CPU/Mobo Haswell 'Refresh'

[shirish]

Hi all,
Few days ago when talking with folks in the fora, I was told about 'Haswell Refresh' and thought they meant the jump from SB or IB to Haswell (HS). Now it seems there is actually something called Haswell Refresh (HSR) which is on the roadmap.

See http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/31701-intel-plans-haswell-refresh-in-q2-2014
as well as the blog posts shared therein :-
http://asder00.blogspot.it/search/label/Roadmap
I know it's crystal ball-gazing but what do people think it would be a bad idea to buy a lappy on HS (probably a core i5) , say come Diwali. Did come to know that Intel just introduced quite a bit of range of mobile CPU's on 1st September, perhaps they might hit the mkt. come Diwali.

The only thing I would probably be upgrading say 6 months - yr. down the line would be RAM probably. I would do a desktop thing say around the time Haswell Refresh hits the mkt.

Any ideas or speculation welcome.

 

[haris5sani]

I also heard Broadwell with DDR4 may be coming in 2014.

But I think Haswell is new and DDR3 is going good, so no point for new roadmap for now for the time being since AMD is not threat.

 

[amitkher]

Hi all,
Few days ago when talking with folks in the fora, I was told about 'Haswell Refresh' and thought they meant the jump from SB or IB to Haswell (HS). Now it seems there is actually something called Haswell Refresh (HSR) which is on the roadmap.

See http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/31701-intel-plans-haswell-refresh-in-q2-2014
as well as the blog posts shared therein :-
http://asder00.blogspot.it/search/label/Roadmap
I know it's crystal ball-gazing but what do people think it would be a bad idea to buy a lappy on HS (probably a core i5) , say come Diwali. Did come to know that Intel just introduced quite a bit of range of mobile CPU's on 1st September, perhaps they might hit the mkt. come Diwali.

The only thing I would probably be upgrading say 6 months - yr. down the line would be RAM probably. I would do a desktop thing say around the time Haswell Refresh hits the mkt.

Any ideas or speculation welcome.

If you were buying a desktop, you might have needed to worry. But on a laptop, I don't think you intend to replace the CPU. Contrary to popular opinion, a CPU keeps working fine even if a newer CPU is released by the same manufacturer .

If you are worried Haswell Refresh might be much much much better than Haswell at similar prices, just look at recent history. There has been no drastic improvements for more than 2 years - a Sandy Bridge system still performs nearly as good as Haswell for most people in most areas. This in spite of platforms with completely different names - Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, and then Haswell. This makes it extremely unlikely that a new platform - Haswell Refresh, which doesn't even deserve its own fresh name, will eclipse Haswell so drastically.

In the unlikely event that Haswell Refresh supports DDR4, DDR3 wouldn't get completely obsolete for 2 more years. So RAM prices won't rise greatly for your 6 monthly upgrades.

I'd say go for Haswell laptop now, and don't wait because of the uncertain roadmap full of rumours. And if you don't need a lot of processing power, check out AMD APU based laptops too - some give great battery life while being very light.