Looking to buy a JS. However with Star Citizen, Maxwell and Broadwell coming...

[OldTimez]

Heya guys. I've been following hardware news and such since I made my first (uninformed) notebook purchase way back in 2011.


I have not touched my rusty dust filled desktop since my laptop purchase and have never looked back. Whilst desktops has the advantage of being cheaper in the long run because you can upgrade them, I still very much prefer the all in one versatility of laptops.


Laptops have improved so much since the 500 series I've been apart however the more I look into information of specs etc the more I see just how big the disparity between laptop and desktop power is. Of course benchmarks are different from the real world, which is why I'm looking for any hardware experts that can chime in exactly, what a gaming laptop would compare to in desktop equivalent.


I myself am looking at purchasing an ASUS G750JS but we can look at the JZ version which has an i7 4700HQ and a GTX880m.

1) Using the Futuremark website it says a 780M or 880M is merely a GTX760 on a desktop. Is this true? Watching Linex tech tips review of a JZ he compared it to a GTX770 and the I7 4700HQ to an I7 4770 which to my knowledge sounds like exaggeration. Benchmarks says its very close to an i5-4670K. Now this is where I'm confused because an the i5 can boost up to 3.8Ghz yet the 4700 can only reach 3.2. Nowadays desktops are clocking CPUs at 4Ghz+. It would be nice if someone could help me understand CPUs performance better. All I know is that from my looking around the sediment of the 4700 is that it's lacking.


2) I myself am looking to play the upcoming Star Citizen when it comes out. Even with optimization I am only expecting 40+ FPS on low-medium settings at 1920x1080 with the universe filled with ships with a JS. I have been waiting for Broadwell (because with my current knowledge I believe the common 4700 is underpowered for the cryengine) and forever with Maxwell. (Shakes angry fist at Nvidia) After 3 years of the Kepler generation how big of a difference is people realistically expecting a Maxwell 70-80 would give us to games such as Crysis 3? Notebookcheck currently shows the GTX880m giving 30ish FPS on ultra. CPU increases?


3) Lastly for my personal circumstances my first and only laptop purchase was an Alienware M14 with a GT 555m and i5-2430m @ 2.4GHz. (Considering how much money I threw at this laptop, I can see why after learning a bit people say Alienware is overpriced :P) It's been a long time of waiting and I'm not sure my spendable income is common to others, but I can only really shell out the $2350 every 4 ish years for a new one since I'm very poor. (its £1400 here in UK for a J S compared to $1800 in US. Tax destroys our wallets.)

However right now my laptops about had it, and I'm frustrated and fed up at its inadequacy to run Guild Wars 2 WvW in zergs at a playable FPS. I've been waiting to upgrade since last year, waiting and waiting for Maxwell details in particular. Now that Computex has passed us and still no information about Maxwell dates and very vague intel news as well, I am getting extremely close to just buying an annoyingly kepler based J S now, although in the back of my mind I am always fearing the specs won't be enough to satisfy me with the amount of money I'm paying. I really do not think I can wait for 2015 March sometime which is what it's looking like for the new laptop cycle to come. What do you guys think I should do?

Thanks to anyone in advance who wishes to chime on this discussion.

[dblkk]

While no one knows for certain, probably not even asus, when broadwell and maxwell will make their debut in the laptop gaming aspect. I would easily guess it'll be at least late next year more than likely the year after that.

If broadwell follows any sort of suite with the rest of the upgrades, then expect 5-10% perofrmance increse. Broadwell biggest hype will be battery life, but in gaming laptop with better screens and power hungry gpu's, i doubt battery life with broadwell will hit even an hour longer.

If maxwell follows suite, you can expect a 10-15% performance increase in same tier chip comparisons, and again maxwell is aimed largely at power consumption, not performance increase.

I have the JS, kind of wish i went with jm as thats till a beast, or the jz which is the best you can get. But i went mid tear and bought ram and ssd instead. 2x 1tb samsung evo and another 16gb ram. I felt that was the better way to go for me personally. But i do rendering video editing more often than gaming.

But gaming wise, when i had the jm model, i played every game at worst high settings. My JS model, there hasnt been a game that hasnt been ultra. Those are bf4, cod, titanfall, skyrim, ect. I cant image there being a game coming out soon that would play at medium settings on these machine. js or jz. If your that worried, then get the jz model, up 15-20% from the js model.

As for 4700 not being enough, i have yet to have a game hit even 70% cpu utilization, normally not even hitting 50%. With newer generation chips adding maybe 10% performance increase, instead of playing around 50% you'll play at 45%, alright. I render with mine like all the time, thats 100% cpu, 100% gpu, and not quite as fast as my desktop, its really within a few minuets of rendering an hour movie. Its really really close. And my pc is a 8350 overclocked to 5.0ghz with a gtx 770 (in sli but rendering doesnt care about sli).

So, i really dont see the need to wait for a year maybe two to get an added all around 10% performance increase. Lately newer laptops are just adding 3k-4k screens which are great for everything but video games and is awesome, but its really to a point that laptops can play high/ultra so how much higher can you get?

[ithanium2]

There is no way to predict de future.
870M in JS is about 20% slower then 880M. And both are keplers based on the 680 desktop chip.
860M is Maxwell and it's probably based on the 750ti Maxwell.
I would not call the 4700HQ underpowered. You can run it at 3.4 GHz on all 4 cores (gotta compare it to an i5 sandy when my laptop comes from service).

But yes, you are correct the 880M, the fastest single GPU on the market, has the same performance as a Geforce 760 or an AMD 270X.

Ultimately, it is your decision if you really need a laptop to play games or you could buy a desktop. So far all companies are spoon feeding us performance so it is hard to say what, will be what.

And regarding the Star Citizen hype train...don't board it bro 🙂 Never buy hardware for upcoming games, 99% of the time you will be disappointed.
My opinion is that, the G750JZ will handle games in the upcoming 2 years, at 1080p on atleast medium or high details. My assumption is based on the fact that most games are console ports, and since consoles don't have great hardware specs...