Surface Pro 4 i7 und dragon naturally legal

While the total Passmark score is a good predictor of performance with true multitasking workloads, for straight speech to text, the best predictor of Dragon NaturallySpeaking responsiveness is the single thread ranking. As you can see below the processor in your Sony VAIO is about 80% of the single thread processing power of your Intel Xeon based machine.

Now a typical day I will use Dragon NaturallySpeaking for 12+ hours. I switch between my Sony VAIO, a custom overclocked hex core machine with a single thread rating of approximately 2400, and an older Lenovo quadcore workstation laptop with a single thread rating of approximately 1589

Http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E3-1275+%40+3.40GHz&id=1205
Intel Xeon E3-1275 @ 3.40GHz 
Average CPU Mark     8350
Single Thread Rating: 1932

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu … mp;id=1937
Intel Core i7-4500U @ 1.80GHz 
Average CPU Mark 3795
Single Thread Rating: 1578

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu … 40+2.40GHz
Intel Core i7-2760QM @ 2.40GHz 
Average CPU Mark 6644
Single Thread Rating: 1589

Using Dragon to control heavyweight corporate IT applications that are running directly on your laptop will require multicore machines and faster processors.

However, if you are using Dragon Legal you are not going to run across these programs. For straight speech to text, into email or reasonable sized Microsoft Word documents there is no difference in responsiveness within the "blink of an eye" (which is a little under 200 ms.) between the above processors

However, if you insist on running many other other background processes on the same machine, you will run into occasional to frequent unexplained slowdowns. For best Dragon responsiveness, irrespective of how powerful your machine is, you'll get the most consistent performance when you just use Dragon alone with whatever your text editing program is. There have been many threads on this forum discussing the various unpredictable behaviors that can occur when Dragon is running on a machine with many other programs and processes of the same time.

Also, there are some third-party command programs that under certain circumstances will have noticeable latency that can be improved somewhat with faster machines.

To reemphasize something from my last post, microphones that are suitable for Skype are unlikely to be sufficiently noise rejecting to work well with Dragon if your dictation environment has a lot of background noise. Very inexpensive microphones will work well with Dragon under ideal conditions, but recognition and responsiveness drops off dramatically with these microphones in more unforgiving environments.

I have played around with the Surface Pro 4 and Dragon. It seems to be a very well-designed machine. The array microphone on this machine actually works quite well for Dragon in a very quiet environment. As you can see from the Passmark reference below, the single thread performance is roughly equivalent to your Xeon-based machine.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu … 40+2.20GHz
Intel Core i7-6650U @ 2.20GHz 
Average CPU Mark    4882
Single Thread Rating: 1849

For the time being, I would stay away from the Core M processors as the technology that is used to allow them to run at very low power makes for a rather unpleasant Dragon experience.

Again, my apologies for replying in English.

Phil Schaadt

I played with the Core M processors with Dragon as have a few other DNS users. The DNS responsiveness was very inconsistent and never really great. This is almost certainly due to the aggressive power management and the need for thermal throttling because the processor is mounted in a case without a fan.

One of the reasons that the Passmark Score has been so reliable, as a predictor  of Dragon performance, over the last few year,  is that since the introduction of L3 cache there has been no real architectural change in the Intel processors that would impact perceivable DNS performance  when moving from the i5/i7 – 2XXX through the i5/i7 – 6XXX family of processors.

If you look at the more technical review sites such as AnandTech, the Core M processors' inconsistent responsiveness variations show up even with standard PC productivity tooling under more conditions than I would find acceptable for anything other than content consumption. Also, each one of the computer integrators, such as Lenovo or Dell, uses different approaches to cooling so that there is going to be ongoing differences in perceived performance between machines that have almost exactly the same specs.

In my case, I have found that Google Voice, running on my Samsung Note 4 phone, will give me about 97% to 98% recognition rate for short email replies. This is after a few months of my using Google Voice for my email as well as correcting my custom technobabble words as I go.  I've done fairly extensive measurements and head-to-head comparisons that I could repost here if anybody's interested. However, I'm fairly sure that my results would not directly map to the recognition results that would be obtainable by a German language speaker

Therefore, I don't have a real use case for using a Core M processor as opposed to one of my very lightweight Ultrabooks. I use my phone for speech to text email replies and I take my 2 pound Ultrabook in order to use Dragon NaturallySpeaking, with commands, if I have to do serious business work away from my office.

For the time being I would stick with lightweight Ultrabooks using i5 processor's. However as per the above, a Core M machine might be the only reasonable alternative for German language speech to text if Google Voice does not give acceptable results. By the way I found, that at least for English language speech to text, Dragon Anywhere was no better than Google Voice. I dropped my subscription to Dragon Anywhere after three months.

Phil Schaadt

Sure, anytime.

Phil Schaadt

Hallo,

ich suche gerade nach einem möglichst billigen leisen System für stationären Einsatz.
Nuance schreibt selbst eine Dual Core 2,2GHz CPU als Vorraussetzung.

Das wären ca. 900 Passmark Points single thread, richtig ?

Reichen 900 Points für Speech to Text aus oder sollten es mehr sein ?

Wobei, im Moment schau ich auf den Celeron G1820, der hat über 1500 Points und kostet
34 €...

Without additional information it will be difficult to give you a definitive answer but I would recommend against that processor. The lowest power CPU that will still perform adequately with Dragon is surprisingly difficult to determine in the abstract. It is very specific to the usage scenario. Using the Passmark score alone to compare Dragon performance really works best for i3/i5/i7 processors with similar amounts of L3 cache.

Some people have been successful getting Dragon to work when using very low capability processors, but only by eliminating many of the functions of Dragon and Windows that are shut down by the user to reduce the load on the processor. Usually this means not dictating into something like Microsoft Word but only using Dragon Pad with a limited vocabulary and perhaps only a subset of commands

However you said that you need a silent PC by which I assume you mean that it is passively cooled without a fan.

Therefore I'm assuming that you want a PC that will used in a media room that already has audio visual electronics or will it be primarily used for media and you will be controlling the machine via Dragon? If you plan to use this machine as a media PC, you will not be able to turn off as many Windows services. It also matters if you are partially or completely disabled because being able to do full commands with your voice reliably and with low latency is very important if you are disabled,

Plus, because the Celeron processor that you named in your post is relatively high wattage, at 45 W, but at the same time with low compute power compared to a lower power consumption i5, you will likely be paying more for a relatively exotic passively cooled case than you would for upgrading the processor.

If this machine will be for use in a media room have you actually measured the existing background noise in your media room as there are very quiet fan cooled options which may be more cost-effective

Watt for Watt of power consumed, which also means heat that you must dissipate, the Celeron processors are very inefficient compared to the recent generations of i5 processor's which makes them a poor option for a media processor as well is for Dragon

For example Eggsnow makes a Fanless Mini PC Desktop Computer that is available with i3, i5 or i7 options. In the United States these are available for about $300-400 and you would definitely get a silent machine that would do basic Dragon processing along with command-and-control and basic media functionality.

Plus there will be a cost for your microphone set up.

Therefore, if you can provide more information as to your specific usage and whether or not you are disabled we can provide you some more information.

In general, users who try to implement Dragon on the absolutely lowest processor capacity machines end up disappointed.

Phil Schaadt

Thank you for the long answer.
I was very happy to read about your passmark single thread rating and that a very
cheap Celeron reach about 1500 points.
I have spent aprox. 80 € for the testsystem overall, its not that big deal.
First test was 50/50. At first the recognition was great, but after a minute
DNS gets slower and the rate was bad.
Perhaps this was CPU power related.

Myself is healthy and not disabled, but the work is for my hearing impaired grandmother.

I need only dictate functions, no orders.
In fact, i will disable all punctuation marks because i don´t need them.
And dictate with dragon Pad is fine.