new GTX 980M coming

Ha, 900M series doesn't have it yet. Consider it a Shadowplay fiasco; we're going to get it in a few months after the desktop users have swung their e-peens around at us not having it while they do. Doesn't mean your card cannot use it, just like how when Shadowplay came out and OBS added the NVENC option, I was able to record, stream and encode in NVENC even though shadowplay was "disabled" for me because I "didn't meet the requirements" in the GPU section according to GFE.

Basically, we have the capability to use it. They aren't adding it for us for a while, for likely the same reason that the full GM204 chips aren't released yet.

 

Did you read my whole post?
I said I wanted a good balance between power and heat. A pair of cards trying to display 150FPS while the display can only refresh itself no faster than 60 times a second is a waste of heat and noise.

GTX 970M beats R9 290X by 20% ish. Try telling someone you bought the R9 290X for a 1080p display. You will get laughed at.

The majority of games Notebookcheck tested 970M SLI with got 75FPS++ with Ultra settings and MSAAx4. Go down to AA you get a lot more FPS than that and the games still look beautiful.
There is still a ton of room for DSR. I use overclocking if I need that and my 970Ms is too weak for DSR.

So not everyone just want just pure power. We all have different needs.

True, 144Hz would need 980M SLI. But the display on AW18 is 60Hz and I don't plan on using an external display anyway so I don't need that power.

GTX 970M SLI always beat 980M even if its bad scaling. They got benches on NBC on both. There are Indeed a few games where there are some troubles with SLI, but they are so few apart I think SLI is worth it.

GTX 970 clearly sell more than GTX 980 in desktop btw. Its because they can almost buy 2x970 for the price of 1x980. Same as with mobile. 970M $450, 980M $800.

Mini-ATX build with 980 will be a good choice yes. I agree fully here

 

Yes, I read the whole post. I don't have a problem with anyone wanting 970M or something else. I totally respect your decision. My comments are only about the perspective that something more can be "too much" or (or "overkill" as some like to say) because there is no such thing as too much performance or power if you ascribe value to that more than anything else. I want you to have what you want, and I feel the same way for everyone else. In some cases it may boil down to what some folks can afford. Buying the best you can reasonably afford is pretty smart. That's not the same as being a cheapskate that criticizes people for spending extra to have the best. You're not doing that, so everything is cool, bro.

 

I want the 980M because it's the latest and greatest, quite a bit faster than a 970M and I want my next mobile-gaming solution purchase to last me for a very long time. I am solely willing to wait just for AW to release 980M systems because I love AW/Dell, and I know I will always get good service when I put in the effort.

Also, I can afford it.

Reason why people go for 970 VS a 980, is because the performance is already so close and the 970 can reach 980 speeds by overclocking. Or they can just they just buy a second GPU. Price/performance. GTX 980 is

This is not the same with mobile GPUs, the 980M is 25% - 30% faster than the 970M. The 980M is also about 30 - 35% more expensive than the 970M.

From a technical stand point, you're getting a lot more from a 980M than a 970M VS a 980 and a 970, better yet it's your cash, you decide where it goes.

Mines going on a 980M. Even if it means only getting a single GPU. (Pref 2)

That doesn't mean the 970M isn't a beast, though. Cause DO NOT get me wrong, it is a lion in it's own right. The 980M is simply just the pack leader.

 

One thing I should point out... I have not seen a AAA title release with SLI support on Day 0 since BF4 (which was a broken cow) and CoD: Ghosts. BF:Hardline did not have it, Evolve did not have it (though an alpha test), CoD: AW didn't have it, Watch Dogs didn't have it, Wolfenstein and Evil Within CANNOT have it, Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut and Titanfall took months to get it, etc. The list goes on. Just remember if you plan on getting games day 1 or pre-ordering that you're likely going to be winging it with one 970M for a bit.

Not trying to dissuade you or anything, but keep this in mind.

 

And then the 980 can reach significantly faster speeds by overclocking. People should either compare stock to stock or overclocked to overclocked; comparing a cheaper overclocked part to a more expensive stock part is not representative of real world use.

I'd also personally rather have a single 980 than two 970s. Yes, the latter is theoretically something like 50% faster if SLi scales well, but I'd rather have the single 980 thanks to SLi's pitfalls. (Plus, a single 980 now would allow me to stick a second 980 in later, whereas I'd be stuck with two 970s otherwise and a third 970 would scale really badly in most games.)

Watch Dogs has SLi support? It always ran like a turd for me, giving exactly the same performance on two GPUs as it did on one. Might try it on my 880M's sometime (and might actually be able to play without that crappy stuttering now that I have enough VRAM to store that stupidly large framebuffer from the lazy arses that programmed the game)

But yes, this is another reason why I'd generally recommend a single, more powerful card over a potentially faster setup of two weaker cards.

 

Not interested in how fast a 980 can go. GTX 980s are for people with the cash, 970s are for people who want almost the same performance for a lot less. (Not like a 980 on it's own can't run anything) A 970 can run anything it likes currently, but you CAN get 980 speeds with an overclock. So I think it is representative of real world use, because that's what a lot of GTX x70 owners do.

In practicality, SLi is about 50%, theoretically it's 100%.

And yes, Watch Dogs has SLi.

 

2 x 980m for me otherwise.. what's the point of upgrading? I got plans for that overkill

 

Looking forward to it.

For people waiting on a Alienware 18 with a 980M, how would you feel if they suddenly announced they are discontinueing the 18?

 

Honestly if you're going the single most powerful card route, you should be looking at GM200 instead of GM204. The performance difference between 980 and 970 simply isn't enough to say that 980 would offer a significantly better gaming experience. That being said if you have no intention of getting GM200 and instead want to hold out till Pascal, then 980 might make sense. For me 970 is simply a placeholder card until GM200 drops.

 

In my experience, good SLI scaling can hit 80-90% (it will likely never hit 100% because the games get harder to run the higher the FPS goes; each engine is a bit different though).

I've rarely seen 50% bonuses in SLI. I HAVE seen 0% bonuses though, where it'll sit at 50-55% usage on both cards but your FPS will not improve from not using SLI.

 

It's not necessarily that they get harder to run, just that you're more likely to run into CPU being the limiting factor at really high FPS. Which naturally reduces GPU usage and hence SLI scaling.

Given my weaker cards, 99% GPU usage and near-perfect scaling is more the rule rather than the exception in SLI-compatible games.

 

True. I was going by it based on what my dev friend told me those who make games said. They said when optimizing it gets progressively harder the higher the FPS you go.

Also, it's also prevalent HERE in that video with Watch Dogs and the GTX 480. It needed more than double the clockspeed to double the FPS at same resolution. As I said it depends on the game engine and the coding generally though. Some games will indeed run into needing a better CPU.

Maybe the best way to test this would be to get something like a 5930K at 4.6GHz and DDR4 3300MHz or something, then try using SLI on some more midrange GPUs. Should knock off any and all CPU bottlenecks, no matter how slight. Also, an even better way to test would be to wait until DirectX 12 for low-level GPU access so that CPU is far less of a factor.

Edit: By the way, 99% scaling has been shown to actually only be a 85-94% increase according to some benchmarks HTWingNut once showed me. Even though scaling is 99%, it's not actually "doubling" the FPS.

 

Too bad they don't put more effort into making good games great ones. If we saw GPU utilization like we do in 3DMark, 3DMark11 and Vantage it would be awesome. It's typically 95% and higher for me on those benchmarks. There are some game to do great with SLI, but they are getting to be fewer and further between. Awesome does not seem to be available in mass quantities like it used to. Unless the game engine is just totally a pile of junk, SLI is almost always delivers better performance than what a single GPU machine is capable of achieving. Sometimes a little bit and sometimes a ton better.

 

I've tested this quite a bit with my setup and constant 95%+ utilization on both GPU's just about doubles FPS (+/- 10% or within margin of error) over single GPU. If you're running a benchmark that doesn't fully load the GPU in places and are wondering why the final result doesn't show performance doubling, well that's why.

By scaling I'm referring to performance scaling ofc and not necessarily GPU usage, although the two are almost always directly related. For instance, 50% on both cards = 0% increase over single GPU, 75% = +50%, and 99% = +100%.

 

Sorry, I have been an AMD boy boy since 2011. I must have not had the luxury of nVidia's SLi

Next time around!

We're seeing less and less good SLi/Crossfire support in games because developers do not like the technology. They do not like the idea of the PC being tricked into thinking there is just one card, when really there is two taking turns to render a frame. Reason they don't like it is because it creates more problems than benefits.

Hence why some suggest you to see SLi as a benefit, rather than a "must". It's just a nice thing to have, really.