The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Haha, I know what you mean, but I think it's human nature to always want to improve, make things easier, achieve more, be in a better situation...! I'm fighting those urges when it comes to my laptop, quite successfully at the moment!
There's no such thing as Human nature (which is a myth that seriously needs to finally die out) when you take into account neuroscience and epigenetics.
Cultural upbringing is what results in this want (not 'need' - very big difference) to improve your overall gaming experience with better technology - since we are bombarded with ads and numerous other material on an almost daily basis.
But, games are also hardly optimized properly for PC's... even with consoles being more close to PC's than ever, software has yet to be properly optimized and make better use of current hardware.
Now, there's nothing wrong in getting better technology, and I doubt that sensibly upgrading within certain time-frames (without bankrupting yourself in the process) is something to be frowned upon.
If you want a better gaming experience and if you have the money to afford it, then waiting for better technology which is at the cusp of being released is a good way to go about upgrading (which is actually what I'm doing by waiting for AMD to release Polaris for instance, which will also be on a 14nm manuf. process - overall, I'll be making a huge jump from my current, late 2008 technology which will also allow me to be far more productive in 3ds Max for example, and play certain games of interest at maxed out settings in native resolution).
I've waited for over 7 years with my laptop (mainly due to lack of money) - then again I'm also not a hardcore gamer.
I don't need all my games to run at 60 FPS for a good gaming experience, since I cannot honestly tell all the difference between 30 and 60 FPS - and I could easily get myself a laptop with 970M now and be set.
Still, if I waited this long, then I might as well wait a bit longer for a new architecture from AMD which will be released shortly and a new manuf. process (no point in me getting older tech if I want to at least ensure good performance for the next 4 or 5 years) and simply invest in that instead.
Difference between 30 and 60 fps is easy to tell for me if u turn around in a 1st/3rd person game with mouse control like GW2.
Once youve seen 60fps u cant call 30 fps fluid anymore.
I'd seen some higher frame rate films and videos, but never had an opportunity to experience playing modern games at 60fps. Wasn't until youtube began publishing 60fps videos that I was able to see clearly what I had been missing. From that point, I began lowering setings as much as possible to get higher frame rate.
In any game with a lot of action happening, 60fps is a completely different experience compared with 25 or 30fps. It's not so much a visual fidelity thing, but the experience feels smooth instead of jerky. It's not just for hardcore gamers - you really comprehend better what's happening on the screen and react more quickly.
My laptop is also rather old but especially for any multiplayer games, if I need to drop down as low as 800x600, I'll do it. The smoother experience from faster frame rate is worth sacrificing resolution and other settings. Around 45-50fps it starts to become smooth.
The SemiAccurate article they pulled the info from is whack too. They claim that nVidia has had Pascal ready since the third week of 2015. Lol. It's not until the very last sentence that SA brings up what nVidia did with Fermi...
This 980MX with 5-7% improvement over 980m is pathetic. This means that pascal is surely delayed. This is really bad news for those of us who have been patiently waiting for the pascal to get their new laptop.
If pascal is delayed till end of 2016, then it is too long to wait for it. On the other hand if we get 980m laptop now, it will mean that all waiting we did for the last year was useless and our new machines will be outclassed in an year.
Honestly, i dont care what the next gen is and iam ok with the idea of a 980MX. I just want a resonable (40-60%) improvement over 980m.
The more I think about it, the more P870DM looks to be the optimal choice at this stage.But this idea has its own issues.
Assuming 1H/2Q usually means by June, a further 6 month delay from a previously "announced" release date would be 2H/Q4, or by December 2016 for desktop, and by June 2017 for mobile.
I have been waiting for Pascal to see if it will work in my M18x R2. If not I was going to get 980Ms for it. Since 680Ms are still pretty spectacular in SLI I can wait.
But my poor, beat up P170SM-A is starting to show its age. The fact it was knocked off onto a concrete floor doesn't help.
An AMD honcho in the interview at the link above says: "We believe we’re several months ahead of this transition, especially for the notebook and the mainstream market. The competition is talking about chips for cars and stuff, but not the mainstream market.". So, sounds like AMD will be releasing first!
The speculation was that mobile Pascal would be available by Q2 2016, but seems that is slipping (or actually originally planned) to Q4 2016. Either way nobody knows. If Nvidia are to start shipping Q2 2016, desktop even, it seems we'd see some parts in the wild, some leaks, and they'd have an actual part at CES. Maybe they're just planning on launching at Computex. But I just don't see mobile coming in much earlier than Q4 2016 considering the MX Maxwell refresh cards in Q2 and if speculations are true that they are running awfully hot.
I fully expect AMD to beat Nvidia to the punch this time. They did it at the 28nm transition, and they will do it again now. However, I can't speak for the "refinement" process over the next 3 years.
If they wait until Q4, they'll have to delay Volta to 2019 because HBM2 in mobile Pascal is planned for 2017. And if they wait this long, consumers may as well wait for HBM2. It would screw up everything (again)... A huge mistake to wait two fiscal years before launching new products, which is unheard of.
And the other rumors of a re-brand for mobile (MX): If they do this, it will also result in further delay of pretty much everything.
I'm still betting they'll launch desktop Pascal at Computex and then launch mobile Pascal (with GDDR5X?) after.
If Pascal is going to slip 6 months, then we would need to assume that which depends on and follows Pascal will either slip 6 months as well, or something(s) may be dropped or rescheduled later.
Well at least end of 2016, in other words, not any time soon.
I wanted to get one of those P650RG laptops with Pascal, but I guess will have to hold on to my P650SE with 970m for a bit longer. Just I would like G-sync. I've been spoiled.
The June 2016 release for new MX GPU's provides new Laptops using those MX GPU's in September 2016, just in time for school. And, that leads us right in to the rest of the MX GPU laptop releases for the 2016 Holiday season.
It's unlikely Nvidia would pile on a Pascal GPU after the MX's release right at the end of 2016.
Intel's Broadwell slim timeframe for release was a good example to others to not do that again.
That leaves 2016 end to beginning of 2017 Holiday clearance sales, and a Pascal announcement in June 2017, which means Pascal laptop releases for Sept-Dec 2017.
Of course, the MX's could be BS, and that would bring us back to 2H 2016.
Yeah. I have a P750ZM-G and P650SE. Thinking of selling both and getting the P650SG and pocket the cash difference. I use my desktop a lot more now, and don't need the power like I used to in a laptop, just would be nice to have G-sync for the times I do. I've been spoiled.
But yeah, this whole Maxwell rebrand is getting long in the tooth. Just we have not clue. I guess best bet is to wait a month or two and see if any actual reliable info comes through.
The 680MX was made specifically for Apple. Would not surprise me to see a re-brand 980MX for Apple. It is well known that Apple launches new laptops at the beginning of every year:
Buyers Guide - MacRumors, and iMacs every fall.
Pascal is coming this year. The CEO of NVIDIA has already announced this at Computex (2015) and most recently at the annual shareholders meeting. Makes zero sense to invest in a re-brand of an entire product line only to replace it less than six months later. Would be a complete waste of money.
Looking at the Computex event schedule for 2016, NVIDIA holds a very big spot.
the low end MX chips which will add support for GDDR5 was a known change, as well as the "updated" 965m which will remain 965m even though it's faster than the first 965m. Why that wasn't called 965MX nobody knows.
Nothing specific right now. If you're waiting for Pascal though, it might be awhile before the real mobile flagship gets here. A look at how pathetic the rebrands are should sound some alarms for sure, especially since we know what nVidia can actually do with Maxwell right now.
As much as I'd love to see the new architecture in mobile cards next week, unless AMD surprises us with something massively faster than the 'GTX 950 equivalent' Polaris 10, it makes more sense for Nvidia to stretch it out and keep selling Maxwell cards to laptop manufacturers as long as they can.
Why bother when they have had almost zero competition in the mobile gaming segment for the past two years. Their only competition is if their own older cards do not become obsolete quickly enough.
From consumer perspective, though, it blows. Was planning to pick up a shiny new Pascal laptop this summer. Now I'm hoping AMD announces more cards soon, otherwise I suppose I'll look into something with 980MX or desktop 980.
"...Since the DP FP64 FPU hardware blocks will be removed from the top-tier cards that are rumored to arrive next year, they will include several more FP32 FPUs to make use of the remaining core space and that means better performance for the GeForce parts since games have little to do with Double precision performance. So with no Tesla parts based on Maxwell, HPC and the supercomputing market will have to do with either the current GPU parts
or wait till next year when Pascal arrives."
Those HPC / Supercomputing guys have been waiting for over a year for higher performing parts...
HPC / Supercomputing sales are far more valuable than high end gaming card / gaming laptop GPU $.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
