7970m with AMD CPU vs 7970m with Intel CPU

I was wondering how much of difference in performance would be noticed when it comes to gaming with the AMD and the Intel.

So what would the difference be between, 7970m with the AMD A10-4600M, and the 7970m with the Intel i7 3630QM.

Any huge differences?
Any benchmarks out there comparing these two with the 7970m?

 

This is a pretty pointless comparison. Firstly, you won't find a benchmark for that simply because the A10 is an APU. It comes with its own GPU, the 7660G. You cannot put a 7970m into a notebook that has a A10-4600.

Secondly, assuming you did, the 7970m would be severely bottlenecked because the A10-4600 in terms of raw power is compared to an i3.

EDIT: I suppose I was wrong. I never even dreamed they'd put a 7970m with a A10. I suppose I leanred me lesson of checking before opening my mouth. :|. Apologies, again.

 

Well that's weird for the MSIGX60, they have the 7970m with the A10-4600, and it only cost $1200. I was just wondering if its worth the value compared to the i7.

 

MSI GX60 comes with the 7970M and the A10-4600M...

Anyhow, here is some comparison for you (all pre 12.11). Look at the graphic scores

Vantage:
3720QM + 7970M


Vantage:
4600M + 7970M


3DMark11:
3720QM + 7970M (+100 in the "Graphic score" since 12.9 beta gave you that)


3DMark11
4600M + 7970M


Heaven
3720QM + 7970M


Heaven
4600M + 7970M




Here is a review of the GX60
http://www.kitguru.net/laptops/zardon/msi-gx60-gaming-laptop-review-a10-4600mhd7970m/

 

Thanks for the reply! +1 for you!

 

LOL look at the CPU score in Vantage. Crazy

Anyhow, the 4600M clearly bottlenecks the GPU in the Vantage test. With a i7 you get 27% better "Graphic score" aka GPU performance. That is DX10.

DX11 however, 3DMark11, the GPU score was identical between the i7 and the APU.

You are much better off with a 3610QM or any CPU alike. 3630QM will be way ahead in a lot of games, and I`m not shure why MSI decided to mix 7970M with 4600M. It would have worked with a weaker GPU like GTX 660M probably, but why the top model? Its a cheap notebook, I give them that. But an upgrade from 4600M to 3610QM isn`t that high. $100? $150?

Anyhow, before concluding, I`d like to see some real game FPS scores between 7970M/APU and 7970M/i7 I know Meaker have GX60

 

HAHA, I knew the A-10 was going to bottleneck the 7970m, but not as that much!

 

A-10's score kinda went ugly in vantage, even pulled HD7970M down in graphic score

 

Interesting, didn't even know that combination was available. It probably shouldn't be lol. It would probably bottleneck with midrange cards as well.

 

WOW. The A10 CPU is actually SLOWER than the first gen i5 I used to use in my Qosmio. o.o I scored around 7.5k for the CPU back with that thing... that's kinda sad...

 

AMD needs to release a proper quad core, since the current top end Trinity APU is more of a hyper threaded dual core.
From what i seen in reviews the top end Piledriver based FX CPU seems to be a beast in games / programs that can utilize more than two threads though i understand that pure AMD notebooks geared towards gaming would be a very small niche market.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

 

When I started researching the build for my HTPC/Gaming desktop I leaned heavily toward an APU at first, but then I realized how silly that was and went with an i5. The APU's pick up some ground in multithreaded apps, but six years after the first quad-cores hit the market multithreading is still heavily underutilized in many applications and games. If you're looking at anything that uses a dedicated GPU, you're almost definitely better off going Intel. If you're going for high-performance GPU's like the 7970m, you'll pay for your savings with performance, which kind've negates the benefit. With desktop processors there's the further downside that desktop APU's all have ridiculous TPD's - the desktop A8's use almost twice as much power as desktop i5's do, for example. Seriously, AMD?

 

Thanks God someone has the balls to put those two together! Obviously, they don't blend very well, but at least it gives you an option. If now top-of-the-line Intel CPU costs a good $1000andyou think it's expensive , wait till AMD is gone. If it wasn't for the aspect ratio, I'll be all over this machine.

 

But... why? Sure it's cheap, but spending a couple hundred more on an intel cpu will net you so much more performance. It's like dumping a supercharged V8 into an old civic with broken axles, it might have 600 horsepower, but that doesn't mean it'll perform well.

 

You missed the point. It's an OPTION, it performs fairly well, it's not going to cost arm-and-leg OUTSIDE USofA. Yes, you can always throw higher tier i7 which is going to blow this far and away, but the CPU alone is going to cost as much as this whole system! And hopefully this would get an option for overclock, which would increase its bang-for-the-buck.

 

An i7 would cost as much as the whole system? What are you talking about? A 3630qm would add a couple hundred dollars to the price, max. And yes, it's an option, but that doesn't make it a good option. It doesn't make sense to throw a high end gpu into a laptop with a cheap, low end cpu that bottlenecks it like crazy. It makes more sense to simply spend money on a better all around package. This thing costs 1200 dollars and performs about as well as a laptop with a 660m and an i7. For 1200 bucks, you could get an NP9150 with a 3630qm and 675m that wuld outperform this setup by a wide margin.

It's the cheapest way to get a 7970m, but it's not worth it if the gpu is crippled by that cpu.

 

maybe in the heavenly usa... here you can buy a whole notebook from the price of a mobile i7.

 

I'm still confused lol... so intel cpu's are really expensive in europe?

 

they are expensive just about everywhere... the problem lies that compared to US prices, Europe price tags are even higher.

 

I see. That's too bad; these machines are expensive enough in the US.

 

you dont understand price points.

at 1200 the price is kind of so so, it could be better. But the thing is that the 7970m coupled with the A10 gives you better or similar performance than a notebook with a 675m on it. Meaning it eats a i7 +660m for breakfast. Its not going to be as good as a i7+7970m, but its considerably cheaper

 

I was just going off the Vantage score, which is similar to a 660m. You're right, the other scores show it's a lot more powerful than the 660m, but I missed those until now.

 

As for price if it ever comes to my country this notebook will be around 2000USD at least (or maybe EUR...)

 

1200 for a A10-4600 w/ 7970m doesn't seem that great to me. Considering the single-threaded performance margin between Ivy Bridge and Trinity and that I priced a Sager w/ 3720qm and 7970m new for ~1400 USD a few days ago (not leaving AW, was just checking price difference without calling in on AW vs. Sager/Clevo)

If MSI or anyone offered a A10-4600m with a 7970m at 1k, I'd consider it a bargain for most people! Once you start breaking 1k you're honestly looking into high-end workstation or pure gaming notebooks where no one will want a compromise whether it be CPU with Intels huge lead over AMD currently or GPU (Sorry M14x but the 650m is not that appealing to me and Razor makes me just waffle about)

The bottleneck will obviously be CPU and partially game dependant. Some games are much more CPU bound although CPU would bottleneck before the CPU on any title I can think of

 

You priced a sager with a 3720 and a 7970 for 1400? Where? Wish I could have gotten mine that cheap lol.

 

It was actually on xoticpc! Looks like the web configurator has been updated. Now the 675m is showing as a free upgrade over the 670m. A few days ago the 7970m was a free upgrade over the 660/670m! So around a base price of 1250 and upgrading to a 3740qm (showing 2nd iteration of Ivy tonight) I still got $1395 for base config with 3740qm+675m. I know thats not a 3720qm and 7970m but im telling you it seriously did give 7970m as a free upgrade earlier this week! Now if this was a fluke on xotic, well damn then I didn't realize it was such a deal else I would've posted it for peeps

 

A problem with looking at 3dmark vantage and stuff like that is that benchmarks are almost always bottlenecked by the CPU, even a quad core i7, so they are firstly CPU tests and secondly GPU tests, even if they are supposedly graphics benchmarks. This is because those benchmarks are made to be relatively decent GPU tests with the hardware that is out at the time of release. 3dmark 2011 is from 2010, 3dmark vantage, hahaa. Because graphics power has been increasing at a much faster rate than CPU power, these tests in short order become less GPU intensive, to more a whole system test, to being CPU bottlenecked as time passes.

I want to see some real benchmarks to see how they compare in real-life games. Because we know a quad-core i7 is more than enough CPU for any game, so the question is the AMD cpu enough to not constantly bottleneck the GPU in games? If you play recent games at 1080p with lots of eye candy enabled, I'd be inclined to say the AMD CPU is enough. But I am really curious to see how they would compare.

 

I understand where failwheeldrive is coming from here. I mean, is the A10-4600M even a cheaper alternative than the Core i5-3210M? I'd be interested in seeing that price comparison.

 

You sure about that? The 675m has been a free upgrade on the NP9150 for about a month now. The 7970 has actually gone up in price in the last month from a 250 dollar upgrade to a 300 dollar upgrade. Not saying you're wrong, I just think it must have been a mistake if it showed that on the website it would be one hell of a deal though lol

I was thinking the same thing. The ivy bridge i5 is no doubt a more powerful gpu at a similar price, right?

 

Yeah, it must've been a mistake on their webpage. I was surprised to see it listed as Free that night in the drop down menu. Man its too bad I didn't realize it was a mistake and thought it was just how they were offering it! It did make for one hell of a price difference when I priced a 17xR4 (2k base warranty) and NP9150 (1.4k) that night. Oh well, maybe there's a lucky buyer out there who saw the same mistake I did

 

I built my p150em for us $1400 I just bought a barebone p150em and had to add ram, hdd, os.

Specs

Barebone kit

P150em
95% ntsc monitor
dvd
wireless
motherboard
amd 7970m
webcam
security fingerprint
plus more

$850

added
intel i7 3740qm $350
16gig corsair vengance 1600mhz ram $80
windows 7 pro $120

Total $1400

I perfer intel cpu over amd any day. As for their video cards I am a nvidia fanboy but price and performance still factor to me.
So I went with the 7970m and have not looked back.

 

Where'd you pick up the kit?

Nice setup btw, especially for the price.

 

I got it off ebay with the best offer button. I started out at $650 and didn't want to go above $900, plus you only get three offers if it is denied. I should have gotten 2 because I haven't been able to get another one. I was going to see about building and selling them.