Haswell Samsung Series 9?

[firegrill]

I'm planning on getting a 13.3 series 9 for university next year(fall 2013) and was wondering if I should wait for the new haswell chips.
I hear that the battery life for laptops have improved.

 

[jaguarskx]

Next year meaning fall 2013 or fall 2014?

If you are talking about fall 2013, then I would wait for Haswell. The is supposed to consume a little less power than current Ivy Bridge mobile CPUs. But it wont be like day and night difference. I believe the most energy efficient Haswell CPU ("Y" models) is suppose to be 7.5w but it will be giving up a lot of performance to reach that low power consumption. The "U" model Haswell CPUs used in most typical ultrabooks are expected to consume about 15w of power compared to 17w for current Ivy Bridge CPUs. Battery life also depends on the capacity (size of the batter). If you stick a smaller capacity battery with a Haswell CPU, it might have shorter battery life than a slightly larger battery with an Ivy Bridge CPU.

If you are talking about fall 2014, then I recommend you wait for the Broadwell mobile CPUs. That's assuming you don't need a laptop this year.

 

[firegrill]

Next year meaning fall 2013 or fall 2014?

If you are talking about fall 2013, then I would wait for Haswell. The is supposed to consume a little less power than current Ivy Bridge mobile CPUs. But it wont be like day and night difference. I believe the most energy efficient Haswell CPU ("Y" models) is suppose to be 7.5w but it will be giving up a lot of performance to reach that low power consumption. The "U" model Haswell CPUs used in most typical ultrabooks are expected to consume about 15w of power compared to 17w for current Ivy Bridge CPUs. Battery life also depends on the capacity (size of the batter). If you stick a smaller capacity battery with a Haswell CPU, it might have shorter battery life than a slightly larger battery with an Ivy Bridge CPU.

If you are talking about fall 2014, then I recommend you wait for the Broadwell mobile CPUs. That's assuming you don't need a laptop this year.

Yeah fall 2013.
Would the ultrabooks that come out as soon as haswell comes out take full advantage of the new cpu?
Usually the first models with the newer chipset aren't as good as the ones to come later.

 

[rustylongwood]

It's true that Intel often releases a few refreshed processors about 6 months in which run at slightly faster speeds (usually just 0.1 or 0.2 ghz) in the middle of one of the tick-tocks. These performance differences are minimal. There's always going to be something better in the pipeline. I would wait for Haswell chips to debut in most laptops as the energy efficiency is going to be the biggest factor there. If you wait or not it's not as though you'll be missing out on anything enormous, Haswell is not that great of a leap over Ivy Bridge performance-wise.