The only suggestion I can give to you, is.. wait a few months until Haswell is available. No reason to not to wait for the 4th Generation of Intel processors with them so close now.
What benefit will the 4th gen Intel processors bring that the 3rd gen processors lack at the moment? Serious question. I have the option to get a refund on my RMA and just wait a few months for the new processors if that's the better option for high-end gaming.
I'm curious about this too. I am looking hard at new laptops and wondering how smart it is to buy now--especially since I'm only going for the $1k market.
I've been reading up on several places concerning the new Haswell, and well... it doesn't really seem like a big reason to wait and upgrade right now depending on where you stand. I'm posting some complied info concerning Intel's new chip, I've divided it into parts labeled "A(N)".
TL;DR at the bottom.
-A1-
Let's examine some things:
1) As this is a Gaming Laptop thread, I'm going to assume the majority of people want a Laptop that can decently play most of the current gen games at 60fps and/or 1080p and handle the upcoming "next-gen" games.
2) We've moved to the point where most games shall be developed for consoles primarily and ported to the PC. When I say port, I do not mean a low quality shoddy excuse, I mean an example such as Crysis 3. The main PC games are mostly MMO-type games and select Indie titles which eventually get ported to consoles to PSN or XBLA as well. It's a two way exchange, so this leads us to point 3:
3) There will ultimately be a point where consoles will hold back games, and I am referring to the PS4/Durango. Before anyone reading this rages, this is great as the new consoles are moving towards PC architecture which allows for a better PC port of a game than before. Eventually, we'll be receiving mGPUs that surpass the console counterpart.
-A2-
So how does Haswell tie into this? I'll quote some information you may find interesting concerning this.
Seeking Alpha said:
The latest news release, courtesy of Fudzilla, has the first Haswell part coming out in June and it's a 2GHz Core i7 running at 35W TDP, the Core i7-4765T. Now the prevailing wisdom is that Haswell will see instructions per clock improve by at most 15%, but more likely 10%, itself a solid achievement - you are free to disagree - given that CPU speed was not Intel's over-arching design goal here; power management and graphics performance were. The 4765T will be married to the GT2 (not GT3) HD4600 GPU which can turbo up to 1.2GHz. Okay, sounds good right? But so what?
There's an Ivy Bridge SKU now that runs at 2.2GHz and 35W TDP with the HD4000, the 3632QM. So, in effect the IPC increase is offset by the lower speed at the same thermal envelope. It doesn't matter that one is a notebook product (3632QM) and one is a desktop product (4765T). 35W TDP is 35W TDP. This is a real red flag to me and these engineering sample benchmarks support this, which show even worse performance than this theoretic comparison. So, the CPU side of Haswell may not be anything to write home about.
-----
Haswell as blueprinted was going to be everything to all people and, when one looked at everything Intel had planned, it was hard to argue with that conclusion. But the problem with blueprints is that eventually it has to meet with the reality of the cost of production. So, over the course of development in the past 16 months, initial features of Haswell got lopped off, most notably Crystalwell - the massive 8 GB integrated memory block to feed the new GPUs - which is where a great deal of the performance increase was going to come from. But, at this point, Crystalwell's cost is causing OEMs to scream. Even if Haswell with Crystalwell makes it into actual systems, at what price point will they be selling?
-A3-
And here is where the problem lies. The Price point. What exactly is exciting about the Haswell? Haswell is based on the same 22nm silicon as the current Ivy-Bridge chips. There's a problem though, it's not pin-compatible. This means we'll need an entirely new CPU socket and as a result, a completely new motherboard to insert our Haswell processor into. Speaking from a desktop perspective, it won't really be that much of an improvement over current gen Intel CPUs. What it will be improved in is graphics though, about a double power increase from the current HD4000. So it will provide an improved graphic capabilities with increased battery life, but what's it to us Laptop Gamers?
Now here's where the divide occurs. If you're looking for a decent solution to mild gaming with a better battery life, then the Haswell is an excellent solution that's coming up if you're not aiming for the added cost of a discrete mGPU. But if you're buying laptops with discrete GPUs in them, some that even allow upgrading mGPUs along the line, you don't really "care" in a sense about the new integrated graphics power of the Haswell. Why buy a Haswell when you can save yourself $100 in essence and buy an Ivy and get more than enough for performance?
-A4-
Conclusion/TL;DR
Haswell Pros:
-Better Integrated Graphics Performance, about x2 of that of the current HD4000
-More Battery Life
-10-15% Increase CPU speed vs Ivy (Depending on your perspective)
-New Motherboards will likely bring in new laptops
Cons:
-Only 10-15% Increase CPU speed vs Ivy (Depending on your perspective)
-Added cost to what the Ivy will probably match for cheaper
-New Integrated Graphics doesn't really matter when we're buying laptops with discrete mGPUs.
-Desktop version of a Haswell CPU runs at the same thermal envelope as a current Ivy mobile CPU, check quote for more details.
-Not Compatible with current Motherboards
If you spot any errors or anything off, feel free to correct me. Hope this helps somewhat.
EDIT: K. Jack above summarizes it even further.
I also plan to buy a desktop for bigger 3d/video edit/etc. work but right now I am piss poor and I need a PC asap. (My current PC is a desktop running sweet ass 1.4Ghz AMD Duron with awesome GEForceMX440SE card 8) ). 