Mobile quad core before September, wait or buy now?

[EliteRetard]

Seems like Broadwell has been out for a while now, but only low end poor performance chips. I hear Skylake will be out towards the end of the year...is Intel just going to skip the performance mobile Broadwell?

I'm going to need a high performance laptop for school and trying to decide if I should buy now or wait.

I was given a list of required specs:

Quad i7 (specifically mentioned 4th gen)
12GB RAM (16GB recommended)
1GB GDDR5 GPU (2GB, Nvidia, recommended)
500GB HDD storage (SSD recommended)

I originally thought I'd be able to do this for $1k...boy was that wrong. Then I though $1.5k, NOPE. So here I am sitting at $2k now and thinking how terrible it is to spend that much on 2 year old CPUs and 4 year old GPUs. I'd be so much happier if that much money got me a modern system that could actually last through the early years on the job as well (4-5yrs total).

 

[jpiniero]

Er... I found one that meets those specs pretty easily under 2k. Then again it does have Windows 8.1 so you'd have to dump that and put 7 Pro on there.

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/lenovo/y-series/y50-uhd/

 

[tenks]

the new macbook pro's got updated with mobile broadwell i5s and i7 dual-cores

 

[Idontcare]

I'm going to need a high performance laptop for school and trying to decide if I should buy now or wait.

I was given a list of required specs:

Quad i7 (specifically mentioned 4th gen)
12GB RAM (16GB recommended)
1GB GDDR5 GPU (2GB, Nvidia, recommended)
500GB HDD storage (SSD recommended)

You are required to have a quad i7 laptop for school? To do what?

I mean, sure, if I were to go to college these days then I'd "require" myself to have nothing but the best hardware available. Hack the planet and all that.

But the school requires it? Such high-end specs like that? I'm impressed, someone at that school or college department must have a well-greased relationship with the local Intel account rep.

Er... I found one that meets those specs pretty easily under 2k. Then again it does have Windows 8.1 so you'd have to dump that and put 7 Pro on there.

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/lenovo/y-series/y50-uhd/

Holy cow, haven't looked at laptops lately but the hardware specs in the link you dug up are simply beautiful, and the price is sublime. I so want!

 

[Enigmoid]

y50 has a crap screen and terrible throttling. Pass it up.

 

[jpiniero]

y50 has a crap screen and terrible throttling. Pass it up.

I wasn't suggesting he buy it; took me like 5 mins to find something that met his specs.

 

[Burpo]

Wait until later this year.. You'll be surprised at what you can get after July.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Are you in the US? Can you shop from new egg? There are several on this page that meet those criteria for less than 1500.00. Most only have 8 gb of ram, but a few do have 16gb, and on these gaming laptops, I would think the ram would be upgradable, but it would vary by model. gaming laptops

Or try the custom gaming computer sites. ibuypower for instance has an MSI GE60 for 1199.00 that fits the bill, even has 16gb of ram.

 

[EliteRetard]

Looked again, and it actually said gen 3 or newer (xeon e7 is listed as well). Doesn't really change anything.

Anyway, I am in the US and I appreciate the recommends...but I'm still curious what if anything is coming down the line.

Burpo, you got a lead you can share? Or is this one of those I have an NDA but cant say I have an NDA but I'm going to hint that I do because "reasons"?

 

[escrow4]

In a few seconds, voila!:

http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np7155-clevo-n155sd-eta-03202015-p-8083.html

- i7-4720HQ
- 960M 2GB GDDR3 Maxwell
- 16GB RAM extra $40
- 512GB mSATA SSD for extra $285
- 1TB HDD
- 1080p matte screen
- $0 to yank branding

for less than $1400 . . . you can up the budget for an IPS panel (check that may already be an IPS) and a beefier GPU in other models.

EDIT: $1500 YES!

 

[know of fence]

Anand always talked about the "back to school" buying season and competitors having new stuff out by then.
Technology prediction is a bit like astrology, right now the product cycles aligned so adversely that anything you buy before Virgo or Libra is destined for a much shorter life.

 

[Ratman6161]

There will be Broadwell i7U's out this summer. Intel lists them as being released Q1 2015 here:http://ark.intel.com/products/84995/Intel-Core-i7-5650U-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3_20-GHz

Of course as the latest and greatest they won't be cheap. But that does mean you may see good pricing on i7-47xxHQ based system (may be why the Lenovo's linked to above are priced the way they are).

 

[NTMBK]

Does it need to be mobile, or could you keep a small desktop in your dorm? I'd always choose a static workstation and a mobile note taking Ultrabook over a paving slab of a laptop.