GTX 680m On sale at Dell. SLI = $539 more than 7970m cfx

What the title says.

 

yea on xoticpc, 680m is 295$ more then 7970m

 

$550 more for 2x680M than 2x7970M on M18x

Strangely I can`t find any option for a single GTX 680M on the M17x, only 675M and 7970M

 

It's up now on the M17x. $350 price bump over the 7970m and a 6 day delay.

 

is it really worth that money? thats the big question isnt it? i mean your gonna get those people that will buy it cause they have the money, but to me with really high end GPUs, it seems like Radeon has the upper hand...

 

Wow, one 680 costs the same as two 7970s!

 

greedy nvidia

 

You know even if there proves to be a substantive speed bump after people start benching it, I'm just not interested right now. Too much cash for not enough juice so far as I can see.

But I am hoping it's just powerful enough to kick AMD into gear and get the 7970m some official drivers.

 

They would if they would release a driver...

Anyway, 7970 is still recommended by dell. I wonder how long that will last.

 

now we know the price. do we know the performance? is it gonna be at least 25% bump over 7970m CF? if not, how can they justify the price that's 100% more than what's basically the compatible products in performance?

 

7970 seems to has a lower tdp than 6970 and we can expect for a 7990 right?

 

Hello Everyone,

Maybe I am missing something but, the clevo versions are 4gb of GDDR5 and the alienware versions are only 2gb of GDDR5?

$55 less for double the VRAM

Wonder if the Clevo GTX 680m 4GB would fit in the M18x?

Thank you,
Monnie

 

Either 8970M/8870M or 7990M.

 

Wow. The only reason i could see anyone who doesn't have money to burn getting a 680 in their AW is if they went with the m17x and wanted 3d and decent FPS.

 

"2GB" could be a mistake. All sources I found quote 4GB as the only option.

 

Clevos are 4, dells are 2. Won't matter at all at 1080p.

Caught between wanting better drivers vs. wanting $500.

 

How much a difference is the 2GB going to make vs. the 4GB at sager?

 

I am dead set on an SLI laptop and I have been waiting on AW (or Clevo) to come up with the 680m SLI. I am truly torn now between Nvidia driver goodness and questionable AMD driver quirks. Talk about sticker shock with the 680m! Now I need to decide if i really want the 3920XM or not.

 

I beg to differ. Different applications use different amounts of Vram, then start adding anti-aliasing. Not to mention if you use an external monitor greater than 1080p

Makes a big difference to me. 4GB per card model was my target purchase to provide current needs and longevity. 2GB will not be enough to get my purchase.

I hope you are correct.

Thank you,
Monnie

 

I thought they were supposed to be "only a little more expensive than the 7970's". Are they retarded over there?
A lot of people who were going to get laptops for gaming this year ot fed up with waiting for Nvidia and went ahead and bough ones with 7970's, even if they were fans of Nvidia. Now with these prices they are just going to drive customers away. unless the factory clock is like 15%+ higher than the factory clock of the 7970.

 

The desktop 680 2gb wasn't framebuffer limited by skyrim at 5760x1200, 8x AA, FXAA, 16x AF, and with the high res texture pack. So no one should miss the extra 2gb.

 

Manufacturer of the card's PCB can stick whatever amount of RAM they want on it, so expect to see some variation. Any more than 2GB on the 680M is just a waste though unless your using 3D or a multi monitor setup.

 

i also heard, correct me if im wrong, that later nVidia was going to try and cram 4-6 GB of VRAM into the 680M later on. To me, again, seems like its not gonna be worth the extreme charges they'll probably have on it, but like you guys said, the official drivers to seem to be the downside.

 

Hello Everyone,

As far as VRAM is concerned, not everyone has the same needs.

The simulation I use the most for gaming entertainment is Digital Combat Simulator A-10C Warthog which uses over 2.3GB of VRAM with high textures,structures/builds on ultra, and viewing distance increased. Hence the reason I have been using 3GB GTX 580's in SLI. Going with 2GB of VRAM would be a step backwards. Buying a new system should be able to handle current needs as well as provide enough hardware for the future too.

Thank you,
Monnie

 

Hi Monnie, I'm not trying to troll you or anything, but Kepler uses mem more efficiently (differently) than fermi. There have been quite the discussions about it at evga forums. There are other variables such as vram will use more if it has more, but to say that your sim uses 2.3GB on fermi is not the to say that it would be vram bottlenecked on 2GB kepler and you'd have to lower settings.

Just my 2c with community research and testing over a couple months. I'm not saying you don't want or need a 4GB 680m, just wanted to spread some of the jelly out there on your bread

 

Quagmire,

Truly appreciate your more technical input. I will research this more. I will say, it is an expensive gamble to see if Kelper's adaptive process/ memory management will work or not with the primary application a new system would be used for. Do not think anyone would want to be next to me when I bought a new maxed out M18x, fired up the simulator and had to reduced the settings and/or Kelper's adaptive process reduces the visual effects to get by with less VRAM.

Thank you,
Monnie

 

Currently the 680m offered by alienware is the 2gb version, as of right now they do not have any 4gb versions.

They will get the 4gb version soon.

The reason i am posting this is because i noticed this after i was trying to get a quote and thought it was just read back to me wrong when they said the "2gb 680m in sli"

From Alienware:
"there's an option for a 4GB 680M but it is not available as of the moment due to supply issue .. only the 2GB is available as of the moment"

 

Does this mean that a 4GB version of the GTX 680M will be available for the M17x R4 and Clevo models soon?

 

Only time will tell....

 

Would be interesting to see what pans out on this....I was having a google and came across this article in which Frank Azor is commenting about the 680m in AW machines at Computex just recently. Clearly he is talking about 2gb vRam cards:

Quite odd as Engadget's main write up also clearly says 4gb vRam is available too....

 

How long do you anticipate it will be before the 680m is selling for a more reasonable price? $550 for 680m SLI over the CF 7970 configuration (which is already expensive) is ridiculous. Surely this is only the initial release gouge? What do you think? 3 months and its down $200-300?

 

680M SLI w/ 2GB VRAM for $1100 is already expensive, as one of the posts above claims, they are going the 2GB version simply because they did not have the boards with 4GB VRAM on them yet.

If the limited supply is the only reason, when the 4GB VRAM version comes, it should cost the same. An option would be to make the 2GB version cheaper.

AFAIR it was 5 months for 580M SLI. AW started selling in July 2012 for $1100. The price dropped to some $500 in November I think. Naturally, these are the 'upgrade' prices talking newly configured setups.

 

Sorry, I didn't follow you. Are you saying the 580m SLI was $1100 at first and then 5 months later was only $500? And this was on newly configured systems?

Thanks.

 

Yes. To get 580M SLI in a new m18x R1 you had to pay extra $1100 at first (so it's the same as for 680M SLI now). The price was valid for the end of June, July, August, September and October 2011. Then, the price for 580M SLI in new systems went down to half the original price, so ~$550 somewhere around November 2011.

Edit: Let me add that if 680M SLI works as stable and smooth as 580M SLI has worked for me so far, naturally at its full spec performance, the cards are worth the money (talking the current price). I have never had a single issue with 580M SLI and Nvidia's drivers have always worked fine and I do 3D Vision sometimes.

 

I see, well, I guess I won't be waiting til November cause I just re-ordered my M18x with 680m SLI this time---woo hoo! Besides getting ripped for the 680m SLI configuration, I actually made a better deal as far as total % off than the order a week ago.

Price before tax $3655 ($3272 if you count the $200 GC and 5% GC), price as configured without any discounts: $4337.

Go Team OCD!!! (<---that's me)

 

Good choice. Put your specs in your sig so we can see what's your setup, talking future discussions.

 

Does anyone know when the GTX 680m will be available on the UK or Irish alienware sites?

 

Should be Monday. PM me if you want my rep to get you a good deal on your machine!

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ccessories-please-contribute.html#post7058066

 

Be aware that AW will probably only have the 2gb VRAM version as the 4gb versions appear to be short supply, if thats important to you ?

 

upper hand on benchmarks, not performance in games. In bf3 it is not stable at all for me (yes i know we don't have official drivers to run 7970m and enduro properly). The thing with going to nvidia is stable FPS performance, easy overclocking with nvidiainspector, and installing drivers are the easiest thing to do and not tricky like AMD drivers. The stress free maintenance of Nvidia GPU's are worth it...

 

I cancelled my 7970m CF build and yesterday put in my 680m SLI order just for the above quoted reasons.... and I am going STRICTLY by word on this forum. I really don't know. I have a X205-s4349 Toshiba laptop with an Nvidia 8700m GT I bought in 2007 that I am typing from at this moment and haven't had any trouble except once with random restarts and it turned out a graphics driver update healed that if I recall correctly. I don't really game with this laptop although I bought it with that intention 5 years ago. My self-built PC has a Radeon HD 4870 x2. It has been trouble free as well. I built that in 2008. With that build I didn't overclock or anything. I decided that I wanted to be happy with the stated performance and I would buy parts accordingly. Since I don't have any experience (besides replacing a battery and adding memory to my Toshiba) with laptop tweaking, I want to make sure the Alienware I buy will have the best chance of not needing tweaking and TLC that it sounds like the 7970m CF systems need. I am starting to wonder, however, if most of the problems I read about really stems from people over-clocking and such and I wonder if those who don't mess with it have it work better?

 

Thing is we don't even know how 680M SLI will work out since no one has it yet, but I wish you luck there and hope it all works out for the best.

 

True. I guess unless a buyer is willing to wait until they actually SEE how the 680m's are, that leaves those wanting to buy right now with the option of either spending hard earned cash on hardware that, at this point in time, doesnt work as it should do OR taking a gamble that 680m wil be less problematic.

I would be waiting it out to see in a few weeks what gives with both 680m testing and also AMD/Dell driver support. Then I would take the plunge either way - based on the situation at the time.

 

totally agree, brother stev. I'll not buy ontill august when everything is stable.

 

Nobody really believes 680M SLI will not be stable, c'mon. Since 680M SLI AW/Dell availability is confirmed, now this just becomes the question of available funds: If one has those extra $550 to spend, one gets 680M SLI; else gets 7970M and tries to justify its choice on various forums coming up with very different reasons. You may not like what I've just said, but let's face it, this is exactly how it is.

680M SLI will do wonders. It will feature 580M SLI hardware/drivers stability paired with its 200% (or more, compared do 580m sli) performance and the absence of the infamous 580M throttle.

 

Does the 680m support multiple monitors out of the box?

 

AMD 7970M remains broken, buggy, and unsupported by AMD after more than a month of being in retail production. I suspect it may be the last AMD product that I will consider owning. Being more powerful than 580M SLI doesn't really mean much when it doesn't work properly. Sure, it achieves some phenomenal benchmark scores... maybe in 1 out of 20 runs where it either crashes the benchmark program, causes a black-screen freeze or BSOD the rest of the time. It even has issues with mundane tasks, like watching YouTube videos. If I were buying a new M18x R2, it would most definitely be worth an extra $500 to $600 for me to own something that works properly, with historically superior driver support.

 

Can anybody tell me why the GTX 680M in the alienware laptops is offered to have 2GB or memory.

I know this is more than enough for 1080p and possibly 1440p.

But the clevo models offer 4GB as standard

Is this normal or just a typo?

 

good question, Sager / Clevo have the the upgrade option at $295 for the 4GB version, why is Alienware charging $350 for 2GB version? I hope it's a typo...

 

EDIT: Clevo 680M's is priced at 495$

Maybe the PCB is allowed to be customized by nvidia, like 2GB GTX 680 and 4GB GTX 680. So clevo is allowed to double the memory I guess.

I'm skeptical about the latency in the 4GB mem chips, I hope it doesn't have any overclocking problems compared to the 2GB mem chips.

I'm emailing dell now, I'll wait for their reply and post them here.