M17 Plug and Play Video Cards

What is the best graphics card that I could get for my M17x R4 without having any problems with drivers, or having to get unlocked bios, and stuff like that. I am planning on getting a 680m, but I just wanted to make sure there isn't a better one. Thanks.

 

You've got it. I never even needed to reinstall the video driver

 

Yeah 680M however I would get the 780M for much better performance and less cost...

 

I have the 780m right now, but I've had too much trouble trying to get it to work. The 680m is nearly as good as the 780m and without any problems so I will get that.

 

what kind of trouble? I was under the impression that with the modified drivers it should work just fine?

 

I modified the drivers and everything was working fine up until I tried to play a game, then the GPU wasn't being used at all for any games or applications.

 

Yeah, you can't use the intel at all with a non-standard GPU, optimus gets screwed up. You have to use an unlocked bios to switch the primary graphics to PEG. You'd think just disabling the intel driver would have the same effect but nobody that has tried this has had sucess .

 

I know it's a shame I couldn't get the 780m to work, but I will be absolutely fine with a 680m!

 

This is true. No messing in the future as drivers are updated either . I read of a lot of people cranking up the 680m to 780m performance quite easily - they are the same core with different settings after all.

Good luck.

 

Not quite the same core. Both are GK104, but 680M has 1344 shaders at 720Mhz and 780M has 1536 shaders at 823Mhz. But as you say you can easily get 780M performance by overclocking, especially if you flash a modified vBIOS from TechInferno. If I had an R4 I wouldn't bother with a 780M, I'd get a 4GB 680M if the prices were good. I wonder if the 4GB version of the 680M is pure plug & play with the R4, because the Dell version is 2GB.

 

Thanks for the info . Unlocking stuff that they originally had on the core to get another 'generation' . It's always been said that NV deliberately cripple new cards just to give them headroom to improve it over a two year period. I think the 675m rebadge of the 580m was originally going to run faster clocks but once all the reports of failures came in they just left it alone and stuck with their release roadmap.

Do you know if the 880m is a straight rebadge 780m or (as I'm guessing) they have pushed it further - hence all the overheating and other problems?

As for the 4gb version. I went for a 2gb simply to be sure I would not have any issues (and one came up cheap!) - the 3D was my main concern. I've seen a few R4 owners upgrade to the 4Gb version and say that the vanilla drivers install just fine - or you can use the Dell vbios. I did see one reseller offering 4gb cards with whatever OEM vBIOS you wanted. As long as the hardware ID does not change with the vbios I believe it should be OK for plug-n-play.

 

Yeah, I agree, I think NV do cripple the first new cards of a generation to allow for headroom to improve over the next 2 yrs. They do it to make more profit I'm sure, so they can steadily release new products with slight increments in performance. For example, I reckon they would have had the technical ability to have released the 780M right away at the start of the Kepler generation instead of the 680M, but that would have meant that they wouldn't have released any new products over the next 2 yr period!

The 880M is effectively a 780M, but with higher core clocks and more VRAM (8GB, although there are versions of the card with 'only' 4GB). I don't think you need more than 4GB though, and by having 8GB probably just limits the maximum stable memory overclock you could achieve, as well as increasing overall heat output & current consumption of the card. Boost clock on the 880M is 993Mhz, but most don't stick around at 993Mhz very long - lots of throttling issues with that chip! (954Mhz is the base clock). The memory clock & bus width & core count are all the same as the 780M though. I think the 880M is a disaster - reminds me of the 580M/675M in some ways, but a bit different really. Looking back, the guys that bought a 680M shortly after it's release back in 2012 in a notebook with good cooling (like the M17xR4) were the real winners, especially if they were willing to flash a modified vBIOS & overclock it to beyond 1Ghz - they really fly & can match & exceed 780M/880M stock performance easily. (All that performance since beginning of 2012!).

2GB version of the 680M is still cool. There's only some games that are limited by the 2GB VRAM (Titanfall & Watchdogs spring to mind). Might change in the future though. If we look back at what we deem acceptable amounts of VRAM it really does increase quite quickly, but not as quickly as the performance jumps in the core performance. Back in 2011 wasn't 1GB - 1.5GB viewed as being good. Now it's almost like 3-4GB is a new 'gold' standard, with 2GB being perhaps a minimum you'd buy in a new GPU. Praps in 2016 it'll be 6-8GB as the new standard for not running into game limitations. (Talking normal 1080 resolutions for now).

 

Got it! So the 880m is just the GK104 maxed to it's theoretical top performance. The temps I am seeing in posts are way too high for the long-life of a mobile chip IMO even at their best.

The vRAM is quite funny for me. When the 680 started to hit machines as you can imagine I was watching very closely. I had a 675m that dell gave me as a replacement for a 580m disaster. I wanted to ask about the 680m and was prepared to pay the price differential (if asked ) but the R4 had just been released and the 680m was still in certification with low supplies. When it became public that dell had opted for 2gb and everyone else 4gb the discussions started. Same thing back then, 2gb is plenty unless you want to run multi-monitor. Now I see those games with options when you have a ton of vRAM!

Is the dog wagging the tail or is it a case of 'If You Build It, They Will Come'?

Yeah, a lot of development and memory are going to give access to those 8k resolutions but until the chips become powerful enough to do cinema quality VR imaging, I can't see that games are going to look that much better?

 

I don't know a whole lot about game development, but I do think that lighting quality & lighting effects are amoung the things that increase realism the most - and also happen to be very compute intensive too. So, I reckon there's scope for improved lighting in the future. I'm not convinced that ultra high resolutions really increase realism in games, as you can see I'm only on 1600x900 and I don't notice jaggy problems if I use x4MSAA. I suppose with higher resolutions you could just disable MSAA, but not sure how much extra realism it would offer up in games. There is something called the 'uncanny valley' where as games will become more photo realistic the more unreal/strange they will look until they hit the point where they get to photo realism. I'm not sure whether I want photo realsim in my games. I'm not sure I want to shoot people in games where it looks like actual real life - that's a bit freaky, maybe not very healthy! I would like it for the technical achievement, but I think it would be weird!

Dog wagging the tail you say? Yes, I think so, as the GPU's get faster & with more VRAM it gives the developers more to use to create even better visuals.

 

Hey if your'e not needing your 780M, I'm looking to get one.. I'll send you a PM