GTX 580 to replace my 6990m good or bad?

On the phone with Dell right now. My 6990m is dead and back ordered, they are offering to wait 11 days for a 6990 or wait 1 day for a 580m, what should I do? I have the 60hz screen so no 3D upgrade.

I am experienced with ATI, but not Nvidia, so I'm not up to snuff on the 580m. It seems like Amd has driver updates all the time, and Nvidia not so much, but people talk about Nvidia having more "mature" drivers.

I've been happy with ATI so far, but this is my 2nd dead card in 2 months, should I take the 580m?

Pros?

Cons?

NO FAN BOY COMMENTS HERE, I need intelligent feedback on what I may loose or gain if I switch GPUs. I have head the 580m has throttling issues and power/optimus issues. I have been very happy with 6990m except for the fact it died. But at the same time Dell is offering basically a $300 "freebe".

What does a 580m = in the desktop world? 6990m= slower desktop 6870, 580m = GTX???



Thanks

 

how did you lose your 6990m??!?

 

I'd go with the Nvidia. Good experiences from the past.

 

The 580m is about a 560 Ti underclocked, so pretty good by mobile standards. Worth the price? You have to decide. I would personally go with NVIDIA if it wasn't so expensive. The R3 has a lot of life left, so I'm buying my time.

 

I started having driver crashes last week. See this thread. Then the GPU started disappearing randomly. On Saturday (the last day I game'd) it worked flawlessly all day. Today I booted up and it had disappeared completely. Basically the exact same thing that happened to you happened to me. And it happened the same way my 6970m died on my last M17. This makes me lean toward the 580m, since it should be just as reliable if not more so, and ATI has already failed me twice, but I have admit I am very happy with 6970m/6990m performace otherwise.

For those of you wondering, I didn't ask for an upgrade, my tech told me the 6990m was backordered 11 days, and I simply asked if "another GPU" was available sooner since I had Next Business Day service.

 

Absolutely take the 580.

I believe they have the throttling issue fixed ? or a work around.

6990 is all about value and performance as where the 580 is all about performance and value gets tossed out the window .

Yeah go for it and dont look back i know i would not hesitate myself.

I am not a fan of Optimus though and loved the manual switching on the AMD end but battery life or whatever should be secondary concern really with these rigs.

Also one guy just hit 18,000 on Vantage GPU 580m which is a serious beat down on the 6990 .

 

Thank you.

 

at no extra cost to you? why not? lol they about the same. Preferably i like amd more but most of my cards are nvidia lol.

 

Yeah, this is tougher than I thought, on one hand, the 580m could be slightly faster and have physX and CUDA, BUT on the other hand the 6990m has switchable graphics, which I really like, the 580m has optimus, but from what I've read, it isn't as good as a direct switch, and doesn't compete in overall battery life.

I think I will take the 580m just because I don't want to wait 11 days, and it could increase resale value, but otherwise I think I was happy with the 6990m.

 

You can just go into NVIDIA Control Panel and adjust which programs you want to use integrated and which programs dedicated. I don't know why people say Optimus is sketchy, it's always worked for me. Give the 580m a go! I would.

 

There are still some issues with certain games/drivers and this has been an on going thing since day one of Optimus.

If you poke around the M14x and M11x forums you can always see threads of people trying to get things to run even though they have tried to force them in the NV control panel.

But yeah the 580 at the same price is a no brainer ESPECIALLY if its no money out of pocket.

Your battery life will presumably take some hit since i do believe the card stays active all the time vs the AMD solution of literally shutting off the card.

If i had 2 or 3 failed cards though the choice would be just that much easier for me but the 6970 i owned was rocked solid and so is this 6990 i currently have .

If i get an R3(again) soon hopefully it does not kill my 6990 . I am a little spooked by your bad luck lol but there are plenty of owners who i believe have had no issues like what your experiencing.

Id like to say its the motherboard but who knows if your last machine had a similar/same issue.

 

I have been happy with my 580M since I've owned this comp. from Aug 3rd this year. I have had some games where I need to go into nvidia control panel to add the game and tell it to, by default, use the high performace graphics card since it isn't always smart enough to choose it.

The good news also is that the latest beta drivers from nvidia actually installed without any modded INF file Nice surprise I thought.

Sadly I can't compare the performace between this card and the 6990 but hoepfully you'll be happy if you choose this card. So far so good here

I play games like Bad Company 2, Star craft 2, Dead Island, Medal of Honor, Mass Effect 2, Fallout New Vegas... all run to my satisfaction though I'm not one to jack up the AA settings in any games.

 

From a guy who has owned both GPUs I can say that they both perform admirably. They are downclocked desktop versions of the 6870 and 560 Ti. Now with the 580m, the throttling has a work around so you can overvolt it and clock it up to a very nice speed. My highest benchmark, which is also the highest 580m bench in the world is a smidgen over 18k on GPU score. Not practical but the nvidia card does perform a bit better. For the price though, the 6990m is great, amazing in fact.

 

Well my 580m is on order, in fact it may be delivered today. The Alienware Reps made it sound like it is all one order, but the service # shows only the heatsink and fan arriving today. If the GPU isn't in there, then I expect it to ship soon (they told me a 1 day backorder). Once I get the 580m up and running, I will update with my impression on how it compares with the 6990m.

Thank you everyone who posted advice.

 

The service order will only show 2 items max and sometimes or most of the time in my cases in the past i could never see the item i was really looking for, but it will be in the same order so dont worry.

 

If it arrives in the next day or so, I will be interested to know as my warranty replacement 580m has been on 'backorder' for a week and a half now.

 

Mine was ordered tuesday and shipped wednesday, tech called me today to let me know to expect it being delivered to my address and to set up a time to install it.

 

Well I wish this was the case, but alas, it is not. The parts arrived today, I am at work, so I had my wife open the package and tell me what was inside, unfortunately nothing remotely resembling a circuit board. According to her; a fan, a bracket, and the heatsink (which she initially thought was the GPU but obviously is not).

So I called our good Costa Rican friends again, the 580m is on back order until the 28th (which sounds bad until you see the 6990m is on back order until October). According to them, my order is in the system, and it will be shipped once they have it. Initially it was supposed to come in on the 21st (which was when they told me it would go out), but has been pushed back 1 week.

So we are in the same boat, waiting for our 580s. Well at least I can get some work done in the mean time.

I am going to take all this free time to reinstall my SSD and make new backups.

 

Yeah that is SUPER strange they would only ship the heatsink and the fan but no GPU .

But if its on backorder i guess that makes sense .

In future though if you have multiple items coming they only list 2 items at a time and its totally random what is displayed.

Bummer about the GPU though and having to wait.

 

Do you have the extra copper heatsink already? I thought the 6990m's came with the same heatsinks as the 580m's...?