M17x R3 possible buy- Nvidia 580m or AMD 6990m ?

Hi

i'm considering buy AW from second hand. Thinking about graphics. Which one take and why?

I read that nvidia has throttling trouble. Run AMD without problems?

Thank you for advices.

 

the 580m is slightly better but in some cases it does have throttling issues, the infamous 78'C throttle. The 6990m is only behind by a few fps in most games and is more stable than the 580m. hope this helps

 

Yes answer helped me. What are temps with HD 6990m? I can't find review with HD 6990M.

Fn+F7 hard switching between IGP and dedicated graphics works for both ( 580m-6990m)?

 

Here is a review of the 6990M:
AMD Radeon HD 6990M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

I can tell you from experience that it is a great card and there are only a handful of games on the market that this card can't run on max settings. The 6990M features manual switching of the graphics, while the 580M uses Optimus which lets the software decide when to use the 580M and when to use integrated graphics. I've heard it's not the greatest with knowing when to use which.

As for temps I'm using stock paste and no laptop cooler (I do have the back of the laptop propped up though) and my temperature reached 75C after a 10 minute burn in with Furmark (This was overclocked to 825/1100 vs the stock 715/900). Overall heat isn't an issue with this card unless you want to really push the extreme side of overclocking.

 

I'm going to be the voice of dissent here and say that if you can get a 580m equipped machine then do that and make the necessary changes to help with the throttling issue. The AMD card isn't supported nearly as well with drivers and once you have to update it's a crap shoot as to whether or not you'll succeed without having to waste time on several reinstalls and other issues. My 6990 just vanished a couple of days ago and it took me the better part of a day to resolve this issue including having to remove the card completely. Real pain in the posterior. I'm planning on avoiding AMD cards like the plague until, at some point in the likely FAR DISTANT FUTURE, that company starts providing decent support for their products.

 

I can say that after a year of light use my video card cooked off in my M17X. My 6970M started acting up and then while troubleshooting saw some components completely fry. I am using the Intel integrated graphics until I can source a replacement.

 

Ive been looking for 580m as i done some research and just previous past problems with ATI cards in laptops and desktops.. i heard the 7970 are ment to be good im either looking at 580m or 7970 in my m17xr3... good luck anyways

 

GTX 580M has a throttling issue that can be persistent and requires special steps to be taken to avoid it with the M17x R3. That was built-in by Dell on purpose and it is not an NVIDIA issue. There is no throttling issue with GTX 580M SLI in the M18x R1 with the correct vBIOS and a very simple software tweak. On either platform the 580M can outperform the 6900M GPUs in the hands of someone capable of doing the correct tuning. They are very close to the same level of performance, just as the 7970M and GTX 680M are very close. Across the board, NVIDIA offers better driver support and more features than AMD. SLI also consistently works better than CrossFire, but that is irrelevant with respect to systems equipped with a single GPU. Game performance is also less of an issue with NVIDIA GPUs because they care enough to build good business relationships with game developers. As a consequence, games are more often optimized to work correctly with NVIDIA graphics. Good things seem to happen more by accident with AMD than by design. I've owned three times as many reds as I have greens over the years and was always very pleased, but things have begin a downward spiral since AMD took over ATI. In my own experience the frequency of hardware malfunction and failures with AMD display adapters (desktop and mobile) have outnumbered NVIDIA by at least a 4-to-1 margin.