M17x-R2 - out with HD5870

I'll be wearing my sombrero + drinking a cold cerveza during launch day of crossfire 5870.

 

i guess this is because people really really want those pair of 5870s.

 

Fermi SLI vs a single 5870... easy choice

 

Where did you see that? Link...

 

HP part number : 596064-001
Description: nVidia GLM5 graphics board with 2GB GDDR5 memory

Link

It's also listed here if you scroll down to the GPU section.

 

That's interesting. They would not put that information up on their website unless it was ready to be available really soon. I would guess less than 45 days.

 

My guess is mid-late May it will be at least pre-orderable.

 

What are people going to do if they are given the choice...

Fermi GTX 380M SLI or 5870M CF

 

Im going Fermi if it means games like BFBC2 will load at a decent time.
ATi's drivers are lame.

Nvidia all the way for me from now on.

 

Would the Fermi be a 380M or 480M? For some reason I thought the fermi is a 4xx series but I might be wrong.

 

Welcome to AW forum! What do you expect from one of the few specialty laptops makers that produce the cutting of cutting edge product, speculation is a natural and contant byproduct in these forums.

Also Joker knows some pretty high up engineers in AW, I would trust him on his hints. One more thing yes, mobile fermi is rumored for June...so yep.

 

Sooner than that amigo. I pretty much told you guys when if you read between the lines.

 

He was talking about fermi Joker not 5870 CF

I think you are right, it would be 4XX

 

Wait, I got lost here. Are we talking about the 5870XF from AW or the nvidia from HP?

 

I guess aikimox was talking about the HP fermi.

 

Well, what you need to find out from your connections Joker is when is the Fermi solution coming out on the M17X...

 

I didn't mean anything bad joe, sorry if you misunderstood me

And about the situation my first reaction was imagening the situation at AW factory:\

Bob: hey Joe, how do I connect these cards again???
Joe: geez Bob, I told you a hundred times, there's a cable on the master card for that...
Bob: what cable?
Joe: nevermind, I'm comming. This cabl..... oh , we better tell the boss about this...

But I trust Joker knows his stuff, can't wait to order the laptop

 

The Fermi cards are 4XX - 470 and 480, so far. nVidia uses 3XX for OEM cards that are otherwise similar to the 2XX cards.

 

ATI's drivers are lame? I've never seen a single set of mobile SLI drivers that don't have one major issue or another.

i've been through dual: 8700m, 8800m, 9800m gt, 280m

maybe its a situation where i play a different combination of games than you, so you see problems in ati drivers that i don't and i see problems in nvidia drivers that you dont... but as far as I can tell, nvidia drivers are complete crap. that laptopvideo2go.com even needs to exist is a testament to that. and although mobility modder used to be necessary, drivers from ati's website (namely 10.3) install flawlessly.

 

i think 100000% no fermi for m17x unlesss it a whole new laptop as my contact says gpu heatisink and psu experimentation is happening and as we all know fermi is hotter and uses more power, so it will had to be one hell of a laptop to do this..... allededgly the m17x with 5870 has a cf connection but i dont beleive my contact.

as it stands i need to buy a new laptop to replace my others and ive been holding out untill yesterday when i orderd and come home from work today and cancelled.... so i am at a lose now with what to do with regards to buying a new laptop to play my games on.

 

I doubt it'll be a Fermi variant as well. It's too hot and too power hungry, I don't think they've had enough time to scale it down to an appropriate mobile factor, and if they have, I think it would have had to have been significantly neutered and probably would end up being less powerful than the mobile 5870's. I'm sure it's GT200 based.

 

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=7824

Not really the place to debate this, but I'm extremely concerned about Fermi in any laptop solution right now, give the power draw (already a problem on the M17x) and heat issues in a laptop solution.

And nevermind. Apparently while posting the debate shifted to Fermi's potential inviability lol.

 

Well, I am sure they will make changes and remember the mobile version will be a slightly different design.

I would not bet on that article to predict the future of Nvidia. They have to wake up at some point...

 

I think you just discovered proof that Dell has a sense of Humor. I just Hope my EPP rep doesnt push my order back another month should something come up and I decide to change my configuration.

lol.. no kidding, just haven't experienced a thread explode so quickly before in 8+years of posting on an internet forum. It's awesome/sick at the same time.

 

So if a person just wanted a single 5870 and possibly do CF later should they upgrade or wait till mid may?

 

I agree, with the current cooling design Fermi is unlikely to enter M17X, well not in SLI config. at least. But looking at the HP heatsink and fan I think it's possible, though it's more likely that Nvidia made a GT200-based 3XXX pro GPU for workstations. Still, if it's 2GB GDDR5 and 192-bit+, I'm sold...Technically, I'm already sold, lol.

 

People really don't understand the reasons for the Fermi power and heat failure and thus believe incorrectly that a smaller chip can be made. I will agree it "could" be a G92 variant that simply bolts on a few more shaders and DX11, but a smaller lighter Fermi is quite possible.

Nvidia failed by making a huge die that didn't spin out well. ATI went smaller and succeeded. Fermi is modular. It was designed from to be capable of spinning into a smaller more successful chip should the large one fail (which, imo, it has so far). Spinning up some smaller half chips isn't just possible, it's fairly easy and far, far easier to get the process come out "right" in terms of a functioning cool chip. It doesn't mean they will, but people need to get a grip on themselves when they say it's "impossible", because it isn't in the slightest.

As for ATI driver problems they are 10x as prevalent on the web as you'll find the opposite. It's funny but most fans of Nvidia chips are former ATI owners, who've had more than enough of the kinds of troubles that are had with ATI drivers. I'm happy they are beginning to get it right. But the swath of 10.2, 10.3, 10.4a and 10.5a all tell me they have a host of troubles still. Nvidia is no bed of roses. It's true. I trust neither vendor implicitly. But to say that ATI has better drivers than Nvidia right now is pure fallacy. I'd wager 75% of the web would handily disagree with that opinion.

The other thing you should consider is that you've had drivers for years to work WITH from Nvidia. ATI, after selling you mobile chips for years, has finally decided to come around and make drivers for the products they sold. I think that's a nice move. But it's a required move, not a "kind gesture". Now they have to get the drivers solid as a rock, none of this "won't install" or "use driver cleaner" stuff. They are on the right track. But it needs to continue. And for now, they still rank #2 in the driver area.

 

if it is GDDR5, it is not GT200 based, it is something new (and should be 40 nm)

 

Pretty sure all GDDR5 NV chips are 40nm. Anyway - still hoping to see the 5870 CF in action. This is a good chip and worth considering. By the time you cut things down enough to fit the power and heat envelope, I don't think a mobile Fermi will be faster, I tend to think they'll both be about even. Even performance, but one you can buy now vs one you can buy in some unknown number of months means you look (and consider) closely the chip you can buy now to see if it's worth spending the money

5870 in CF should drive a 30" monitor with ease. It might even do a triple screen setup if there were outputs enough. Sadly I don't see those on this latest M17x, but still having enough oomph to drive a 30" monitor from DP is nothing to sneeze at.

Forgot to mention there is no USB 3 yet - despite it being offered on the M6500. /sigh

 

Isn't fermi mobile going to be 100 watts, meaning no dual solution?

 

Isnt the release of Fermi in June just a rumor? I wouldnt imagine they would even have anything ready till the end of the year at the earliest. Has anyone on the forum ordered the m17x with 5870? Or is everyone waiting for crossfire? I may just buy a single 5870 if the crossfire ones are not out by end of May... im getting tired of waiting! Anyone think we will see the crossfire 5870s by then?

 

The M17x can do triple outputs.....VGA, HDMI, DP

And 5870m CF should be a few hairs shy of a desktop 5870 (which is freaking amazing mind you). The main difference is clocks (although these should be easily able to close that margin though overclocking) and the memory bandwidth. Expect performance closer to a 4870x2 since they crippled the GDDR5 by making it 128-bit (shame really - there was soooo much potential)

 

i am under replacement of my R1 from UK Dell which actually means my machine is reordered from the beginning. however i cant see the R1 configuration there any more. do you think i may get the R2?

the bad thing is i cant see crossfire for 5870 only 4870 crossfire yet (until their stock is finished i guess). i may ask for a refund

 

On the paper. Anyway, my point is that even though you literally live in the country where the notebooks are being made, you'll be the last one to get them. That's my experience after living 3 years in Taiwan.

 

It's ture.same in china.some stuff are made in china, but chinese customer get last to have them.

 

as we always do we are only thinking of new specs. no one considers the power issues of this machine until first flickering and stuff come forward. if 4870 in crossfire need so much power guess what will happen with the 5870s. just a thought.

 

the 5870s should actually use noticeably less power than the 4870s lol

I can't wait to see some actual numbers, but that should not be a problem

 

i wouldnt put my hands on fire for that as i am sure no machine till now has 5870s in crossfire which actually means not tested. Dell -Alienware has only tested this and i wouldnt put my hands on fire once again because they will be burnt. lool

 

given that a desktop 5870 uses 40 more watts than a desktop 4870 yet has twice the cores and over twice the transistors, I would say they have figured something out about lower power usage

And the laptop 4870 and 5870 are the same number of cores.....it will be less

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-5870,2422-20.html

 

what i can see from this link is what i actually said. more power consumption. i dont know about the cores and stuff. the first chart says everything. 5870s may deal better with power but with more power (first chart) . lool

thus those tests are on desktops. gpu specs on notebooks as we all know are different.

 

Comparing laptop 4870 CF to laptop 5870 CF would be about the same as comparing the desktop 4870x2 to the desktop 5870

Note the difference in power consumption (140 watts) between the 2 setups. That is purely graphics card, the rest of the test system was identical for this test. I chose the desktop 4870x2 vs the desktop 5870 because they are about the same number of transistors and are the exact same number of cores (same situation as comparing the laptop 4870 CF to laptop 5870 CF)

hopefully that helps in clarifying what I was trying to say

 

still unclear because of the first chart. however if they have the same transistors and cores they will have identical power in terms of games? thus dx11 is proved to be needless demanding in comparison with dx10 so this may stress the 5870s even more. this can be an explanation for higher temps too.

 

Transistors do not directly equate to 3d gaming ability. I was referring to transistors because they do directly correlate to power consumption.

If they had the same clock speeds, they would perform the same in games, but the 5870m stock is higher speeds than the 4870m can even be overclocked to - so there is a rather appreciable difference between the two.

The DX11 actually helps a ton in games that support it. It is not adding additional overhead that is wasting power (3d or electrical) because the needed components for dx11 are simple disabled when it is not in use.

The speculation with 5870s that are out already is that the main heat source is actually the GDDR5 and not the GPU core

 

this is for notebooks? because there are also ddr5 4870s but for desktops.

 

People I would wait before buying a single ati 5870. I have a feeling your falling into a trap. What if the system support two gpu ati 5870 but will not support crossfire mode. You are in a Oh crap mode.

Please wait and watch.

 

What would be the point of a second gpu and no crossfire in a laptop?

 

It's a storage compartment for use in the event of the primary failing.

 

You would still need a mechanism to sync them.

 

I was joking.

Edit: So what your proposing is a raid 1 equivalent for gpus?

 

SLI on Nvidia cards won't work with the current M17x-R2 mainboard, I believe.