First review of Alienware M17x with GTX 680M

Desktop Green

Laptop Red

 

Yeah you are right. I checked XoticPC so they are more expensive.

Neptune 2.0 at Eurocom
7970M +$260
680M +$510

So GTX 680M is only $250 more expensive than 7970M at Eurocom
Your example is SLI, so it seems that the customer gets a little price cut by buying 2 680Ms ($211 instead $250)

Sneaky Alienware is $100 more expensive than Clevo

 

I'm pricing off the upgrade parts menu, not the systems menus.

 

No Thankyou I am very happy with a 7970

Lol

Dell recommends the 675M as a $50 upgrade over the 7970M. Who are these people?[/QUOTE]

 

Oh I see. I`m looking for a brand new notebook so I didn`t look there

 

I really really hope it's R3 compatible. My 460m is ok for me, but ffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuutttttttttttttuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeee. plz plz plz plz plz.

 

A company that knows the only way they're going to get the 675m's off the shelf is to take advantage of the uninformed

 

Just FYI if you plan to order you might want to wait a day as I placed 2 orders today with the 680 and both were canceled due to system errors.

 

Gotta agree with the 7970m. Cheaper and still a great GPU. Plays everything at a decent level. Perhaps when newer games come out the 680m will seem more worth it, or perhaps they'll lower the price a bit.

 

^^I agree, there is no reason for people to get the 680m over the 7970m unless they can snag a deal or something.

The ONLY thing that nvidia has the edge is the PhysX and marginally better performance. CUDA means nothing now as the 7970m destroys it in DirectCompute.

 

And good drivers, but that still doesn't beat the cheap and viable AMD card

 

The drivers debate has always been a grey area. Nvidia have only just released a proper driver for any notebook Kepler GPU. The GTX 660m has been out many weeks already.

 

And the 3D option for a few (like me) too.... but still, have to say a good price/performance ratio is unbeatable for a couple extra value-add features!

 

Oh yeah the 3D as well. I'm getting a 680m for the single reason that I am getting it as a replacement for my current system. Waiting game for me though. UK here

 

You're right there. I wouldn't expect to see a driver from Nvidia for the 680m for some considerable time. You'll be at the mercy of whatever Dell used during their testing. I still can't get an official 3xx driver for my 675 (and we all know that its only a 580 with a facelift). Response from an Nvidia rep on their forum 'we do not supply drivers for new M series cards, that is the responsibility of the OEM. We will add it at a future date.' - thanks - not!
Laptopvideo2go is superb though in providing modded inf's to support chips not on the official driver list so it's not a disaster

 

Dude, I just went to the nvidia site and selected the GTX 675m and this driver popped up:

NVIDIA DRIVERS 304.48BETA

Your 675m is officially supported

 

I thank you! Wasn't there yesterday. Ain't it a b*** when this happens - sorry
Downloading now...

Edit, well that was a miserable failure 'cannot detect any compatible hardware', argggg.

 

Over my head , but this is about the Kelper direct compute


Nvidia GPGPU performance (in consumer Kepler cards) is bad only if you use 64 bit arithmetic (1/24 rate FP64). Nvidia just released the specifications of the new compute oriented Tesla boards based on Kepler architecture. The full Kepler has 1/3 rate FP64 processing, improved caches and lots of other goodies for GPGPU (for example the new GPU can issue new kernels itself without CPUs help). Nvidia surely isn't out of the GPGPU game.

 

This is my first post though I have been following these forums for a few months now in particular the 7970 and 680m debates. Anyways there is a review on pcmag.com for the m17x w/gtx 680m though there is no depth to it.
I love notebook review, notebook check and anandtech but what are some other sites that you guys use for laptop reviews? Most I find on google are crap, outdated or like pc mag and cnet have very little depth,

 

There's no debate. The 680m will definitely be better, or else it wouldn't be coming out. But whether it's worth the money for just that little bit of oomph, is the true debate.

 

That's not entirely true. NVidia will be releasing a card, better or worse. They know they have part of the market cornered and fanboys will pay whatever for whatever they release. They won't just sit there and let a competitor take all the profits. The same goes for AMD. We can't truly go off of what we have seen posted online. The numbers can be skewered and misleading. Once people start getting the cards and running benchmarks and actually playing games, then we'll truly know.

Now my thoughts are that the 680M will be the better card when it comes to benching. Similar to the 580M vs the 6990M. I don't think it'll be as drastic as it was last year. As for gaming, it's going to come down to drivers and optimization from the gaming companies. Some games prefer AMD, others prefer NVidia. Now we're probably going to be talking about a few FPS that we most likely won't even be seeing (Honestly, are you going to notice a difference between 100 FPS vs 110?).

What it's going to ultimately boil down to is whether or not the card you pick is going to play the games you want to play. There's going to be some people that only care about chasing numbers and trying to out do everyone else. In all honesty, who cares. Granted it's addicting and fun to do, but pointless in the end. If you can play games maxed out with either card, then that's all that matters. I mean these machines are meant for gaming right?

 

I would buy your math if two 680M were $550 more than one 7970M. But it's two for two, so an extra 200 isn't completely out of the question.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

which 675 drivers are you finding the best?

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

Complete agree dude! +rep

 

I hadn't really done a lot of testing since I wanted to see how it goes with the pre-installed 296.39, (and stay stock for at least a week or so) which were fine.

I finally broke down last night as it was pointed out that Nvidia now listed the 675 on the 304.40 beta. Installation failed with 'no detected hardware' so I broke down and got the inf from laptopvideo2go. Worked first time and a quick check of a couple of in-game benchmarks show a slight increase in FPS, along with some new features like adaptive V sync.

I did get one BSOD with a nvidia benchmark/demo: PLA ( Articles : Put Your System Through Its Paces: Download The PLA DirectX 11 & PhysX Benchmark - GeForce) but that was OC'd and a second run at the same settings was fine. Awesome demo of what CAN be done with tessellation, etc..

 

Kepler gforce cards also lose very badly to its fermi predecessor and AMD cards in OpenCL, specifically in Luxmark where Video editors and heavy users of Adobe Creative Suite 6 really notice it. a gtx680 desktop card is 1/3 slower than the gtx580 ( fermi ) and over 2/3 slower than the AMD direct competitor. ( first hand trials in PS6 and AE6 confirm this )

 

Thank GoD I got mine with 675m.....Well I do believe this aspect of changes has gone largely unknown to most nvidia adopters.

I do believe AMD will continue to shine as its doing well on this front even with their latest iteration.

 

Any idea how to actually buy a 680m/ 7970m with heat sink to replace the 580m I'm currently using?

680m would be cool, but then the 7970m is miles ahead of the 580m, so any card would do.

 

Haha! Good question

 

the review has been released on notebookcheck and it looks like epic fail for the 680m

summary: Worse performance than 7970m, but costs $300 more

7970m is faster at maxPayne3, BF3, Skyrim, Crysis 2, Metro 2033, Alan Wake, Unigine etc...

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

 

Haha oh dear. Oh well. Looking on the brightside, the GTX 680m may be been the original weaker 768 shader one but still cost $300 more than the 7970m. I encourage competition

 

Looks like AMD outdid themselves this time. Especially if they release a 7990M just to rub it in

 

Review shows 680 ahead on more benchmarks but 7970 on more games. I would expect 680 to be ahead of almost everything if I am going to spend $700+ on it

 

Thanks 4 the link Slick. Those Compare tabs do not bode well. I wouldn't have thought that in a million years. Still, it's early, that's one check, we still need NBR'ers to get their hands on it.

But please all, let's not go off on the "drivers will get better" argument, both camps are on release. Oh, and Xfire still blows So for dual gpus and 3D, gotta pony up and go green.

Considering I use my lappy for imaging and video work as well as gaming, my trigger pull is looking highly Justified (looking forward to season 4 btw).

 

Actually Xfire scales much better nowadays compared to before but that's a discussion for another place. The R4 is a single GPU machine and I'm sticking to green or else all my 3D movies go to waste

 

Seeing that 680 is just on the same level if not lower than 7970 based from available reviews, are we still going to see NBR peeps' actual reviews?

Just thinking that noone might risk trying knowing that it might just be the same with 7970 but with about $200-300 price premium.

 

I have a 680m on order, but I'm seriously thinking about cancelling it...all i need is another review to confirm these numbers and there really is no point

But what i have found is that notebookcheck are generally very reliable...plus they would have tested the 7970m the same way so there is consistency with the benches. Even if someone came out with slightly better numbers than what notebookcheck produced, you can't splice together results from different tests...because in one part of a game, i can get 100fps, but in another part of the same game, i can get 30fps. There is too much variation. You have to trust one website running the exact same benchmark

 

So we might not be able to see how far it can be OC'ed. Is it possible to test it for a few days and return for a full refund if you are not satisfied?

 

Scaling isn't the issue these days (usually scales better than SLi), it's if it works and I seen some fail in there to a single card, that's what I was suggesting as it has also been happening on the desktop.

Well, that might be 1 less NBR'er.

 

we'll see. My plan was to bench it and keep the card that was the better one. As it is now, word coming from TSMC is that yield is average at best meaning, i may be waiting a while for my card.

But don't worry someone will get the 680m and bench it and show how wonderful it is.

There may be a lot of NBR'ers who will go red if these results are real lol (and i think they are real based on all available evidence so far)

Nvidia has to get off their high horse and lower the cost of this card if they even want a chance

 

You should stick with the order! If it doesn't perform up to expectations (though I think the 680M might surprise us in a good way), there would be a lot of interest in the classified section if you decide to get rid of it. I would like to see someone like you and some of the other benchmarkers put the 680M through its paces to see where it truly stands.

 

maybe, it just depends on when i can get the card. The price is decent, but i just don't have the patience to wait for it if it takes too long. As it stands now, initial 680m supply will be limited (as is always the case when a card is launched). All the big guys will get their cards which they will use in laptops only. I was given a wait time yesterday that i wasn't happy with.

Granted, you make a good point about the easy resale of the card

 

you seem to be the guy to ask....
ive just ordered a M17X R4 with the 3820QM ivy bridge i7, 16GB RAM, and the 2GB 7970M GPU....

payments gone through and its now in production and then i go and hear that the 680M will be an option within the next month... bad move or good move to order the 7970M?!

from what im reading the 680M will offer 5-10% more than what the 7970M will!yet the 7970M offers better overclocking potential (which i would prefer not to do as im not confident enough in my abilities to overclock safely) so if im not going to be overclocking the 7970M should i have waited for the 680M which sounds more 'noob' friendly or have i made a good purchase?

how good a system have i ordered really and for how long will i be playing new release games for? 1 years,2 years, 3 years...? as tech seems to move quickly!!

i guess after spending £3000+ im hoping that the machine i have ordered is more than a match for 50+ fps in BF3 and will be future proof for at least 4 years playing new release games (far cry3, crysis 3 etc etc) before ultimatly i move over to a desktop which i hope to build myself!

so im calling on the pro's in the forums like you to give me a heads up lamens term explanation! rep+ for any help!! cheers in advance.

 

If you checkout notebookcheck, you'll see that the 7970m and 680m are pretty much neck and neck. Some games prefer one card over the other. As far as future proofing, there really is no better option. You can play games 4 years from now with these cards, but it won't be on high settings. The problem is you can't predict how tech will advance in the next few years. I mean next year might bring out some revolutionary new tech that will take gaming into a whole new era, and leave our current systems in the dust. Probably a little extreme, but there is no way of predicting how future proof your system will be. The best choice for future proofing would be a system with dual 7970Ms or 680Ms. Sitting on a single GPU system, we have less room to work with in terms of squeezing out the last bit of tech out of our cards.

 

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Cheers for that well im hoping il get 3/4 yrs outta my system! Then its desktop time as its easier to upgrade! In 3 years id be happy with medium/high settings rather than very high/ultra! I have my fingers crossed!

 

seems that 680 can hardly win the competition to 7970 according to the game benchmark on notebookcheck

 

Before we call the 680M a bust and throw it under the rug, we need to be patient and wait on some people to actually get the card and see what the deal really is. I think notebookcheck is a very legit site and I have used them to help in determine where my previous GPUs stood. They seem pretty spot on.

All in all, it appears that these cards are very close with each other. A little closer than the 580M vs 6990M of last year. It just goes to show that each company is really pushing each other neck and neck. Now we'll all just have to sit back and see who will win the drivers war, lol.

 

I agree with slickdude looking at notebookcheck.net. What matters is games that the card does better for under 60fps. Anything over 60fps you wont notice and is strickly bragging rights. You wont see anything better after 60fps because of the refreshrate of HDTV's, monitors, ect. which is 60hz (the standard). If you have 120 or 240hz, the tv itself is just doubling or quadrupling its framerate with its built in technology so even then 60fps is enough.

I would look at games under 60fps, like max payne 3, dirt showdown, metro 2033, BF3, risen 2, ect. Thats where the real test is. Just because the 680m gets 105fps in CoD3 and the 7970m gets 91fps in it, you wont see a difference one bit. Now if it was 45fps compared to 30fps then you would.
Just remember that when comparing. Everyone thinks 85-150+fps is oh so wow when in reality you wont see anything over 60fps, hence why v-sync is capped at 40fps or more usually 60fps.

If anyone things im off on this topic please elaborate. The 680m does look like a good card though. I wouldnt mind the physX.

 

I much prefer mouse response at 90+ fps.

 

feel free to correct me if im wrong here, but unless you have the 120hz screen it doesn't matter past 60hz as that's the refresh rate of the screen. the mouse response should be the same either way.

 

Best way to future proof our gadgets is to make sure europe defaults and the whole earth's monetary system is broken.

"Good people" and "Bad people" are relative terms .No limit, no position for greed and power. We all are honest till we are given an opportunity to be otherwise.