680M is OUT!

Honestly, the 3 drivers that I have tried aren't that bad - the latest unofficial 9 June beta being the best so far. Back when I had a 4870X2, my God was that a nightmare to find drivers that worked with different games.

 

They are not "that bad" if you are running them at stock core and memory speeds. At least for me, everything except 12.5 beta has had serious issue with very mild overclocking.

 

I cannot even max out Crysis 2 with latest drivers. 7970m should be able to do that.

Same with deus ex human revolution, that game doesnt require that much juice but it wont max out with 7970m with current drivers.

If its a driver problem or just a weak card i dont know.

 

Is that in CF ? or single GPU

 

Single GPU

Must be because of no real drivers i guess. Still when i see others showcasing how crysis 2 runs on their M18x with single 7970m they seem to get better performance than me. When theres smoke on my screen it slows down drasticaly, same in deus ex human revolution where it slows down in weird places.

 

Ahh its driver issue, as ive complete crysis 2 (DX11 and High tex.), usually ive got around 45fps avg. while both gpu utilizes at 50% to 55%, additional driver bug ive found that whenever more enemy get together and obviously you will start triggerin weapon tht time screen gets darker after when firin stops its back to normal.

 

I turned off VSYNC in game settings and am getting 80-120 FPS now. Weird, but instead of limiting to 60, it limits to 45? Yet I still do notice that darker, lighter screen thing too. Using the 9 June unofficial betas.

 

yap its driver issue mate, some times it occurs with Battlefield 3 too. Well with my experience 12.5 beta driver is best so far with less issue, as ive played additional Battlefield 3, MW3, B 2, NFS RUN, BT 2, sniper elite, world in conflict, So on, 12.5 beta came out with stable performance. If you face some basic trouble with specific game then you can disable Crossfire for stable performance till office driver wont come out.

 

Yeah... For the record, this driver is serving me exceptionally well!

 

Crysis 2 v-syncs to 40 (its perfectly playable at 40 but I prefer 60) and I can't figure out a way to lift that limit. There's a maxFPS console command but it only seems to apply when v-sync is off.

 

I thought I read somewhere that the 40 FPS limit was due to dx11 (and dx10 also). When I did my first play-through, I played in dx9 and had 60 FPS all the way through. That may not be the answer you're looking for, but it's one solution

The dx11 in crysis 2 is hardly worth the performance cost (in my opinion).

 

Interesting link here from Benchmark.com - Unfortunately the article is written by nVidia, so dont expect too much objectivity.
However, they ran the 680m (on driver 302.56) vs 7970m (on driver 12.4)

"Testing was conducted comparing the GeForce GTX 680M versus Radeon 7970M, running at a resolution of 1920x1080. Driver version used was 302.56 for 680M and cat 12.4 for Radeon. In 3Dmark Vantage P with PhysX enabled, 680M scored 25063 and AMD scored 20590. In Far Cry 2 Ultra-High 1xAA/AF, 680M scored 129.8 FPS while 7970M scored 112.6. Dirt 3 in Ultra 1xAA/AF, 680M scored 80 FPS while 7970M scored 64.5. For performance, a higher number is better."
link - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M Gaming Notebook Unveiled | NVIDIA,GeForce,GTX 680M,Gaming,Notebook,NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M Gaming Notebook Unveiled

Observations - Well... it looks like the 680m is proving to have some grunt and AMD need some decent drivers sooner rather than later.

 

Nice find! Can't wait for the final results)

 

I can't wait either!!

 

where? (in response to the OP's title)

my patience is running out...

 

Just been chatting with my rep on the phone (UK) and they have had internal notification of 680m for 18x/17x - no price info as yet, although he did say he thought they would be similalry priced to the 7970m's which would be great news - estimated release date 21st June here in the UK - hopefully same date for the US too.

When I find out more, I will update.

 

About the same price? Holy crap, seriously?

 

If they are around the same price, the 675's should take a real nose dive in price.

 

That's what he said....he thought around £500 for the upgrade to 680m sli vs £430 currently for 7970m crossfire....obviously speculation but I hope he is on the money....personally, I am thinking more like £1000+ vs. £430

 

wow I hope that it is true. Perhaps Nvidia is gunning for recapturing Alienware customers. With that price its a no brainer

 

lol your rep. was extreme great but after ur clarification his great But i dont think price will be tht much high, as far i think it will be between £650 to £750. but lets see if its less then my next replacement will be Dual 680M.

 

Yeah, if they ARE that price, I think I will be selling the machine in my sig.

 

yeahh mate if your true gamer then its worth. A bit off topic but im goin to order UltraSharp U2410 24" sooner, colors will be great isnt is compare to m18x stock display ?

 

Ohhhhh yeaahhhh! - a million times better. I hardly ever use my internal display. The U2410 really does make things pop and I am 10000% sure you will be impressed.

 

Similar performance compared with the 7970M - Benchmark

 

steviejones: You absolutely should buy new notebook. 680M will be 80% better than the 580M, probably the same performance as 2x580M

 

For sure, 680m sli will put 580m sli (mine) to shame. I pull around 6200 (from recollection) on a stock 3dmark11 run and around 24k on vantage....a single 680m will be around those figures so sli 680m's will destroy my cards lol

Any takers for my rig?

 

Eahh feelin like to order it now, well cant help it, Ive should control my Alcohol expense

Are you serious, youve goin to pull the trigger for R2. Well just give me a bell i will ask for it to my rep lolzzzz

 

Here are some GTX 680M results done just recently by Schenker notebooks btw so you can compare. This is ONE 680M without the optimized drivers that will follow 680M once it is released
The 3DMark 11 GPU score is impressive



GTX 680M

 

It's official...I am drooling at the thought of 680m

 

The 680M is a down clocked 670 desktop, of course its going to be faster than 7970M. I don't know why people think otherwise. This is probably the first time ever that notebook GPUs are almost on par with their desktop counterparts.

 

I thought I read somewhere that the 7970M is a downclocked version of an AMD card as well?

Also, with the limited testing done so far on the 680M, the 7970M is actually close in performance.

BTW, I am a Nvidia fan - my desktop PC has four GTX 580 Classifieds in it. Call me a fanboi, but the 7970M is friggen powerful.

 

It is but in the desktop world a 670 is only 5-10% slower than a 680. Some ambitious overclocking with the 680M should show some amazing results. Not to mention nVidia will likely have fully functioning SLi vs AMD's broken solution.

 

At stock, they have shown so far to be roughly even. I agree that it's probable that overclocking benefits the 680m more, but probably not to any remarkable degree.

On the downside compared to its desktop variant, the memory bandwidth is nearly halved. It may not matter at 1080p though, but we'll hopefully see soon.

At the moment from what little we have it's about 5% better performance and probably better drivers vs. $250 or so per card. I'm waiting for it myself and hope to know more in three weeks or so when it's in people's hands.

On a side note, It's amusing how people can get almost religiously defensive about brands.

 

Yeah it makes me sick when all these children argue back and forth about that. I always just go for the best and sometimes most price worthy products. Really depends on my economy at the time of decision . We have to remember, its religion and all these aggressive religious/fanboys that start all the wars.

 

Does anyone know why Nvidia chose to use 4096MB for the memory instead of 2048?
even the Desktop version equivalent (GTX 670) only has 2048

also it seems that they are both about the same performance:

 

So Stevie, any more news on the 680M? Don't know whether or not to return my machine equipped with 7970M >.>

 

Anything about throttling or dpc latency? That's my only concern.

 

No news as of yet from my side. Regards the latency or throttling we saw on 580m, I guess we will have to wait until someone has a machine with a 680m to test it out....unfortunately.

 

Is it definitely available on the 21st to order? I just had a rep tell me he doesn't know and the M17x R4 wont have it....... >.> Right.

 

I can only go on what my guy has told me - I can't promise but inside info is better than no info, right? - and the M17x R4 will have it - the guy you spoke to knows nothing LOL!

 

GTX 680M will cost $200 more than 7970M
Source: Gone

 

If that's true, then that's a bit more reasonable. But I wouldn't trust these screen reading Dell reps until I see it...

 

I'm with you on that one....from reading the transcript above, it seems to me that the chat agent was saying the 7970m would be $200 more....which funnily enough is the exact amount that upgrading to the 7970m from base costs for the 17x....

Think the chat agent got a bit confused....more is the pity.

 

Yeah, not to mention "Karl P" types like a 14 year old. See the last message from him in that chat transcript? It's probably the only one that wasn't a template response..

 

I don't even give a slight bit of confidence in anything agents say, but since that's 2 that said it's within a cheaper realm than the 580M, it's looking okay.

 

When i spoke to a rep i was told around the £1000 mark.

 

hahaha - yeah, I hadnt noticed but looking back, he could well have been a robot too. I still think he was slightly confuddled and thought Cloudfire's enquiry was about upgrading to a 7970m from stock...that would be $200......

 

I tried asking 3 more guys the same question. Nobody knew