By Stephen Schenck | November 30, 2012 9:36 AM
The Surface RT has made its debut, and with Microsoft confirming Surface Pro pricing and January availability yesterday, that model is well on its way to becoming a reality, as well. After that, though, then what? These are still probably a long way off, but some new rumors are attempting to take a stab at what hardware Microsoft’s looking at for its next wave of Surface devices, and they suggest that this time we could be getting three models instead of two.
While the first two Surface tablets have different resolutions, they both share the same 10.6-inch screen dimension. According to these rumors, that’s all going to change for the Surface 2. Instead, we might see an 8.6-inch Surface RT 2, while the Pro version would move up to 11.6 inches. Additionally, this source claims there could be a larger “Surface Book” model with an oversized 14.6-inch display.
These rumors also look to the chipsets powering these tablets, and say that Microsoft would move from NVIDIA to Qualcomm for the RT, and from Intel to AMD for the Pro. Supposedly, the Pro would run an upcoming AMD Temash chip, while Microsoft would look back to Intel for the Surface Book’s CPU, and employ a next-gen Haswell component.
Based on when those AMD and Intel chips are expected to first become available, it doesn’t sound like Microsoft could hope to have this hardware released until well into second half of 2013. That’s assuming that there’s any truth to these claims; for now, they’re still very much rumors.
