8970M (bad enduro?) vs 770M for NP8265

Hi guys,
I'm still eyeing+researching NP8265 and stumbled upon this issue.
The upgrade from 770M to 8970M is only 100$, is it worth it? (It looks like it to me)

But I'm worried about Enduro problem that people having. I've used only NVIDIA so far (540M, and now 660M)
I've read couple threads and articles regarding this issue but maybe I could learn more from your insight

articles:
AnandTech | Performance Retrospective: AMD (bad performance?)
Review AMD Radeon HD 8970M - NotebookCheck.net Reviews (can't update driver? and problem with some game?)

Some people said:
-It's not big of a deal and rarely happen
-It throttle performance as anand's article said

How bad is actually the problem with drivers and stuff? what's wrong with the switching process and how often it occurs?
and ultimately, do You think it is worth the additional 100$? (also do you know how long the special +100$ from xoticpc last?)

any opinion is welcomed. Thank you!

 

For that kind of money, why take the risk with AMD? It's obvious their focus is on consoles right now.

 

Only get the 7970M/8970M if Enduro is completely out of the equation, otherwise go Nvidia.

 

I can vouch for the GTX770m, excellent performance for the money I paid. Totally worth every penny. For reference, Crysis 3 runs high/ultra at 30-40fps most of the time.

 

I haven't had any problems with the NP8250 with 8970m. The drivers are working great just make sure to have the beta drivers because the old ones have had problems with directx 9 games but that has been fixed. I haven't tried the 770m to compare them but it is a great all around card. CAD runs nice, too.

 

GTX770 is a nice card but HD 8970 is quite faster, hell i's faster even than GTX680m.

 

I have that same model with the 8970m and have no graphical issues so far. No problem with the switching process just configure the usage options for when it's plugged in or application specific. It's a better value than the $400 jump for the 780m IMO.

 

Well if it throttles even performance while gaming, then it's not out of equation

Yeah 770M looks sufficient for my need too.. and I dont use CAD..


Still a bit indecisive, although now slightly leaning toward 770M..
Anymore thoughts?

 

Get the 770M.

 

I spent some time doing searches for 8970M with keywords like "help", "problem", "doesn't work", "sux", and others. I couldn't find any real problems. Most were people concerned about potential problems. I did find one user that enduro wasn't properly detecting some old games. Seems the fix was to manually force them. Another user was having issues with multimonitor, i.e. eyefinity. I don't know what the fix was.

So I can't find any real issues. The 7970M had many issues, but they resolved most. But not all.

Personally, I have had great luck with Nvidia. They update drivers better. The optimus software is more refined. I just trust them more. Besides, getting the 780M I pay more but I get the best performing card. No stress, no headaches, and faster framerates.

 

You can't go wrong with Nvidia. Better drivers that are released faster to users, and the cards are faster and have cooler temps when in use.
You get more bang for your buck, too with Optimus, PhysX, and CUDA. Every game that I play on my Laptop sees my Nvidia GPU, but those same games NEVER see my AMD 7970m card on my other laptop. That says something right there.
Not having to ever deal with the Enduro nonsense is just the icing on the cake for gamers, so there really is only one choice to make, and that's Nvidia.
____________________________________________________________________________________

 

ah yes, looks like I'll be going for 770M

went back to see this thread
-saw another Nvidia supporter
-saw version46 RMA
-just remembered about the PSU limit on this model

Alrighty then

 

Don't think it was the PSU limit that caused the outage. It was working fine with the adapter until I came back home and plugged it in again and poof it doesn't boot up anymore.

 

Oh I didn't know about that. I thought you we're referring that 180W PSU is not enough power for that kind of GPU, CPU etc2.
Regardless, looks like 770M is the way to go

 

Sounds more like a classic case of RTFM

 

Huh? Read the manual? I don't see the connection. If you implying user error, I don't see that either. ???

 

I would go for 8970m hahaha or 780m 770m is too weak for my gaming needs mwuahahaha

Also don't buy into the whole nvidia has better drivers. Instead check if there is any potential issue in the particular notebook you want, ask your resellers or users for anything like the Enduro Issue.

nVidia has good GPUs, but their current drivers have also been a bit of a pain in some games... It should not be a selling point right now, instead opt for a machine that works the best for you.

 

Basically, only get the 7970M/8970M if it's in an Alienware, as you can shut off Enduro entirely.

Otherwise, get the 770M. It's gonna close the gap compared to the Radeon anyway since the latter loses some performance and stability due to Enduro.

 

Does it really loose that much performance? Back with the early "fixes" of enduro they closed performance gap like within 10% of a stock system on average right?

Just wondering because a 770m is a step down. It would take what, a 20% OC to reach 7970?

Tho it is possible that maybe steer away from sager and get another brand altogether. You are gaining very little going sager to be honest. And there are very competitive products from other brands.

 

Well ok, the manual being Google search on how to set up your sh*t properly

so.. RTFG

 

Not exactly... pretty derpy comment.

 

The user never said they couldn't get something to work. They simply said one saw the game and the other didn't. They didn't say it wouldn't work, or they couldn't get it to work. And if you are implyimg that for one you don't need to do a google search, but for the other one you do, well then it seems you are proving thier point.

 

Have you played BF4 with your setup?

 

There are few videos on YouTube with people playing BF4 on 8970M and it runs pretty smooth at high-ultra settings.

 

I don't have the 7970m/8970m, but I don't see Enduro issues on these board nearly as much as I used to. Go to the MSI and Sager/Clevo forums and search for all posts with Enduro, there's nothing since September. Performance-wise it is worth the extra $100 now, and the AMD Radeon HD 8970M is based on the GCN [Graphics Core Next] architecture, so ...Mantle. As a prediction, I think these cards are going to beat the 780m in Mantle enabled games.

 

I agree. 8970M already gets quite close to 780M in BF4, which is a highly AMD-optimized game. And based on the performance estimates I've been given, it will definitely beat 780M in this particular title once Mantle support is added.

Computer Games on Laptop Graphic Cards - NotebookCheck.net Tech

 

Wow, thats a big prediction. I guess no one really knows at the minute what kind of power lies within the 8970M.

Not sure what the actual overclock potential of that chip is, but I'm sure I will try some overclocking on it eventually.

Is that because BF4 is more CPU hungry than GPU?

I'm kinda glad now that I've gone for the AMD instead of spending a fortune on the 780M or 765M SLi!

 

MSI GX60 owners are more concerned with the serious A10-5750M bottlenecking so thats why you don`t see it

 

Thats why people need to avoid the current AMD CPU range lol

 

Yeah. The GX60 is cheap though, but if you look at the real performance, you have actually done a really really bad buy
Too bad people are getting drawn in by the MSI marketing. They are pretty good at luring people in.

AnandTech | AMD's A10-5750M Review, Part 2: The MSI GX60 Gaming Notebook

Ouch

 

Yeah, terrible pairing lol

Hence why I'm getting an i7-4800MQ + Radeon HD 8970M, that CPU should be more than enough to let the 8970M stretch it legs. xD

MSI nearly lured me in as well with the CX61 2OD-011UK, which is a pretty good system for the price but I'm getting a nice pay packet this month so I decided to stretch to a full on custom build from MYsn. To be honest, if the budget is an issue then MSI should definitely be an option.

 

No it's because BF4 is a heavily AMD-sponsored game and AMD received the code months before Nvidia did, so they've been able to optimize it a lot more for their hardware. That's why at release it ran significantly faster on AMD GPU's than on comparable Nvidia ones, and why FX CPU's are punching above their weight compared to i5 and i7. Knowing the pace of Nvidia driver improvements, they will surely make up that gap in a hurry, but then Mantle will come out and they'll be left behind again.

 

The GX60/70 A-10s will not be an issue with Mantle enabled games.

MANTLE StarSwarm Demo: 100k draw calls on FX8350 vs 15k on i7-4770k + DirectX, no CPU bottleneck on 2GHz, expect 1 million draw calls by 2018 - Imgur

Between the reports of underclocking a 8350 to 2GHz without a loss of frame rate on a R290X and reports of 3x faster performance on the Starswarm demo with mantle, when I said the 7970m/8970m was going to beat the 780m ...I meant like a red-headed stepchild.

 

I agree. Mantle will go a long way toward alleviating the CPU bottleneck in the MSI GX60/70 and extracting much more performance out of the 7970M/8970M in that particular setup.

 

NVidia's stabiliy or AMD raw performance ? you gotta try both to choose
i would suggest to see that mantle thing in BF4 before buying

 

i have spend some time comparing this 2 cards.i think its better to get the radeon if you are able to configure it right. you will get much more performance for just a liltle more money.
the upgrade from 770M to 8970M in my case was 20€ thats why i decided to get the 8970m the other upgrade option 780m for +280€ is not worth the price imho.
finally i bought a p170sm clevo 4700mq 8gb 1600 ram 8970m 4gb 120gb ssd 500gb hdd.
770m NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770M - Notebookcheck.com Technik/FAQ
8970m AMD Radeon HD 8970M - Notebookcheck.com Technik/FAQ
there i compared both with the games i play and the settings i expect to get. i was realy surprised when i saw that amd cpus decrease the performance of the 8970m that much

counter strike global offensive for example
AMD A-Series A10-5750M 2.5GHz 8192MB RAM ( GX70H-A108972811B )Radeon HD 8970M (950MHz), 2048MB (1250MHz) GDDR5, 9.12.0.0 =>102.1fps
Intel Core i7 4700MQ 2.4GHz 8192MB RAM ( One K73-3N ) Radeon HD 8970M (900MHz), 4096MB (1250MHz) GDDR5, 13.4 => 191.1fps

i can play all games on max settings Natural Selection 2, Dota 2, Fifa 14, BF3 and BF4 and Saints Row 4 without any issue.
the only problems i got is if i wanna start a game and display the temperature & workload if have to restart HWINFO64 during the game is running otherwise the gpu is not identified just cpu.
yeah the enduro is half baked =/ but its not that hard for me if you do it once you can play till the next reboot with osd xD
War Thunder is the only game where the grafic bugs attracted my attention sometimes when the ground is burning the flames seem to glare rly rly wrong and if something is exploding right in front of me there is a minimal lag.
overclocking is just possible for gpu (1025 stable for me with 13.11beta drivers and 2.3.1 afterburner ) . the memory is blocked if you try to raise it just by 10 mhz the drivers will crash just in case you want to overclock.
sorry for my bad english guys but i try my best =)

 

Hmm sounds like there is some real potential locked within that card, maybe a nodded vbios will help with that?

I'm also glad that I'm going for the 4800MQ + Radeon HD 8970M, reckon that will stay beastly for a long time.

Sent from my baked potato

 

I also ordered a 4800MQ + 8970M combo. It should come friday or something like that

 

Wow cool!

Which Clevo did you order?


Sent from my baked potato

 

The P170SM special edition from xoticpc

 

Good stuff!

I was intially going to go for the P177SM, but the P370SM has grabbed my attention after I found out about the dual GPU capability.

Eventually I will put another Radeon HD 8970M into it, which means some CrossFire goodness. xD