M18x R2 HD 7970M Xfire GTX 680M SLI when ?

Found it on the 3DMark11 website, search for the 7970M

http://3dmark.com/search

 

This was done yesterday and with tessellation ON!!


I'll do a quick overclocked run to compare with tessellation on

P7365

 

Ohhhhh

AMD Radeon HD 7970M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2920XM Processor,Alienware M17xR3 score: P6847 3DMarks

So close (lol).

 

LOL I hate you

 

Ooo..shot down XD
7970m sure is looking promising

 

Wow - 10k+ on Mark11 - NICE!!.....should get better too when the drivers are sorted out more.....

Really tempted to splurge on a pair but I will wait it out a bit longer....

 

Yh might as well wait for the green team to out their options as well..already waited so long can't be much longer ~

 

Yup. I'm gonna wait till all of the "big guns" are out and been thoroughly abused before upgrading......

 

That's right. With 580m we really don't need to rush anyway. It's not like the cards underperform.

I'd like to see for how much 680M SLI will be available this summer and if R1 will be able to take it.

 

The 580Ms once overvolted and overclocked are around 15%-20% superior to the 6990Ms overclocked, in nearly all games. It's not exactly fair but it gives you guys with 580Ms a reason to wait. 6990M users are in a different position .

Stock clocks (stock 580m sli) to stock clocks (stock 6990m cfx) it means nothing though.

 

Depends what you want MAX performance or max performance for price

 

Well CUDA is also extremely attractive. Badaboom is an awesome app. All GPGPU are pretty exciting. Strangely though, AMD has more potential in GPGPU, IMO. It's just not shown.

 

yep I hate this guy too. he,he,he just kidding.

 

no that's not me. There are several ES m18x R2 testers floating around with xfire 7970's. unfortunately, the motherboards are serialized and have to be sent back to dell...or else i would have bought one of them lol

Still, pretty decent numbers for a stock run.

 

wait did you said. Still, pretty decent numbers for a stock run. wow that's cracy.

 

ya bro, that is a stock run. Expect 12k+ 3dmark11s with the 7970's OC'ed to 1ghz core/ 1.5ghz vram

 

Even that stock run was a bit lower than expected tbh I would expect 11.5k + easy

 

blackstar, once official support comes for xfire 7970m's, who knows where the final number will end up

 

ITS OVER 9000! ..well someone had to do it

 

i want xfire 7970's so frickin bad. I got a 2560x1440 panel to drive and i need the horsepower. I will be crushed if it doesn't work in the r1. Cant afford to take loss on the r1 and buy an r2 but i can afford some non dell branded 7970's especially if i sell the 6990m's but i don't know if there is rly a market for them. I'm guessing warranty is void if i don't keep the 6990m's to put back if something happens right?

 

I'm waiting for the green teams offerings! I had 285m GTX SLI in m17xR2 and 580m GTX SLI in m18x so waiting for 680/685m GTX SLI. Are the 7970m only mxm2.0? I assume new Nvidia offerings will be mxm3.0 only. Green team all the way for me!!! The 7970m do look great however but I have trust in Nvidia. Fingers crossed we have no latency however


Sent from my iPad3 using Tapatalk HD

 

It does work in the R1.

If you install aftermarket GPUs, those are not covered by the warranty, but doing so does not void the warranty. You would need to hang onto the 6990M GPUs in case you need to return the R1 for warranty service or system exchange. Owner-induced damage is not covered under warranty.

That is the best way to avoid wasting money and being disappointed about holding second place later. While we are waiting to see what NVIDIA does, it gives AMD time to work on their drivers... based on history, AMD needs all the help it can get in that area. (Their M. O. seems to be three steps forward, two steps backward, LOL.) And, I don't even think we've seen what 7970M CF is truly capable of yet. I bet it gets better as the drivers improve.

Fair? No such thing as that. In terms of hardware performance, anything goes. Unfair would be more like using software to fake results, or disabling features like tessellation so that benchmark results are totally skewed. But adjusting voltage and clocks is not unfair. It just separates good hardware from awesome hardware. Otherwise, we would be saying 7970M is "unfair" LOL. Setting aside benchmark scores, unless AMD does something unusual, NVIDIA will most likely remain superior in games because of its proprietary technologies that make games look better and play better. At stock speeds there is not much difference between 6990M CF and 580M SLI in game play as far as FPS performance is concerned, but the visual quality of games is noticeably better with 580M SLI. When I switched over to green because of hardware reliability issues with reds I was shocked at how much better things looked. Round objects were actually round looking, edges were smoother, everything looked much crisper and more lifelike than cartoonish. At equal framerates, gameplay is smoother with NVIDIA. This is especially true at lower frame rates. Plus, NVIDIA seems to have a much stronger influence on game development.

If NVIDIA does not come through with something better in this round, there's always the next one. Or, switching to 7970M after early adopters work out the kinks isn't so bad either. There is sometimes a down side to early adoption. We can only make assumptions about what's going to happen. Coming to the party late after seeing what actually did happen is pretty smart.

 

^^ definitely agree M.R fox^^!

 

Still trying to find out when the mx18r2 will get the 7970m in xFire, some have said the may 10th but where did they get that number from.

 

Check this link:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x/659996-m18x-r2-hd-7970m-xfire-gtx-680m-sli-when-7.html#post8491348

 

Originally Posted by gbsn721
So we are looking at 7970's in the m18x around May 10-ish? I've waited this long, I guess I can make it another week and half.

Originally Posted by gbsn721
Sounds good, should we be expecting the price to be inline with the m17x? (+$200 for a single 7970m, +$350-$400 for x-fire)

Just trying to plan everything out ahead of time

Also, thanks for all the quick replies.

I asked Dell-Bill_B (one of the helpful dell reps on these forums) and he said they are shooting for May 10th, but that it could change because they are working on a driver issue.

I know a lot of us are waiting on the same thing, so just be patient. They should be out soon!

 

Hi All,

Right here is my situation and would like some feed back ...

I currently have an m1730 AKA the Beast but it getting very old now and is always overheating - i have underclocked everything now just so its stays alive so i can play SWTOR (wont even bother with new games now as i know it wont be able to take them)

i have about £2500.00 (no tax applicable for me) (and that is a large amount of cash for me to spend in a single go) to spend on a new laptop and i want an Alienware however here are my issues ..I have had 2x Alienwares in the past and i had issues with them with overheating or HW failure and i dont want to spend all that money and for it break with a few years (and i do take take exceptional care of my equip by cleraning them out on a reg basis etc)

First off - I know the m1730 has had issues with over heating but that was due to the graphics card and coolers ... so does the m18x r2 have good cooling? does the back have to be raise of the table to get good cooling?

Can i utalise my older ram (8gb) in the new m18x even thought the clock speeds will be different?

I have two hdd in an ATA formation - can i place those into the laptop as well so i am not spening a load of money of HDD's when i can get 1 SDD for Win and then use the other HDD for my storage?

is R2 better than R1 as there is a £400 differ in starting price alone?

Is there much difference in i7-3720 and i7-3820 as the is a £230.00 diff (OMG)

Anyone tried out the Geforce GTX675m SLI? (and i will be getting that)

any advice would be great

Thanks in advance

Fatch

 

Don't personally own one but all of the below are from what I've heard and researched.

The M18x has excellent cooling, you shouldn't have a problem with it unless Dell does a poor thermal paste job (unlikely). It's not like the AWs of old before Dell produced the systems.

Assuming you're talking about the RAM in your XPS, no. That's DDR2 (200 pin). The M18x takes DDR3 (204 pin). Your old RAM wouldn't fit, let alone work. Besides, the latest RAM is more than twice as fast in clock speed as your current memory, and it's £40 for an 8GB DDR3 1600MHz SODIMM kit which you can install yourself.

Should be fine.

We don't know all of the differences yet, but the R2 supports Ivy Bridge processors (R1 only takes last gen Sandy Bridge), has updated MXM sockets (PCIe 3.0 compared to PCIe 2.0 in the R1), has an mSATA slot (in which you can place an mSATA SSD in addition to two drives in the standard SATA slots), and from what we've heard it's got a better link to the screen which according to Dell results in a higher quality display. We won't know that for certain until someone can test it.

No. Assuming you're using it for games, the 3720 will be perfectly fine for years to come. In the vast majority of games, your GPUs (no matter how fast) will bottleneck it first. Very few games will see a performance benefit.

If you use CPU-intensive apps then the 3820 can be a bonus, but if you did, you'd probably already know that you needed a faster CPU for it.

Really, the 3610 should be fast enough by a long shot, but the 3720 isn't much more and that is quite a speed boost (although that still won't affect most current-day games).

The 675Ms are identical in every way except name as the last generation 580Ms, and you can find benchmarks for that here.

But I'd advise you to wait. Very soon the AMD Radeon 7970M Crossfire will be available, and the performance of that is nothing short of incredible - significantly faster than the 675M SLi - and not only that, it will be a lot cheaper as well (believe it or not). Unless there's any particular reason for you to go nVidia, they're a much better pick. It's suggested that they should become available around May 10th, in just 2 days.

Phone in and haggle with the sales representatives for a better quote. If you find one who will barely budge, put it down and find another one. I literally got 10% off a quote just for asking for a discount, as well as an extra year of warranty thrown in (no haggling involved at all, really). Push them for lower prices. There are advice threads around here that you should find easily on the main Alienware forum for ordering over the phone.

 

Did I read correctly, older laptops use ATA drives, big difference, difference connector than a sata connector. Might want to double check that one.

 

Ah yeah, I missed that. Not too sure on the older types of hard drive but check that first. Might not work with current-gen SATA.

 

6990Ms can be volt-modded physically which would actually even the ground. That is saying if unfair means anything goes.

As for higher IQ and less micro-stuttering I don't know what to say to that. I've owned nVIDIA several times and have never noticed a difference between the competing ATi card.

Currently in the process of getting a CFX 7950 system (I'm leaving high-end notebooks until 2013)

6990M CF
6970M CF
GTX 480 eVGA
GTX 480 PNY
Radeon 5870 Mobility
GTX 260m SLI
GTX 280m SLI
GTX 260 (216SP)
GTX 285
GTX 260 (192SP)
8800GTS
X1600 Mobility
7900GTO
X800XT Platinum Edition
9700Pro
GeForce 4 Ti

The only time major IQ differences have ever been announced was against nVIDIA's own cards:

GeForce FX 5800 (2003) had higher quality AF than GeForce 7900GTX (2006).

nVIDIA's new 690 Limited Edition $999 is reported to have less micro-stuttering than all nVIDIA's previous SLI configs.

Default AMD settings vs. Default nVIDIA settings don't mean anything at all.

As far as AA modes are concerned, ATi (AMD), recently released new modes with the 12.4 driver. I don't think comparisons mean much when technology is always moving unless its at least up-to-date.

This might support your argument:

 

Zero: I think Mr. Fox is talking about more detail (e.g. in games that support nVidia specific features like PhysX and FXAA) in games vs. AMD which require driver hacks or flat our don't have support.

Furthermore, nVidia MSAA does have better IQ than AMD MSAA, I've put both side by side in an M18x and have seen it. It's hard to capture through a camera but in motion its very evident. What's more, nVidia cards tend to have less steep drops into minimum fps territory like AMD cards do, hence you get a smoother experience. This is especially compounded in Crossfire vs SLi situations.

Also, nVidia drivers and support are far and away better than AMD. Just to give one anecdotal example, when I had 6990M Xfire (and 6970M Xfire before that), BF3 had an ongoing problem with flickering textures in some levels. This took a long time to resolve. Then there's that issue with AMD drivers having broken brightness control in the M18x (has it even been fixed yet?) and prior to that, we had to make a major push for Dell to convince AMD to release a properly working vbios that would support their latest drivers for the 5870M Xfire.

Lastly, don't forget nVidia has a much better stereoscopic 3D implementation, optimus enjoys broad support and their TWIMTBP program is usually present in AAA games thus guaranteeing a smooth gaming experience. nVidia simply executes consistently better, even if their hardware costs more, its justified by their awesome support.

 

I'm not even going to acknowledge drivers because AMD will never be up to par, at least for another couple of years.

Yes PhysX and FXAA > What 6990M offers but 12.4 drivers offer enhancements in IQ with SSAA.

AMD's default settings have been known to cut corners (Catalyst AI), but this can be disabled by setting quality to high quality.

AA Modes on the 580M are superior to the 6990M but not for this next round.

3D is also a joke when it comes to AMD; I'm not acknowledging that either.

The 580Ms are far superior to the 6990Ms, no question, I just don't see the same happening with the 680M vs. 7970M. It doesn't matter to me though because I want more power and am moving back to desktops . I have a feeling that the GTX 685 will be unstoppable this year, literally unstoppable.

87% the performance of a 690 for $700.

Talking about AA image quality for new cards :

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=226244

 

what do you need more power for? 6990m can max anything at 1080p and just use a frame limiter to smooth things out when multi-gpu shows it's classic stuttering.

 

To be perfectly honest I am considering the same thing. I've been thinking about a 3D Surround setup run by 3x AW2310 and 2x evga GTX 680 water cooled.

As I can imagine, 680M in SLI for R1 will cost more than 1000 EUR and I already paid that for 580M SLI last year. I can afford it but the thing is, maybe it is simply not worth it. For 1k I can get more than 1/3 of the setup I want, especially as I already own single AW2310.

The way notebook hardware manufacturers artificially limit their products just in order to sell new hardware next year is discouraging, cannot deny that.

 

I need to do some hardcore 3D rendering. (3930K)

2760QM too slow.

That, and I want Tahiti NOT Kepler/PitCairn in mobile form, which hasn't been announced.

I will move to GTX 685 SLI later in the year. I'm gonna go for some desktop benching records . I'll then go back to 8970M CFX/780M SLI (2013).

 

Yes, this is what I was referring to. +1 Rep. Although anecdotal, I was alluding to actual visual differences that I noticed immediately when I moved from 6990M CF to 580M SLI. To elaborate further... and still in an anecdotal manner... It was profoundly better visual quality. Besides BF3 flickering, this was also a problem with Crysis. One of the first things I noticed was that Crysis not only had zero flickering with 580M SLI, it also looked a whole lot better. I noticed this in other games also, but Crysis has been one of my favorites since it was released and it was one of the first games I ran with 580M SLI. As a long time AMD (ATI) user, I had never known Crysis to not have flickering issues to some extent.

As everyone knows, I like benching. One of the first things I noticed in 3DMark11 was huge improvement in graphics test #4. That particular test was always super choppy and jerky with 6970M/6990M CF. The FPS were not much higher with 580M SLI than 6990M CF (as long as tessellation is turned off with AMD, otherwise 580M SLI FPS were higher). However, that test is much smoother looking and more fluid in movement with 580M SLI than it is with 6990M CF running at roughly equal FPS.

In Vantage, I noticed shadows, light reflections, steam and other visual elements that I never even knew existed with 6970M/6990M CF. I was not able to see some of those elements with the AMD cards, and some were very muted and not especially noticeable. In Unigine's Heaven, Sanctuary and Tropics benchmarks everything looked a lot better to me, and I was able to run with tessellation almost as fast as 6990M CF ran with tessellation disabled.

Things just seem to "pop" visually to a greater extent in games and benchmarks. I know that is all anecdotal observation, but it was enough to impress me. I am still not a fanboy for either brand, but I was somewhat anti-NVIDIA before switching to 580M SLI because I had serious problems with the "NVIDIA defect" that affected the only 3 NVIDIA-based computers I had ever owned in 20+ years of computing. At the offer of Alienware, I switched to 580M SLI only out of desperation. It was with a degree of apprehension, but I was fed up with problems I was having with AMD 6970M/6990M CF (multiple hardware failures in a very short time, not to mention horrendous driver issues, one release after another). I ended up being very pleased with the change, for all of the above reasons.

As evidence that I am not a NVIDIA fanboy, I am seriously considering an upgrade to 7970M CF because of my fondness for benching. I still value performance over eye candy, but I have been impressed enough with 580M SLI that I'm not rushing into anything. I am dragging my feet a bit to see if GTX 680M SLI materializes. If it does, and overall performance is similar, I will choose 680M SLI over 7970M CF for no reasons other than NVIDIA's superior driver support and visual quality. If the performance crown is passed to AMD in this round, I can deal with AMD's crummy drivers if I need to. I have been doing my own AMD/ATI driver tweaks and hacks for a long time, (at least since the ATI Rage 128 was the hottest thing going,) it's just really nice to not have to resort to that for a change.

 

If the m18x r2 came with the HD 7970m from the start I'd likely have one ordered by now. But, I know in a year at most there with be the next gen cards and processors. I've come to the conclusion that my m17x R2 has enough life in it just to upgrade until the next gen stuff comes out.

 

It might have something to do with Fermi being all the same tech while 69x0M series is not based off the 6970, but rather the 6870.

That's another reason why the 580m smashed the 69x0 in tessellation based games.

Oh well -- good times.

 

Funny thing, when we had both the 580ms and 6990ms equipped machines at the office side by side, nobody could tell any difference in visuals, neither in games nor in benches.

Anyway, I'm also out of the high-end laptop market but for a different reason. Into ultraportables now and am absolutely amazed by MBA's. If they release the famous retina display with the refresh in a month from now - I'm gonna be all over it.

 

Some people think the same thing about Coke and Pepsi. But, others can tell the difference and pick their flavor preference in a taste test with 100% accuracy.

 

My only concern about the nvidia cards is that thamn DPC latency ant the power consumption.

 

retina display?

 

300 pixels per inch = the so called retina display
Its so that your eye can't discern the indiviudal pixels anymore and its more "crisp" like on the iphone and ipad (newest ones)

 

damn!!!!! ME WANTS

Maybe my PS-Vita has it!

 

So just reordered my laptop with 7970ms in crossfire, they're available here in Canada eh?

 

No sign as yet on the UK site.....and I dont see it on the Canada site either.....

 

Well it's supposedly released in Japan today too, haven't check USA but UK should be very soon ^_^

 

675m SLI appears as the only option on the Japan site right now.....

 

They are listed on the Canadian site for $50.00 less then the Nvidia cards

CrossFireX™ 2GB GDDR5 AMD Radeon™ HD 7970M [add $300.00 or $8.00/month1]
Dual 2GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 675M [add $350.00 or $9.00/month1]