Kindly explain the significance of sandy bridge in XPS

I am a former geek- I used to read ads in computer magazines and now have become a 40 year old who is out of the loop. I am considering a new XPS 15 and read about the upcoming sandy bridge. I don't know much about what it means in terms of actual performance- is it something that makes it worthwhile to wait? I know there's debate about when it may come to Dell, but leaving that aside, does it have significant real life impact on daily use?

I use my laptop all the time for everything from media to academic work to games. I customize everything so much that I don't like moving to another computer, just because of the new setup involved. I've been on my XPS M1530 for almost 3 years and will probably keep the new XPS for as long. I will get an upgraded XPS 15 when I order it, with i7, 8 gig ram, higher end (430?) video card and so on. I am not in a hurry to order a new laptop, but this seems like a good time, excepting the sandy bridge issue.

If a kind soul would talk about what SB means in our daily use, that would be great. Thanks in advance.

 

20-30% more performance for the same power/heat envelope. You won't really notice this at all, but it's always nice to have just in case.

Biggest thing is the inclusion of an integrated GPU on the quad-core processors. This means that you can get the highest end XPS, and still have Optimus support for massively improved battery life on light tasks.

 

Do you mean less heat for the same performance? The way you write it, it seems like at the highest power/heat point, you would get 20-30% more performance from the machine compared to the other version and I don't think you meant that- that would be a huge increase in performance.

How "massive" is the improved battery life with optimus support on the i7? Let's say you would ordinarily get 3 hours, will optimus add 15-30 minutes? or more like an hour or two? Does the Nvidia gpu really burn that much energy when it's not doing anything major that switching to the integrated gpu makes that much difference?

 

Not just the integrated GPU, im pretty sure the Sandy Bridge i7 will use less power since itll be a 32nm instead of the current 45nm. I would say that itll save you about an hour of battery life, it uses less power, and less heat, which means less power to the fan also

Basically, if you're planning on getting an i7, it makes more sense to wait because the i7 will have a bigger upgrade. If you want the i5, its still better to wait but not as necessary because all you'll get is a little more performance and a stronger integrated GPU which is supposedly just as powerful as the current Nvidia 310m. This is good in the sense that it uses less energy/less heat than dedicated video cards, so unless you're a gamer, you wont have to worry about having a video card

 

If you are going to be plugged in most of the time, how significant is the sandy bridge? It seems to be not so much, since battery life is not an issue. I understand the point about having a good integrated video card making it unnecessary to get the nvidia card, but if one is going to get it anyway, I guess the performance of the integrated video is less important.

I ask these because in my case (since I don't change laptops much) I will be getting the best video card I can (which means the 2GB nvidia) and I also will be plugged in 95% of the time. If battery life is not important and I will be spending the money on the discrete card anyway, is there another reason to wait for the sandy bridge?

 

It all depends on your needs. Until real world reviews come out from users of shipping laptops we won't know how large the gains will be for the new release, but you can expect some improvement.

The trick is balancing how much do you need your machine. If you need a laptop today then buy what fits your bill today. There will be a new drop in January and probably a refresh in June or so and another in January 2012. This stuff is always on a constant refresh with newer stuff dropping out. So if you get into the "wait" mentality you'd never have anything to use. A line has to be drawn in the sand somewhere...

So buy the machine that fits your needs at the time you need it.

 

*Assuming Sandy Bridge comes to the XPS series.

 

I really doubt it would add another hour to your battery life. I guess the performance increase is worth waiting for though.

 

the biggest feature SB will bring is the more powerful GPU than the current one. since XPS is already built with Nvidia GPU, this SB feature is no longer as important. SB GPU is powerful but no where near Nvidia when it comes to 3D graphic. SB GPU will be more important to laptops without a dedicated GPU from Nvida/AMD.

in term of battery and power, I think SB improvement is incremental at best.

 

Yes and yes. I meant it; CPUs have advanced to the point that 20% more performance will largely go unnoticed in most cases. Your computer won't boot faster, load anything faster, or react faster because in those cases the CPU is bottlenecked anyway. In 3D games, on a laptop, the GPU will determine the maximum FPS. If you video edit and do really heavy CPU-intensive things, then yes, you'll be about 20% faster at that... but that's it. CPUs have advanced to the point that computing is transparent.

Basically, you'll know if this upgrade is worth it for you-- for most people it isn't, and there isn't much point to waiting. Especially since launch dates are moot points and Dell will refresh whenever they please.

The CPU is more efficient and consumes less power. The TDP figures for the upcoming Sandy Bridge APUs takes into account the integrated graphics core. The integrated GPU is built from the ground up as a mobile part and far surpasses any discreet GPU from both Nvidia and AMD in terms of power consumption. If I had to guess, I'd say that you'd get 30% more battery life on light tasks and ~15% more on tasks where the discreet GPU is awake and running (Blu-Ray playback and whatnot) due to the increased CPU efficiency.

If you ordinarily get 3 hours (light tasks, I'm guessing), I'd expect you'll get about 4 hours, maybe four and a half.

I'm not sure about the integrated GPU's specifications, so I can't say for sure what type of gains you'll have. This is just speculation based on what the current IGPs bring to the table. It could, for example, accelerate Blu Ray playback for all I know (I freaking doubt it though LOL).

This IMO is a better reason to wait. I'd love to have a quad core I could lounge on the couch all day with...

 

If you can get an additional hour of battery, it will be a revolutionary breakthrough. and everyone should wait for SB. HP, Dell and even Apple will jump on it the first day. Unfortunately, SB is not revolution by any means. it is just an incremental improvement at best.

one hour of battery means alot to mobile devices.

 

If you can not afford to switch to Sandy Bridge you could undervolt your existing processor (and overclock it) to get approximately the same results, I'm pretty sure anyone can undervolt to get longer battery life but it is a highly technical process. Sandy bridge should be able to be undervolted getting even better battery life than current architecture

 

current i series cpus can't currently be undervolted or overclocked.

 

you can undervolt anyting newer than the c2d series, the VID tables are hardcoded into the CPU