New 8970m/8990m Coming SOON!!

I'd expect an extra 15-20% with that sort of change.

 

If nvidia doesn't bump the memory clocks for the 780m than I consider them beaten. We had this conversation already Meaker so I won't start it again. You know my take on it and I know yours.

 

HD79xx are just limitated by their front-end and i can´t believe, that they will make the same mistake again. i think the min. Part for the 7990 in my opinion is: 1792 shaders, 32 ROPs, 80 TMUs, 800MHZ-GPU, 1250MHZ-Vram on a 256-bit Interface. A lesser part were very dissapointed for me.

 

Just out of curiousity and not wanting to start a new thread .......................how long do you guys think 680m SLI will hold up on gaming performance (not talking about maxed out performance , but close to max , more like a very high instead of a ultra) before one should think about upgrading the GPU ..............i know there is already talk about the 780m and 89XX series .

 

You'll be extremely disappointed pal. What you're asking for is a 150W card.

 

The AMD drivers ain't half bad now. That is if you are a single card config owner lol. I haven't owned a nvidia card since the 8600M GT (not a great card lol) because AMD has always offered more or less the same performance at a much lower price. I would rather wait for good driver support and save several hundred bucks thanks.

I will be whacking the 8990M in when it arrives

 

That sounds naughty and that sort of talk does not belong in this forum!

 

Wouldn't be surprised if 780M would be nothing more than a rebadge of 680MX.

 

You make it sound as if that wouldn't be a big jump.

 

I'm assuming you'll be good for about three years at high settings. At ultra, at least two years from now (2015) - maybe more. Don't worry about it. Most high-end cards have a half-life of about 12-15 months these days for maximum performance.

 

Some 200 unified shaders more and effectively some ~250 extra GFLOPS is not a big jump, ~14% single card and prolly the same in SLI. If you run 680M SLI now, there's no reason to switch at all, especially as 680M overclocks wonderfully. 580M vs. 110% faster 680M was a big jump.

 

No offense gents, but why are we speculating about future NVIDIA GPUs in an AMD GPU speculation thread?

 

You're forgetting something. The huge bump in memory speed. The 680mx's ram is 38% faster. That would mean a potential 35-38% performance improvement when ever it would encounter memory intensive stuff like anti aliasing. The 680m is already heavily bottlenecked by the ram. Again I have to bring up the BF3 example. The 680m has 60% more performance on the core than the 675mx but since they both have the same ram speed the 680m is only 25% faster. Personally I'd prefer the 780m to "only" have 1344 cores but with memory upped to 2500mhz(160gb/s). If you overclocked the core to 1ghz and the memory to 2800 you'd be getting desktop 670 performance most of the time. Instead we'll probably get 1536 cores with the same slow crap ram(115.2gb/s) the 680m has. In that case the 8990m has already won in my eyes performance wise.

Sorry Fox. Had to reply to this one.

 

it all depends on what games you play. better graphics doesn't make a better game. many people still play Counter Strike, CS:GO, killing floor etc.. the demanding games that need the most power are just about covered at the moment with a single top end laptop gpu (i.e metro 2033, far cry 3, hitman) I actually think that game devs are getting more out of pc hardware now and will continue to do so now the PS4 is going x86 with AMD APU's so the advances in game graphics should still occur but the need to get better GPU's wont be as pressing.

Hence i think 4-5 years on High for a SLI / CF top end Laptop GPU easily which lets face it is pretty much the lifespan of a laptop before it gets relegated to being a media streamer or server. Then again choose the right laptop and you could update the GPU and keep it going even longer.

if you go back to some games when they were first relased and then fast forward 6 months the frame rate is overal a lot smoother usually through game and driver optimisation. I remember Blacklight retribution was around 40fps with everything maxed out and frame drops on my 5850 when it first came out, so i turned of MLAA and ambient occlusion, put tessellation to low in order to keep the game at 50-60fps. Nowadys im getting 60fps and the whole game is a lot smoother and they even improved the graphics which are already just about top tier. Considering its stock clocks, and the cpu is a lowly 1055T its impressive that a near 4 year old GPU which was lower top end can still cut it. battlefield 3 was the same story started off everything on medium to low and now i can run a decent FPS with everything on 'high' and it looks no different to ultra
In fact only on the max settings with AA types on the most demanding games do i feel that the card is running out of steam (the witcher, metro 2033, stalker on ultra). Going back to my first point i play Killing floor and games like and left 4 dead so im not feeling the need to swap as of yet!

id say swaping for a 780 from a 680m sli is a pure waste given the already stellar performance!

 

It isn't about winning or losing. It is about saving money My 7970M cost me effectivly 100 pounds back last May when the cards were very fresh indeed. A 680M would have cost 3-400 pounds for me. Would I see 3-400 pounds worth of improvement in games. Don't make me laugh. 680M is the faster card and has better drivers but at price point that just doesn't justify what you get. Only if you are a diehard nv fan or got VERY deep pockets can you justify spending this incredibly huge amount of extra money on something a little better!

Anyways back to the OP. This isn't about the 680M and certainly not the up coming 780M.

I am really excited to see what the 8990M has to offer. I just hope it won't be a 130W reaction to the 680MX!

 

If you take into account the reliability and overclock potential it's certainly worth it. At the end of the day it's a better toy to play around with for the enthusiast.
You can be very happy if you can get a 20% oc out of a 7970m. The 680m on the other hand can easily go up to 1ghz(38%)and beyond.

8990m's not gonna be 130W. 110 at the most but they'd just label it 100W. Neither the 680m nor the 7970m consumes the full 100W so there is some headroom to play around with.

 

^Totally agree with you guy^

 

I am looking forward to the 8K line from AMD personally. I skip a generation. My dual 6990Ms have been rock solid and extremely good performers. I actually am glad I stuck with them and overclocked them instead of going the 7K route. I have not had any of the problems the 7K GPU owners have experienced. All the beta drivers have worked great as well. AMD is still a good company. As for NVidia, I think some of their innovations are amazing. I am very much looking forward to their new Tegra 4 platform including their Project Shield. I mean, come on, Hawken on a portable device? Awesome stuff!

Hawken demoed on Project Shield exclusive to Tegra 4, built in weeks | Polygon

 

As I said much more expensive for slightly better. I disagree about heat. New cards should be made equally or more power efficient.

 

As long as discrete GPUs run like a bat out of you know where and don't overheat, it does not matter if they are energy efficient. Now that I think of it, hardly anything else matters except for brute performance and high quality. You cannot game on battery any way, so it's basically only useful as a built-in UPS. Of course, if the AC adapter cannot keep up with the demand it will matter, but short of that performance is all that truly matters on a beast like the M18x. Fifteen minute battery life? No problem. When performance needs to take a back seat to having a 4 to 5 hour battery life, FN+F7 can get the job done.

 

I'm looking forward to purchasing a laptop, since I missed out last year. I was looking at the Sager 9170 with the 7970m. Now I'm wondering, if the 8970m will start sales in May, when can we expect the next Sager/Clevo model?

 

Probably around June with the release of Haswell.

 

I wouldn't call being 20-30% ahead slightly. Your definition might be different. lol

 

Really a highly OCed 7970M vs a highly OCed 680M there is a gap so big? New news to me. Can't seem to see a problem when I play games though so where do I get my 30% extra performance for spending an extra $500

The money I have saved plus selling the 7970M will buy me a new card that smokes both cards in games where it counts

 

If you're refering to the 8990m or what ever they'll call it than don't be so sure. The new core and the 20% perf./watt is just speculation. I haven't heard anything about a new core and the 20% perf/watt is just a promise by AMD from last year on which they may or may not deliver. We'll see how the 8990m's performance turns out soon. Personally I'm skeptical especially after seeing that the 780m is a 680mx. That thing when overclocked will be equal to a desktop 680.

 

I am expecting both brands to rename their old flagship stuff and push it out as something new. There may be some new low end and mid range stuff that does not really matter in the grand scheme of things.

 

If the 780m turns out to be a re branded 680mx than I'd say nvidia has a winner. Since AMD isn't putting any new tech into their desktops I doubt they'll spend money on making a new 1536 core gpu just for the mobile market.

 

So let me get this clear, the 780m will be a rebrand of the 680mx and when OC'ed it can reach the performance of a desktop 680.

As for the 8970, what would its desktop counterpart be and what is its possible potential when OC'ed?

 

Thermals would stop you getting to 680 desktop turbo clocks and we don't know if it will have the high voltage memory or unlocked shaders or anything.

The 8970 is either a new chip with a few more shaders or a rebrand on the 7970M which = 7870.

There is not much real info at the moment.

 

Either way, I'll "probably" sit next refresh out, unless AMD are selling the 8990 at bargain basement prices, and I can re-use my heat sinks.

It's reassuring that the current dual card setups are capable of running Crysis 3 at 60+ fps. Games tend not to demand more than the Crysis titles for a good amount of time.
I'm still very keen to see what's around the corner though, from both camps.

 

Um, no, we don't know this yet. Every time someone mentions the 780M and 680MX, there's always an "if" or "might" because they're speculative statements of hope.

 

Desktop base clocks aka 1ghz are still good enough. We have a guy in the 780m thread who said he saw the card at Cebit and the specs were: 1536 cores at 711mhz and the 2500mhz ram so basically a very slightly under clocked 680mx. Hope he isn't lying.

 

If the 8990m does come soon, and performance is at least a 40% improvement over the 7970m, I'll probably upgrade and have this be my last upgrade for around 2 years or so. Might upgrade CPU's too. (Even though I find 920xm totally capable even now... was comparing some real-world gaming benches overclocked... still smoking those i7 ivys )

Anything lower than 35-40% improvement doesn't seem worth it to me. It will most likely have huge thermals, so I consider the chance of OC there being pretty small, and the 7970m can already gain 15% performance increase through OC.

I was thinking about AMD's declaration on why there hasn't been any 7990m, and they'd stated something along the line of the 7970m being the flagship until the next gen, since they didn't want to just re-badge it, since re-badging is something they only do for the benefits of OEM's, and most OEM's don't give a damn about the flagship cards, since the entire community already knows what the flagship card always is.

So I'm hoping for that fabled GCN 2.0 upgrade

 

So i just got a message from upgradeyourlaptop:

HD89xxM are coming in a few months around June/July.
Price is going to be around $550-$600 range.
You can pre-order now so you will be on top of the queue.

-upgradeyourlaptop

Further details from upgradeyourlaptop:

there will only 1 card HD8970M with 4GB available with O/C support
We will announce pre-order arrangement in few weeks - once we have delivery dates confirmed. We maybe offer pre-payment plan - i.e. deposit of $50 on placing pre-order and then balance of payment shortly before shipping. Also pre-order pricing is going to be lower than regular price after launch, so all these that prepay save at least $50

- upgradeyourlaptop

EDIT:

HD8970M performance should be up to 30% higher over HD7970M depending on computing platform that you have

- upgradeyourlaptop


So, this means i'm undecided. As far as I can tell, there won't be a 8990m, so that might really cut the possibility of gains over 40% performance.
If the 8970m is "up to 30%" speed increase, I guess I won't be early-adopting it, instead I'll wait and see how others fare with it and if it's good, try to buy a good overclocker. I also have to check out if my CPU is a bottleneck for it. As it stands, the 920xm is pretty much a perfect complement for the 7970m.

EDIT2: I really should have edited my previous posts as well... hmm.

 

well i for one will just have to check the compatibility first my HM machine first cant plan without knowing if the nextgen nvidia/amd gpu even functions properly in my laptop and so should u, my friend@sangemaru

 

Hehe, I tend to be more along the lines of "If i require that component, I'll get the rest of the system built around it" Case in point, my current machine. I wanted a 7970m.

 

i understand ur point, but the fact still stands that u and me were just lucky we got our hands onto that modded vbios so as for the 7970m to properly run in our machines otherwise we wouldve had no choice but to grab a 680m

 

Actually my card runs plug'n'play with any bios I know I'm posting in the alienware section with the wrong machine, but I had updates on the 8970m and couldn't shut up about it.

 

really? huh, interesting and yea well, nobody cares, same here@posting with the wrong machine

 

That's ok, I'm currently waiting on either a 8790m or a 780m depending on specs

 

I was going to upgrade to 7970m's however I think I am going to put in a pre order and wait on a pair of these to put in my M18x.

 

For that to be true it would need a 1536 core chip clocked at around 900-930mhz.

Sounds interesting.

Now all I have to hope for is that it works in my lappy. lol

 

I don't see why it wouldn't. Should be same arch just with improvements on fab process quality. Same MXM slot, thermals around an overclocked 7970m (which is still ridiculously cold), and if AMD is to be believes, 20% thermal and power efficiency clock-per-clock compared to the 7970m, which is to say, identical in terms of requirements, only faster. Imagine how that baby will clock
What I'm really curious about is the 4GB of ram. Does that mean higher density at the same bus speeds, or an increase in bus-speed over the 7970m? I don't know much about how this works, so could someone more experienced tell me how likely it is to be seeing 512-bit bus?
The reason I find it plausible is that nVidia have been touting memory size/speed/bus improvements in future generations, so it wouldn't surprise me to see AMD rub their nose in it.

 

its not about arch/thermals/mxm factor,but rather the software(vbios/system bios/embedded controller firmware) compatibility. the 7970m normally has an automatic igp check built into its vbios. if u dont disable that, it wont work on machines without switchable graphics. no matter which system bios u have installed there thats what im worried about, cuz if we cant get our hands on such a modded vbios we wont be able to install the 8970m into our older machines, especially since its gonna be pretty much the same gcn structure.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

I have a Dell-vendored 7970m, with no modded bios.
I think you may be confusing the BIOS whitelists on some machines with the vBios handshake on some GPU's.
Either way, my machine has no iGPU. The 7970m doesn't care. Like I said, plug'n'play.

 

Get a Dell card Jay! Slightly more expensive but they're plug n play.

It'll be 256bit. The only thing that changes is that it'll have ram chips on the back side as well like 680m.

I hope MSI builds a notebook with it so I can get a heatsink.

 

ohno, I WAS talking about the vbios of the gpu, not the system bios whitelist so i guess that dell cards dont have that iGPU handshake implemented into their vbios, lucky you cuz dell cards unfortunately dont work on clevo machines the embedded controller cannot properly read out the gpu thermal sensor and thus shuts down the system inside 30 seconds...

 

Well that sucks. Alienwares don't have Enduro so they don't search for the iGpu. I don't know why Clevo didn't implement a mux switch instead of Enduro.

 

cuz its cheaper

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

Yeah. Something like 0.6 bucks/unit. Add 1 dollar to the price and you're even making money from it. lol

I hate how Clevo cheaps out where ever possible even when it ruins certain aspects of their units. Like for example their heatsinks which never align correctly with the fans.