870M owners out there -- thoughts?

I'm thinking about buying a new laptop -- really like the look/price/options with the Sager NP8268 -- and am trying to get a sense of the performance of the new gtx 870M. There's not a whole lot of benchmark info. out there yet.

Would any of the proud new owners of 870M equipped laptops care to share their impressions? Does the card meet your expectations? Exceed? Disappoint? Any thoughts welcome to me as I mull over my options...

 

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 870M - NotebookCheck.net Tech

Should be able to play everything at high(er) settings, except for the most graphics intense games (Arma 3 on ultra, Metro last light, etc)

 

I pre-ordered my NP8268-S (Clevo P150SM-A) with 870m in it.

I was worrying about all the "not-peer-reviewed" performances of the 870m so I went for thorough research myself.

The things I worried was
1. heating (GT60 review video of GentechPC in youtube helps(for 870m one))
2. Actuall performance (notebookcheck.com does not thoroughly lists actual Frame Rates for each games.)
3. battery efficiency (even though it is 100W TDP and it is known, but I have slight hope on the new NP8268-S has something to have better power efficiency.)

GT60 dominator with 870m review video from the gentech PC, in the youtube definitely gives you a rough estimate of the heating and performance.
I have been seeing lots of Notebookcheck.com links people simply posted on their reivew, but it does not have any thorough benchmark test results as it does as 860m.

I think it is a good investment in NP8268-S, because it comes with 95% gamut display, 4810MQ(new CPU), BD reader, 120SSD, $15 win7, and intel 7260AC wifi.
if you want to have the options above in some branded computers, it goes way above at least $300 extra.

It is a good investment.

Kind of a consipiracy theory I have,

Nvidia made 870m and 880m out of GK104 chip, which was made 2 yrs ago.
they over produced the GK104 chip back then and left out with bunch of GK140 chips that does not sell.
They recalled all and overclocked it to sell those out just by putting the number 8 in the front.
they told benchmark communities not to benchmark the "new"(880m 870m) chips until they successfully deal with the left-over GK104 chips.
Benchmarking communities usually get a little bit incentives from companies to run benchmarks or post a good review about them.

This is my thoughts.

 

Well Nvidia have undoubtly a huuuuge pile of GK104`s laying around. With the recent 800M announcement, we are maybe getting close to 10 different GPUs using GK104 now.. You are absolutely correct that they have no problem getting those chips.
But renaming existing GPUs to say GTX 870M while doing small tweaks with clocks and such is just Nvidia`s game. They did the same with 600M series too. Nothing new there or any conspiracy. Its just Nvidia being lame and having something to offer while working hard on getting the next real 800M chips out to the public in the coming months. Maxwell that is

 

y'all have seriously dampened my enthusiasm for the new 800 cards

maybe it is worth waiting for Maxwell...

@KillerWhaleS -- I agree that the NP8268 is a good deal at the moment. Very tempting. I hope you'll post some impressions about the 870M's performance when you're up and running -- good luck with it.

 

Honestly, unless you really intend to have your gaming laptop play all games on ultra, are trying to game on multiple monitor setups, or hook up to a really high resolution monitor (and all of 3 of those scenarios would require an SLI/Crossfire setup anyways), anything above a 750m is going to be just fine for high end gaming. Graphics cards have advanced so much over the past few years it is ridiculous.

I purposefully went for the 675mx over the 680. It's a GK104 chip as well, and I've been running it stock. I've had to turn off the fancy hair gimmick in Tomb Raider, lower the AA/FSAA in Metro 2033, and other minor adjustments in games yet they still all run at high settings at 1920 x 1080 at over 30fps.

I personally think that the 2nd best card is usually the sweet spot of performance and price.

 

Thanks for this -- you've helped me put things in perspective. I'm not someone who needs to play games on ultra maxed out 8X FSAA etc. etc., but I do want to be able to play comfortably with high to very high gfx settings enabled -- 'comfortably' meaning reliably above 30FPS. If the 870M can do that for games like TW Rome II at 1080p, that's enough for me.

 

I too have pre-ordered this laptop and have the same concerns that you do. I look at the laptop as a pretty good value, but the question about that 870m still lingers. Over the past couple days everyone has been bashing on it fairly hard.

But I'm going to give it a shot, I'm ready for a new system now, not six months from now. The 870m will top the 770m which I almost settled for. Let's stick with it man, strength in numbers!

 

Notebooks with GTX 870M have poor value. It will not play all games thats out today maxed out. Its late to the party. I would assume the computer will greatly fall in value once the mid and high end Maxwell is announced. Well one can only hope some sucker buyer thinks all 800M cards are Maxwell.

But on the bright side, you can upgrade the GTX 870M to a Maxwell later on with most machines if you want, without replacing the whole notebook.

 

Especially since the upgrade to 880M is $300 over the 870M, which can be put towards a Maxwell on down the road. I don't think the 870M is a bad deal. It beats the pants off a 770M all day long.

 

Of course its better than 770M. It have 384 more cores.
Sounds like a good strategy to save those $300, sell the 870M when the time comes and dish out for Maxwell.

 

Ive had my GT60 w/ the 870m for about a day now and im quite suprised how powerful it is. I can turn AA on at 2x with ambient occlusion on too and keep it above 30 fps
i made a Blood Dragon video showing some performance in case anyone is curious.

 

Nice FPS at those settings considering how poorly optimized Blood Dragon is. Looks to be noticeably faster than stock 680M. How were GPU temps?

 

How do you mean faster than 680m? I am seeing close fps on 680m's so performaance is about the same.

 

Wow, great performance there! I booted up Far Cry 3 for reference and my 780M ran it at similar framerates (around 50fps average) at stock clocks on the exact same settings as your 870M! Now, I know FC3 and FCBD are different games - but it's the same engine! Maybe it has something to do with the amount of foliage on-screen? I don't know. In any case, very impressive show from the 870M!

 

Somehow original FC3 was more heavy than FCBD so your 780m would destroy it if you put it like that. It's not the same...

 

It's ~10 FPS higher than what I've seen stock 680M achieve in Blood Dragon. Which makes sense as 870M has a 34% core clock speed advantage, other specs being nearly equal. 870M looks to be the highest clocked mobile GK104 part Nvidia has released so far.

I disagree. For me Blood Dragon has always run worse than Far Cry 3 at the same settings. And that's despite the considerably simpler graphics. Which is why I say it's unoptimized. 870M running Blood Dragon matching 780M running Far Cry 3 in FPS output is an impressive showing indeed.

 

That title actually belongs to 880M at 954MHz! Just pips the 941MHz of the 870M

I'm almost tempted to get Blood Dragon to see the results, but it has been on sale before; so I must wait for another sale!

 

Doesn't 870M go up to 967 MHz with Boost?

N/m you're right. 880M boosts up to 993 MHz.

 

Yeah, 880M just a tad faster boost but all the 800M series are very highly clocked. The clocks of notebook GPUs have increased by a considerable amount these past few years!

I'd be interested in seeing other games run on the 870M. If it matches a 780M that's really impressive, considering the 192 bit memory bus!

 

How much it can OC is the big question~~

 

I was going to buy the GT 60 dominator :870m,4800mq, 8gb ram, 7200rpm 750gb DvD R-W=1400$
but found a better deal with GT60 0NE :680m ,3630qm,12gb ram,7200rpm 750gb Blu R-W=1341$
Did I make a bad investment?
GTX 680m =+33.33% ROPS +33.33% bandwidth,870m=+38.88% memory,+30.69% clock @stock

 

No, but personally I would have gotten the GT60 Dominator for the extra $60 just to have the latest GPU.

 

Blood Dragon is an awesome game, the first in a long while that I can actually say I enjoyed every single second of it. Even though I finished the game before Christmas, to this day I still watch youtube videos of the final mission, because everything about the last mission is awesome, down to the music. I'm really glad I christened my P370SM with this game, could not have asked for a better experience.

Anyway back on topic, yeah Blood Dragon is unoptimized. With 780M SLI, and 8x AA, I can barely average 60 FPS in open areas, and during intense scenes or where the environment has a lot of foliage, the FPS dips to around 45.

 

Well this makes me almost sure on biting the bullet and ordering the NP8278-S tomorrow. I couldn't decide on that Special Edition from Sager, or a Sager Customized with a GTX 860 Maxwell. Anyone know the difference between performance on the 870 Keplar and the 860 Maxwell? I've seen the specs, but that doesn't always mean everything.... higher boost on the Maxwell, but higher Bit on the 870.

 

Kepler 870M is 20-30% faster than Maxwell 860M, but it also runs hotter and consumes more power.

 

You have the figures a bit wrong.

The 870M has more bandwidth:

192bit 1250mhz memory (870M) = 937.5mhz 256bit memory


So the 870M has a 4.2% advantage in bandwidth.

 

Any other owners with the 870m? Anyone tried to OC it yet?

I'm about to bite the bullet but having trouble deciding between the 870m or m290x - both the same price.

Cheers

 

Just waiting on mine now, its on back order until the 15th but I also sent with the 870/4810 combo and am excited to have this as my project laptop. This was a great post/ discussion BTW as there doesn't seem to be a lot out there from the community about the 8268!

 

I just placed an order for a Sager NP8258 w/ 870M. I agree with the poster that said the sweet spot "Bang per buck" card is usually the one just below the top-of-the-shelf card, offering the ideal balance of performance and price, since it's devoid of the premium pricing.

About Maxwell, seeing tech and how fast it moves over the years doesn't bother me the slightest about newer architectures coming in. That's just how it goes. There's always the next big thing. And the one after that. And after that. And so on.
But here and now, I think the 870M is a great choice! :thumbsup:

 

Nvidia has kept that being true though since the 680M launch, this is the first x7x card since the 570M that's been close to the top dog.

 

All the better a time to opt for this price bracket.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

 

Quick question, I was looking at the Dominator on Xotic ( XOTIC PC | MSI GT70 Dominator-895 - 17" Custom MSI Gaming Laptop) and was wondering what sort of performance difference there would be with the 3GB 870m vs the 6GB 870m?

 

Very marginal I would assume, since I highly doubt the card would fully utilize the 6GB RAM in current gen games anyway.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

 

Appreciate the reply, in what circumstances would the higher memory on the card outperform it's lesser counterpart, do you think? Looking to upgrade from my ancient 260M, but have the intention on running programs like Unity, Unreal and the like as well as next gen games, so I wasn't sure if the 6GB 870M or even the 880M would be a better upfront investment to not run into issues later.

 

If you want my honest opinion, the performance gap between the 870M and the 880M does not warrant the additional $300. As for the 3GB vs 6GB, both would ridiculously outperform your current 260M and the performance difference between the two would be so minimalistic, that it's negligible and can be easily overlooked.

 

So has anyone tested to see if more vram = more gpu load capacity?

For eXample, Sleeping dogs with Max AA and max everything else has a gpu load of around 75% average on a single 780M card. Is the % lower on an 800 series card?

THIS. IS. MAXWELL!!!





By that 2 year gap, looks like true highend maxwell is probably gonna hit in 2015 while we have hybrid maxwell now.

 

The 870m in my P170SM-AS is awesome. Has been playing everything I've thrown at it on top graphic settings. Metro 2033, Arma 3, Rise of Flight, Far Cry 2, all buttery smooth and in 1080p.

I haven't been recording the fps values, but Arma 3 was turning 45-55fps average from what I saw. I'll try to run some fps tests. What is the best thing to use these days? Still fraps?

 

No use FCAT.

 

Got gt60 Dominator with 4810mq and 870m and it's great to see the performance per price, handles everything I've thrown at it so far.
Don't understand people buying 880m's for 300$ more when 870m can handle anything and Maxwell being close I put the extra 300$ towards Maxwell and just going to update Gpu next year

 

Can I get some vbios dumps of those 870m? MSI and Clevo. Would be appreciated, thanks.

 

What about Total War: Rome 2 max settings?.

 

hi guys, i will be getting P377SM with gtx 870M but it is single gpu only
i got an offer for $500 USD for the 2nd gpu kit(gpu+heatsink+fan+x-bracket+etc)
considering the timing of maxwell, price, performance
do you think i should pull the trigger?
thanks in advance

 

Yeah it looks like a reasonable price... I personally would wait and get dual Maxwell cards if u can afford it but even then 870M SLI will be quite good..

 

I really depends on your budget. Buying a couple of new Maxwell cards is gonna be $2500 for the two of them. Unless you are a numbers chaser the 870M setup will be very capable. For gaming, turn off the OSD tools and you likely won't see any difference in games. Save the $2000 unless you have the cash to burn.

Another thing to consider is generally Clevos don't do well when upgrading to newer generation cards. We don't know that the new cards will work in your system. Seems like a good deal on the 2nd 870M. Or wait and see what happens in the coming months.

 

thanks for the input guys, i decided to pull the trigger with the 2nd gtx 870M
after some research, here is major positive and negative

positive :
1. gtx 870M SLI is best bang for the buck, performs +/- 10% compared to gtx 780M SLI which will cost $800 USD more at least
2. the 2nd gtx 870M will definitely make my card last for a while, judging from nvidia trends of improvement, it will be somewhere around GTX 980M/975M or whatever the next top dog will be
3. i can save that $800 USD, sell the laptop in my country (will sell like golds lol) and add them all to buy the next beast

negative
1. possibly non upgradable unless i get a bios that includes the maxwell gpu, but who knows it might still do. maybe svl or premma can help us out xD
2. it has 192-bit memory bus and 120 GB/s memory bandwidth, sounds bad?yes it does, however the total 1344 cores with a little tweak in bandwidth might however negate the bandwidth.
i mean, look at gtx 660 TI SLI, they chill with TITAN, and TITAN is like GTX 580 in fermi age, and GTX 580 is still awesome after 4 consecutive years

EDIT : and talking about maxwell, it is still unsure when will the top dog maxwell be released, at least in desktop platform???we are talking about early - mid next year?or even more?

 

I would imagine there's not much a dual 870M can't handle.

 

Are there any modded vbioses out there for the ASUS 870m? Or you could just use the MSI/Clevo modded vbios?