Where are the nVidia GeForce GTX 780M?

NP..glade to help and good luck on the med school my son just got out of the Army this week a medic..starts Med school in San Diego next Tuesday. I know the pressure your under.

 

Nice! He should totally get an Alienware and use it to take notes in school!!

On the note of AW, I tried to call today to get the OS installation USB so I can install an SSD, on the website it told me to call the customer service because it can't recognize the tag and service code (saying that it can take up to 48 hours to register on the system). Called the customer service as directed and I was told the same thing... I guess I'll try again tomorrow as I plan to install the SSD over the weekend.

Good luck to those with original EDD of this week, hope you guys can get your machines very soon!

 

You are correct. That is indeed a MXM connector.
Wikipedia says the same

Mobile PCI Express Module - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

MXM 3.0 type B: Nvidia GeForce GTX 680mx, AMD Radeon 7970m

 

I think it's actually a type C or a proprietary PCIE connector. It looks more like 200mm. Type B is the typical MXM slot type found in Aw/Clevo machines.

 

I'm a bit behind the info. Anyone know why the option for AW17 with 780m is gone from pre build #2 and 3 (least expensive 2nd and 3rd build)?

Right now only Japan still has the 780m option on build #2 upwards.

Any ideas whether it will come back?

 

The end of September, early October. That is when we expect (and hope) they become available, but it may be longer... I know if I bought a system today, it would have an EDD of Oct. 5th.

There are probably thousands (maybe even tens of thousands) of orders on hold between the US and EU with 780M's, so, it may be a while before Alienware has some to dish out for lower specification builds. These orders obviously have dibs at any new stock of 780M's.

 

In addition to what J.Dre said, it's purely because they're on backorder. You may be able to call in and get the 780m attached to the lower tiers, but you will be waiting a while for it.

 

Might as well wait for 880m now lol

 

Ha, maybe you're right.

The M18x R2 came out in April, the Alienware 18 came out in June, so maybe this upcoming year they will come out a bit earlier.

 

AW18 R2 with an extra HDD slot in the caddy...

 

Yes, definitely. Loss of a drive bay was not great. Getting back an eSATA/USB 2.0 combo port would also be a huge win. Not having that any more is a significant loss of functionality and versatility for those that rely on it. A Thunderbolt port would also be nice if they can find a way to fit it in. I don't own anything that uses it, but I would be willing to transition from ExpressCard to Thunderbolt for the peripherals I used ExpressCard for.

 

Since the new M18 is bigger than the M18x r2, what the heck are they using the space from the extra drive bay for? as well as the other pieces like the ExpressCard slot/card area, wirelessHD card slot, etc?

 

Good old dell budget cuts

 

That is 6-7 months away from an early Oct delivery of an AW with a 780M... damn now I am thinking about waiting!

 

maybe there is hope? the top models of the AW17 & 18 with the 780Ms now show an estimated ship date the same as all the other models

so hopefully the option will come back to lower models

 

This is actually great thinking Maybe meaning my system will actually ship...

 

I noticed MySN -a major Clevo reseller in Europe- run out of 780Ms on Friday and emailed them. They just got back to me saying that there is a worldwide shortage due to nVidia not being able to meet the demand. They are expecting stocks (at least theirs) to improve within the first week of September.

Looks like it isn't Dell's fault this time!

 

First week of September? See we have hope .

 

This happens literally every year with Nvidia's high end silicon. I don't know why anyone would blame Dell in the first place.

 

Lets say Alienware deliver systems with GTX 780M in early October.

8 months after that GTX 880M is released, beating the 780M by roughly +80%
Just something to consider for those who can afford or have the possibility to wait a bit longer.

 

That's what I am debating with myself all day. I know with my AW17, single 780M, I got some descent performance from all my games maxed. However less than a month with the AW17 and I feel like something missing in terms of performance.

I am returning it soon and with the money I was thinking either get an AW18 with 780M SLI or a cheap laptop + console until Maxwell arrives on AWs. Choices choices! I even thought of a mini-ITX PC, but they are not that portable...

 

Well even GTX 780M SLI cant max out all games, but its pretty damn close if you reduce the settings some on the few games it cant max out.

Like GTX 680M vs 580M, the GTX 880M will offer 80-90% better performance than GTX 780M, and at the same time run much cooler. I was thinking about buying the Alienware 18 with 780M SLI but after thinking about if for a while I will rather buy 770M SLI, which will be about 20%ish faster than a single GTX 780M, and I dont have to deal with the heat since 770M is just a 75W GPU (780M is 100W). Plus I dont have to dish out a whole lot of money and this allow me to keep occupied until May next year when I will sell my Alienware 18 and buy a new one with GTX 880M. The Alienware 18 with 770M is still a dual GPU system, and I can market it like that and will have no problem selling it for a decent cashback when that time arrives.

Another route is to buy the 770M SLI with 3 year warranty, buy new triple heatpipe heatsink in May next year, upgrade the 770M SLI to 880M SLI.

My 10 cents

 

The only games you can't max out are like Company of Heroes 2 and Metro -which got a universal performance issue. Similar to Crysis; wasn't as good in terms of graphics as Crysis 2, but had a worse hardware scalability.

The 880M should offer a better performance, as long as devs optimise games for the new architecture with the share memory pool. Something likely to happen as next-gen consoles also use a share memory pool.

For me getting the AW18 770M SLI vs 780M SLI is a no brainer the second one. It only costs 300 more pounds, but there is a performance difference + it may "barely" last another extra year and get 2nd gen Maxwell...

Wondering whenever to keep the AW17 now, just to pass the year and then sell it. How is the resale value of AW17s?

 

Um, where are you getting your information from? I'm actually curious. You claim the 880M is going to be 90% faster than the 780M? That's similar to what happened going from 580M to 680M.

That is a HUGE performance boost. You're basically saying an 880M will be similar to having a GTX 780 (desktop GPU) in a laptop. I find it hard to believe. I'm not doubting the possibility, but ...

 

GTX 485M > First Fermi card
GTX 580M > Second Fermi card. About 15% faster than 485M. Run very hot

GTX 680M > First Kepler card, 80-90% faster than GTX 580M
GTX 780M > Second Kepler card, 30% faster than GTX 680M. Run very hot

GTX 880M > ....

Doubt it all you want, im just telling you guys what will likely happen.

@Athonline: I do not disagree with you but If a single GTX 780M can max out pretty much all games in 1080p (except a few) then what is the point in wasting more money on a 780M SLI system if you are just gonna sell it later anyway?

Thats what Im thinking since Im buying 770M SLI, and it give me a piece of mind heatwise.

Id keep that Alienware 17 if I were you and skip the Alienware 18 this round.

 

I literally just said, "I don't doubt the possibility." I just wanted to know where you're getting this information from, and you pretty much answered that.

If there's even a slight possibility of what you're suggesting of becoming true, I would wait before purchasing a system. :thumbsup:

 

A single 780M is great at the moment, but in future games, like Watchdogs, I doubt a 780M will be able to run on Ultra with the AA and everything.

A 780M SLI will sell more and may last a bit longer -maybe enough to wait for 2nd gen of Maxwell (2015).

Dunno, my AW17 is scratched (something that can't let my mind rest) due to a Dell's engineer mistake.

 

There are debates whether the 880m will be 20nm or still 28nm. Does it make much difference?

 

J.Dre: No worries. It is very big chances it will be like that. Nvidia have a goal at doubling the performance/watt for each new architecture
http://img1.lesnumeriques.com/news/28/28776/nvidia_roadmap_maxwell_volta.jpg

@Athonline: lol im OCD like that too. That would drive me nuts too. If you are looking at a future proof system, yeah the 780M will be no good. Once again it brew down to 780M SLI or wait for 880M SLI. i guess you could always sell the 780Ms in May next year though. Not a full refund but probably not bad result either.

@Observer: where have you heard that? I highly doubt Maxwell will be in 28nm despite some rumors saying that. Not only will it make the goal of doubling performance/watt impossible, but I thibk TSMC have to screw up 20nm production pretty bad for that to happen

 

Where in the heck are you getting those percentages.. ?

 

Hmm will go with the 780M SLI and sell them when the 2nd gen Maxwell is out. Due to the new architecture, with the ARM and the shared memory pool, games will have to be optimised for them so I got a feeling current games won't see much of performance boost...

 

It's true, at least the part that two 580M's are nearly equal one 680M, in terms of performance. I'd love to see that again.

 

No no .. But is there any documentation relating to this?

 

TSMC is known for getting things a bit wrong

 

No. He's basing his predictions off of patterns by NVIDIA. There's nothing to back up those numbers, not yet anyway.

 

There is a lot of talk of TSMC having massive process difficulties.

If we have to stick with 28nm then the gains for mobile are going to be quite small while desktop can play around with going up to 300W.

 

The internet. You know, there are information there. For free :thumbsup:

True. But TSMC gotta screw it up bigtime if they dont make a Q2 launch of 20nm. January is when they start mass producing 20nm according to the president at TSMC

 

In what world have the 580M and 780M "run very hot"? I will agree with saying the 880M will be close 20% of dual 780M performance, but that thermal talk is a bit much.

Also, as I always carry this banner, let's not eschew from mentioning the possibility of Nvidia sliding MXM 4.0 out on us. I'm the only paranoid person on the forum who's been waiting for the axe to drop for each year, since the launch of the GTX 485M, but my neck is itching especially today so I had to bring it up. Nothing to see here....

 

@Kevin: go read the user reviews in the MSI subforum.The 780M reach 90C on those machines. Clevo notebooks with dual fan get about 85C. 580M was no better, that mess of a big and hot chip

Do we need a new revision of MXM btw? What improvements do you have in mind?

 

I've always seen 85C as just... okay. Different definitions.

I have no improvements in mind, out side of Nvidia's pockets. Nvidia is all about pockets, and they hold the keys.

 

The problem is we don't have a lot of pattern for Nvidia because it took till the 400M series before they took mobile seriously again.

If we do see a new process and tech then yes similar (ish) performance increases from 5->6 series would be expected.

 

I guess the real question is whether we can see the same percentage performance increase we see on Desktop flow down to Notebook parts?

Things took a big leap forward with the 680m (and it's successor the 780m), but if nVidia decides to open the floodgates and just consume as much wattage as possible in a desktop design then there is no way the notebook part will maintain the same ratio of increase.

That said, nVidia seems to see real money in smaller and more efficient parts now. My personal opinion (with limited evidence to back it up) is that they will be aiming to improve mobile parts with the same ratio of improvements as Desktop parts, and would like the 880m to be around 70% more powerful than the 780. In reality, the fab process is where they are most vulnerable. Going to a new process they may fall somewhat short of their goals, because to keep yields up they will need to turn off some cores as they did with the 680m.

 

Even with the excellent cooling system in an Alienware 18, 780M reaches 90°C. I never had any heating problems with 580M SLI in the M18xR1, but they do have an extraordinarily great cooling system. I've never had an ordinary laptop with 580M, so maybe it did run hot for many people. I know it tended to run warmer in the M17xR3 than it did with the M18xR1. 580M was the best mobile GPU available in its generation, so I wouldn't call it a mess just because it was born earlier in the GPU evolution. Until 680M was released the 580M and its clone sibling (675M) was pretty much king of the hill.

 

ugh great now this thread has me thinking I should just get something cheap to tide me over and hold out for the 880Ms

 

don't you'll regret it... by the time an new gpu comes out and is easily available for affordable prices and all drivers and long waits over etc.. your actually looking at over a year and such....and that's still chancing its worth the wait.

 

My never get anywhere near 90C. While playing Crysis 3 and Last Light it was in the 70s, mind you I have a very cold room.

 

Yeah, I agree with woodzstack. Procrastination about waiting for new tech is a bad thing and robs you of months of gaming pleasure. As they say, "tomorrow never comes" and that procrastination can end up spanning multiple generations as talking heads posting stuff in speculation threads leading up to a new product launch. Just pull the trigger and enjoy it now if you're serious about buying a new rig. You can always upgrade to a stronger GPU later on. You can enjoy what you already have while the early adopters work out the new tech bugs, so that's also kind of smart. Once the smoke has cleared you can decide whether or not the new tech was simply over-hyped hoopla or actually something "to die for" powerful.

Perhap you weren't pushing yours with a modded vBIOS, overclocked and over-volted as hard as I typically do. I haven't run a stock GPU setup for a long time. These 780M cards can hit 90°C without a whole lot of effort and that is with an ambient temp of 68-70°F. I like a nice, cool work environment as well. I really hate warm weather and warm inside room temps. I usually don't have it on anything but a flat work surface, so that can also increase the temps.

 

It's a crime to run it under a Ghz if you know what you are doing

 

You could always go 770M SLI until 880M is out, overclock them and max out the clear majority of the games. And then sell the 770M's when 880M is out. You will lose some money doing this, but not much.

Yeah, HTWingNuts Clevo review revealed the same. 780M is squeezing every single drop out of Kepler and maxing out temps at the same time.

Well you are right, 580M was a good gaming chip, but it carried too much payload ie big die because it was a allrounder that also could do GPGPU pretty well.

Luckily it seems that Nvidia is now only building pure gaming GPUs and that is good for us gamers

 

I'm hoping for a big jump like we saw to the 6 series. If I had a 680m I wouldn't bother with the 780m. Even my second rate 7970m's make a very compelling argument to wait see what's next.
If I had anything less I wouldn't be happy to play the waiting game though.