8970m drivers safe?

Hi guys, I'm leaning towards getting a laptop with an 8970M instead of a 770M but I'm worried about driver issues which seemed to be a massive problem for the 7970M. Have these driver issues been fixed yet and is the 8970M a safe buy, or is it not worth the hassle and should I just stick with the lower performing 770M?

 

Get a 7970m if that is available. It's the same card as 8970m and can be overclocked to the same clock speeds or higher without problem.

7970m/8970m are both significantly faster than 770m by at least 20-30% (based on my approximate recollections of 3dmark 11 scores but apologises if I remembered wrongly).

These AMD cards work fine now, new 13.6 beta driver is very stable. New game releases favouring Nvidia may run into issues (metro last light) but these are fixed fairly rapidly.

 

No problems at all with Metro Last Light on 7970m. I've used this card for a year now in two machines and I'm Lovin' It.

 

I would agree with the suggestion to purchase the 7970m. If you want, you can OC it yourself. Also, I have used the 7970m without any problems. However, I could switch off Enduro. If you purchase a Clevo, you cannot. The problems with Enduro were fixed long ago so you should be fine.

 

I thought about getting PC Specialist's 15.6" Vortex IV with the HD 8970M 4GB card (they don't allow you to add a 7970M). This comes to around 1157 GBP compared to 1183 for a laptop from Pwn PCs that is identical except for a 770M instead of the 8970M. It sounds like the former is a much better deal, but again, I'm just worried about all these driver and Enduro issues that I've been hearing about.

 

I have a tough time believing you have been hearing about Enduro. There were tons of threads that started all over the internet last year around this time. Most problems got fixed around October. If you think you'll be wasting your money, you can always put in the extra cash to get the 780m or stick with the 770m, save up and upgrade later.

 

Okay, that's good news. Yes, when I said "have been" I meant it in the sense that whilst doing research on ATI vs NVIDIA, there seemed to be a lot of issues with ATI drivers that kept cropping up in article comments and forum posts which scared me off a bit.

 

There is no doubt that AMD drivers have been, in a larger part, responsible for their GPUs lagging behind nVidia. However, like all other um, constructive criticism, when AMD does a good job, only a thread or two worthy of showing up on Google search page 1 will be started. The only thing you can do is check to see how old the issue is and whether more recent solutions have helped. AMD has moved past the Enduro issues to tweaking their GCN architecture in order to get the most they can out of it.

 

The laptop with the 770M is more expensive than the one with 8970M!? If you are a serious gamer get the cheaper machine! 8970M is the second most powerful mobile GPU to date (only a nose ahead of the 680M but still lol)

 

My vote goes to the 8970M, simply because it has 4GB VRAM, which might prove a safer choice in the future. Even if one does not need more than 2 GB in the future, the card will sell for more. The drivers should be as good as the 7970 since the card is the same and as far as enduro goes, it seems to be mostly fixed by now.

 

In the end I decided to go with your advice and order the 8970M 4GB version of the laptop. Is the card even out yet? I read some forum posts from a few days ago and someone was asking when it would actually be out.

 

It's been out a few months. People already have them in laptops.

Also even the latest games won't benefit from that extra memory at 1080p. Only at 1440p will you notice that extra performance. Could be good in the future though when games use more memory.

 

Guy is asking about getting 770M or 8970M and some people suggest 7970M? that's so lame! why you even take him one year behind? even if 8970M is slightly faster than 7970M it still miles far better because it's newer one damn year, in technology every single day counts.
I'm an ex 7970M user and would never suggest that thing to anyone even to my enemy.

 

Rebrands don't work that way.

And as a current 7970m user I would suggest it to anyone that cannot afford a GTX 780m.

 

My choice would be 780m then 680m, then 7970m.
680m will OC far better than a 8970m.

 

I read in a recent review that the Enduro software was not as robust or had as many options as the Nvidia. It also mention that Enduro didn't always properly detect the software running. Is this true? Maybe I can find the review.
.....
I found one review that talks about Enduro software being not as good. http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-AMD-Radeon-HD-8970M.97807.0.html

" Nvidia's Optimus technology is still more mature than Enduro. Handy functions (direct selection by right-clicking in the info area of the task bar) are missing, and the recognition rate is worse. According to our experiences, the program database (decides which GPU is used in standard mode) of Nvidia is significantly better. Nevertheless, Enduro works properly and should not keep anybody from buying from AMD.

However, the graphics switch sometimes decreases performance (see Alienware M14x R4). In particular, the Nvidia graphics partly performs significantly better in undemanding games - at least in low to medium settings."