Wait for Broadwell/Maxwell, or buy now?

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mikelz85

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So I've been looking for a gaming laptop, or perhaps a laptop to game on. I've seen used options for 770m/870m laptops in the $900-$1200 range. Mostly I play WoW, some with some FPS. This laptop would also be used in a trip to Australia, in late October (however I could buy something much cheaper if waiting for better hardware is a good idea). I've been looking mostly at 17" models. Maybe there are no light 17" models. If I went down to 15", I'd want something that was very mobile.

One thing that I don't like about gaming laptops, is that they seem to be very heavy (9-10 lbs) and not have very good battery life at all (1hr), using the dedicated graphics is just bad news on battery. While I would mostly play with a mouse, I like the idea of being able to use a laptop while at work, or on the bus, and these beasts don't seem ideal for that. I think they are about twice as heavy as my wifes old core 2 duo vostro, and that thing doesn't seem 'light' to me at 5-6lbs.

I'm wondering if I'd be better off waiting until broadwell and or maxwell updates to come out to make a purchase? I know broadwell has great battery life, and perhaps decent GPU power, obviously intergrated graphics use less power. Also there should be maxwell refreshes of the 880/870m eventually, which might also offer better battery life.

I like the idea of having something 'ultrabook' like that I can game on, but I'm not sure what this would look like hardware wise. I'm also not sure how long the battery life, and how low the weight can get. I wouldn't want something gimped, but I don't really need a ton of GPU power for what I'm doing. Obviously though, if it's going to weigh 8-10lbs and have crap battery life, I might as well get the most powerful GPU I can afford.

That said, am I going to be disappointed down the road if I grab a 10lb 770m/780m for under $1000 now?

Finally, is there anything I need to know about brands or models? Are there some that I should avoid like the plague?

Thanks for the help guys, I feel like I'm relatively knowledgeable with desktop builds, but when it comes to laptops, I'm not very clued in.
 
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Reality is battery life is going to be crap with any dedicated GPU gaming on a laptop, and I doubt it'll be significantly better even with Broadwell and Maxwell. There's some reasonable (as in 5 lbs or so) gaming laptops now like MSI Ghost and Gigabyte P34G but again, battery life while gaming will not work out anytime soon; they're portable but not mobile, so to speak.
 
Trombe said:
Reality is battery life is going to be crap with any dedicated GPU gaming on a laptop, and I doubt it'll be significantly better even with Broadwell and Maxwell. There's some reasonable (as in 5 lbs or so) gaming laptops now like MSI Ghost and Gigabyte P34G but again, battery life while gaming will not work out anytime soon; they're portable but not mobile, so to speak.
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Yes I'm seeing those, and I'm wondering if I won't be better off buying something like the ghost, even if it is much more expensive than an older model.

Though, I suppose the main question is whether or not the integrated GPU on broadwell is a great improvement, since that would make a big difference with battery life staying on integrated.
 
The rumors are pegging Broadwell GPUs at 30-40% faster than Haswell's Gen7 GPUs. That's a decent increase, but I don't know think it's going to deliver the kind of performance you really want. Good enough for WoW, certainly, but for a lot of shooters at high-quality settings? That's a tougher sell. Dedicated GPUs are still, for the most part, much faster in the configurations for which they tend to be available.

I'd lean toward a machine with a dedicated GPU, a good low-power CPU and something that supports NVIDIA Optimus. That's as good a "have your cake and eat it too" solution as you're going to get for the time being.
 
I think I might be better off just waiting for broadwell.

It looks like many laptops (if not all?) won't even run the dedicated card at all without power from the wall.

When someone says the laptop gets ~1hr of life gaming, I was thinking that was with the dedicated card.

Regardless, having a more powerful integrated graphics option, with excellent battery life, in a small form factor, seems more ideal. Maybe I'll look into one with a dedicated GPU as well, not sure.

ATM it seems like integrated GPUs aren't powerful enough, and the 850m or 860m in a 4-5lb 17" package is quite expensive.
 
The GTX 750m is roughly 3x the performance of the HD4400. The GTX 850m is roughly 50% faster than the GTX 750m. if you want anywhere near discrete gaming performance (especially in the 770m to 870m performance range) there is no way Broadwell will deliver that when even a 2x performance improvement is very unlikely (current estimates are closer to 50% depending on what Intel decides on market placement).

You won't get long battery life under a gaming type workload even with integrated graphics. Also discrete graphics draw more power because it's doing more work not because of an efficiency issue.

What 17 inch 4-5lbs laptop have you found in general? There is a 17 inch Acer with a GTX 850m for roughly 1k but it is 6.5lbs I believe?
 
From what I've read, laptops aren't going to be available until '15 with Broadwell. If you've read different, please post a link.

So, if you are going in October, buy now.
 
jimh425 said:
From what I've read, laptops aren't going to be available until '15 with Broadwell. If you've read different, please post a link.

So, if you are going in October, buy now.
Click to expand...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/18/us-intel-chips-idUSBREA4H08P20140518
"I can guarantee for holiday, and not at the last second of holiday," [Intel CEO] Krzanich said in an interview. "Back to school - that's a tight one. Back to school you have to really have it on-shelf in July, August. That's going to be tough."
Click to expand...

Now, that's not to say every partner will get chips in volume for holidays 2014, more than likely you're going to see Apple's refreshed Macbook as one of the first out of the gate in any volume, followed by other premium models.
 
So far Intel has only indicated that Broadwell-Y (ULX) chips, now branded as Intel Core-M, will be shipping in volume to manufacturers for devices to appear for the holiday market.

Might hear more details/news at IDF next month.
 
In something like an optimus setup the performance of the IGP is pretty irrelevant now, especially since the HD4600 supports 4k output and triple display when using 2 external displayport monitors.
 
It will make little difference. At stock the mobile chips are fine.
 
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