To buy or not to buy?

[Thebadg3r]

Been looking into buying a gaming laptop. Would love to pick up one with a 970m to play a bit smoother but would settle for a 960m. $1600-$2000 and $800-$1000.

I am currently in doubt because of the new gpu's and Intel is releasing their new sky lake. Is it a bad time to buy or should I wait for the next gen/price drops??

 

[jaguarskx]

If you can wait, then wait. If not then buy whatever laptop now that you feel is good for your needs.

To the best of my knowledge, the mobile variants of the Pascal GPU are expected to be released mid 2016 which means June / July. However, you may need to wait a bit longer for more laptops with nVidia's next gen GPU to appear in the market that would actually interest you.

I think there should be a decent number of laptops with nVidia's Pascal GPUs in August because of back to school sales. There should be even more around Thanksgiving in time for the Christmas shopping frenzy. But I would say that if you can hold out until late July / early August, then do so. Otherwise buy something now if it catches your eye.


As for Intel's new CPUs... Kaby Lake... I have not kept up with mobile CPUs in the past few month. Why? Because I am trying to prevent myself from buying a new laptop. I do not expect much of a performance increase in terms of processing power. Probably only about 5% better performance compared to a Skylake CPU with the same number of core and same clockspeed. Some bits of info that I do know are as follows:

- Native USB 3.1 support
- Full hardware support for 10-bit HPEC and VP9 video to more easily decode and playback 4k video
- Kaby Lake is only compatible with Windows 10. It will not support previous versions of Windows.

 

[Thebadg3r]

Thanks for the quick reply.

So you're saying they are going to create the same cards (960m-980m) but as Pascal variants??

 

[jaguarskx]

I assume the Pascal GPUs replacing the GTX 960m to GTX 980m will be the GTX 1060m to GTX 1080m.

 

[Kenneth1987]

From my personal view, GTX970m is great, it depends on what’s your favorite game.
And what’s your purpose to wait for new gen GPU? If you want to save some or you could wait for maybe for 6 months you could wait, yet it always cost time. Do you have any idea about your gaming laptop except for gpu, Alienware and MSI might be a good choice because for their gaming features.

 

[Thebadg3r]

From my personal view, GTX970m is great, it depends on what’s your favorite game.
And what’s your purpose to wait for new gen GPU? If you want to save some or you could wait for maybe for 6 months you could wait, yet it always cost time. Do you have any idea about your gaming laptop except for gpu, Alienware and MSI might be a good choice because for their gaming features.

I'd rather wait for the next gen but I'm sure the prices will be up there. If they are I'm hoping for a price drop. Do you think it will take that long (6 months)? For the 970m I was thinking of the MSI GS60 Ghost Pro (1080p).