Looking to upgrade from 680M on an R4

Ohai gais! Haven't been around these parts much but was investigating new cards. Was about to drop the ball on an 880M then noticed the 9xx series are slated for next month.

Are there official benchmarks, etc., comparing the 680M/880M/980M GPU's? Worth upgrading? Would I need to upgrade from my 220w power brick?

 

880M is a garbage card, definitely wait for the 980M to come out, should be double 680M performance. Power consumption and TDP is still unknown, but I think the 240W PSU is enough.

 

Thanks for the quick response.

Couple other quick ?'s:

1) Did they figure out how to spoof or generate certificates or whatnot so we aren't locked to a couple models of GPU's for running 3D?

2) Any cheap place to get the 120hz LCD panels? I have a single dead (stuck) pixel and it's in an annoying spot, may want to replace it soon'ish or at least keep a spare around

 

900m series doesnt support 3D at all afaik.

 

That doesn't make sense...I can understand the driver giving you the middle finger but *all* GTX cards support nvision 3d. We'll see I guess... I don't use 3D much on the laptop these days anyway. I connect to my projector, the DLP projector handles the 3D better and is more immersive IMO.

 

This is true! I only found out a few days ago but check out the nvidia site for GPU details. No 3D vision on either of the 9xx m cards.

I have no idea what they were thinking, and of course NV just ignore any requests for why? You have to assume the worst (amd maybe NV will finally comment) and 3D Vision is going away. I know it has a huge following BUT the failure of 3DTV (which is rubbish) in the eyes of the general consumer has killed it as a selling point. AW stopped advertising it around a year ago.
Now I'm hearing that nobody has managed to get an alienware 18 or 17 to even boot with the 980m.

A Chinese poster quoted over in techinferno posted some screen shots that appeared to have at least got as far as installing the driver. I'm waiting for someone with a 120hz panel to try one.

Going to test clevo 980m in alienware m17x R4, m18x R2, AW17 - Page 6

 

Nvidia dropped support for 3D vision from future models, the 900M series will not support it.

 

Yeah, love to know why? I see the desktops still support it .

GeForce GTX 980 | GeForce

 

Wow this whole 980m thing is ridiculous but I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Alienware and NVIDIA have been giving us the finger since day 1. Gimping drivers, updating to even more gimped drivers. Whitelisting 3D in certain brands of laptops with certain 120hz displays. Whitelisting certain external monitors/projectors. Blocking gamestream on notebooks (initially, for a long time), selling tablets with cracking cases, broken wifi.

I'm going to cry in a corner now


EDIT: Looking at XoticPC (which I believe is on these forums). They are advertising add-on components as allowing 3D.

 

I can almost guarantee you it won't work for 3D. Nvidia stripped all mention of 3D support in the 900M series.

 

I pinged Hutsady to reply to this thread.

EDIT: Also, I realize they did and I'm not trying to hold up hope. It's just interesting they would remove a feature that really has nothing to do with the GPU anymore and is coded into the drivers.

I also pinged @NVIDIA and @NVIDIAGeforce on twitter to confirm. Too much speculation and rumor going around these days. If they aren't supporting it fine, if they are great! I just want to know

 

Too much effort/resources spent on developing a 3D driver for a dead (or dying) niche.

 

Hutsady replied back directly to me and said they would take one home and test on an external monitor. As far as they are aware it only doesn't work with the built-in 120hz panel. External monitors are still supposed to work fine.

 

Here is my theory on that: My answer as to why it won't work in our systems? nVidia decided to remove optimus components from the vBIOS. The M18x uses a multiplexor switch to alternate between the iGPU and the dGPU. The M17x uses a muxless switch where the dGPU passes through the iGPU to drive the display. Both AMD and nVidia cards have coding in the vBIOS to handle these types of switches. If nVidia omitted that code from the vBIOS, the 980M will never work, as it will have no idea how to handle the switch. I can't believe nVidia decided to remove one of their redeeming (and very successful) features from their 980M

HDMI bypasses the LVDS or eDP connector altogether, which is why it would work.

 

Posted this on the other forum:

"The thing is, I believe they are a Eurocom reseller or related to Eurocom in some way.

Ebay ID: upgradeyourlaptop

"we have them working in all of models that support Optimum M17x R3 R4 R5
now working on solution for M18x and 18 non-Optimus models"

Ebay link: http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=ite...lobalID=EBAY-US&ssPageName=ADME:X:RTQ:US:1123 "

 

I think these were the same guys that tried to sell a functional 780M that would work with 3D vision on the m17x R3, but maybe they have some vBIOS magic going on.

 

That theory works well for me, thanks! BUT, will it work on a 120hz model where the iGPU is hidden even from the bios? POST seems to be the issue right now.

Looking at all the features dropped a lot are around hardware specic monitor stuff...

And Direct-x 11, surely a typo? But if this new design is aimed at steambox console type devices and embedded OS's then it could be so...

 

Depend on the wiring of the motherboard, which I don't have schematics to. It is very possibly that the eGPU disables the iGPU if it detects a signal, but it may still be routed to the same switch, in the same effect as putting your computer on PEG only (what FN+F7 would do)

 

Understood, but there is a subtle difference in the 120hz models. Because the panel is wired differently the iGPU will not even be available to the BIOS. It simply POST's on the dGPU.

As I understand it the intel microcode (containing the vga compatible driver for pre-OS testing) fails on anything other than 60hz. This was the root cause of the rewireing job being needed and not just a bios switch.

The POST code is where my money is on the problem.

 

The panel hooks up to the eDP port instead of LVDS. Before even the BIOS/POST handles it, if the eDP receives information from the LVDS panel, it turns off/bypasses the iGPU. This doesn't change the fact that the iGPU is still involved as the switcher.

The diagram here explains it better

 

The IGP is turned off since it does not use optimus and the IGP driving any displays.

 

Bummer, and I thought we were getting close .

Thanks for the effort to edumacate me . Now I have a much better understanding of how the iGPU hands off and why .

 

"
New message from: upgradeyourlaptop (1317Red Star)
17 is Optimus based
GTX 980M doesn't support 3D internal display, but LCD works in 120Hz mode"

I guess I'll order it *shrug*

 

Looking forward to seeing how it works out for you .

Good luck.

 

And so The M17x uses a muxless switch where the dGPU passes through the iGPU to drive the display.

Is the M17x compatible with 980m as against an M18 that uses a multiplexor switch to alternate between the iGPU and the dGPU ?

 

Subbed to this thread for results. I have an AW17/120Hz screen I would like to swap a 980M into.

Good luck.

 

Don't quote me on it, but a 980M seller on ebay had listed that they got it working for the M17x R4, and were developing a "fix" for the m17x R3 and M18x R1/R2
Naturally, I can't find their listing anymore.

 

get the 780m basically compares the 880m for a fraction of the price. the 880m is only like a 5% performance boost.

 

I would be getting the 980m instead of either of those since it is a bigger performance boost but definitely not going to pay $1000 right now.

 

It's been two months and I'm still confused as to what is going on. The 980M is compatible on the R4's just loss of 3D, correct? I am going to be using an external monitor so I don't even care about that anymore. Just want something that can push higher frame rates for games. Getting a 144hz Asus 24"