Ivy Bridge Laptops Are Here – Time To Upgrade My Gaming Laptop?

New 3rd Gen Intel Core (Ivy Bridge) technology laptops have hit the market, do I need to upgrade my gaming laptop with these latest 22nm processors or chipsets? This question is asked by thousands of common laptop gamers and owners who want the latest specs and highest performance levels for their systems. There are two ways to answer this question.

First, if you just bought or bought a gaming laptop with the old (can’t believe we’re saying this already) Sandy Bridge processors and your system performs all of your games at the highest levels (or all the levels that you like play your games in) then no problem. Your current laptop is quite adequate and you don’t really need to upgrade.

Please note that we are talking about high performance laptops here, if you just want one device for surfing the web, email, watching movies and doing simple word processing, then almost any laptop on the market will meet your requirements and will meet your requirements. needs. Along the same lines, if you have a high-performance platform and it meets all of your requirements, there really is no need to spend money on an upgrade or a new laptop.

However, players are often an odd bunch, they just want the best of “everything” on their gaming machines. So the only question left to ask: “Is Ivy Bridge better than Sandy Bridge?”

Comparing only the speeds, the next generation of Quad Core processors is a bit faster. For example, take the top of the line Sandy Bridge: the Core i7 Extreme 2960XM with 2.7 GHz and go up to 3.7 GHz using a core. Now compare this to the top Ivy Bridge: the 2.9GHz 3920XM boosted at 3.8GHz running one core. Server and desktop processors will have slightly different performance levels.

However, speeds are one thing, but the performance of a laptop in the real world of video games is something else entirely. Excess heat is a major problem that most players have experienced at one point or another. There has been talk in some of the gaming forums about heat issues with the Ivy Bridge processors, especially when they are overloaded. Overclockers.com reports that Ivy Bridge runs about 20 ° C higher than Sandy Bridge when overclocked. In reference to the desktop Core i7 3770k, this overheating was due to the “integrated heat spreader” and this issue needs to be further examined before purchasing, especially if you are going to overload your system.

Also, most of the benchmarks and tests are showing that the Ivy Bridge could definitely be worth the upgrade. PCWorld in its benchmarks reported that there was only a moderate increase in CPU performance when using the Ivy Bridge compared to Sandy Bridge, BUT these new third-generation quad-core processors offered “a significant graphics improvement as well as a better battery life. “

In another comparison, Anandtech benchmarked an Ivy Bridge laptop against AMD’s Trinity platform and found that Intel won the day, however AMD’s integrated Trinity 7660g GPU outperformed Intel’s HD 4000. In contrast, Anandtech found the battery life on this Ivy Bridge system somewhat disappointing compared to the Sandy Bridge and AMD Trinity systems. More testing is probably needed here to get a more accurate judgment on battery life.

Regardless, more and more gaming laptops are switching to the newer Ivy Bridge systems, perhaps most notably the new Alienware M17x R4 laptops. Others include the ASUS G75VW-DS73, Toshiba Qosmio T752, MSI GT60, and MSI GT70. In the coming months, expect more high-end Ivy Bridge gaming laptops from major manufacturers to hit the gaming world. If you’ve been waiting to upgrade your laptop or buy a new system, this is probably the time to do it.