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4th Gen i7 laptops future proof?

sportwarrior

sportwarrior

Limp Gawd
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Joined
Jun 12, 2007
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311
Hey all, quick question. My buddy is in the market for a new gaming laptop in the $1500-2000 range. He'd like to keep it at 15.6" and as future proof as possible. He's found some nice packages, but a lot of them have 4th Gen i7 processors instead of 5th or 6th gen. How much will that affect the longevity of the computer? Is there a serious deficiency between the generations?

The computer he's currently looking and is pretty beefy otherwise... Gtx980, 32gb ram, etc, so the processor (i7-4720HQ) is the one question. Any thoughts?
 
Gaming laptops (and laptops in general) aren't known for being future proof. Software/hardware improves too quickly. That in mind, that Gigabyte and cpu look pretty sweet. 4c/8t, 6M cache, 3.6 turbo. I'd be curious what it turbos up to with 4 cores running medium loads, but otherwise should be solid for at least another ~3 years which is helluva long lifespan for a 1080p gaming laptop. Had to laugh at the "4k ready" marketing nonsense tho.

I really like the swappable odd/hdd slot on that thing. The 128GB ssd is pretty small for an OS and gaming/software drive, especially if you have more than 1-2 AAA games installed. That odd/hdd slot is fucking gold to negate most of those worries.

All in all, looks like your friend has picked out a pretty badass piece of kit. Make sure he gets some closed headphones tho, the vid and cpu are gonna make that thing a jet-engine of fan noise.

Disclaimer: Outside of Asus' Zen and Dell's xps lines, I ain't paid attention to what's going on with laptops lately, so no clue about what is a good value. Maybe that thing should be priced $300 lower/higher, but I'd have no idea.
 
There's about a 6% difference clock per clock between Haswell and Skylake. Not a difference I would worry about. In a laptop you're far more likely to be GPU limited than CPU. If he is Happy with the GPU in the laptop, I'd say go for it. Not super sure if there a better discrete mobile GPU than the 980, but i don't believe so. Battery life improvements between CPU generations are usually a negligible factor when considering gaming laptops due to the low likelihood of gaming on battery power.
 
Thanks, fellas. He's leaning toward the Gigabyte system at this point, although he's also looking at an MSI system with a 970gtx for a couple hundred dollars cheaper. Personally, I'm pretty jealous. As indicated in my sig, my desktop is woefully out of date and I'm not in a position to either upgrade or build a new one at this point. I'll be sitting on the sidelines when Battlefront comes out in a month :-(
 
efishta said:
There's about a 6% difference clock per clock between Haswell and Skylake. Not a difference I would worry about. In a laptop you're far more likely to be GPU limited than CPU. If he is Happy with the GPU in the laptop, I'd say go for it. Not super sure if there a better discrete mobile GPU than the 980, but i don't believe so. Battery life improvements between CPU generations are usually a negligible factor when considering gaming laptops due to the low likelihood of gaming on battery power.
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Better efficiency also means better cooling, which means less heat, less noise, or better turbo clocks when stressed, or both.

I wouldn't get a 4th gen now. It's already close to 3 years old. I'd get the new gen for efficiency's sake. And additional features like M.2 slots.
 
M76 said:
Better efficiency also means better cooling, which means less heat, less noise, or better turbo clocks when stressed, or both.

I wouldn't get a 4th gen now. It's already close to 3 years old. I'd get the new gen for efficiency's sake. And additional features like M.2 slots.
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I have to agree, wait till November and grab a deal on a 6th Gen. Why buy something that is already so old and can't be upgraded.
 
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