GTX 280m vs the upcoming GT3xxM...worth it to wait?

I'm looking to buy a new laptop in about a month or so, and with the release of the new core i7s, it seems like a great time to buy. I'm going to get the W860CU, with the GTX280m.

But that's my issue...since this is going to be my first new laptop in just over 4 years(and 4 years ago I didn't make a good choice), I'm a little paranoid about it's staying power, in particular the GTX280m. I know that the GT3xxM should be released (from what I've read) Q1 2010, but is it worth waiting? Are the differences between the two cards going to be great enough to regret it if I buy the laptop with a 280m in a month?

I understand that with this kind of tech there's always going to be something coming over the horizon, but I guess I'm just asking whether the 280m is going to be a powerful enough card to last well for about 2 years, handling games like Mass Effect 2.

Thanks for reading, I appreciate any opinions...

 

I would not wait because the 280m was just put into a 15inch so I dont think the 3xxm will be around for awhile.

I would rather have i7 and that is already out.

And the 280m is very powerful and can run all games for awhile.

 

Oh so when a new mobile card is released it's placed in 17'' before the 15''? That actually makes more sense...

 

Well If you want it to last 2 years, the 280 should be fine. And starting in about 2 years from now games will be released with the Direct 11x, so you wont get to see many D11X games. The thing is that, as soon as the 3xx series goes out, the 280 is going to drop a lot in it's price. And pretty much is up to you, if you want to pay X amount of dollars instead of waiting until the next series is out and buying the 280 (cheaper) or the new one.

 

I have to agree. I still run a 9800 GTS and there aren't any games that I have problems with right now. They all run great actually. You will be doing very well with that configuration you have chosen for a long long time.

 

i'd but the gtx280 now and sell it when the gtx300 series appears. hey its just me

 

Rough guess, but the GTX 380M should be twice as fast as the GTX 280M. GDDR5 on top of the 256 bit bus, plus a lot more shaders and improved architecture. But to be honest, it's hard to say until we see the final spec.

 

exactly, we don't even know the specs. and since nvidia is already slow with 40nm parts. i'll stick with the 280m for now.
if you're gonna wait, wait for the hd5000s instead, should come out faster. high end parts obviously, gt240ms are creeping up all over the place.

 

The desktop 3 series will come next year so expect the top mobile 3 series by the end of next year. First they will release the mid and low range and much later the top range. Of course nvidia might re-release the 280M as 380M with DX11 as has done many similar times in the past.

 

The 300 parts aren't looking to be DX11 from what I can tell, and they're almost certainly a year or so out. The DX11 ATI mobile parts should be coming out relatively soon, especially since they just released the HD5xxx for the desktops. Nvidia's refresh is barely doing DX10.1 on their desktop chips.

 

That would imply that Nvidia would wait another generation to put DX11 on their GPUs, which I dont see happening, as that would cause ATI to gain even more marketshare, which Nvidia probably cant really afford to lose.

As for the "upcoming" GTX 380m or whatever its name will be, that depends, do you want to wait a full year to getcha game on?

 

Nvidia already released the specs for the Desktop GT300

Got that from a brazilian forum i frequent (and they probably got that from another forum, since its already in english):

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3.0 billion transistors

Just hours before Nvidia decided to share the Fermi, GT300 specification with the world, we managed to get most of the spec and share it with you.

The chip has three billion transistors, a 384-bit memory interface and 512 shader cores, something that Nvidia plans to rename to Cuda cores.

The chip is made of clusters so the slower iterations with less shaders should not be that hard to spin off. Each cluster of the chip has 32 Cuda cores meaning that Fermi has 16 clusters.

Another innovation is 1MB of L1 cache memory divided into 16KB Cache - Shared Memory as well as 768KB L2 of unified cache memory. This is something that many CPUs have today and as of this day Nvidia GPUs will go down that road.

The chip supports GDDR5 memory and up to 6 GB of it, depending on the configuration as well as Half Speed IEEE 754 Double Precision. We also heard that the chip can execute C++ code directly and, of course, it's full DirectX 11 capable.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

So, DX11, capable of execute c++ code directly, GDDR5, 384Bit and a surprising L1 and L2 cache like CPU's have.

Looking those specs its almost certain that the new GT300 is more powerful than the RV870, but i'm i little scared about the prices =(

 

DX11 on the desktop certainly. Its yet to be seen when the GT300 architecture will trickle down to the mobile sector though.

 

Looking at the high-end 'announcement' dates
8800M GTX : 19.11.2007
9800m GTX : 15.07.2008
GTX280M : 02.03.2009

Something like 8 months between them. So I think we'll see new high-end cards announced in Jan, and not shipping for a while after.

Thats a long time to wait, so i'd go for a GTX280M and just enjoy it.

 

300M will probably be a G200 derivative. which I'd sorta be okay with.

 

Well, being it that this is a notebook forum, I was talking about notebooks.

 

3m series from Nvidia will take a while to come out as 280m is just hot and running applications to the fullest. So, just get 280m and be happy.

 

Yes and No!
280M GTX is a great card and I'm sure the 300 series will kick it in the nads but the question is, When is it coming out?Could be quarter 1 of 2010 could be later, that's the thing no one knows for sure!
The "old" 280M GTX together with the new i7 core mobile CPU's will be a pretty powerful combination and play every new game that comes out for a few years.
Now would I wait for a 300 series?
Sure, but if I need a new 15" laptop soon it would stick with CLEVO W860CU that would be a excellent choice.

 

okay...i really doubt they're going to be releasing their mobile part just 3-4 months after their desktop version.

also, i'm wondering it nvidia is actually going to use the g300 for the gtx300m or if they're going to bite the nail and release a too-hot, renamed g200 part.

 

Nvidia better scale down their GF300 arch pretty quick or they will not even be worth looking at.

 

If it's anything close to GDDR5, 256 bit, 256 shaders, and a 600 core clock, it will be quite fast, but no faster than Sli 280M. I think the Mobile 5870 will win, actually, because it's rumored to have all 1600 shaders in place.

 

I would go for the 280, it's a great card and you have to bite the bullet at some time. You might end up waiting forever else.