testing stage, as EVT stands for Equipment Verification Testing. This test is conducted to ensure that the hardware of a product is working properly before the final design, both internal and external, is implemented. The listing also shows the Microsoft Surface device will come preloaded with Windows 11 Pro, but it is a possibility that other versions of Windows may also be available.

Coming to the results of benchmarking, the Surface device scored 1005 in the single-core test and 5574 in the multi-core test. These scores show the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 processor, which is also mentioned in the listing, will be on par with the 25W-rated Intel and AMD processors. But here is the catch. Only the multi-core scores have come out higher. The single-core score is lower on the listed processor when compared with the Intel and AMD counterparts. But take these synthetic results with a bit of doubt, since they do not necessarily translate into a similar real-world performance.

The processor will come with eight cores and be clocked at 3.0GHz. It is not clear if this is the maximum frequency or if it is the base clock speed. The device may come with 16GB of RAM, according to the listing, but this could be just an SKU. The rest of the specifications of the Microsoft Surface device listed on the Geekbench benchmarking website are not clear at the moment. But there is a high chance that Microsoft’s signature features will be available on this device. For what it is worth, this could be the Microsoft Surface Laptop SE, which has been in rumours for a long time.