Buy a laptop now or just wait for Haswell?

[glutesontheloose]

Hello Guys, been months now since I planned to buy a laptop for school and gaming. I might be able to buy one next month but I am a bit skeptical about buying it right now when I know that Haswell is about to be released in a couple of months or so. My choice of laptop for now is an Asus N56VZ and I was wondering which is the best decision. Should I go and buy that N56 now or wait for Haswell-Powered Laptops to come?

Take note that I might be needing the laptop for school (which for me starts somewhere in June). I plan to use the laptop that I would get for programming and also gaming but the reason why I had to make this decision is that there is only one source for me to get that Asus Laptop and it requires some sort of special request shipping from the store that I went to and its much more expensive.

Now this will be the first laptop I would have so I am not sure what month new laptops gets released worldwide. Also, is Haswell really worth the wait? I do heard that its Integrated Graphics was almost on par with a Nvidia GT650M (which the Asus N56VZ has) but other than that I know nothing about what Haswell would bring to the table.

[orangecat]

Depends how much money you have to spend I would look at a Mac Book pro yes its a amc but its got a pretty good dedicated GPU aswell as integrated and you can always install windows plus im almost cretin there will be a haswell CPU change coming soon.

[glutesontheloose]

Depends how much money you have to spend I would look at a Mac Book pro yes its a amc but its got a pretty good dedicated GPU aswell as integrated and you can always install windows plus im almost cretin there will be a haswell CPU change coming soon.

Money doesn't really matter right now since I am not the one actually paying for it. What I want to know is if you're on the same situation as I am would you buy a laptop now or wait for Haswell Laptops to come and what could be the reason?

Macbook is too expensive (I know I said money doesn't matter but I want to limit the cost lol). I could probably just get 2 Lenovo Y580s instead of a Macbook. Plus, most of the programs I use are on Windows.

[ravens2792]

I'd say wait for Haswell, because the focus of this generation is on power efficiency and increasing battery life in notebooks. Also the integrated graphics for certain skews will have dedicated on die dram, which should improve performance immensely. While Haswell might not be a huge leap forward IPC wise, its lowered power consumption should be more important for a mobile device.

[Huntsman]

For your use it's not important if it's Haswell or no Haswell. Since your primary concern is programming which isn't really taking any advantage of the new integrated graphics nor does the Haswell provide significant enough performance boost over Ivy Bridge. Also, for gaming you'll still probably want a discrete graphics to power most games at decent framerate. I am currently using a N56VZ and the 650M isn't really suited for most newer games at playable framerate. So for your case I would just recommend you get a laptop with high end discrete graphics and with an i5 should be more than enough.

From past experience the only real benefit from moving to newer architechture is longer battery life and that's about it. The improvement in performance isn't very significant and can probably be ignored altogether. In terms of internal graphics it is still not practical for generally new titles, a higher end discrete graphics would serve you better.

[glutesontheloose]

For your use it's not important if it's Haswell or no Haswell. Since your primary concern is programming which isn't really taking any advantage of the new integrated graphics nor does the Haswell provide significant enough performance boost over Ivy Bridge. Also, for gaming you'll still probably want a discrete graphics to power most games at decent framerate. I am currently using a N56VZ and the 650M isn't really suited for most newer games at playable framerate. So for your case I would just recommend you get a laptop with high end discrete graphics and with an i5 should be more than enough.

From past experience the only real benefit from moving to newer architechture is longer battery life and that's about it. The improvement in performance isn't very significant and can probably be ignored altogether. In terms of internal graphics it is still not practical for generally new titles, a higher end discrete graphics would serve you better.

Good to know someone who own the same laptop that I plan to buy. And yeah that is what I am thinking of right now since Haswell might just have better power saving feature and thats pretty much it. I have researched a lot about 650M and its pretty good enough. I do not plan on gaming @ 1080p since it doesn't really bother me that much just as long as I could play games on it. I have a friend that has an Acer Laptop with 630M and he could play decently on it and because of that, I am pretty confident that the 650M could hold the games that I plan to play.

Anyways thanks for the input! :)

[eshbop]

I'm in a similar situation, minus the gaming. I need a laptop now for uni but the promised extra battery life from Haswell has me waiting. The differences between Ivy and Haswell for laptops isn't going to huge, especially since your going to using a discrete GPU. If battery life is a concern then maybe wait. Otherwise if you need it now or before Haswell drops I don't think you'll regret getting now.

[Huntsman]

For your use it's not important if it's Haswell or no Haswell. Since your primary concern is programming which isn't really taking any advantage of the new integrated graphics nor does the Haswell provide significant enough performance boost over Ivy Bridge. Also, for gaming you'll still probably want a discrete graphics to power most games at decent framerate. I am currently using a N56VZ and the 650M isn't really suited for most newer games at playable framerate. So for your case I would just recommend you get a laptop with high end discrete graphics and with an i5 should be more than enough.

From past experience the only real benefit from moving to newer architechture is longer battery life and that's about it. The improvement in performance isn't very significant and can probably be ignored altogether. In terms of internal graphics it is still not practical for generally new titles, a higher end discrete graphics would serve you better.

I do not plan on gaming @ 1080p since it doesn't really bother me that much just as long as I could play games on it.

Well, you couldn't, since the native resolution on the N56VZ is 1366x768 anyway.

I have just finihsed Crysis 3 on low settings and I got an average of 40 fps on it. But when you get into intense firefights the fps will tank down to a really REALLy unplayable framerate wher everything will just go slow motion and I died from taking too much damage. I bought this notebook only because it has better sound than most laptops and not really for the graphics. Although the graphics is a really nice thing to have. The thing is, I usually play online FPS at 800x600 so the graphics didn't bother me that much at all. You should look into those gaming notebooks if you really want the horsepower to play games smoothly.

[AEBA05]

I say buy now, the performance difference between current gen and Haswell seems like it's going to be small so it shouldn't make much of a difference at all. If battery life is important to you than wait for Haswell because it's promising better battery life.

[Scirca]

In my opinion, if you have a dire need, get a laptop now, but otherwise, it won't hurt to wait and see how things turn out once Haswell is released. For the most part, I'll stay away from haswell for a while due to the inflation in pricing upon initial release, and if it has some great feature that I'm not already getting from Ivy bridge then I'll take the plunge.

Word of advice: stay away from Apple products, they're more of a fashion statement then they are useful.

[glutesontheloose]

For your use it's not important if it's Haswell or no Haswell. Since your primary concern is programming which isn't really taking any advantage of the new integrated graphics nor does the Haswell provide significant enough performance boost over Ivy Bridge. Also, for gaming you'll still probably want a discrete graphics to power most games at decent framerate. I am currently using a N56VZ and the 650M isn't really suited for most newer games at playable framerate. So for your case I would just recommend you get a laptop with high end discrete graphics and with an i5 should be more than enough.

From past experience the only real benefit from moving to newer architechture is longer battery life and that's about it. The improvement in performance isn't very significant and can probably be ignored altogether. In terms of internal graphics it is still not practical for generally new titles, a higher end discrete graphics would serve you better.

There are some models that has 1080p Screens. :)