is there a whole alot of difference in the upcoming sandy bridge laptops??

i have been waiting since early december for a new sandy bridge laptops...but cant wait anymore should i just get an asus - N43??

i dont see much difference between the current N43 and the new sandybridge laptops except they have longer battery life (which is really not a probelm since i will be carrying my adapter everywhere)
and a little faster processor...with nvidia gpu which has about the same power as 430m

so is it worth the wait for new sandy bridge models??
i probably have to pay more than the current N43 price..

so could anyone point out the major difference between the N43 and the new sandy bridge laptops??

 

Read this thread. It really is up to you on whether or not you can wait about 40 days for new dual core SB notebooks (since only quads will be at CES).

 

Unless you push the CPU frequently, I would say no.

 

i was kinda dissapointed when i saw the tdps for the quads.
is there data showing power consumption comparisons of the present i7 quads versus the sb quads in idle and low power states?

 

Well, don't forget there's an IGP to contend with in there now too that's raising the TDPs. That's probably good for 5-10 watts right there, if not more. It's like when we changed over to Nehalem, people always forget to add the memory controller into the TDP too.

 

that is true. but from the demo ive seen they were comparing power consumption and performance of the igp to an nvidia card running mass effect 2 and some other video programs.
i have yet to see a comparison of the igp versus optimus and a dedicated card in low power or idle state. for me that would be of more interest, as the igp would only come into use (for my purposes) on those scenarios (idle/low power).

but more than anything i really want a comparison between idle/lower power between the present i7 vs sb quads.

 

The TDPs haven't changed from the current quad core i7s to SB. I expect power consumption to be similar on load and lower on idle, due to the change in manufacturing process - but we'll see shortly how they fair.

 

Desktop Sandy Bridge are listed 95W TDP just like Lynnfield but the consumption is noticeably less according to early reviews, both in load and idle mode. I would expect the same from Huron River compared to Clarksfield.

To answer the original question, if you need a powerful CPU and planned on buying a quad-core notebook I say it'd be worth the wait, 32nm quad cores will literally crush the current lineup. If you don't run CPU intensive tasks and are in a bit of a hurry I'd say buy it now, since you don't care about extra battery life.

 

Basically people who render on their notebooks and professionals who do not care about discreet graphics will enjoy cooler notebooks and better battery life. Gamers aren't really going benefit due to SB..

 

Memory bandwidth >67% (but it was so high before you may or may not see improvements here, but it's closer to the first gen I7 bandwidth)

WIDI (wireless display to HDTV) now goes full 1080p vs 720p currently

Vastly improved branch prediction engine

Intel's Sandy Bridge Architecture Exposed - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

 

Unless you play games like Starcraft II -- the difference relative to Lynnfield at the same clock speed is 25% so I would expect the difference relative to Clarksfield to be a full 50% or more (because the clocks are substantially higher).

 

Well of course frame rate will be better but I'm talking about like they won't see a 500% jump in frame rates. Most games will benefit from a higher GPU..

 

How badly does a game like Starcraft II bottleneck on something as low as an i7-720QM, though? I'm not saying that Sandy Bridge won't be better, but at some point, extra performance is just "wasted", sort of like buying a sports car just to go down to the corner market. Sure, it's "cooler", but in terms of actual utility it doesn't really add anything.

 

By quite a bit -- the overclocked 875K running at 3.4GHz in the review is basically twice the power of an i7-720QM so you can divide the FPS by 2 as well and you're well below 50 for the average, probably below 30 for the minimum. Of course, this all assumes you have a decent GPU as well.

 

we don't see that often in similar power consumtion frames anyways..

 

Oh, just noticed this part; you mean the difference relative to Clarksfield is still probably 25% at the same clock speed, but the overall difference would be 50% or more, right? Since the point of the first comparison was at equal clock speeds.

 

Yep that's what he meant. SB won't be mind blowing for a majority of games except some RTS and MMOs. At least that's what the early reviews around hint at.

 

short answer is: yes, it is intel's most significant update since core

but if you dont care much about notebooks or computers in general, just buy it now

 

It seems to me you are after a dual core laptop, in which case there is no need to wait for Sandy Bridge so buy it now.

Sandy Bridge brings no noticeable changes to dual-core CPUs, only the quad cores are getting a huge performance leap.

 

The dual-cores get power efficiency rather than performance so they'll still be better, but unless you can wait for a couple of months, you're probably still getting Arrandale. Rumor has it that only the quad-core Sandy Bridge CPUs are coming out in two weeks, the dual-cores have been delayed until mid-February.