4th Gen vs. 5th Gen Help

I am in the market to purchase a new laptop to replace my 3 year old Asus G53SW. I have been browsing xoticpc.com and have pretty much narrowed it down to a 17.3" Sager. However, I am torn between ordering one now with the 4th Gen i7 or waiting a few weeks and getting a 5th Gen i5/i7. This is what the laptop would be used for:

Gaming such as Rift and WoW (nothing too CPU or GPU intensive )
Netflix streaming
MS Office

I am NOT concerned about the following things:

Screen size as I HDMI to a 24"
I have an external optical drive
I have an external speaker bar
I have an external HDD for storage

The laptop would sit on a desk, plugged in to a wall outlet. I need it to be mobile as I move back and forth from home to office and back every day. My only real concerns are heat (4th Gen vs 5th Gen) and do I really need a quad core for any of the stuff listed? I chose a 17" over a 15" because I have read that the 17s are slightly better at heat dissipation.

So 4th Gen or wait for 5th Gen?

 

Might as well wait for the 5th generation.
Apart from a process shrinkage, it won't provide really many benefits... but it might result in lower power draw and an overall cooler system.
Bottom line is, its not too far away to wait for, so you might as well wait.

As for needing a quad core... it would certainly help down the line since we're moving into multi-core processing and not single-core.

 

I will guess that the current notebook you have is still sufficient for your needs, at least for a while longer?'

I would suggest considering waiting for the launch of Skylake in a few short months; even if you still end up getting a Broadwell based platform. The time can be used to save up more funds (if needed). It will also ensure that the price you pay for a new Broadwell system is as low as can be reasonably expected for a new platform.

And if you find the features Skylake offers irresistible, you wont' be losing money buying and selling an intermediary platform either.

i7 QC and 16GB+ RAM with the latest O/S (Win10 soon...) and the biggest SSD you can afford. Any other configuration for a general purpose (and gaming) system is money and/or (performance) potential well wasted. Especially if you expect the same 3+ year lifecycle of the new system.

If you have to buy very soon; yeah I'm only buying/recommending Broadwell in early 2015 too.

 

I would wait for Skylake if you can or if not, get the Haswell notebook... Broadwell will hardly have any CPU performance improvement over Haswell and the only really improvement is with the Intel iGPU which is not worht waiting for... Skylake on the other hand is completely new and will be a game changer... Probably a 10- 20% improvement over Haswell as it's a tock!

 

Yeah but nothing I do really utilizes a quad core. Just found out that both of those games are designed to run on a single core. If in a few years from now quads become more "mandatory" then I will upgrade again at that time. There is no such thing as "future proofing." I tend to be practical and get what I need, not what I want.

 

Actually, it is not. I bought that Asus because the name implied quality, but I have had nothing but problems out of it. Warranty for defective screen, out of warranty motherboard replacement, and now the GPU fan is humming as if a bearing is going bad. It is only a matter of time before it burns up. On top of that, I had a high end Asus network router that only lasted 14 months, putting it just outside of warranty. I am done with Asus.

 

Actually, unless money is no object, buying last year laptop now makes a lot of sense since everybody is clearing inventories, to make room for new models. You can get great discounts and as already stated, except for little lower power usage, newest processors don't offer much new. I just undervolted my haswell quad core using Intel utility and my CPU power usage per core is almost as low as the newest broadwell. As far as you playing only those 2 games for next 2 years or so, all I can say is I'm not sure what game will I like and play next week, so 4 quad core is always there in case I need it no matter what.

 

I don't know who told you that, but I guess you found out the truth the hard way...

 

Well at least for me they do imply quality... My G73JH ran perfectly for 4 years and didn't need any warranty services.. It's hit and miss though with them so best thing is to get their products through a reseller like XoticPC so everything is tested etc and you can get better service/warranty..