Ivy Bridge?

Hi there,
Some of you may have seen my post stating that I am trying to purchase a laptop for school. I kind of need it, but just heard that Ivy Bridge might be released Q1 or Q2 2012. So, once again, do I wait for IB or buy now and go with Sandy Bridge?

Thanks!

 

Do your homeopwrk. What features are going to be added by Ivy Bridge that you need? Win 7 a wonderful OS works great on Sandy Bridge. I am building my new desk top machine with a I5 2500K Sandy Bridge and have no worry about it not being Ivy Bridge. I am on the normal 2 to 4 year cycle so next cycle it will be IB, not now. I don't see any compelling reqason to wait.

 

According to the roadmap, IB for notebooks won't be available until April-May 2012, if there are no delays. If you don't need a laptop until Q3 2012, you could wait, but if you need it now, just get it now.

 

Rule of thumb: if you can wait, wait, if you need it now get it now.

If you're asking if you need Ivy Bridge, chances are it brings nothing to the table that you need

 

Ivy Bridge supposedly has more efficiency, and uses less power to get more performance?

 

In a nutshell. But you're still looking at 5-6 months most likely.

 

Sorry, 5-6 months for what again?

 

Until widespread release in laptops?

There are gains for sure, but I think they're not "wait half a year" worthy gains. If you need something now, buy now; if you can wait, then by all means go ahead.

 

Well, I think that they are worth waiting for 'half a year' if first, you can wait and second if the system to be bought then will be used for 4-5 yrs as a minimum.

Also, I don't think we will need to wait that long for them - I'm predicting we're seeing them at least a few months earlier.

 

See, I would love to wait, I WANT to wait... but the laptop is just such a necessity now because of the overload of notes and projects and papers.

 

If you can wait yes, which is what I said. Every iteration always has some gains over the past ones there's no denying that. The question is simply "play the waiting game or not?" and that really depends on how soon/bad you need your laptop/computer in contrast to how big the improvements are (or at least how useful those improvements are to you as a user).

 

Now, for a gamer/student are the improvements made in IB significant enough to make me wait? What's your take?

 

As a gamer, your GPU will bottleneck in 99.9% of cases long before your CPU so waiting for Ivy is pointless. As a student, it is also pointless unless you need to do some crazy number crunching on your own laptop. Normally, if you need to do some intensive number crunching, your college/university will have the required hardware for that anyways. The next best thing is always around the corner in computer hardware, if you can afford the wait, thens ure go for it, but don't let the prospect of new hardwre hold you back if you need a new laptop now or soon.

 

What does Bottlenecking mean? I've been wondering about that...

 

Depends. Ivy Bridge is 22NM, and with every die shrink there's usually modest battery life improvements.

Performance wise, for gaming and general student stuff such as writing papers and such, you won't notice anything different. Now if battery life is your concern, I'd wait. IB notebooks with HD 4000 graphics will be decently powerful enough to run non-hardcore games and still get phenomenal battery life with no dGPU. Sandy Bridge already gets really good battery life on most notebooks with no dGPU. Even the switchable GPU models have decent battery life.

Personally, I'd just go ahead and get one. If IB comes out and it's all rainbows and unicorns, sell the SB notebook and put that towards an IB model.

 

Is it possible to upgrade from SB to IB in a laptop?

 

The weakest component in contrast to a given task is called the "bottleneck". Just as the name implies: it will limit the overall performance of the task at hand.

If I want to make a dozen cookies, but only have enough milk for 6 cookies, the milk is the "bottleneck" to the task of baking the cookies. However if I want to bake a cake, maybe I have enough milk but now not enough butter. In this task, the butter becomes my bottleneck. And so on and so forth. The bottleneck of a system is given by what part is the weakest in regards to the task being performed.

For now you can't AFAIK.

 

In computers, a bottleneck occurs when one of your components reaches it's limit before the others. Simply put, your GPU will limit game performance before your CPU.

Bottleneck - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ninja'ed by melody.

 

Simply, No. They arent enough to make anyone wait. People who are waiting to get IB are only doing so because they want the "latest and greatest"... but it's not worth waiting for the minimal gains, especially if you need a notebook now or very soon.

 

IB is just a die-shrink of existing SB architecture.
Performance gains in the cpu department will be roughly 10-20% (if that... and predominantly from higher clocks), and yes, more efficiency power-wise, but overall, it's not going to be groundbreaking or worth the wait if you need a laptop right now.
The biggest gain will be seen in the Intel integrated gpu... but that's a moot point if you plan to have a discrete gpu in the laptop.

So overall, if you need a laptop now, get it. IB won't bring significant enough changes since it's a die-shrink, even if you plan to use the laptop for cpu intense tasks.
If you aren't in a rush though and can wait until IB comes out, might as well wait it since it's close on the release schedule anyway.

 

Buy it now. Period.

Your benefit will be limited to a few % here and there and it is definitely not worth to wait for half a year.


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I would have to agree with ramgen here. Ivy Bridge will be an improvement for gaming on IGPU with the HD 4000 but nothing else. If you want to wait for improvements in gaming, the biggest advantage is 28nm GPU's that will come out in tandem with Ivy Bridge. In all honesty Sandy Bridge is overkill for anything other than hard core gaming or CAD work. If all you will be doing is microsoft productivity software and some light gaming then there is no point point in worrying about being left behind by going with Sandy Bridge.

 

Don' get me wrong, there will be plenty of MS Word work, but gaming will have its priorities as well.

 

Well if you're gaming, you're going to wanna look at your graphics unit before you even look at your CPU. If you're serious about it, chances are you'll have a dedicated graphics card so you won't be using Ivy Bridge's integrated GPU so that won't matter.

From a CPU perspective, CPUs out for the last few generations have been good enough to play games so really, if your concern is gaming you shouldn't be asking about Ivy Bridge but about what Nvidia and AMD are offering next year.

 

exactly! and the higher end cards should be rolling out in January, for AMD. NVidia might be aways later. Definitely worth waiting for, for anyone who is looking to game on a new notebook.

 

Is the CPU and GPu upgradable on any Sager?

 

Assuming within the same generation of sockets yes they can but it's going to cost you a buttload of money (aka within a few hundred dollars).

 

Isnt a few hundred well worth it?

 

Depends on you really....

I personally wouldn't pay an upgrade for anything less than a 50% boost in performance, especially if I'm ending up paying a sizeable fraction of what it'd cost me to replace the entire computer.

If your system is going to be worth 3000$ ok, but if your system is a 1500-2000$ Clevo, then you might end up paying 20%-30% of the price of a new system next year...(with next year's new technology).

I've more or less given up on the idea of laptop upgradeability beyond RAM and HDD. By the time I feel like I need/want more performance, new tech will be out and I'd be better off just switching the entire machine (with the added bonus of the whole "new computer" feeling )

 

If you're upgrading for a 20% to even a 70% performance increase within one year; that means you bought the wrong system and you'll be paying much more (in total) than you would have if you simply had bought a system that was at the performance level you required in the first place.

As Melody mentions, the only thing worth upgrading (even in desktops, imo...) is the HDD's, the RAM and the O/S. If you really need more performance then a platform upgrade is the only $en$ible option.

And with the price of RAM and SSD's right now, it makes more sense to upgrade the RAM and HDD's (to at least one SSD...) right from day one of ownership to fully take advantage of the performance today's platform (SNB) offers us.

Anyone doing that today might be able to skip IB, but even if they needed any of the features and/or extra performance that IB will offer and they do take advantage of it, they will still be able to move their current system's RAM and SSD/HDD's and will probably not lose any money after they sell the 'old' SNB system with a cheap (by then...) XT 750GB Hybrid HDD.

Sure, cpu and gpu upgrades may be tempting - but staying with the same platform while spending real $$$ is not only a sideways move; it is actually a backwards move if done when there is a new platform available to purchase (when the overall performance increase vs. the cost is considered).

 

@OP: I am also in this fix right now--not sure if I should buy now or wait for new refreshes with IB in them. You see I opted for waiting. Why?
(1) I rehabilitated my 10 month old existing machine with hybrid HDD and added more RAM (max 8GB) on my existing SB Dell E5520 notebook; it should last me till summer (Aug 2012)
(2) In this way, I can see what form factors come out that take advantage of IB architecture-what I am looking for is a nice, neat, and good looking Windows notebook that uses less resources and has excellent battery life; more important for me is it should not have a noisy fan or heat up. Something like the Thinkpad X220, only thinner and lighter, but packed with performance enhancing hardware.

If this is your case, I would wait. Else get the SB. i would recommend X220; it is a lean mean machine!

 

Idk about you, but the form factor of the Lenovo's has always bothered me.