M17x r2, 7970M vs 680M vs 780M

In the next week I will be upgrading my graphics card. Curious as to what's the most reliable out of these 3? And is the 780 even possible? Lots of googling and still no real answers. Seems like 680m's aren't lasting very long?

 

no one has gotten a 780m to work on a m17x r2. some people has gotten a 680m to work on a r2, but sli doesnt work and it is more expensive than a 7970m. 7970m works with a r2 and it is compatible with crossfire. 7970m's hdmi audio out does not work; however, video out works fine.

 

Crossfire 7970M would offer huge amounts of performance.

 

I would say depends on the games you want to play, 7970M Crossfire maybe overkill for alot of people, and wouldn't a 920XM bottleneck it unless it was overclocked?

 

yes it will. im already pushing my 7970m to get above 60 fps in most games and my screen resolution is only 1440x900. on bf4 im getting 50-60fps on ultra with low AA and im hitting temps in the 90s. there are some guys around here with 1920x1200 screens on their r2 and they can run their card cooler and lower clocks and still have more than 60fps when playing games.

 

You meant higher clocks and lower voltage, which gives us more FPS and cooler cards comparing them with stock settings

60FPS+ in every game so far

And yes 780M is NOT compatible with R2

 

For the best performance, 7970M in Crossfire would be ideal.

 

Sounds good, I do have the RGB 1200p screen, so sounds like 7970M is the card of choice. I'm just afraid of buying one and having it pop after a few months or so, never had much luck with ATi.

 

I'm with you there, ATI/AMD has not been that reliable with me either. But with care you can crossfire two 7970M's and be set for some good gaming. Also driver support is going to be there because the card had been rebranded twice.

 

The only reason I recommended the 7970M (which I very rarely do) is because the 680M's have issues in the R2, as mentioned above. You will suffer through hours of trouble shooting and may never find a solution for suitable game-play. It is a proven fact that the 7970M works in the R2, and it's cheaper. Yes, it is expected to have a shorter life than NVIDIA cards, but it also more likely to work. It's up to you.

If I were in your position, I wouldn't keep the M17x R2. It is getting pretty old now. I would sell it and purchase an M18x R2.

 

What do you think I would be able to get for it? Sad part is, I just spent about 400$ on the ram + cpu upgrade. I really do like the 1200P screen a lot, looks a LOT better compared to my m15x, color wise and clarity. Is the screen decent on the m18x? From what I read, its also a pain to tear down the m18x to swap out gpu's and do any work on it. I can pull GPU's on this m17x in probably 1 minute, super easy to work on.

Would there be much performance difference between say, this laptop with the 920x running 3.5ghz on all four cores, and a single 7970m, compared to a m18x running a single 7970m?

If I bought a m18x r2, it would probably be around these specs from what I'd be able to afford.

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/3598800

Now if I ran 7970m Crossfire in this m17x, the score would be around this?

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/7721794

Honestly, 2x7970m seems total overkill for any real gaming @ 1200p. A single 7970m is probably sufficient. So a 350$ gpu upgrade for this laptop would probably be the best route to get a few more years out of it? Plus, I really, really love 16:10 displays. Feels a lot bigger then my old 16:9 Asus G74.

 

If you already did the ram and cpu upgrades recently, then you might as well just go ahead and upgrade the gpu to lower costs for yourself, unless you really want the performance potential that the m18x r2 has to offer. The 7970m is still AMD's flagship gpu, with the newer models just being refreshes of this one, and it still holds up to modern games. Unless you plan on running the Crysis Expanded mod (my desktop can only run it average 35 fps), or Metro LL, then you wont have any problems running current games at the highest settings at 1200p, sometimes switching off filters if needed.

 

I installed a 680m in my R2 and I'm very happy with it.

I've only encountered one issue that bugs me - I need to use HWInfo to manually control temps but that's bearable as I wanted a card that had HDMI audio / video out working, which is something the 7970m doesn't seem to be able to do.

I debated getting a 7970m but in the last 12ish months I noted that there was sometimes a decent gap between driver releases and some games 'partner' with nVidia during development which seems to result in better support for nVidia cards vs. AMD. (Not sure if it's on the game developer's end or AMD's or both but I noticed a few games had abysmal AMD driver support and crossfire profiles coming out much later).

When looking at the 7970m I was only looking to temporarily extend the life of my R2 as it can still handle everything I throw at it. I'll be upgrading to an m18x next revision.

At the end of the day, I think it boils down to preference and cost - they're much of a muchness and your mileage will vary depending on your viewpoint / choice of card. Good luck!