The right time to buy a gaming notebook

I've been reading many people saying that "waiting to buy" is a non sense 'cos every time a new tech will be out.

IMO this is not the right way of thinking.

It's' true, technology always moves forward but there are new tech and new tech. A 5 meter step forward is not comparable to a 3 meter one!!!

I.e. buying a 8700m gt when you know 8800gtx is around the corner is a stupid thing so better waiting.
But not buying a 8800gtx (when it's right out) with the intent to wait for the next tech (ati 5xxx or nvidia gt300) is a non sense.

I mean I really believe that waiting and not buying NOW is better than waiting and not buying when ati 5xxx and nvidia300 will be out!

Does it make sense????
(my english is poor I know)

 

My opinion is that the best time to buy new kit is when a major CPU + GPU itteration hit together.

E.g. I bought my last gaming laptop (Clevo M570RU) when the penryn cpu 'tock' hit, with an 8800GTX and 4gb ram. It still flys through everything I chuck at it, even at 1920x1200 native res. I feel it was a very good buy, as its only now (2 years later!) that the CPU has been superceded (with the new i7 tech) and Nvidia's fastest mobile cards are STILL just a die shrink of the core in my 8800GTX (the misnamed GTX260m etc are all G96 core chips...).

So my opinion is to wait for a major CPU and GPU revision to arrive at roughly the same time:- sometime in the new year may be good if the G300 and x5xxx series GPU's hit to con-incide with i7's going mainstream.

 

I'd say the best time in the near future to buy would be a little after the new GT300 chips hit the market. Give NVIDIA some time to iron out the bugs, and then buy a laptop, and you should be golden for a few years, provided that you get a sufficiently high end card, as well as a good processor.

 

Waiting is only worth doing when you know what you are waiting for and roughly when it will be out. If I know that some new tech will be out and it will only be in a few months then I will wait, but if it will be a few years or is mere speculation then I won't bother.

When I was planning on purchasing an NP8660, I heard that the new GTX 260M along with Quad support would be released as a revision of that model so I waited and then purchased that instead at the same price it would have cost me.

Now more than a few months later, they have released the G860 / W860CU /NP8690 with mobile i7 and the GTX 280M but I have no regrets because if I had waited all of that time I would have missed out on all of the fun, the learning, benchmarks, new games and traveling with the gaming laptop I had purchased.

The gaming performance increase when comparing the NP8662 to the G860 is not major either since the GPU isn't vastly superior

 

While I agree that newer technology isn't always of the same performance magnitude, it really depends on the situation.

ATI HD5xxx and Nvidia 3xx series aren't meant to come out before next year and even then, it's a bit fuzzy as to when they'll be fully implemented. Some people estimate early in the year, some people estimate later in the year.

Basically, you can only wait so long before you have to buy. If you have a given deadline for x reason, you can maybe wait a few weeks if not a month, but half a year from now is a long time for lots of people.

Also, bleeding technology(i.e. tech about to go old) sometimes provide the best value deals.

 

Next year there should be:

i9 processors
New Nvidia and ATI chipsets
Dx11 (possibly 12...)
Windows 7 serives packages
Improvement in Sata Hard drives
And I don't know... i'll have a guess at DDR5 RAM or something

 

Buy when you need to, that's what I say. Wait till the last possible moment before you absolutely needed, then get the best possible in your price range.

 

Buy when there are games you need to play, and you don't have strong enough kit to play them with the settings you wish. With my GTX 260M, I can wait a long time. If I had an 8400, my patience would be short.

 

Yes, unlikely, no, maybe, yes, no.

 

And the year after that computers will be self aware and will upgrade themselves!

 

IMO buy what you want when you want.

When I was purchasing my M17x I was always being told to wait until Alienware made their special announcement. Personally I didn't care considering everything about the current model pleased me (and it still does).

Yet what I found humorous was that after people began telling others to wait for more tech.

Why constantly wait, cancel your orders or ship them back?

Definitely non-sense.

This whole, "It'll be out next year" stuff is stupid. I assume the person wants a laptop now not on December 2010.

 

New laptop every 5 years...I find that's where I can no longer play the latest games even with the graphics options turned way down...

Toshiba 315CDT in 1998
Toshiba 5205-S119 in 2003
Dell XPS m1710 in 2008

At the time that I was looking in late 2007/early 2008, Alienware had just announced the m15x with the 8800m GTX...user reviews here were mixed, so I took one step back and bought a 7950 GTX...very happy then, and still happy almost two years later...I have to play newer games at 1280x800 vs 1920x1200 and with some of the options turned down, but they still look good to me, and more importantly, they're just as fun...I no longer have a machine where I can show off the latest graphics engine to everyone, but I enjoy playing a wide mix of games on it...I'll start looking again in a couple of years...if a machine has just been announced that has the right blend of specs, I may wait for its release...otherwise, I'll try to find the best deal on the available hardware when I can no longer tolerate my current gaming machine...

 

Another thing about "waiting" is that normally you have to wait even more after release for reviews or opinions to come up(to validate the purchase).

So really, it all comes down to how much you can "wait". Even if new technology came around next month, if you're going on a business trip due next week and you need a laptop to work with, you can't really wait...

 

There is no right time..Whether you buy the laptop now or later , eventually it gets obsolete.. i would say go and ahead buy a gaming notebook with mobile core i7 and GTX280M..like WC890CU..

 

Wrong. The right time to buy a gaming notebook is April 28th, 2010. Specifically at 2:08PM (CST/ GMT-6).

I think we can close this thread now.

Next question please.

 

and why is that time the right time?

 

I checked the planetary alignments against market forecasting and also included a bit of the farmers almanac, and I ran it past my pet turtle, and he was in agreement.

He's a smart turtle.

 

I was almost going to say you saw it in your flashforward but you are missing it by couple days.

 

True, but there are better times to purchase a notebook than others. Wouldn't it stink for you to purchase a Core 2 Quad notebook when it is replaced a week later by a refreshed Core i7 at the same price. So you could have either purchased a newly refreshed notebook at the same price or purchase the older model at a discount?

 

Such big replacements would be over publicisized (Alienware announcement, once again) and would be know way before that one week.

So really, the user would already know what's ahead of him.

 

I don't care what anyone says! *SHakes angry stick* core i7+dual GPU's is something to definately delay buying over, that combination will last a user years...itll be some time before games and apps will even utilize something beyond corei7 and the new 5k/300m series in SLi or Crossfire coming out.

 

Those new 5xxx and 3xx won't come for quite some time. You can keep on waiting, that's your choice. But others should just buy what there is now considering the whole dream combination of i7s and next generation SLi's and Crossfires won't be here for a while.

Not to mention, the higher end C2Ds and C2Qs will last people well into the life span of the first, and possibly future, i7s.

 

That would've been more clever, but I was tired and just randomly picked a date. I have to spend more time working on my witty responses.

 

What's "awhile"? If it's 3-5 months I can easily wait that if I was to spend 3-5k on a laptop. You don't know how long until these cards will release, this entire thread is about speculation afterall. I do know I've heard credible rumors about Clevo and AW refreshing their dual GPU setups in late Q1/early Q2 and I know there's little chance they would release it with old cards.

 

Who let the Sony guy in here?

 

3-5 months can be long depending on who's buying. Some people buy gaming notebooks, but that use them for other purposes(ex: school or work) so they might not be able to wait 3-5 months.

 

A year plus.

Trust me we won't get them in 3-5 months. No way in hell that would happen.

 

ATi will be out by March, barring wafer allocation issues. I'll wager money on this statement.

 

March is still a while away though so when we say wait, we really mean wait(5 months can really be significant depending on who we're talking about).

 

At the moment i got a rusty 8600m gt and im forced to play recent games low/medium but i want a card that supports directX11 so im willing to wait in pain for the hd5000/300m series even if that means two years from now. Im die hard!

 

I'm just waiting for the time when a Clevo D900F becomes cheaper.. i want that beast!

 

This is the argument i needed to get my laptop....
Thanks..italian.madness....

 

nobody knows how big of a performance increase a new computer will give them untill they try/buy it.

Lets all hold out for ATI 6870!!!....but when it gets here, it could just be a refreshed 5870. who knows, could be the next earth shattering discovery since electricity.

 

I'm in the same camp as Alien_M4v3r1kk and LaptopNut.

History has shown that probably 50% of the time technology gets delayed inevitably for whatever reason. I don't have hard statistics, but just my guess, at least my geriatric wisdom should hold some credibility.

When I went to purchase my NP8662 in August, I was told I should wait for the i7 and nVidia 3xx series in Q4 2008. Well, I would still be waiting three months later at this point, and probably another three.

This doesn't mean you shouldn't do your research, and waiting six months for a laptop to me seems insane considering the pace of technology, especially for a "gaming" notebook. At first I regretted a bit not waiting for the W860CU/NP8690 but it also costs over $300 more, granted I get the i7 CPU and GTX 280m instead of 260m. But in reality, would that $300 really benefit me that much more? I don't think so.

I do think, however, that if your current rig can play the games you want for the next six months, you best wait since you can get the best of i7 and DX11 GPU's. Otherwise if your rig doesn't perform to your satisfaction, buy what you can afford, and deal with it.