870m or 880m or wait

In the market for my first gaming laptop. Im going with the MSI GT70 but cannot decided what GPU to get i've been doing a lot of research and haven't been able to come up with a solution. Im looking to play current games and future games for at least 3 years on at least high settings. I mostly play RTS, RPG, and some FPS. Not worried about maxing everything out just want playable FPS with good quality graphics at least better than ps4/xboxone graphics. Also have been thinking of possibly waiting and seeing if nvidia is going to release something like a 880m but maxwell unlike the 880m re brand they have now. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

Dont buy now. Wait and see the upcoming months

870M - Worse than a GPU released almost 2 years ago
880M - Same GPU released almost a year ago

Old, hot, maxed out and bound to be replaced by Maxwell

 

Sounds like my life... lol.

 

Im waiting... my GE60 is still working fine... cant wait for star citizen so I can upgrade.

 

wait 9 months to a yr for 20nm maxwell

 

If you are in the market for your first gaming laptop, are you going to wait a year? I got the 880M. It may be a rebrand but it's still the fasted mobile GPU on the planet.

 

Exactly, if you're in the market for a gaming laptop NOW, it's counterproductive to wait a year for the next big thing.

 

I just looked at notebookcheck and they have benchmarks up for the 870M. The 780M is about 6% faster.

For those looking for a really good bang for your buck I think the Sager NP9377-S (Clevo P377SM-A) with SLI 870M would be a very viable option. It's $50 more than a single 880M.

 

So $650 less than an SLI 880m!

 

800m is included with the Sager NP9377-S = $0
SLI 870m = $50 adder
SLI 880m = $600 adder

So SLI 870m is $550 less than an SLI 880m. :thumbsup:

 

Do most games support SLI configuration?

 

P7k 3dm11 for the 870M.. not bad for an old kepler core !

 

192-bit at that, faster than 680m by quite a bit.

 

Well it has a faster mem speed to make up for that and a faster core clock to make up for the lack of ROPs, so all in all it's just got a chunk more shader power.

 

Which can overclock higher? 680M vs 870M?

 

Well considering 870M is still new and nobody has done a proper test, we don't know. But I still suspect the 680M will clock higher.

 

870m is just a 680m with a 192-bit bus, with an already faster clocked core. So amount of total overclock probably goes to 680m (i.e. 720MHz to 1120MHz for example, delta of 400MHz). Max clock speed may go to 870m since it's based off a more refined process (i.e. 940MHz to 1240MHz, delta of 300MHz).

I'm considering going with an SLI 870m rig for a while. Tired of all this fuss about Maxwell this, Kepler that, 28nm this, 20nm that. And then rely on third party BIOS updates to support an upgrade in the future if it ever happens. I am just skeptical now that any thing significantly faster than 880m will be released any time soon. I think 20nm will fall end of this year and that's when we'll get the 880m replacement. Not sure if I can wait six to nine months more. I really am longing for a 17" screen.

 

And this is precisely why I'm going back to desktops after this. My 780M SLI will have more than enough power for all my mobile gaming needs.

 

If I could have gotten the previous gen P370SM with SLI 870m that would have been my dream. I almost did that with SLI 780m, but I hesitated. And you know what they say about he who hesitates.

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I'll be moving to New York in 3 months and am looking to get rid of my current rig before then. Basically, I can sell it for more in the UK than a new laptop with a faster GPU costs in the US. The one time that UK tech-tax actually benefits me...

Anyway, I've never considered going SLI in a laptop before. Clearly going dual 880m would be insanely expensive (was looking at a unit with just one previously) but would double 870ms give me a huge performance increase from my 680m? If so, I might be tempted. Plus, the upgrade wouldn't cost me much if I can get rid of my (in-great condition) 680m equipped machine before then.

 

870M SLI provides the best performance per dollar at the moment, at least in my opinion. I think you'd be very happy with it.

 

Yep, you can get an SLI 870M system for about 2k out the door. That's tough to beat!

 

Oh wow, I could sell my current one for about $1600 after conversion so that's definitely worth considering.

I can't seem to find any reseller that's offering an 870m sli model though. Can only find 860m sli or 880m sli for $3K (!).

 

I know you are in the UK. Are you able to order directly from Sager? The 870M SLI is an option here:

custom gaming laptops - Welcome to Sager Notebooks

 

Eurocom has it in SLI 870M

EUROCOM Configuration

 

inb4 "desktopz hurr durr"

 

I'll actually be moving to New York in 3 months or so which means I'll likely hold off until buying then, but thanks anwyay!

I found that you can buy directly from the Sager website last night so might do that. Eurocome literally doubles the price if I buy in the UK so I'll wait.

How much of a performance boost could I expect going from a single 680m to dual 870m? An 870m is around the same speed as the 680m, right? So guessing an increase of at least 50% for most games with an SLI profile?

 

870m is actually a bit faster than the 680m, but yeah expect 50-80% improvement if you got SLI 870m.

 

Oh, I had no idea. Would have thought it would be slower. But yeah, I don't want to upgrade unless I'm getting a minimum of a 50% performance increase (hence my wariness to go with the single 880m). Seems like I might end up going dual 870m in June if maxwell is indeed not showing up until late this year or early next.

 

That's why I'm so excited about the 870M.. It's about 100% faster then my 675M.

 

That's a big boost.

Seeing so many conflicting things about performance increase with the new series. Apparently 880m can get an average of 50% or more vs my current 680m. That might be enough for me to swing that way and avoid the possible headaches of an SLI rig. Don't have to make a decision until June anyway so at least I can see what happens between now and then.

 

I'm probably going with an sli 870m sager to replace my m18x with crossfire 7970m that was stolen

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About how much faster do you guys think 870m sli is compared to a single 880? I'm looking at ordering a Sager NP9377-S tomorrow and this is the only choice holding me back.

 

870M can have up to 90% of 780M's performance in games at stock. So you could probably compare 880M vs 780M SLI and draw conclusions from there.

 

780M SLI will definitely outperform a single 880M. The 880M is the 780M, but overclocked and stuffed with more VRAM. That doesn't do much.

 

I wish notebookcheck had some concrete data on 870M SLI, because otherwise, comparing 880M vs 780M SLI is about as close as you'll get in terms of determining how much faster 870M SLI will be vs a single 880M.

 

I know the 870m is just a overclocked 770m but is it possible to overclock the 880m (MSI Afterburner) or is it at it's max as mines coming on wednesdau and to the question I'd wait if my laptop had a 680m or above my old one only had 580m and 870m gives me way over double performance

 

So far I haven't been able to overclock the 880m in either the Sager NP8268 with Optimus or Sager NP9377 with SLI 880m. But I think it's probably just a driver/BIOS limitation that likely will be able to be overcome.

 

I'd say you're looking at 35-45% increase 870m SLI over a single 880m in optimal situations.

Similarly, 780m SLI will be around 60% faster than a single 880m.

My general rule when buying gpus is almost always go for a single card with more shaders over two cards with fewer shaders - or even better, get two cards with the most shaders possible. You can always overclock to compensate for slower speed, but you can never add more shaders . E.g. you can always overclock two 780ms to match two 880ms (and further). You'll never be able to overclock two 870ms enough to match two 780ms.

 

And don't forget the 870M "only" has a 192-bit bus, which is partly why the memory clocks have to be so high in order to compensate.

 

Unless youre hand is forced like mine then wait. I didnt have a choice and thus Kepler is what Im getting. Am I mad? Hell no! the 870 and 880 are beast cards that will run games very well for a long time, but 20nm maxwell does have its advantages in heat and power consumption with an ever so slight performance improvement.

 

I feel like it will be more than ever so slight. Unless of course you are having a lol.

 

With all this re-branding going on lately, even if Maxwell is an improvement, I'm curious (and somewhat concerned) as to what "gain" we'll actually see. When Maxwell was first spoken of, people were claiming a 100% increase in performance, which is double. Now that we've seen early versions of Maxwell cards (low-end GPU's), 30%-50% seems to be about what Maxwell brings to the table.

Hope for more, prepare for less. Maxwell is much more efficient, though...

 

Current maxwell cards compared to their kepler counterparts show very little performance improvements. What maxwell looks to bring to the table is not so much a huge performance increase, but power consumption and heat decreases.

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@cathal1292 Not true. The 870m has:
More texture mapping units 112 vs 80 :32 more texture mapping units
More shading units 1,344 vs 960 :384 more shading units

It is less gimped than the 770.

"GTX 870M follows a slightly different pattern, using the same GK104 core but with one SMX disabled, leaving us with 1344 cores. Along with the loss of one SMX, the GTX 870M cuts the memory interface down to 192-bits. (Interestingly, this is the same core count as the GTX 775M found in Apple’s iMac only with a 192-bit memory interface, but to my knowledge the GTX 775M never shipped in a notebook.) The previous generation 770M only had 960 cores running at 811MHz + Boost, so overall the 870M should provide a significant boost in performance relative to the previous generation – around 62% more shader processing power and 25% more memory bandwidth as well!"

Looks to me like the 870m is a large improvement from the 770.

 

Right. Was waiting for someone to jump in and correct this. The 870m has the shaders of the 680m, but only 192-bit memory bus, 1gb less VRAM with higher core clocks. It should be very close in performance to GTX 680m . At signicantly lower cost than 680m when it was released, the 870m should be a great card.

 

I wonder how the new Razer Blade will handle the 870M? It's so thin I hope they did there homework controlling the thermals.

 

Well, Maxwell we expected to be 20nm which would theoretically about doubled the performance. But even at 28nm the performance improvement is impressive considering the power reduction as well. If they made a Maxwell GPU at the same TDP it will likely be near double the performance.

 

I would still love to see that, HT. I'm just not as optimistic anymore...

 

Well, 20nm is no doubt looking like end of 2014. I am definitely having my doubts about a Maxwell 870m or 880m even at 28nm. nVidia are probably just targeting end of year now because they can.