Nvidia 770, 780 or AMD 7970m?

From your experience, which card would you recommend to upgrade to? Do the three of them work fine? Which one if more overclockable?

I'm so in love with my beast... Upgraded from the original nvidia 260m to 460m, then to 6970m and now this will be my third upgrade! It never gets old!

Also I upgraded from a i5 540m to a i7 920xm... and an additional 256gb ssd...

Ah, and thanks who discovered the pin removal thing for the adaptors to get additional power, that is f***ing brilliant!!!

 

I think the general consensus will be the NVidia 680m, great performance, good overclocking and reasonable price.

In terms of performance its 770m -> 7970m - 780m (with the 680m sitting between the 7970m and 780m). I suppose it might boil down to cost, again it follows the same as the performance. If money is no object then go for the 780m, otherwise consider the 7970m or 680m (depending on if you have an allegiance with AMD or NVidia).

 

Djboz is exactly right. Gtx 680m would be my choice due to lower power consumption and greater OC headroom. If you take a look at tech inferno website svl7 just scored 10k graphics (3dMark 11) with an overclocked gtx 880m in m15x!

It will depend on the price you can get so 7970m may be best value but 680m would still be my first choice.

Sent from my One S running 4.4.2

 

PSU pin removal discovery was upsi! Legend!

Sent from my One S running 4.4.2

 

Yea... svl7... he plays in another league...

how are the 780m and 880m in terms of power consumption comparing to the 680m?

 

780M and 880M run hotter and use more power. The 780M does not overclock at all well in the M15x and actually the GTX 680M can overclock to around the same level as a 780M at stock.
The 880Ms must be binned impossibly high to be able to push them that high within a limited power envelope. Or svl7 has some voodoo PSU magic up his sleeve.

 

Cool, so I made my mind and I will go for the 680M.

Anybody out there that has bought it in ebay or from other trustable sources? Shall I go for the Dell model?

 

Dell model is definitely preferable but I think there isn't much difference between dell or clevo. Certainly not the same issues as AMD clevo cards.
The best place (in my experience) is to look for one in the NBR marketplace. That is where I found my 7970m.
Ebay can be a bit risky, especially upgradeyourlaptop or upgrademonkey, who refuse to replace faulty cards claiming once you've installed it you've invalidated the warranty or some like that.

Good luck!

 

Good choice. You should try to buy the Dell model for compatibility assurance, and be sure to watch the temps constantly.

 

I was also thinking of selling my m15x and get a new m17x. But feck it, it's 3 years with it and never an issue so gonna get a 680m and don't spend a lots of money. After the upgrade my laptop will still be good enough for couple of more years.

 

680M hands down. Second to that the 7970M. The 780M and 880M are c**p crippled performance and hot! Another great contender would be the upcoming maxwell based 860M GTX. This card will be at 770M GTX performance at much lower power comsumption. Push that hard and it might just catch up with even a 680M OCed!

 

The 780M is not that bad, but it gets a bit hot. At stock it's like this: Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Unknown,, with the 920xm at 27/26/25/25, 240W psu without center pin. As for overclocking, I don't think you need to overclock the 780m atm, but I know that some keep it at 1000/1450 1.0v fully stable in gaming, acceptable temps.

 

Ok I was a bit harsh about the card however for the money it just cannot realise it`s potential enough. The 680M is much cheaper and will perform the same in the M15x due to being able to OC it a fair bit.

Just not really a very suitable card for the M15x for the money asked and the power required. Then again it is the only new card since the 7970M and 680M debuted in 2012 (not counting rebrands lol) so good job trying it out.

The 880M before someone asks is the 780M but higher binned. This means it should run more efficiently and OC better but still too hot, power hungry and expensive for the M15x as it runs at higher stock clocks.

It is high time we had some new architecture to play with

 

What are your temps 780M idle and at full load?

 

i run the 7970M. idle is 33-35C and full load 69C at 20% OC. 60C at stock clocks.

 

Haha, with that amazing cooling mod that sounds pretty normal. I think that the 780m would run at about the same temps in your laptop too.

 

True that. However even with stock cooling if you run stock clocks with an undervolt you won't hit 70C (be hard pushed to)

 

I agree, that's pretty good too.

@chopsy, what temps do you reach?

 

I laughed out loud when I read this ), my idle was about 56C, full load went close to 90C in some games. I made a KOI cooling mod too hehe, but I think I need better fans, so I only managed to shave off a few degrees, about 52C idle, 80 something at full load. My opinion is that the high temperature is the major limit for the gtx780m in the m15x.

 

Did you apply the ultra low profile heatsinks to the heatpipes? The KOI mod makes a huge difference to me on both GPU and CPU side. My gaming temps now are lower than they were pre-mod but I'm running much bigger overclocks than before mod
Post a pic chopsy

 

The low profile heatsinks would have taken too long to arrive, so I got some taller ones from a local company. I'll post pics and what I had in mind tonight when I reach home, on the KoI cooling mod thread.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I have a 6970M running at 780/950Mhz (stocks are 690/900) at 1.1V together with a 920XM 90W/80A at 26/25/24/24. CPU Temps Idle 50C, GPU Idle 45C. Playing games both go up to 80C - 85C max only in few games after playing for long periods. I reckon my temps are quite good considering that I don't have any special cooling mod or additional fans.

By the way, chopsy, one of the things that lowered my temps a lot was to get a new heatsink for both my processor and GPU. Maybe after applying too many times thermal pastes of all kind the copper lost its conductive properties but it actually helped a lot.

 

You may be right, the heatsink or the fan could lose their performance over time.
I plan to get a new heatsink soon, shave all the round protrusions on it, or what they are called, and glue some heatsinks on all it's surface with some good temperature conductive epoxy .

 

Don't want to start a new thread. GTX 870M speculation? Apparently another GK104 chip running 6GB DDR5 over a 192 bit bus? Probably not quite topping an overclocked gtx 680m or 7970M?
Apparently the GTX 860M is a maxwell chip so I wonder if we'll see a GTX 870MX or something. All info from Guru3D and notebookcheck.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-860M.107794.0.html