7970M hotfix reviewed by Anandtech

Anandtech have tested the P170EM with 7970M and 680M. And most importantly, with the upcoming hotfix from AMD.
The GPU utilization is about the same as on the 680M with the hotfix. Even better in some games. Good work AMD :thumbsup:

Anandtech also testet 15 games to see which GPU is the best now that the hotfix is here. Please refrain yourself from letting this thread become a fanboy spewing war. Thank you

AnandTech - AVADirect Clevo P170EM Part 2: GTX 680M Grudge Match

 

You have to wonder if AMD would have made their flagship mobile GPU after the 7950 instead had they known this in hindsight.

I cannot believe drivers do this much. Man, if I were a guy in design and the software guys were the onyl reason my chip was performing sub par, I'd be so pissed

 

I just saw this review on Anandtech, bought my 7970M two weeks ago for my P150HM, should have payed the extra money and go with the green, then I would also have a working HDMI, meh...

 

This is really disappointing news, to say the least. The new "hotfix" still couldn't even make our 7970m's even remotely comparable to the 680m, as it is still getting smoked on FPS scores on most of the games.


If THIS is the best that AMD can do with this new hotfix, then it looks like they have wasted their time and ours, because there still is a huge gaming discrepancy between the two GPU's.
The only gains that were made, were in 5 games, where the 7970m meets or beats the 680m BARELY in FPS scores.
I was hoping that this latest hotfix would make the 7970m an equal partner and equivalent to the 680m, and this is just not the case.

Well, it looks like I am still looking at a GPU switch to the 680m sooner than later now.

Bummer.

 

There was some rumors about a 7990M releasing Nov/December, perhaps that is what AMD is gonna combat it with? Perhaps its a downclocked 7950?

Yeah the 680M is pretty good, it overclock a lot better than 7970M like we seen many times in the forum. But that said, the 7970M is still much cheaper and very good performer + will improve with new drivers in the upcoming years. And AMD managed to fix the GPU utilization which many of us (me included) didn`t think they could fix so fast. Huge kudos there

 

I'm sorry, but either I'm overlooking something or you should stop ranting in my humble opinion. The 7970M costs $500 while the 680M is $800.

Price

7970M - $500 - 100%
680M - $800+ - 160%+​

Performance

7970M - 100%
680M - 125%​

Of course the 680M is visibly more powerful, however saying they're not even comparable is a bit of an exaggeration to be honest. Also, I don't see why you would even want to compare them. You can't expect similar performance from a card that costs $300 less. The card you could directly compare the 7970M to would be the 675MX as they are in the same price range and taking a look at the available data the 7970M stands it's ground pretty well in it's own league indeed.

 

If this is the performance we get from the first hotfix, I'm pretty pleased. Considering the price difference, I dont care if the 680m has a slight edge in performance on my current setup. This is eventually going to be my backup laptop and primarily used by my girlfriend.

We may even see some improvements with future driver releases - this is just their first swing at it.

 

x2

He's also overlooking the face that this is the FIRST hotfix that will be released. Performance will likely increase with upcoming driver releases, as amd gets the kinks worked out. The 7970 is a great card with a lot of potential... once the enduro fixes are out, I could easily argue it's a better value than the 680m.

 

I'm really impressed!!






Didn't have time to read the whole thing...when do I get the hotfix!?

 

Considering AMD is canning 3300+ workers this may be the ONLY hotfix for a while.

 

I kinda doubt firmware designers would be in the hotseat, its probably anyone who is immediately outsourceable. IE, engineering, manufacturing if they have any... etc.

 

Yep, (while I don't know any facts) I think they wouldn't want to lay off the most successful division of the company, maybe the less important stuff..

 

I read here on the forums that the layoffs would include a bunch of engineers from the gpu dept Hopefully it doesn't include guys working on the drivers and software side of things.

 

This is actually a review that shows AMD in GOOD light. The reviews you claim to have read all said that the 7970m was riddled with driver issues and what not. I'd understand if you had read a review that said the 7970m was GOOD and purchased it and were not satisfied. But to read reviews clearly telling you to purchase the 680m if you have got the extra euros or korna or whatever you use up there and to still complain is a bit, um, strange, to put it kindly.

Show me one game on that list that you can play, at these clocks, with the 680m but you cannot with the 7970m. You can tell 150fps vs 80fps? What are you, a cat?

NV has superior drivers, better support and better frame rates, sure. However, of the three, frame rates above 50ish is a meaningless comparison. And the point of this thread is to show that AMD is improving on their software support as well. The point of this was not to BEAT the 680m. The 680m is better. The idea was to get rid of any bugs that they COULD (i.e., software bugs or anything else thta wouldn't require any hw changes) so that end users and programs could make use of its full potential. Which it did.

 

I can understand what you are trying to say, and I partly agree with it, but +25% performance have very rarely been +25% in price.

Anyway, you should take a trip down the memory lane to our previous cards: 580M and 6990M. Remember them? You paid $300 extra for the 580M and got a lousy 3% better performance or something over the 6990M. Talk about ripping people off

 

I'm really happy with the result. I don't think you can compare Borderland 2 and Batman since they use PhysX. They really need to remove the diablo 3 from the average, 100% difference seem really too far from other games, something going wrong there.

After 4 month I just want this hotfix ASAP. Please ?

 

You can't simply remove a data point just because it is skewing the result. It is skewing the result because the 680m is better. What you need to look at is that it is not a 90fps vs 30 fps thing.

 

Yes you can. I think it's perfectly legitimate to omit results from games that were paid by Nvidia to favor their hardware and use proprietary technology unsupported by their competitors.

 

Um, my "rant" as you suggest, is due to not what I said that 7970m was going to be initially, but what the benchmarks had to say for the last 6 months it has been out. It was tested by different sites since May, and they all said (including many AMD fan boys) that the 7970m was the equal to, and in some cases BETTER than the 680m in the majority of the games tested and compared to.
As it turns out, everyone was clearly wrong.
Practically everyone said here who owned the 7970m, and on other forums, that in testing the AMD was as good as, if not substantially better, than the 680m in more than half the games (NBR said it was about 7 games out of 10 where it was equal to or better in FPS rates),
so now it seems that everyone is backtracking from that, and lowering their expectations quite a bit in this heated argument of which one is better.
This is what is happening, and now people seem to want to spin this, backtrack and lower their tones about this, and now say that the 7970m is now comparable to the 675m (re-badged 580m), which is a complete reversal from two months ago.

The bottom-line for me and for many others I am sure who bought the 7970m with the expectations of being an equal to the 680m, is that after all the smoke has cleared and all the hoopla of excitement has worn away, our 7970m is the same as the 675m/580m in performance, and not nearly as powerful as we had been told it was going to be in relation to the 680m.

As I said earlier, for all the early talk and promises of better drivers, it still can't hold a candle to the 680m, and that is very disappointing news.

 

Well enjoy being disappointed because a $300 cheaper card is slower by 2-5 FPS in games that aren't Nvidia money bag games. lawl.

 

lmao nobody is comparing the 7970 to the 675m in performance. The 7970 completely trounces the 675m AND 675MX in performance. The only thing people can compare the 7970 to is the 675MX (same price) but it's a much more powerful card. Once Enduro is sorted out, the 7970 may not beat the 680m in performance in every game, but it's certainly close. Look at benchmarks of the 7970m in Allienware and HM laptops, they're comparable to the 680m. Look at notebookcheck.net. I've personally run benchmarks in games that aren't heavily effected by Enduro (BF3 and Metro 2033) and they're consistently as good as 680m benchmarks, even on large maps like caspian border that people often claim have under utilization issues. The 7970 is a great card for its price, and after the hotfix/new drivers it'll be even more compelling. Personally, I never claimed it was better than the 680m, but I thought it was a more attractive deal than the 680m and allowed me to get other upgrades with the money I would have spent on the 680m (RAM, SSD, etc.)

/end rant

 

I'm really happy to see that this hotfix is fixing a lot of the issues and am glad I didn't panic.

 

My laptop is powered by a 7970m. So this is not a comment coming from a fan boy. Now that we have that out of the way, do you have any source for your claims?

D3 is powered by the Havok engine, the same engine that powers Alan Wake. Alan Wake is known to perform better on AMD GPUs (both this and 6000s generation). Eliminate the engine and you eliminate a major part of a software that would benefit from a specific type of hardware. Also, Sleeping Dogs uses the Havok engine but the game performs marginally better on the 7970m. StarCraft 2 is a similar story. Same engine, better frame rates on the 7970m. So I honestly doubt nv paid off Blizzard ONLY for D3 and not for SC2 or pretty much any of their other titles.

I am not refuting your claims of nv sponsorship making the difference. However, without a credible source and evidence pointing to the contrary, it simply comes down to the fact that the game is written in a certain way that, unfortunately, the GCN arch cannot perform better on.

 

Eh? Say what? Even if the smoke hadn't cleared. Even if there was more smoke than........ok I can't find a nice witty simile there but there is no comparison between ANY of the last gen GPUs (on either side) and the 7970m.

Also, yes before the 680m was released, people were skeptical as to what nv could do that could trounce the 7970m. Once the 680m was out, NO ONE was of the same opinion any more. The numbers clearly spoke for themselves. I think you would be hard pressed to find even an AMD fan boy claiming that the 7970m is better after reading numbers over and over again.

Also, the 680m has not been out for 6 months yet so you could not have possibly read reviews that compared the two and said that the 680m was better. The 7970m was released first. It was out for about a MONTH before the 680m was announced. No one is spinning back or backtracking ANYTHING. There isn't a SINGLE game on that list that the 680m can handle comfortably but the 7970m cannot.

There is pretty much NOTHING about your comments that is or ever was true. And please, oh please explain to us how exactly you think that the 7970m does not, how did you claim it, "hold a candle to" the 680m. Coz the 680m pushes out 150 whatver frames on D3 and the 7970m does 70ish? LOL.

 

Blizzard when they released SC2 did not even give AMD access to their game for release. That was why AMD had to rush for weeks to get their drivers up to par with SC2 and releasing hotfixes. SC2 was most definitely a NV game, why? I don't know, but that's how it happened.

 

Again, do you have sources? Anything credible other than intuition that points to this? That still leaves out Alan Wake, Sleeping Dogs (the most recent ones) and many other games that use the Havok engine but show performance completely different from D3 for the two GPUs.

 

Anandtech didn`t use PhysX with Borderlands 2 in this review. Not shure about the Batman game.

Anandtech also tried to make the test as fair as possible.

I don`t see why you guys keep arguing about it. Just enjoy your GPUs. 7970M owners will get even better GPU utilization than 680M in some games, other will be the same between both. You get your fix pretty soon and thats a huge win for AMD if you ask me since Nvidia took about a freaking year to fix Optimus. It had other problems, but still, thats very fast imo. AMD even sent the hotfix to a review site to have some sneak peek for you guys.

 

If you took out all the Nvidia TWIMTBP and AMD Gaming Evolved games, there would be a grand total of 2 games on that graph. Or you can just realize that end users care about performance, not who paid who to make the game faster.

As the whole Enduro issue shows, software support is just as important as hardware.

Also, Havok is a physics engine that devs can license. Alan Wake uses UE3 (iirc, not 100% sure) and D3 uses some proprietary Blizzard engine.

edit: nope, Alan Wake also uses a custom engine.

 

Again you're saying that it 'can't hold a candle to the 680M'. This is simply not true. Despite being $300 cheaper, the 7970M is still very comparable to the 680M.

Aside from that, I understand what you're saying; it's true that a few months back people said the 7970M would match the 680M, but it was because at first the performance of the 7970M was shockingly good and people didn't believe that nVidia can match it. As benchmark and gaming results surfaced from the (supposedly redesigned) 680M people slowly started shifting toward the opinion that the 680M beats the AMD, but it's still close, and only after the release (and when many people got their hands on it) it turned out that there is a larger performance gap than thought. Also the Enduro issue contributed to widen the gap as well.

Still, even now you can be extremely satisfied with your 7970M seeing how nVidia priced the 680M and that AMD finally seems to be making progress at patching up Enduro.

 

Exactly !!!!!!!

When one cuts through all the clutter of the discussion, you have nailed the bottom line. +1 from me.

 

Re-read what I said, and then look at the latest test results. The 680m trounces some games, but the 7970m doesn't/can't say the same thing on any game. That is disappointing, despite having the newest and latest hotfix, which helps with under-utilization scores, but doesn't create a wide gap in even some FPS score results.
I was expecting better, and am disappointed with the results.
FPS scores are important, and the higher, the better. The 680m fares better overall still, despite the new hotfix, and I was not expecting this to be the case.
There are wide gaps in some games that favor the 680m, but there are NO wide gaps that favor the 7970m, so yes, the 680m DOES do a better job, and IS a far better card, and NO, the 7970m can't hold a candle to the 680m overall. With the new hotfix, I expected a closer result in competition, but there isn't one. The 680m wins overall, but having PhysX shouldn't have anything to do with that discrepancy.
The question has been asked by many for months now- is the 680m a better card for the extra $300?
Yes, in looking back at my laptop purchase, I took the easy route, and selected a "cheaper" GPU, and have buyer's remorse, and should have taken the better Nvidia offering with CUDA, 3d support, PhysX, better battery life, lower temps, etc.
Those things make for a far better GPU, and those things add to "holding a candle".
If I had known about what others were saying on Anandtech about holding off on buying the AMD GPU in advance, I would not have bought it in the first place, and would have chosen the 680m instead.

 

I really feel sorry for you. I have no idea what you expecting, at medium and high the graph show 10% difference on average fps of 15 games (source http://www.anandtech.com/show/6369/avadirect-clevo-p170em-part-2-gtx-680m-grudge-match/4). Now we run pretty much everything with 60 fps ( even the game you seem to care like borderland 2 and diablo 3 ) and for game you can't run at 60 fps you need to lower the setting and get same performence more or less 10%. I REALLY don't know what you expected from this card.

At least for me when i see 95% average utilization at medium in BF3, i can't be more happy. IT'S LIKE A DREAM. ( 4 month dream in my case -_- )

I can't wait for this hotfix !

 

Of course the 680M is going to be "better" it's over 50% more expensive. Now that we have that we have established that lets stop and use our brains for a second shall we? We see almost a 100% increases in FPS on 2 games, one of them being a relatively new console port, and the other being D3 which seems to be possibly flawed as it's a far bit off from previous results (without v-sync on I hover around 100fps). The fact still remains that the 7970 is nearly equal to the 680m in almost every game so your argument falls a bit flat. Idk why you were expecting better results either, unless you have difficulty reading/researching, this latest hotfix puts the 7970 exactly where it was advertised to be.

 

lmao if you have so much buyer's remorse, go buy a 680m and quit whining about how you think the 7970 is SO inferior to the 680m. Regardless of your ridiculous arguments to the contrary, the closest card is performance to the 7970m is the 680m. Not the 675m, not the 675mx, THE 680m. So go spend 900 dollars on your amazing 680m for increased performance you won't even notice lol. The rest of us will continue to enjoy our 7970's that handle any game out there with solid framerates. Have fun!

 

You have again ranted on but have no answered one simple question. Can you or can you not name a game, not just on that list, ANY game, that, after the hotfix the 680m can comfortable handle but the 7970m cannot.

 

I changed to the 680m in the last minute thinking I was going to get a dud with the amd card but now I can see that I was
wrong, I'm still happy I changed but for the price to performance difference the 7970m is by far the better card for overall
value and now I feel happy for amd 7970 owners as they have a much better value for money card then the 680m.

 

Both are great cards, and I would have gone with the 680m if it didn't mean I would have to skimp on extras like ram/ssd. I think they're both good values, especially when you look at how much more powerful they are than any of the mid and high range cards out there

 

seriously, wait for the fix to arrive before you rave about how great 7970m is. Jarred's medium and mainstream tests are at low resolutions, which nobody here will be playing with. and his BF3 results are of single player - which never had any utilization issues in the first place.

 

exactly. when both cards first came out there were so many people (hulawafu77 included) raving about how much of a 680m beater 7970m was. This went on for a few months before enduro issues become better known.
I still cant believe people are defending 7970m as a better buy than 680m - one is currently a faulty card (on systems that cant disable enduro), with terrible support and no fully working drivers 7 month after the release data; - the other is a more expensive but one that works, is faster, runs cooler, OC's much higher and offers more features. Many will say that its only 2-5fps difference for $300, but that is BS - 680m clearly smokes 7970m at stock frequencies. When you OC both cards the difference widens even further.
I bought 7970m based on these forums where a lot of people were saying its faster than 680m (or is within few fps) yet a lot cheaper; - it turns out its barelly (or not at all) faster than my 6970m and can hardly compete with gtx 580m in its current state.

 

^ A bunch of hogwash because the 7970m was released before the 680m and the Enduro issues were known well before the 680m was even announced. It does not matter what YOU do or do not believe. No one is forcing you to purchase the 7970m. Your money. Go put it wherever you wish. That being said, numbers do not lie. Neither of you two "ranters" is answering my simple question - Which game do you know of that the 680m can handle comfortably but the 7970m cannot?

 

Resolution don't matter much, you just get much lower utilization with lower resolution. In the test you see his utilization average at 95% on BF3 even with lower resolution, so it's a pretty good thing. And YES, BF3 single player have issue if you play at medium or low, in any resolution. ( Inside mission are fine but you get crappy utilization on the outside mission/scene.)

I really understand, we are in the same boat. Enduro really make me sad too.

 

Why exaggerate things so greatly? Most of us here have a pretty clear understanding of the problems that effected the 7970, so why go through the trouble of making statements that are grossly inaccurate.........a 580m competing with the 7970? C'mon dude get real here.

I've had my far share of issues with the card, some that I wouldn't have expected from a flagship card but to deny the performance this card still displays even with the current bottleneck issues is nothing more than ignorance. The 680m is clearly the better card, how ever slight it lead may be............also realize it launched nearly 2 months after the 7970 and the 160% price difference. You are freaking out over 2 abnormal game parses when all the other big name titles fall right within range of a couple fps of each other, this boils down to driver support which Nvidia is clearly superior in at the moment, if you did not understand that going in then I'm sorry do better research next time.

I understand you may be displeased with your purchase, none of us are happy that our purchase isn't quite living up to its' full potential, but lets display some common sense here and have a civil discussion without you or anyone else making wildly incorrect statements.

 

People like me bought GTX 680M, installed and tested back in July and forgot about the early leaked weak 3DMark11 GTX 680M score (P4905), if AMD didn't release HD7970M first and pressured NVIDIA, that weak GTX 680M would have been released. I guess thanks to AMD .

 

right now? the following games run pretty poor on my 7970m (some worse than with my 6970m): BF3 multiplayer, Crysis 2 with DX11 on, Batman AC, ARMA 2 ... probably a few others I could add. I will wait to see this hotfix to see how things will improve, though looking at your sig you have m17x so you probably have not experienced any of enduro issues yourself.

 

160% price difference and I am exaggerating? also, yes with enduro issues 580m beats 7970m on quite a few games. Anantech article (prior to part 2 edit) in fact themselves stated that 7970m is a competitor to 675m rather than 680m.

 

He probably meant the 680 was 60% more than the 7970. Or that it costs over twice as much to upgrade to the 680m than the 7070.

And because some guy on anandtech says it's a competitor to the 675m that means it's true? Give me a break, man. Look at any benchmark out there. Hell, look at the results from the anandtech article you're quoting. There is NO way the 675m puts out framerates like those.

Just because the 680m had significantly better performance in 2 games that the 7970 still handled fine doesn't mean the 7970 is an awful card or somehow on on par with the 675. I can understand being upset that you've had to wait for the Enduro fix, but I don't understand the 7970m owners that constantly bash it on the forums instead of being relieved a fix is coming. It's the same complaints and arguments over and over again. If it's such a burden, sell the card, buy a 680m, and move on. The rest of us will enjoy the hotfix.

 

500*.60 = 300......300+500=800.......sooooo ya a 680m is ~160% of the cost of a 7970, hope that makes it a bit easier to understand. Also, I read the article you are referring to and no where was it mentioned that the 675m could compete with the 7970 from a raw performance stand point (no sane person would), however the 675m was noted as being a more reliable card in comparison.
Like I said before, most of us are disappointed with the 7970's release issues but lets take a step back remember that this was a completely brand new technology on several fronts, and from a performance standard it was literally groundbreaking..................it forced NVIDIA to push their mobile chip release back almost an entire quarter.

 

i was referring to current situation, - that hotfix has not been released yet and has been on the verge of a release for a while now. And yes, right now, 675m beats my 7970m in quite a few games, - BF3 MP, Batman AC, ARMA 2 and Crysis 2 DX11.

I cant sell it for much until its fixed though. I understand that as an owner of 7970m you feel inclined to look at it through rose tinted glasses, but to me its been an awful card as for the last 6 months I have done only 10-20 hours of gaming on my gaming laptop, because the games I play run like crap.
so yay,I have saved $300 on the total price of my laptop (which is only about 15% of its total value), but its not being used how I envisioned using it.

 

that article has gone through a few edits - in part one Jarred tested 7970m with current drivers (without the hotfix) and on over half of the benchmarks 675m beat 7970m.

 

lol I originally ordered a 675m because I wanted nothing to do with Enduro. That changed once I looked at the performance potential and upcoming hotfix. So far my experience with the 7970 has been good. Not perfect, but good. There are only two games I've played that are heavily affected by enduro, saint's row the third and batman arkham city. While I've noticed some underutilization in a few other games, it has never been enough to drop the framerates below 30 fps. That includes BF3 caspian border and Crysis Warhead. I have run benchmarks on both games through fraps and caspian border averaged 43 fps over 30 minutes of play. Crysis Warhead averages 40. Max settings on both. I know a 675m won't approach those numbers, and that's ignoring the games with zero enduro issues like metro 2033. I'm not looking at it through rose tinted glasses lol. I'm speaking from my experience over the last week. It's been a great card, and it will get even better. I'm stoked.

edit: I double checked my files on the benchmarks, I averaged 43 fps while running a 900/1300 overclock. I averaged 39.8 on stock clocks. There was underutilization both times.