6990m v 580m Comparison by people who have USED BOTH ONLY

I am wondering how many people here have used BOTH the 6990m and the 580m? If you have used both, which do you prefer and why?

Please don't post an argumentative comment if you have not personally used both cards, I don't want an Nvidia/ATI debate here.

I know we have a lot of threads on 580m v 6990m, but most of them seem to be rather uninformed. Anyone can read the specs and choose which they want, but I have seen very few posts relating to actual experience comparing the two.

Now that I have used both, I feel like I should share my initial observations. All tests are at stock clock speeds.

The 580m is faster, but only barely. The 580m score a Vantage GPU score of 13451 using 280.26 drivers. The 6990m scores a Vantage GPU score of 12792 on 11.8 drivers. A difference of 5%, advantage 580m.

The 580m cannot be easily disabled, unlike the 6990m. Due to optimus, the 580m cycles on and off and it is pretty much out of your control. This causes the fan to turn on and off at regular intervals. I find this very annoying. If you are using a 6990m, your pretty much hear no noise unless you are gaming. On the 580m, every time you do anything graphic, Optimus switches you from the Integrated Graphics Port (IGP) to the 580m, this causes the fan to cycle on and off. It is totally harmless I think, but it is annoying. The advantage of this is that the 580m gives good battery life with no effort on the part of the user. The laptop will automatically use the best graphics solution. The downside of that, is that you could play a youtube video, something easily handled by the IGP, but Optimus will detect the GPU load, and activate the 580m, and this will use more battery. This makes the 6990m, which can be completely disabled, more useful at conserving battery life. I suppose you could completely disable the 580m in Windows Device Manager or something, but the 580m still doesn't have the nice easy FN F7 IGP switch that the 6990m has.

In conclusion, so far I find the 580m to be faster and more convenient for users who want to never have to deal with switchable graphics. BUT, and this is a big BUT, the 580m is annoying, the fan noise while internet browsing is grinding on my nerves. The 580m cannot be max out in furmark due to an internal throttle (I know there is a fix but I am talking stock solutions here). Additionally, the 6990m should have superior battery life since it can be completely disabled.

If I was to buy today, I would definitely get the 6990m, the 580m just isn't worth the dough, unless you are using a 3D 120hz display, in which case you know going in you will not be using Optimus (because so far optimus doesn't work with 3D).

What are the opinions of others who have used both cards?

 

Voted for having both and preferring the 580m. Better bench scores and better general performance. 3D and Physx too. Throttling doesn't bother me as I have use the blind method and temps never reach higher than 75C for me.

 

I voted i have used only 6990m but i won't change it

I like the 580m..but too much work with all the potential throttling

 

6990m for me due to the thermal throttling. Also one of the main games I play now FFXIV the GTX580m is actually slower than the 6990m.

 

I have tested laptops with both. The 580 performs slightly better, until it starts running into heat issues.

But the difference isn't big enough for me to justify the 580's price point. Even if it was only 100$ more, I would still run with the 6990m.

 

widezu69 What's your passmark performance score?

PassMark Software - Video Card Benchmarks - High End Video Cards

Can you run a benchmark and let us know?

 

This is somewhat pointless. It's clear from benchmarks that while the 580M is only slightly faster at stock speeds, it has significantly more overclocking headroom since you can overvolt it. As far as performance goes, the 580M clearly wins. The highest Vantage scores I can get with my 6990M are in the low 16000's, while I've seen 580M scores well over 18000.

However, considering the price I still don't think it's worth the difference and would buy the 6990M again if I ordered my laptop again today. As you stated, Optimus is another consideration to make, and I would prefer not to have it.

I don't consider the thermal throttling to be an issue since there are ways to work around it by modding the vbios, something you expect to do for any overclocking anyways.

 

I have to disagree, but everyone is entitled to their opinion. I just got the 580m, if had known what I know now about the 580m, I wouldn't have gotten it (it didn't cost me any money so this isn't a big deal). The performance differences are somewhat obvious, BUT the noise, the battery life and such are not something a new buyer would not learn about until after the fact.

I for one would like to know what others who have used both think. Now that I have the 580m, I want to see if there is something good about it, but so far I can't see it (other than 3D, which I don't have). I hoping others will shed some light on the subject.

The other reason I started the thread is find out if the fan cycling noise that bugs me so much is normal, or if it just my card.

 

Mine does it as well and from what I can see the vbios mod does not fix the thermal throttle only the power throttle. So a card that performs better due to higher over clocks but has a thermal issue is counter productive in my book.

But that is what is great about options are we have choices on what graphics card to get and with a site like this we can help each other out to make the best educated decision on what to spend our hard earned money on

 

I've seen both in action and I'd go with the 6990m. That is for single gpu's. If they do crossfire/sli for these cards I'd go with the 580m as I think Nvidia's SLI drivers are a little better then Crossfire (but not alot better).

 

i thought of getting a 580M when i was configging my current setup but with all the issues on 580m i went for de 6990M and never had a regret. works fine, driver updates every month. in my R2 i had 4870X2 and worked like a charm too.

 

Ordered a m17x with the 6990m as again read too many throttling issues with nvidia cards. Not down to bias choice but realised i've not had an ati card since 2002!

 

I would highly recommend you get the 1080p monitor (if your signature is correct). This is not something you can easily upgrade later on.

 

Agree with ValkerieFire... Had a bad experience with the R2 900p... What a big diference to 1080p. Very expensive later to upgrade...

 

interesting thread...ill get back to you on which one is actually better....

 

Thought about a 1080p screen but i want the extra frame rate for games. I wont need 1080p as i wont watch movies or do desktop work with it.

 

Can a 6990m do this?

 

yeah, i dont think so...lol

 

I know my pic is slightly skewed by the XM CPU but the GPU score speaks for itself

 

highest i got with a 6990m was:

Graphics Score 15765
CPU Score 26687
Jane Nash 46.88 FPS
New Calico 45.45 FPS
AI Test 3724 operations/s
Physics Test 34 operations/s