Planning to get a new notebook, 780m or 880m?

I've been waiting for a while for the new Nvidia GPUs to come out. I'm looking for a 15" notebook with a 780m or an 880m. I waited until the 800 series came out before I decided to do anything. My budget is around $2,000 I was originally going to get an MSI; they had a pretty good 15" model for $2,000 which included a 780m, 16GB RAM, 1TB HDD + 128GB msata et al. I was hoping they'd have a similar model for the 800 series, but it seems the cheapest 15" you can get is $2,300 with the same everything except the screen is upgraded to a 3k, which i don't really want. I want to game on it, and if i'm not mistaken, it would be detrimental to try to game with a 3k screen. Even so, I can't downgrade the screen and it's minimum $2,300 anyway.

I looked tonight and Sager has a pretty fantastic deal with the 8265-s. For right about $2,000, I can get a 780m, 16GB RAM, 1TBHDD+240GBmsata, et al. I could drop to around $1,850 or so if i lower the msata and some other stuff, but I really love the value there. My question is if i should bite the bullet and get that model now or wait for the 880m and possibly get a far worse deal as I'm seeing with MSI. I mean I"m getting a few extra goodies for free, like the nicer screen and free IC DIamond stuff, which seems to be far superior to the 15" model MSI offered I guess what I'm asking is is the 880m worth the extra cash I'd be spending? I plan on playing some demanding games and I want ot play them on as high level as possible. The big thing I"m wondering about is the extra VRAM. Does it make a big difference? My understanding is it makes a difference with textures. How much of a difference in FPS would the 880m have over the 780m in, say, Skyrim with the HD texture pack? Does the extra 4GB of VRAM make a difference there? Just in general, how much faster should I expect the 880m to be compared to the 780m? I mean I'm loving the deal they have on the 8265-S, but if 880m makes a significant difference, I'll wait.

Thanks.

 

Can't really say much about the vid card. It's typically a 40 - 80% price jump for a 20% upgrade in performance.

But IMHO, here is where i think you can save a little bit of your money and help you make your decision. You don't have to spend extra for the stock IC diamond paste. Most manufacturer did a poor job on putting the paste. Eventually, you still have to redo it yourself.
As for the 15 inch screen........ well, it's a 15 inch. I won't recommend shelling out the dough for a nicer screen on a 15 inch. At least this is just my preference. I will use that extra money and get an external monitor.

I think if you really want to shell out the extra dough because your are planning to play some extra demanding games, you should spend more on the video card. The card may be expensive, but they don't drop in price much at all. It still cost an arm and an leg to buy a 680m card today, even though the card has been out for 2 years already.

 

I'd hold off on making a decision for a little bit longer and review the options in the coming week or so. You'll likely have your decision made for you.

 

The 780M is a great card, even if the new 8xxM series lives up to its much anticipated reputation. If you like the deal you found, contact the seller and ask about forthcoming deals with the new hardware. I think you'd be pretty happy with a 780M, but I don't want to push you into buying now and then feel an of ounce of regret when the 8xxM cards are released and flaunted.

The vRAM doesn't make a big difference in gaming, and 4 GB as it stands now is already more than enough for modern games. Performance gap = we'll have to see. The 8xxM series looks promising with its new architecture, although we won't see the new fabrication process for some time, so it won't be living up to its full potential at the initial launch.

 

Seriously people, if you have no clue just don't even give your opinion to confuse him even more.
880m = Rebrand of 780m and doesn't woth the waiting and most likely higher price.
I would not recomend MSI, cuz their current model only have 1 fan for GPU and CPU which is retarded. Would recomend Alienware which isnt even much more expensive than a MSI or just go with Clevo.
8 GB is completly useless, even most demanding games dont use more than 2GB usage. My Skyrim with 200 mods, ENB and lots of HD texture packs uses around 3GB.

 

Of what we know right now, the 880M is just a rebrand of the 780M, so not much of an upgrade. But possibly in July the true, or big upgraded 800 series will come out. These are called Maxwell, and should be much cooler and faster. In a week the Clevos/Sagers should have some 800 series, but except for the low end, they will not be Maxwell.

Skyrim is not that demanding of a game, when stock. Upgrading the textures and other things can make it more so. But even with 4K textures, you can still run it on 1G vram. It depends on resolution, but most of the time 2G is enough. But has Alex said he pushed his to 3G, and the 780M has 4G, so still fine.

New video cards are made for 4K resolutions, and future games. So those might need more vram.

 

With my 6990m I was having stutter problems running Skyrim cuz it had only 2GB and most my textures are NOT 4k. With only 1GB it would be unplayable.
Playing at 1920x1080 my vram usage is about 3GB, so the 4GB is enough, and for every other game its more than enough and you will rarely use even 2GB.
4GB is enough for 4k, but it doesnt make much sense since even a 780 Ti cant run demanding games with acceptable FPS in 4k.

 

If it saves you a decent bit the 870m is going to give a lot of bang for the buck.

 

From the early benchmarks I've seen, the new 870/880M versions out now are insignificantly faster than the 770/780M parts (just a few FPS more in most benchmarks). If you can get the newer, Kepler based 880M for roughly the same price, then go for it. If it's a significant jump in price, go for the 780M. If you are not in a rush, you might want to wait for the Maxwell based 880M (or whatever it will be called) due out later this year. At the very least, the Maxwell GPU will offer significant savings in power (and likely heat), and should be faster as well.

Currently only the GPUs below the 860M are Maxwell, as well as *some* 860 GPUs. Apparently there are 2 version of the new 860, one based on Kepler, and the other Maxwell. There are significant differences in the number of cores and clock speeds between the two 860 parts, but Nvidia says the overall performance is similar. Everything above the 860 is a refreshed Kepler part with boosted clock speeds (essentially, overclocked 770M or 780M).

From the early pricing on the new Sagers, it looks like we are not paying a premium on the new 870/880M series, as the overall system prices haven't jumped much, and, in fact, the system I had configured a few weeks ago is actually cheaper with the 880M!! Sager NP8265-S with i7-4800MQ & GTX 780M ($1824) vs NP8268-S with i7-4810MQ & GTX 880M ($1744)! Wow, I am so tempted to pull the trigger, but with the Maxwell parts coming out later this year (possibly as early as this summer) I'm really torn.

On the one hand, I desperately need a new computer. On the other hand, I want something that will last me as long as possible, so that means I should probably wait for Maxwell. But then again, there's always something better coming out, and if you play the waiting game, you might just be waiting forever (which is why I desperately need a new computer, I've waited so long that my old PC is woefully obsolete).

What I really need is a better paying job, so I can afford to upgrade more often. LOL!

 

when i saw the new cards out, the price of 880m sli is the same as 780m sli before (+600 usd) so now i doubt that the performance is that big of a difference, what questions me is why they pulled out the 780m, replaced it immediately with 880m (slightly higher clocked, but others the same) nvidia should've made the release more worth while not like a refresh (i can say refresh coz the 880m is like a 780 rebrand)

that being said, the order i put last time with 780m sli price compared to my new order for 880m sli is lower than before, same with 120hz screen respectively. for me the laptop price with these gpus did drop a little bit plus a new 880m card, but as like i said before its not much of an upgrade (or not worth it) so that's maybe why they pulled out 780m's to give space to the new 880m's which is (maybe) just similar or a little better to 780m

still in my case im already due to having a laptop since i need it for the next few months for work, initially i pulled the trigger in 780m sli 120hz screen, but got out of luck and the parts were phased out weeks ago, so now here iam pulling the trigger in 880m sli 120hz laptop with a slightly lower price compared to before, (before my prospect was sager np9380-s, changed to now sager np9377-s) which honestly looks better aesthetically and slightly lower price. the real thing i actually after for real is a dual gpu with a 120hz screen

i just hope my order will process soon, man had to wait till mid April for the release and hopefully they would post some reviews and actual benches for 880m in laptops

 

The 7 series had been out a little while in terms of gpu tech to be fair.

 

I am going to expand on an opinion I posted in another thread...

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 with the same hardware (the CPU/GPU got upgrades due to the refresh). The video cards are 780m and 880m and the CPU's are 4800MQ and 4810MQ respectively. So, we are paying less for more and you guys are complaining?

The 770m left me kinda cold. the 770m was so far behind the 780m that I could see springing for the 780m. With the bump in speed to the 870m vs. 770m I think the 870m is worth considering. It's not quite as fast as the 780m but it's $300 cheaper part. nVidia is throwing us a bone until the high end maxwell cards are ready. I am OK with that.

I have even considered going SLI with the 870m. Still pondering that because the bang for the buck is pretty good. The down side is when the new maxwells are released I would need to purchase 2 cards if I want to upgrade.

The 860m is a nice part for a small laptop that can't handle the heat of it's bigger brothers. I am looking at 17" models, so I am not overly concerned about heat. I briefly looked at the NP7338 with a 860m. I decided that I am really enamored with the backlit keyboards so that is on my "must have" options list. The NP7338 does not have a backlit keyboard option. It is also limited to 24GB RAM. Probably not much of a limit today though.

 

Look at this Sager model Sager NP8258-S from XoiticPC. Intel I7-4810MQ, 120 GB SSD, 1TB secondary drive, Nvidia GTX 880m 8GB, 16GB ram for $1919 without an OS. Your getting a much better deal than the older models with 780m, 10-15% increase in gpu. An upgraded CPU which no one has mentioned. These models are slowly being released since the 800 series gpu's only came out 2 days ago.

 

I saw the 8265-S I think it was and it looked to be a great deal. Just over $2,000 for what I want for a 15" notebook with the 880m. The only concern I have is whether that's a limited time promo or if we expect to see those S models for the next few weeks.

I see on some reseller sites that members of NBR get certain discounts, can I get any details? Thanks.

 

You would need to contact the sales team of each place to enquire.

 

Feel free to contact with any details you need. Email is typically best. Resellers are not allowed to share pricing details on the open forums.

 

Well isn't this fantastic - I was planning on placing an order soon... maybe sooner. That Sager NP8258-S does look like a beast.

 

Well its to keep the forums clean for everyone. Also yes that sager is a beast