Laptop Gamer, should I wait for Pascal?

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tverma

Honorable
Nov 13, 2012
24
0
10,560
Hey Guys,
I am in the market for a gaming laptop. My budget is a $1000 or less. I know this more or less restricts me to GTX960m. I understand that the 960m is just a Nvidia overclock of the 860m with extremely minute differences. I would certainly like more bang for my buck but I have already been playing games at what people consider unplayable.
My current laptop's specs are:
HP dm4-Pavilion 2191-us
Intel Core-i5 2430m with Intel HD 3000
4gb RAM
I have toughed it out with this laptop for 4 years and its still serving me well for my non-gaming needs. I actually played AC: Black Flag @10-14 fps. You do what you have to do with what you have, I know. But now, I have literally reached a wall gaming-wise. I am unable to play any new games unless its like minus 10fps which is like my threshold for unplayable. I play BF3 @ low settings and manage 15-20 fps after I reduce my res all the way to 600X400. So yes, I need a new computer. I am severely annoyed by NVIDIAs oversight with the GTX 960m and I'm not going to be buying another system for 4-5 years. And with directx12, Nvidia actually performs poorer than AMD in dx12. Yes Nvidia had the upperhand dx11 but things have changed. I would like the maximum bang for my buck and people always come up with "you'll keep waiting forever" because the new best thing is right around the corner, etc. So, I just wanted advice I guess. Should I wait? I know a lot of new things came out like Skylake, DDR4, TB3 (The idea of external gpus is like my favorite thing about it), etc. So feel free to weigh in people... all advice welcome! Thanks
 
Solution
I would suggest waiting, but it could be Q3 2016. If in a move to maximize profit Nvidia only improves the performance by 10-15% than the rest of the benefits from the double node shrink will come in efficiency. 28nm to 16FF allows for around 70% less power use. In a desktop this matters less to gamers but in a laptop it means running a lot cooler. This will allow for quieter, thinner, lighter and cooler laptops. Nvidia is pushing more power in laptops; they recently announced support for full desktop 980gtx in laptops. If they push mobile performance and match the 980gtx desktop with a 16nmFF Pascal which draws much less power then you will have some great graphics power that runs cooler than today's mobile cards. Pascal will...

David Harrison

Estimable
Jul 23, 2014
2
0
4,510


 

David Harrison

Estimable
Jul 23, 2014
2
0
4,510
Asus G751JL 17.3 inch Notebook (Intel Core i7-4750HQ 2 GHz, 16 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD Plus 128 GB SSD, Windows 8.1) was for sale on Amazon for £999 , not sure what it would be in the states , got a 3DMark11 of 10500 , and with Gsync screen Assassins Creed Syndicate was silky smooth. Will probably be waiting a year until the gtx 1070m comes out, so if you can get a gtx 970m for $1000 i would get one as will run all current games smoothly.