680M is OUT!

Well said Akimox,
The actual drivers for the hd 7970m 12.5beta work very good actually. I cant tell the difference from official and beta to be honest.

 

When you say the official driver. Are you refering to the pre installed one ?

 

There are official 7970m xfire drivers ???

 

I am sure that they meant the drivers that shipped with the R2.

 

Sorry for the confusion, I wasn't clear. I have crossfire hd 7970s on my desktop with official 12.4 drivers on it. The beta mobile and the official 12.4 for destop seem just as stable to me. I can't tell the difference.

 

performance wise what desktop card would sli 680m be compared to ?

 

From my understanding, it's 60% of what a GTX 670 is. So, roughly 20% better than a desktop GTX 670, and right along the lines of a desktop GTX 680 would be my best guess. If not a smidge better than a desktop GTX 680.

 

dam thats bloddy fast !

 

this is real confusing looks like now we have beta drivers, official beta drivers, oem drivers in this case beta drivers and official drivers something that we don't see to often I guess going back to consoles makes sense with all this crappy drivers we get

 

is the 7970m really faster than 680m? Is notebookcheck a good source ?

 

I can't wait to wait til someone gets their hands on a pair of 680s and goes to town with then and tell all of us the truth

 

that makes us 2.... the notebookcheck reviews are showing the 7970m kicking the 680m's butt in most games. it would be funny if this is true and the 680m being twice the price.....

 

Notebookcheck isnt always the most accurate source for info. Take it with a pinch of salt. I think we can all agree that the 680m isnt gonna be "head and shoulders" above the 7970m - heck, it might even be a tiny bit slower - but, with a bit of luck, at least it will work....with that said, I know which I'd rather have....an expensive car sat on my driveway that actually works vs. a not-quite-as-expensive car that wont get 10 yards from the house without breaking down

 

my 7970ms have not given me any problems (or broken down). im using 12.5beta.

 

good to know, I assume that they'll be available for other countries in west europe during next week.
can you ask him details for ... France? haha
i'm waiting those cards to order a M18xR2 ...

 

everyone knows when it comes to mobile gpus, Nvidia is overpriced comparing price/performance ratio vs AMD. 580m vs 6990m is about 5-10% difference in performance with 100%difference in price.(at least at launch) then the 580ms came down to the price that they should have started at ... in the $6xx range. the same thing is gonna happen to the overpriced 680ms.

 

I will ask him tomorrow....

I know that. Just take a look around the forum to see how many people are experiencing problems with 7970m - and that's just Alienware folk. Look further afield and you will see that the issues with AMD are more than localised, as they are spread across other manufacturers too. It's great you have not had any issues with your gpu's but I would count you in the minority - given that, I would still stand by my words in the sense that a bargain or lower priced gpu solution is only good (or potentially great if the 7970m was without issue) if it actually works 100% of the time for 100% of the people who have shelled out big money to buy them in the first instance. If you bought Crossfire, it should work. End of story.

 

no doubt when it comes to AMD drivers you need to know ur stuff and be ready to tweak it here and there. Nvidia is more of a plug and play driver. easy with less hassle... i give u that Stevie... I wouldn't say 7970ms are broken or broken down. Look at the notebookcheck scores... that doesent seem that broken down to me.

 

Nvida drivers are more User friendly for sure. I agree 100% with that.

 

I agree with you, Juang.

Thing is, there are alot of people out there that will pay the extra cash for less headaches. I know I would if I were looking at dropping £3k+ on a machine. All my experience with AMD has required a certain level of tweaking, registry editing and general messing around - coupled with a great deal of patience to get stuff to work properly....I havent had that experience with Nvidia and maybe because Nvidia KNOW this, they charge a premium for it.

I'm not ragging on 7970m because it could be fantastic if the support was there, but it is severely lacking and has been for some time, even with older series gpu's.

 

Yeah i totally agree, Nvidia is more like using a console as where AMD is more like when i was configuring IRQs on my Win95 PC to get the modem to work ....

Some people enjoy the tinkering experience as where others just want to hit play and start enjoying what ever it is they are going to be doing.

And with all that comes a price but in the end it really is worth spending the extra for most people.

 

Wow....Alienware.co.nz has them as an upgrade from the 675's of only 285.20$ NZD....going to call in a bit to get a price quote on JUST the cards...

 

Bloomin' eck!!! - that's a BARGAIN right there lol

 

Nbc now have compare the GTX 680M and HD 7970M

http://www.notebookcheck.com/Test-Geforce-GTX-680M-vs-Radeon-HD-7970M.77072.0.html

The GTX 680M have no Turbo Boost

 

Sad, was expecting more for being so much more expensive.

 

Glad I went with amd for that cost.per performance.
Now I wonder with a proper official driver how much better will this make the 7970m?

 

Now i wonder with a official driver how much faster will be the gtx 680m?

The gtx 680m need less power and got lower temps!

 

So Alienware currently offers the 680m in the 2gb configuration will it make a difference in performance going from the 2gb 680m to the 4gb 680m?

 

I think it doesn't make a difference.Alienware maybe got better
overclocking potential because of better cooling system.

 

At 1920x1080 it wont make a difference about the Vram even with everything cranked up.

If you were running 3 monitors at some insane resolution then the extra Vram might come into play but thats about it.

 

Must be a mistake - it's over $1000 as an upgrade to the 675 sli on the Australian site, and $1090 as an upgrade over 7970m xfire.

 

oh wow, now what will people have to say about it having less heat and lower power consumption..

 

That'd be impressive. My XFire 7970s going full bore with a 50MHz OC only hit 68C in BF3, wonder what that will translate into for the 680M in SLI?

 

according to nbc...amd runs hotter, which is what "everyone" was waiting on. well...not me anyway.


edit:
do a run like this on bf3 so we can see what your in game temps are... thanks.

 

I can do that when I get home. Might be me standing still, because I can't record and play at the same time xD.

 

that's a phone picture of the screen.

 

Pretty disappointing results!

 

What results are disappointing?

 

In all honesty I was going to buy two 680m cards but now that AW offers the card with half the ram I flat out will not buy it.

I understand that the ram will not be a huge benefit unless in some unique situations (that I so happen to use) but it is also a matter of paying top dollar for a lesser product.

I for one hope we can buy the 4 gig models and use them in the m18x. Technically it should work but it might need a vbios flash. I would be afraid to spend 2000+ for two cards with a high chance of a brick. Or at best worse case scenario a vbios flash from the 2 gig version might only utilize 2 gigs out of the 4.

 

The way the 680M performs. It is contrary to what NVIDIA claimed. My main concern is BF3 since that's my favorite game. They are lagging behind AMD whereas in their marketing (keyword, I know) benchmarks they claimed a double digit lead.

Either way, no regrets. I can't wait to receive mine. But perhaps I will be making another configuration change if they're not what NVIDIA claimed.

 

1.2K for Canadians... same as 580M SLI

 

quick question...does the 790m crossfire switch between onbaord graphics?

 

It can switch to the HD4000 w/ FN+F7

 

7970 Xfire BF3 temps

GPU2 is a little warmer than yesterday, probably ambient temperature differences.

 

thanks.

and to those and the 4gb question.....he appears to be using 2.2 gigs of ram.....

 

im so highly confused its not funny.. is he using the 7970 or the 680m?

 

I am using the 7970M in crossfire, Beta 12.5 drivers in that phone snapshot. The spot in the game that I took the shot was when the squad was walking into the store room with the nuke case (with just 1 of possibly 3 nukes there). It was after that intense firefight, and I noticed the temp on GPU2 was lower later on.

 

Now why would you be confused ?? Its a thread saying the 680m is out and yet its full of info about the 7970m

Seems par for the course really

 

Haha, Nice one Gary! ....back to the thread topic....

Just thought I would let those in the UK know that from the conference call that was held Today, the guys at Dell said that 680m should be hitting the UK pretty soon....within a week.

 

Excellent news Stevie , looking forward to see how it performs !