Is it worth purchasing a new laptop this summer or are more powerful processors on the horizon?

[smoez]

Hello all,

My current laptop: HP Envy M6 1184ca is about two and a half years old.

I've already had to replace the motherboard once and now the screen hinge is breaking off. I'm headed back to university next year and wondering if it would be worth picking up a laptop this summer. Not in a Comp Sci field and program does not demand extensive computing power but I'm a fairly regular pc user (ie. Occasional gaming mostly office suite software for school) but still enjoy high speed machines that have a nice lifespan - I won't be getting another "ultra book"

I know every ~2 years Moore's law kicks in effect so i figure there would probably be a newer and faster line of processors coming out soon and I want to avoid buying an obsolete machine.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

edit: I figured I might as well post specs of the machine for some insight

http/support.hp.com/ca-en/document/c03513161

CPU: 2.3 to 3.2 GHz AMD Quad-Core A10-4600M
RAM: 8GB DDR3 SD RAM

GFX: AMD Radeon HD 7660G + 7670M Switchable
HDD: 750GB

 

[jaguarskx]

Intel will be releasing the 6th generation Skylake Core CPUs in September. I am guessing you have a 3rd generation Ivy Bridge Core CPU in your current laptop. There has been slight improvement in performance over the generations; 4th gen is about 6% more powerful than 3rd gen, 5th gen is about another 5%. Preliminary benchmarks indicates that 6th gen tacks on another 5%. That means a 2.0GHz Skylake CPU is probably equivalent to an Ivy Bridge CPU running at 2.33GHz; about 16.9% in total. We will probably not see any official Skylake benchmark results until sometime next month.

Integrated graphics performance should increase much more than the CPU performance. Ever since the release of the Sandy Bridge generation CPUs with the Intel HD 3000 graphics core Intel has been increasing the mainstream Intel HD (4000, 4400, 5500) graphics performance by roughly 15% - 20% per generation. I suspect Skylake will maintain that trend. On the lower end of the scale (15% performance increases) the Skylake Intel HD graphics core would be about 52% more powerful than the Intel HD 4000 in an Ivy Bridge generation CPU. Actual performance increase will depend on the specific game though.

 

[velo3100]

I would say no. Unless your course demands a lot of cpu power which most courses don't I wouldn't bother waiting for the new cpu's to be released. The best option is to wait for win 10 so that old laptop prices will drop.

 

[smoez]

Intel will be releasing the 6th generation Skylake Core CPUs in September. I am guessing you have a 3rd generation Ivy Bridge Core CPU in your current laptop. There has been slight improvement in performance over the generations; 4th gen is about 6% more powerful than 3rd gen, 5th gen is about another 5%. Preliminary benchmarks indicates that 6th gen tacks on another 5%. That means a 2.0GHz Skylake CPU is probably equivalent to an Ivy Bridge CPU running at 2.33GHz; about 16.9% in total. We will probably not see any official Skylake benchmark results until sometime next month.

Integrated graphics performance should increase much more than the CPU performance. Ever since the release of the Sandy Bridge generation CPUs with the Intel HD 3000 graphics core Intel has been increasing the mainstream Intel HD (4000, 4400, 5500) graphics performance by roughly 15% - 20% per generation. I suspect Skylake will maintain that trend. On the lower end of the scale (15% performance increases) the Skylake Intel HD graphics core would be about 52% more powerful than the Intel HD 4000 in an Ivy Bridge generation CPU. Actual performance increase will depend on the specific game though.

Do you think this next generation will match or even overtake AMD in terms of integrated GFX performance? From my understanding Intel machines are superior in CPU power but AMD generally wins in graphics performance in comparison

http/www.pcworld.com/article/255838/amds_trinity_processors_vs_intels_ivy_bridge.html

 

[jaguarskx]

I would say no. Unless your course demands a lot of cpu power which most courses don't I wouldn't bother waiting for the new cpu's to be released. The best option is to wait for win 10 so that old laptop prices will drop.

The release of Windows 10 will have no real impact on laptop prices since all laptops with Win 7 and Win 8 will get a free upgrade to Win 10. However, prices of current laptops should be discounted soon if not already because laptops using Skylake CPUs will be out in about 2 months.

 

[jaguarskx]

Do you think this next generation will match or even overtake AMD in terms of integrated GFX performance?

In actuality Intel iGPUs have already matched / overtaken AMD's iGPUs... at least according to synthetic benchmarks and some game benchmarks from Notebookcheck.net. I will be using the following link for reference. The middle column ranks the GPUs in order of performance based on actual benchmarks or what they expect the performance to be based on the specs for recently announced / released GPUs.

http/www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Iris-Pro-Graphics-6200.125593.0.html

Based on the link, the most powerful current and recently announced integrated graphics cores are as follows starting with the most powerful (only a partial listing)

Intel HD Iris Pro 6200
GeForce 940m
Intel HD Iris Pro 5200
Radeon R7 (Carrizo)
Radeon R7 (Kaveri)
GeForce 920m
Radeon R6 (Carrizo)
Radeon R6 (Kaveri) - only in the FX-7400p
Intel HD 5600
Radeon HD 8650G - A10-5750
GeForce 820m
Intel HD Iris 6100
Radeon R6 (Kaveri) - FX-7300
Intel HD Iris 6000
Intel HD Iris 5100
GeForce GT 540m
Radeon HD 8610G - A10-5745M
Intel HD 4600
Intel HD 5500
Radeon R5 (Kaveri)
GeForce 710m
Intel HD 5000
Radeon HD 8550G - A8-5550M
Intel HD 4400

CPUs using the Intel Iris Pro 6200 were only announced last month so finding a laptop right now that uses such a laptop may be difficult. The dual core i5-5350H (Intel list price $289 when purchased in bulk) and a few quad core i7 HQ CPUs will have that graphics core. The least expensive will be the i7-5750HQ which Intel lists for $434 when purchased in bulk.

The Intel Iris Pro 5200 is in high end 4th generation Haswell CPUs so they are currently in the market. The problem is finding a laptop that uses it because such a laptop will cost over $1,000 and most people prefer a laptop with dedicated graphics in that price range.

AMD's Carrizo generation APUs have been announced in June, but it is unknown how long it will take for laptop using the higher end AMD APUs using the Radon R6 and R7 (Carrizo) graphic cores to be released. It took around 5 months for a laptop to be released using the FX-7400p APU which has the faster version of the Radeon R6 (Kaveri) graphics core.

Assuming the mainstream Skylake generation graphics core will be called the "Intel HD 6600", I would guess that it's performance will be between the Intel HD 6000 and the lower end Radeon R6 (Kaveri) graphics core that is in the FX-7300 APU.

Edit - I threw in some dedicated GPUs for reference.