Considering to get a new laptop, worth it or play the waiting game?

Right, let me first say im disappointed in both the CPU choices for the last 2 years and the GPU's that come with them.
Intel - since Ivy Bridge, clock speeds stayed the same, integrated graphics don't amaze me in the least and just now, they refresh Haswell with just 100mhz higher clocks over my Ivy refresh. A whooping 100mhz...
AMD - nothing new there since 7970m, the 8000 series was a full rebrand and now those R290m's are absolutely the same. Wohoooo.....
Nvidia - both 600 and 700 series are kepler, that's well and good. 5-10% increase in favor for the 700 lineup. Then came the 800 rebrand, that pissed me off! No Maxwell any time soon, Q4 brings some entry-level kepler-maxwell hybrids that Im struggling to be impressed with. Real Maxwell - due next year sometime on 20nm.

All of this leaves me with 2 options:
1) buy a P370SM this month with single AMD R290M and i7 4810qm (+ a larger SSD and HDD)
2) wait until next year, get broadwell + whatever GPU I decide

Why do I need a new laptop? Well, for several reasons:
- my gtx660m is not suited for large custom maps in StarCraft 2, sometimes drops FPS in heavy Dota 2 battles and Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls eats it for breakfast on Act 3 when fighting tons of mobs on the Korsikk bridge.
- the SSD is almost full, only 30GB of free space remains (those games, especially Dota, simply love to download ~1gb of new content every month)
- HDD is also full, 750gb ain't enough for all the music and pictures im storing on it
- a glossy screen is due, im not using my laptops in brightly lit rooms anyways (not to mention in direct sunlight, glossy screens are actually brighter than matte)
- my current 2-nd Sata 3 slot is unusable, due to extreme temperatures generated from the PCH (yeah, my HDD used to run at 66'C there, while now in the caddy, it runs 28-30'C)

With all the reasons listed, it seems best to sell the laptop (which is in perfect condition btw, no trace of usage on the chassis whatsoever) and get a P370SM with a single AMD card, plus a large 240gb ssd and 1.5gb HDD.

So, the question is, what does everyone think about that? Either I need to wait 'till next year, not knowing if it would be worth it, or just pull the trigger on a machine from the current lineup.
By "worth it" I mean what should I expect CPU and GPU wise in percentage increase of performance?

 

dota 2 and diablo shouldn't have any lag issues with a gtx 660m. Get a antivirus like AVG or AVAST. Scan your computer completely.
Also, Whats your cpu? It might be your bottleneck.

 

Specs are in my sig, the FPS dips are happening under extreme battle conditions.
In dota, the fps dips happen rarely, with frames going down to the 20-s, which is still playable, but not smooth enough.
More notably, in the winter map of dota, with the snow and breath effects, that's where it was most noticeable.

The real challenge is diablo 3, the fps is smooth as long as Im solo on acts 1,2 and 4.
But with 4 players, on act 3 (where flying objects, projectiles and gargoyles and fire dominate the scenery), especially on the bridge level with all those mobs spawning from worms, the fps sometimes drops to 10-15 which is choppy as hell.
On higher difficulty levels, where mobs are hard to kill, the spell effects and physics tend to overwhelm the gtx660m quite heavily.

On starcraft 2, maps like Desert Strike, Marine Arena....mobs are sometimes gathering by the thousands and even my old AMD 6990m had difficulties when playing on ultra settings.

So to sum it up - I feel the need for a more powerful graphics card that can really hold its own when battles get big. My gtx660m is very energy efficient, yes. Perfect for casual gaming on battery when on the road.
But when at home, I kinda want to keep a steady fps above 40 in all cases, no matter which game im on.

So yeah, im leaning towards a p370sm this year.
If anyone can persuade me to wait for another year for better hardware, go ahead guys, I really wanna know! If we are gonna see something with the performance of a gtx880m and power draw less than 60W, then I really wanna hear about it!

 

Well the 750 ti has a tdp of 60w and performs quite damn well even at 28nm technology. If you wait, there will be cards far superior to the gtx 780m with much lower power consumption.

 

This question is also of interest to me. My old laptop is dying and I have been strongly considering grabbing a P150SM with a 8970M.

Everyone is always talking about new tech 'around the corner' its an inevitability but does anyone have any concrete dates/estimates on when this tech should be arriving? How many months roughly do you expect? Whenever these kind of threads open up people generally just ignore the question ( when) and talk about other things. Is it because no one genuinely has any idea or what?

 

Yes, even if we had a date, its never 100% solid.
Clevo's roadmap showed NVidia's new video cards were supposed to be out in February.
Now its march, nothing is out yet.

Im not looking forward to waiting for intel's new broadwell architecture, CPU power is not an issue nowadays.
The only unknown piece of the puzzle is WHEN NVidia is going to load up Maxwell with all of its goodies and how much of a power increase can be expected.

Anionz, so far Im considering to pull the trigger on a current-gen laptop. Especially since the broadwell processors are coming somewhere in the middle of the summer and new graphics cards are UNLIKELY to happen until 2015.
And trust me, broadwell will not be worth the wait alone. Why? Because the video cards are the bottleneck of every DTR laptop for the last 10 years.
Right now, we must decide on either waiting for 9-12 months or just buying whatever is available at the moment.

 

Why not just get a desktop so u can game while at home while also having your current laptop to be used while outside?

 

Simply because of these reasons:
1) power outage is VERY common where I live, a UPS system will only last a couple of minutes with a desktop machine;
2) I don't want to have to maintain 2 computers and constantly move files inbetween them
3) desktops are noisier than laptops in general, even in idle mode while downloading torrets.
4) I move frequently between rooms, imagine having to disconnect all those cables every time and lugging around a 22" monitor + the PC itself...not gonna happen

 

Ah well then, that answered my question. As for files, you can try a NAS for shared storage.

 

Only you know how much disposable income you have. You seem to know the technical side.

New Nvidia graphics cards are happening, rumor is stock is on hold right now for the gpu refresh. Maxwell is expected for the low to mid range gpus. High end by year end. Check thr Maxwell posts in the Gaming section.

1. Get a bigger ups.
2. Current laptop hdds are only 1TB. Maybe external storage will work, like cloud, usb, esata, nas, etc.
3. This has changed as it is now much easier to buy quieter gaming desktops. In fact when gaming they will be much quiter than a laptop. My old desktop was whisper quiet even when gaming. This changed a lot with Haswell and Kepler, not so much with AMD though.
4. Computer cart, i.e. a small desk on wheels. Also, when Steam OS comes out, this might be something to look into. Basically it will let you leave the gaming desktop in one room, but access it to play games on a lower end computer in a different room.

 

A 780M/880M will be able to eat starcraft.

 

You can already use in home streaming if you join the group. I got my beta invitating in 4 hours. All you need is steam. No steam os required.

 

Agreed on 99% of the points made.
The 1% I disagree with - there are laptop HDDs with 1.5 teras around. Just not 7200rpm, only 5400rpm ones.

Im gonna give it a month's time in thinking before I decide whether to go for a i7 4810qm + AMD R290M or just wait for Broadwell + genuine Maxwell 20nm to hit the shelves by the end of the year (or next year).
Either machine will do the job I want.
Its just that I want to get the best bang for the buck (which is definitely the broadwell-Maxwell option). But will I want to wait a whole year for that....this is what I need to decide.

 

mai be po dobre da chakash do kraya na mesetza.

I'm new here and i don't own a sager/clevo yet, Im hoping to buy some varent of the clevo w230st/ss/xxx when reports of heat issues aren't so bad...

Anyway, from what i've been reading ever sence august of last year on these forums and other places.. Is that the 800m series, the earlier versions probably will be rebrands of the 700m series but with higher clock speeds or think of them as being over clocked. And some people say they will run hotter and others say that 800m's will be maxwell and will run cooler.
But I think currently, theres too many rumors to decide on wether or not to go for the bait. So maybe its a better idea to wait till the end of the month, because theres going to be a refresh of notebooks in mid-March (or so it says on xoticpc), and im hoping that some of these refreshed modelswill come with 800m series, and wait till a few people do reviews. Also there should still be some 700m series notebooks in stock from different resellers after the refresh.
But if reviews arent good enough then i'd wait till August, or till the end of the year.
For now I ont see why you need to replaces you system when you still have a 600m series card in it, 700m's are rebrands of 600m's or so i've read.

 

The 860m will be the only maxwell 800m series card. The rest will be rebrands of kepler. The 800MX series would be maxwell on 20nm technology which will be the one everyone is waiting for.

 

So can someone help me out.

I looked over at the gaming thread and it seemed to be heavily rumored that new Nvidia cards are coming out probably late march. Is this also for its mobile series or does it take some time between the desktop cards -> laptop cards?

Or is new nvida tech long way off and I am interpreting this wrong?

 

The only mobile Maxwell semi-confirmed for March release is 860M. The high-end 800 series (870M, 880M) are likely Kepler rebrands. True high-end Maxwell mobile cards are expected to show up Q4 2014.

 

I think I made my decision guys. Im gonna post it here, so others with the same question in mind might benefit.

The facts:
1) DDR4 support for mobile & desktop platforms is due to arrive with Skylake in 2015, Broadwell will only have it for the Xeon server series;
2) NVidia's Maxwell (the 20nm flagship model) will likely arrive at the end of this year; No idea if AMD plans to ship something out (like it did with 6990m over 6970m in the past)
3) Sata Express comes with Skylake (another thing Broadwell has no support for)
4) Skylake will be primarily quad-core based, there is a chance of hexa-core variants in the consumer market (my personal speculation)

Taking into consideration the DDR4 RAM pricings at launch, the next generation of SSD's that require native Sata Express support due to their high speeds, a possible new GPU platform for AMD (maybe even 20nm based), all this leads to Q2 or even Q3 2015. This will be the "perfect" time to buy a new system. You get upgrade on all components, nothing is lagging behind.

And with that, the decision is made: Broadwell is nothing worth writing home about, NVidia's stuff is going to be expensive as hell until AMD launches something that can compete on the 20nm die level and since Sata Express is out of the question alongside with DDR4, Im just gonna buy a haswell + AMD powered laptop that will last me at least until Q4 2015, at which point I might consider something smaller, with lower TDP, more portable power brick and same performance.

 

Alright so that's settled, my next system will a desktop Skylake 7960X with 128GB of DDR4 and 3x SATA Express SSDs in Raid 0.

 

860m and below, basically 64-bit and 128-bit cards will be Maxwell. 192-bit and 256-bit cards will be Kepler rebrands.

 

Yep, simply because a larger maxwell does not exist yet.

 

DDR4 is nice but do you really need it? What scenarios would you notice the DDR4? IGPs perhaps, but I don`t think you`ll notice stuff cached on a DDR3 or a DDR4.

Likely arrive in the summer you mean...
Anyway, why don`t you buy a notebook with GTX 860M? It will be Maxwell, it will be out in March and it will be almost have 2x the performance of your GTX 660M while output same or less heat. So you will get a solid performance boost as well as having better battery life than the high end Kepler/GCN.

But many OEMs will include support for M2 SSDs this year. With an ability to do 1GB/s vs SATA3`s 550MB/s. There have also been presented a couple of SSD brands ready with a working SSD that can do 1GB/s+. All thats missing is that controller which 9 series chipset will have onboard

Well its a valid reason since Skylake will be a new architecture. Broadwell is running Haswell architecture. But the jump from Sandy Bridge to Haswell (architecture, not CPU) was a poor jump anyway, so my personal opinion is that no one should wait for any CPUs from Intel. They are mostly about IGP performance anyway now that AMD have lured them in the APU race..sigh.

 

Hey HTWingNut, any prediction as to how much better than 860 the 870 will be?

Noticed new stuff is imminent on lpc-digital.com.. Looking forward to it :-D

 

What do you base this assumption on, why is it more likely to arrive during this summer than later towards the end of the year (genuinely curious)?

With the fact that mid ranged Maxwell, as well as rebrands, have yet to be released in mind doesn't it seem a bit optimistic that we will see high end Maxwell so "soon"? I can't see why they would even bother with a rebranded 780m if that was the case.

 

I don't know, but my guess 30-40%.

Obviously am interested in Cloudfire's response, but like with Fermi to Kepler there were updates to other cards just months after Kepler released and were "MX" models using the newer tech. So there could be a 770mx, 775mx and 780mx, and would likely wholesale replace the 770m, 775m, and 780m altogether. When that will happen with Maxwell is all speculation at this point, could be July, could be December. It all depends on yields and capacity from the 20nm process. Probably because the mid to lower end GPU's are much higher volume and smaller dies they could produce more and refine the process (not to mention get back as much money as quickly as possible).

 

Smaller dies are inherently more resistant to process variations, this benefited AMD with the 40nm process for instance who had smaller cores and the HD4770 core to practise with, which resulted in redundant transistors used in certain parts to increase yields.

 

Many reasons why I think we will see 20nm GTX 880MX in June/July.

1. Volume production of 28nm started in November 2011. First 28nm Nvidia cards released March 2012.
That is 5 months.
Volume production of 20nm started in January 16th. 5 months from that we are in June 16th....

2. When the first mobile Kepler`s (600M) launched in March 2012, we had also Fermi rebrands like GTX 670M and GTX 675M.
When the first mobile Maxwell launch March 12th, we will also have Kepler rebrands like GTX 870M and GTX 880M.
GTX 680M (First high end Kepler) came out 3 months after the first Kepler launch.
GTX 880MX (First high end Maxwell) will come out 3 months after the first Maxwell launch.
Nvidia can`t build the high end Maxwell without using 20nm due to the extra cores and transistors.

3. Notebook OEMs will be introducing a lot of new notebooks in Computex Taipei in June, Nvidia of course will want to showcase the newest hardware there to get a good start with the new 20nm Maxwell`s.

4. TSMC had 4 different processes with 28nm, giving some benefits, but it also slowed down production of the 28nm wafers.
TSMC was gonna have a LP (Low Power) and HP (High Power) process in 20nm, but after initial testing, they ditched HP because they saw no noticable differences between those two.
So with 20nm they will only offer one process, LP, which should speed 20nm production up

 

First look at GTX 860M here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/745074-new-details-about-nvidia-s-maxwell-40.html#post9584705

It is very impressive

 

Indeed, it's going to do really nice things for the slightly smaller gaming machines.

 

If performance and TDP are really that much better, I might just invest in the W230SS with 3K screen (if it exists).

 

Don't get the 3K screen, I read it's bad in terms of picture quality. Colors are off, especially in the yellow spectrum.
It had something to do with the matrix design (some white pixels being put to use to enable the illusion of more brightness, but colors are then getting inaccurate).

 

3K on 13.3"? I'd probably go blind even with 150% DPI.

 

Yes, I still have nightmares about 1080p on 15.4" when playing starcraft 2.
After an hour of playing zerg, trying to micro those zerglings around the map and selecting the bas*ards while moving....my eyesight went blurry for hours, couldn't see things clearly from afar.

 

3k means gaming at 1600x900 in those cases, perfect for the GPU tbh.

 

Oh, definitely. It will be perfect that that resolution....framerates will be nice.
But the gaming part, any RTS under 13.3" will be making your life miserable for obvious reasons.
FPS games will be fine, though. As will MMO's.

 

Well depends how close you are and on your eye sight I suppose

 

I have bad eyesight, so even 17.3" at 1080p kinda hurts after a while. Not to mention sometimes I feel like I'm kissing the screen if trying to read small text.

 

Hi b0b1man, it looks like you wanna sell your current W370. I am recently searching a gaming laptop which can handle Dota2 with high graphic effects. I am interested to your staff. How much do you want for price?

 

All sales should be handled in the members market

 

Well, pre-orders for the new Sager/Clevo 'puters are available now. GPU parts below the 860 are Maxwell, while the 860M has both Kepler & Maxwell variants (with supposedly comparable performance) and everything above the 860 is, essentially, an overclocked 770/780M. Not sure about the pricing on the model you are looking for, but the model I was looking at (Sager NP 8265-S) is actually cheaper now with the newer, better CPU and GPU!

The NP 8265-S with an i7-4800MQ CPU and GTX 780M GPU was $1824 last I looked, and then it went AWOL due to the impending refresh.

The new NP 8268-S with an i7-4810MQ CPU and GTX 880M GPU is $1744 now. Wow! All other spec's are the same, as far as I can see, so that's pretty awesome, even though the new GPU is just a slightly overclocked 780M. Both the i7-4810MQ CPU and the GTX 880M GPU are slightly faster than their older counterparts, for LESS money. If they were more expensive, it probably wouldn't have been worth it (since the performance increase will probably not be noticeable), but since the overall system price is less, it seems like a win, in spite of the marginal improvement.

 

To wait 'till September or not to wait....my dilemma. I really, >really<, REALLY want to spend the money wisely. Rebrands are just not what Im after. Seems like genuine Maxwell is some 6 months away and maybe broadwell too.
What are the chances of getting new clevo chassis for the broadwell launch? Any speculations on that?

 

I found the same thing when I priced out an NP8275-S before the refresh. It's now called an NP8278-S and it's about $100 less than the previous model. I don't see how anyone can complain about that!

 

People will always complain.

Nvidia have salvaged an uninspiring launch by introducing something interesting (860M and family) and by giving all the other chips improved value.

 

Literally, word for word my experience 1 hour ago. I had been waiting for the NP 8265-S to arrive at XOTIC PC for about 2 weeks, since there inventory was out. But yesterday I got an email about the new NP 8268-S and all the parts too. After setting up my second customization, the NP 8268-S is better in every single way, yet somehow about 100-200 dollars cheaper. Thank GOD my original order didn't go through. And wow, I cant believe how much I am getting for my money. (Pretty much same specs as Cellular-Decay.)

 

The new/refreshed configs certainly are a better value. Sure, the "rebranded" 880M Kepler GPU is not a significant improvement, and neither is the 0.1GHz faster i7-4810MQ CPU, but the system is CHEAPER with the newer parts!! If they had just lowered the price on the older spec'd system by $100 bucks, I doubt anyone would be disappointed. But here we are with better specs, for less money, and people are complaining that it's not Maxwell/Broadwell. :-(

You can keep riding the "next best thing is just around the corner" train forever, but if you actually want a new computer, you need to get off at some point. Not that I don't understand wanting to stay on the train a little longer. I totally get that. I've been doing that myself for far too long! However, I suffer from OCD and "Analysis Paralysis" (as my girlfriend calls it), so others might want to learn from my bad example and jump before it's too late! ;-)

 

if you want to buy a laptop just for an upgrade, then its not worth it, but if you need a laptop coz your old one died (in my case, my alienware m18x is in my brother's hands now, sort of a graduation gift from me) then this is a great opportunity to buy one, the sager units that are out now are more cheaper than when they released the 700ms card batch, for me im not really going for an upgrade coz right now i have my wife's 5 year old laptop, but buying for my own, and consider the price drop after they pulled out the 700ms im really considering on pulling the trigger on this

sure it could be that 880m is similar to 780m, but now im buying the later gpu with less price compared to when im ordering 780m laptops back, of course with all the reason that i need it next month or so

the waiting game for gamers mind never ends, there is always a better tech around the corner, its how business is meant to be, what really matters if you want it so badly that you have to cash your way in, or stick with your rig and wait for the right time to buy a better and worthy-for-you gpu

 

No it's not always a waiting game. It's like this forum has become a place for parroting conventional nerd wisdom. People come learn a few one-liners and think they've learned something IT.

I personally smashed right into the 7970M upon release and apart from the Enduro issue it was new architecture and still up there competing with anything in its class 2 years later because everything after it thus far has been a rebrand both Green and Red. Was a nice investment then but I had to pay for early adoption with glitchy drivers that eventually got better, and bragging rights.

That's a useful conventional wisdom for you: Buy new architecture early and brag, but suffer drivers and instability, or settle for last gen solidity but always have that nerdy cringing feeling.

To the guy above me, how is your Razer Mamba doing? Mine is great but is there anything more glitchy than that Razer Synapse catastrophe?

 

If you have the money it is a pretty safe bet to get a new arch/gen nvidia chip as it launches.