AMD 7970m vs GTX 680m

Where can we purchase the 7970m online? I want one but my favorite reseller is saying I have to wait till late may to receive it. Ivy Bridge is out in a week and I'd like to get that + have the 7970m within 2-3 weeks so I have it before Diablo 3.

 

For a whole new laptop I think the absolute earliest you can get it is May 21, and with Ivy it will probably be end of May or first part of June.

 

Ivy came out today; they should start shipping them on the 29th of april; I'm hearing the 7970m comes out in mid to late may but I'm going to just find one on Ebay if I must.

 

Technically I think the 7970m comes out tomorrow, the problem is there is always a disconnect between release date and actually having the product in a customers hands. You might be able to make it work if you are willing to spend extra but it won't be easy or cheap.

My guess is that consumer laptops with Ivy + 7970m will not be delivered to customers until the end of May or early June.

 

Do you guys think 4GB variants of the 7970M will come this year too or is that pushing TDP too much?

 

It's already at 100W so I don't think there will be anything higher than 2GB, you can Crossfire them and have 4GB Though If you have a P180 Clevo or M18x Alienware ha.

 

2x gpus != 1+1 =2

you cant add like in normal math, the amount of ram is dedicated to that card alone.

 

I thought each card had 2GB of VRAM? It doesn't end up giving you 4GB VRAM when you CF them?

 

Nope, games will have copy the same information into both buffers, so it's still effectively 2gb.

So say a game's assets take up 1gb. With one card you'll have 1gb of information in 2gb of vram. With two cards, you'll have 1gb of information in the VRAM of 1 card, and the same 1gb of information duplicated in the other one also.

Not the most efficient implementation, but that's just how it is.

 

Dang that is unfortunate; hopefully eventually they will be able to better coordinate the use of the separate VRAM modules. It would help with the micro stuttering issues also; I'm sure in 2-3 years we will have much better CF and SLi firmware /drivers/ etc.

 

I thought this card was about the same price range than GTX 670m?? Did I miss something?

 

Apparantly its about 100 more if you get it online . I have seen gtx 670 for 350, ppl say 7970m is 450.

 

Internal memory bandwidth = 158GB/sec
PCI-E bandwidth = 8GB/sec

Do you really want to be transferring that much data between the cards over that bus?

 

Well what's the bandwidth of the SLI bridge? Doesn't have to be over PCI-E, you know.

 

You can add another 6, so thats still more than an order of magnitude difference and we have still not got to the fact that other data has to go over the PCI-E bus and the massive difference in latencies.

 

some commentaries on the 7000m series
AnandTech - AMD Launches Radeon 7700M, 7800M, and 7900M Mobile GPUs

 

i also heard in chinese fairytales rabbits live on the moon, is it true?

 

Well that isnt even close to 100 %. More around 50 % compared to 6990m and 580m, which still isn't bad.

 

Its nearly 100 percent in vantage and 3d Mark. I don't want to wait I think I'm going to order through eBay and either install it myself or pay a clevo reseller to do it.

 

what is 100% or close to it are the unigine benches...1080p, tessellation normal, high, high

The 7970m is rendering DX11 @ 60 fps with a min frame rate over 31...this is very impressive. All previous cards i.e., 6990m/580/675 were getting half that

This tells me that this card is well suited for the future and is a huge leap over the 6990/675. Tesselation performance was stunted in the 6990m, but it looks really good in the 7970m

PS...the results i've gotten are with zero driver and app support. Installation was much akin to slapping together a balony sandwich. Expect the scores to go up when there is actually a real driver. I've also read that the 7970m has a turbo boost function just like the intel cpu's do. These are very interesting times indeed

 

it works in m15x, I bet it does in R2

 

I hope it works in Clevo P150EM, it should considering the GTX 675m does and they require the same 100W TDP. Do the Clevos support AMD Graphics switching though??

 

It will work in the P150EM (no doubt about that mate)
Don't know about the graphics switch.. No one really knows, maybe (somehow, just not through BIOS) not sure.

 

Sweet, Yeah I was like 90% sure it would work in P150EM because its really very similar to the 6990m, just way more beast, but requires same power throughput etc. I can't wait for this beast of a laptop; I won't even need a desktop. In 3-4 years when I get another it will probably have a card more powerful than the GTX 690 thats coming out for desktops this year haha.

 

Since AMD 7970m will be available in late May and gtx 680m will release in June. Shouldn't I just wait for gtx 680m to be released?

 

680m will likely be at least a few hundred dollars more than the 7970m. Also it will probably not perform much better, I'd say tops it performs 10% better, but will cost you 30%-40% more. As was the case with 6990m and GTX 580m. 580m was almost double the price of the 6990m, and less than 10% better performance. Kind of ridiculous...

 

no one knows for sure about the 680m or when it will be released. Do you need a laptop now? If the 680m is released in June, when will it actually be available? Mid to late July? August?

 

If I was buying a laptop I would probably wait, I really prefer Nvidia. Optimus, exclusive features (Ambient occlusion, adaptive vsync, FXAA, and Keplar has even more exclusive features), and in my experience significantly better driver support. Not to mention the 680m should be faster.

At the very least I would wait and see how it pans out. No one predicted the 7970m would perform like it does, the 680m could easily surprise everyone again.

 

And then AMD will surprise, and then nVIDIA will surprise, it's a freaking circle

 

This is completely true, I mean if you really need a laptop then just buy it with the best available. Nothing stays on top for very long, though in reality, especially with how slowly game tech is advancing, it won't matter beyond benchmarks for several years.

Even the benchmarks for the 7970m, which show a big gain over the 675m, is still like the game runs at 50 FPS on the 675, and then 70 FPS on the 7970m, it isn't really a world changing thing. Not like you couldn't play a game on the 675m and could on the 7970m.

I feel like Nvidia just has a better strategy, setting themselves apart with features and extras rather than pure performance, so I would definitely wait to see their hand.

 

This is true, no card ever stays on top for that long so just get what works. Right now there isn't a game which you can't play...hell even on midrange GPUs.

As for the strategy I would digress this time, because that was certainly the case before but kepler has little extra capabilities besides performance which is what it mostly offers. It's GPGPU capabilities are greatly diminished but that doesn't matter to me because I use them mostly for gaming!

I wouldn't wait tho, because unlike the desktop market, nvidia has a different approach into mobile market, where they set up prices much higher as "luxury" items rather than based on performance. If you mostly care about performance go for whatever makes your wallet cry less.

 

The thing is if you get the top top of the line you are future proofing your laptop a bit more. So you won't have to upgrade in 2-3 years to play the latest games. Instead of them running at 70FPS like now they will run at 40-50FPS whereas the GTX 675m might only run them at 25-35 FPS and not be as smooth.

It's all about being set for the next few years so that your investment is worth it. I would hate buying a mid grade card like GTX 670m and then in a year or two not be able to play games at enthusiast levels.

 

7970m is a monster, but I'll better wait for 680m because of PhysX and possibility to get a 3D screen with 120Hz refresh rate. As I know AMD mobile cards doesn't support any of it. Even more there is 'Optimus', but I'm not sure if it will work with laptops that have 3D screen.

 

It's not that they don't support it, they just don't tend to ship AMD cards with 120 hz screens.

They do support 3D. I have a 240hz external monitor, and tried 3D with Deus Ex with my HD5870m so it works haha.

Physix is... well its up to personal preference so yeah if you want a performance similar to 7970m but with physx yup you gotta wait. Personally, physx is useless since its propietary and very few games support it. I look forward to other methods like OpenCL which can be used by both.

And if ZeroCore tech, and Core gating work well on the HD7000m series, Optimus and dual GPU will be useless

 

ok apparently there is amd powertune which is like kepler's turbo boosts/variable clock speeds?

 

Yeah - Powertune is just the same as the TurboBoost of Nvidia

and there are other similarities

Enduro comes with the new high-end cards.. this is compareable to the Optimus Technology.

ZeroCore is also a thing build in.

The GPU has a built in Discrete Digital Multipoint Audio (DDMA) which .. yes is just a HD Audio Processor




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The English Notebookcheck hasn't updated the informations on the 7970m. But the German one has. With Google Translater you can get a hint of what the articel is about hopefully

and an other one.. unfortunaly also on German (sorry )

 

I hope Powertune and Enduro are both supported by Clevo P150EM and P170EM, they might need a BIOS/firmware update?

 

A BIOS/firmware update won't be enough since Enduro, like Optimus, is also a hardware issue. If it's similar or even the same to how Optimus is wired maybe the new models will support it. Either way, we'll find out pretty soon as soon as some of the resellers start playing around with them.

 

From what I'm reading everyone says Enduro is built into the card itself. It has nothing to do with the mobo.

I may be mistaken though, I hope at least Enduro works. I can do the Powertune myself and just OC a little if I really wanted haha.

 

Enduro is just a fancy name for power gating. It all happens right on the card. Just go look at desktop 7xxx idle numbers. Way down from previous generation.

 

Would be nice. I just ordered a notebook with the 7970M yesterday, as I decided I didn't feel like waiting any longer for Nvidia; additionally, it will be more than enough for my needs anyways.

 

What other laptops is it being offered on right now? I could only find it available on the Sagers. I wonder if it'll delay a ship date if I configure it with this beast.

 

Alienware. A forthcoming Samsung model will have it too, but I don't know the ETA on it.

 

Thanks. Probably going to lean towards pulling the trigger on a Sager as it is. But darn alienware is just so tempting. If only they had a matte screen.

 

Does anyone know if xotic or powernotebooks will be offering quicker build time for a little extra? I'd like to have something with the 7970 before the end of the month...

 

Before the end of April? Your best bet is to get an alienware and the new card. Then do the installation by yourself.

 

The 7970m looks like an amazing card. Does anyone know if it would be compatible with the new msi barebones laptops if I bought the card separately? They're only offering the 670M with those at the moment . I don't really have any experience with modifying laptops or anything but it seems like it'd maybe be a bit cheaper if I could do it.

 

I don't know enough about the new card and the Clevo refreshes to know which is true. I do hope it is used, however it works. I'm getting the card either way and if the Enduro works it's a bonus.

 

Sneaki, you should post this question in the MSI forums. They will have a better ideal. The 7970m is a 100w card based on the mxm 3.0c standard. Ask them if it will be compatible

 

Ok cheers I'll do that, I guess that makes more sense.