Can't decide on what to do here... New GPU or New Machine?

Alrighty... Now short and to the point with me.


Am looking to upgrade in the near future. I had my eyes set on the R4/680M, which is complete overkill and would murder my wallet into oblivion, HOWEVER would guarantee me a powerhouse of a laptop for around 3+ years. (I would overclock the bajeezus out of it.)

OR

I could just upgrade the GPU in this M17x R2 and go for a 7970M again like I had before and keep this machine a bit longer till I feel the need to upgrade past that... HOWEVER, I'm not sure how much longer this machine is going to last, being 3 years old already... o.o


So what's the best deal here? New GPU or New Machine?

 

I have the R3 so I'm not totally sure dude, but from what I've read I would guess that it's better to upgrade to 7970m since it's a great card, and you'll still have your awesome RGB screen.

That should keep you happy until the R5 comes out and then you can make the jump, and have some cash left over for other things

Just my 2c

 

Can you not get a 2nd 6970m? Looking at maybe £200 to upgrade. That would be enough for most of the ported crap for 6 months or so untill the R5 and the 8000 series AMDvor the next series Nvidia cards are released.

 

Yeap, a 6970m crossfire would be cool for you, I think that even only one 6970m is very powerfull to run any game (well not with max details... but playable, no ?) so two must be good enough !
But I would go for the 7970m, it's really a good deal for the price, and your i7 isn't the one who will bottleneck you to play games Just see if there isn't power consumption compatibility problems with the R2 and one 7970m

 

I've been running my dual 6970's now for over a year and they've been awesome. Still can pretty easily run everything new with close to max'd out settings and have been super solid. I hope to get at least another year out of my system, and maybe look to upgrade to an m18x-r3 (or whatever) at that time. I think for the cost/benefit upgrading to a second 6970 will get you far more bang for your buck, but that's just my 2 cents.

 

I tried CFX 6970Ms back when I first got the machine and it throttled in every game I enjoyed playing, from Crysis 2 to AvP to Metro 2033. If there's a way to get around the horrid limit of the 240w PSU, I'd go for the 6970M CFX option again, but that's just... disappointing.

However you all convinced me to stick with this machine for a bit longer. ^_^

Grey, you managed to get it to work pretty well, eh? What'd you do?

 

If it was me Id upgrade your GFX as the rest of the machine is still well in date.

 

I would definitely wait for the 8000 AMD's and 700 Nvidias... Wouldn't wanna spend a few thousand on a machine to find out the GTX 780M comes out the week later or whatever the case may be

Personally I think if you really got upgrade something, upgrade the GPU for now.. since the 7970M is a beast and cheap. But what I would do, is just lower the graphics settings to get more fps and just wait until the next range of GPU's / M17x's come out

 

Hi imglidinhere,

Honestly, nothing much really. I've never had a throttling problem (have also played Crysis 2, Metro 2033, etc), and according to my kill-a-watt I rarely (if ever) exceed the 240W PSU. That's including a slight overclock that I'm doing on the cards. So not sure what sort of problem you were running into. Temps have always been great as well.

You can see the specs I'm running in my sig, as far as cards go, I'm running dual Eurocom's (with the included Eurocom crossfire cable) with the Clevo bios installed. I did all my overclocking via a bios flash (so not using anything software-wise to adjust the clocks). Have been rock solid for over a year (I also played Witcher, Witcher 2, Starcraft II, World of Warcraft, Civilization, etc without any issues what-so-ever).

I do know that not all power supplies are created equal, and do know of others who had to replace the power supply because they were seeing throttling (not sure if you had attempted that or not, but have seen that be an issue in the past)...also temps are very important, and making sure that everything is pasted properly so that the temps stay low can also prevent throttling.

Wish I could say that I did something magic for it to work, but really there wasn't much more to it.

Good luck to you whatever you decide to do.

 

I would just sell the one I have on Ebay or so and then buy a new one

 

I'm with Greywolf on this one. I was so (imagine my fingers >< so close) close to purchase a 680m... then the news for the upcoming 8000m series cards came out and i decide to wait and to purchase a note 10.1 instead (christmas present ). As for the throttling.. that's wierd. i have the system on my sign running without any hint of throttling. CPU i keep it @ 3.2 Ghz on 4 cores and the cards are clocked 775/[email protected]. I believe it perform faster than a single 7970 setted up like that.