AMD 7970m vs GTX 680m

What software do you guys use/recommend for overclocking? This is the first notebook I don't mind trying out overclocking the GPU of...

 

well I just tried that 12.6 mod driver and my score on 3d mark 11 was 100 lower than 12.5 beta on the graphics

12.6 mod = 6100 GPU 6500 overall

12.5 beta= 6200 GPU 6550 overall

this is overclocked 940-1350 flashed clocks with tesselation on no tweaks mr Nvidia

also the screen went black with 12.6 mod just letting the machine alone it was kind of weird

 

The 100 points difference is minimal at best, and not worth consideration or discussion. The newer driver is obviously more mature, which means noticeable (or not) performance gains in a real-life gaming environment, until ofcourse a better driver surfaces. The black screen is something I've been hearing about repeatedly across the forums, and I'm at this point, unsure if it has to do with the drivers or something else entirely. It is most certainly worth looking into though.. Hopefully, it gets better with time and driver support. Haven't experienced the issue myself, however.

 

well 12.5 beta doesn't have any issue mature or not that's why i went back to that driver

 

No black screen issues at all, then? I'd like to try it out... I can only find the 12.4, 12.6 and the June 12 (w/ / w/o MOD) drivers, not the 12.5... Link?

 

what laptop do you have again? If its a Sager/Clevo, you have no ability to shut off the integrated graphics at the moment. We can do this in the Alienwares. Perhaps someone will come out with a unlocked bios for you guys

12.6 will be more stable overall...but i'm on the 12.5's because it seems to perform better in the things that matter to me

I have a link to the modded 12.5's in my 7970m guide

 

What does DPI mean here? I thought DPI was the mouses' sensitivty.
Anyway I really would like to know what is the best performance/reliability driver for 7970m. SlickDude has on his tutorial page that AMD Catalyst 8.97 18 April – 7900 MOD – BenchmarK3D works best. Is this true?

 

this is the ones that worked better for me single and CF AMD_Catalyst_12.5_Beta.rar

 

Dots Per Inch. Try both the one above and the newest June 12 MODDED driver, see what works for you best..

 

Well what has the mouse's sensitivity gotta do with the latest driver not working?

 

Why possibly should "Dots Per Inch" only apply to mouse sensitivity?? You can change your desktop display DPI in Windows... That's what I was talking about.

 

So for sager/clevo the best drivers seem to be the 12.5 modded ... what drivers do they come with from the manufacturer?

 

@Slick - Yeah its a Clevo.
I'm curious about the 12.6 drivers... might install them and see if there's even more improvement. having said that I'm happy with the current results.

 

The reason why I stay with the 12.5 modded drivers is because they run very well for me. BF3, Diablo 3, Skyrim, Crysis 2 etc...it doesn't matter what game you throw at it, the games fly and i have never suffered instability overclocked at my normal gaming OC of 950/1400

Just out of curiosity, i wanted to see what my best 3dmark11's would be in an overclock (on stock voltage). So i've been juggling the core and ram speeds. It seems that my best i can do is with the Core down a bit and ram up

Here is pretty close to the upper limit of what my 7970m will do on the stock voltage:

CPU maxxed via XTU
7970m @ 992/1575
Tess on

AMD Radeon HD 7970M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2820QM Processor,Alienware M17xR3 score: P6859 3DMarks

 

So are the 7970m's drivers getting better seems like the 12.6 drivers arnt looking to good to me but there any new news on the 680m?

Sent From My Rooted EVO 3D

 

Hello Dude. Are you sure AMD Catalyst 8.97 18 April – 7900 MOD – BenchmarK3D is 12.5 modded because on that page it says 8.97 modded.
Plz confirm this is the best driver that works for you as of right now.

 

Actually, I can't find the 12.5 modded drivers on benchmarks site. There's 12.4b and 12.6. any ideas?

 

These are the ones Speedy has been using as he sent me the link earlier to prepare for Monday when my card arrives. He said only use these and i imagine they are the same one as Slickdude has been commenting on.

AMD_Catalyst_12.5_Beta.rar

 

I tried these and after rebooting got BSD. Had to use restore point - went back to 12.6 modded. These are the most stable so far.

 

Interesting link here from Benchmark.com - Unfortunately the article is written by nVidia, so dont expect too much objectivity.
However, they ran the 680m (on driver 302.56) vs 7970m (on driver 12.4)

"Testing was conducted comparing the GeForce GTX 680M versus Radeon 7970M, running at a resolution of 1920x1080. Driver version used was 302.56 for 680M and cat 12.4 for Radeon. In 3Dmark Vantage P with PhysX enabled, 680M scored 25063 and AMD scored 20590. In Far Cry 2 Ultra-High 1xAA/AF, 680M scored 129.8 FPS while 7970M scored 112.6. Dirt 3 in Ultra 1xAA/AF, 680M scored 80 FPS while 7970M scored 64.5. For performance, a higher number is better."
link - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M Gaming Notebook Unveiled | NVIDIA,GeForce,GTX 680M,Gaming,Notebook,NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M Gaming Notebook Unveiled

Observations - Well... it looks like the 680m is proving to have some grunt and AMD need some decent drivers sooner rather than later.

 

Hello notebookreview...
On an italian forum the user Fifointhesky score this on heaven
7970m Stock clock:


he done it with this setting for compare with this bench:


/thread....
lol just joking, shareyour opnion ofc

 

Both with Tessellation off =(

 

he shut off tess coz nvidia did it in first place...

 

i know this thread is very large now...but within the first 25 pages, there are posts of 7970m with tess normal

 

There is also a thread just for 7970m benchmarks that no one takes any notice of as well, instead of cluttering up this one

 

So the 680m is 10-15 percent faster? isn't that worth the 300 considering you get better support and features?

but I guess if you, like 99 percent of the people out their on a budget the 7970m is the way to go.

 

It's worth $100 extra at the most.

 

Lol that depends. If you NEED to have CUDA support, then yes.

However, lots of programs are starting to support OpenCL, which the 7970M is more than proficient with.

As far as games go, to me at least, <10fps (most of the time at 10-15%) differences aren't that apparent, unless you're below 30. But when you're less than 30, even 15% will only be 4-5 frames per second faster.

 

It all depends on how the 680 overclocks, with the performance of a overclocked 7970m you can scratch that 15% and give it to the 7970m

 

As long as the AMD drivers can make the 7970m reliable. No BSOD, black screens, crashes etc.

 

People keep amaze me with theyr problems with AMD drivers. I havent had more problems with AMD than i have had with Nvidia. And i have had AMD cards more than Nvidia cards. So what are those mystic problems guys/girls?
Im running 7970 on my PC atm with 3 screens connected. No problems whatsoever with any driver i have used.

 

Well whoopee for you People amaze you ? Patronising much ??

But I guess you can ignore the people who are having huge problems with black screens, BSOD's, artifacting, fan noise, heat, useless or non existant xfire profiles etc.

Whilst I agree that many issues are user inflicted , also with so many different specs of machines you cant dismiss an issue just because YOU havent had a problem.

 

Nevermind Supranium. He is part of the AMD fanboy community in this forum and will never admit anything bad about AMD even if it were right in front of his nose

Thread carefully. Since 7970M was the first GPU that was available, people bought that GPU and is now defending it no matter what. I can`t blame them. I think its something human about the need to justify your choice of product.

 

It seems to me that most of those mentioning ATI drivers problems haven't really had any ATI cards and only used Nvidia.
The only time I remember when someone didn't mention video driver problems was when I still played ASCII-graphics based games (and that was a very long time ago). Starting early 1990s every video card on the market was having some kind of driver problem and Nvidia isn't the exception.
The most common driver problem out there is a problem with 'user.sys' driver which can be successfully fixed by updating it with the one that actually knows what he's doing.

 

The first sentence in your post is absurd, how can you possibly know whether someone has or has had an ATi/AMD video. Please back this statement up.

I generally don't make statements unless they meet one of two criteria:

A. I've experienced the issue myself.
B. There are numerous reports of an issue.

In this case, AMD drivers, I meet both "A" and "B" criteria. I've owned ATi/AMD video cards and experienced the poor drivers first hand, and I've read numerous reports about the poor drivers.

I can say though, I haven't experienced any driver issues with my current AMD processor and graphics card.

 

I mean, look up any forum you`d like, at random, and you will find many people swearing that they will never buy an AMD GPU again due to the lack of driver support. Yes you will also find people with bad experience with Nvidia products, but the vast majority is saying AMD is doing something wrong.

Either the whole technology community is full of lies and want AMD out of business or there are atleast some truth to the AMD and their drivers.

 

It's as absurd as the statement that "ATI has driver problems and Nvidia doesn't". I have owned multiple cards from both manufacturers and I had as many Nvidia driver problems as I had ATI problems.

Yes, I'm sure you can find ATI owners that have one or another type of problem with their card, but it doesn't mean that ATI cards by default have driver problems.

On the other hand "ATI drivers" already became an urban legend that certain type of people (*cough* Nvidia fanboys *cough*) accepts as a fact without even bothering to check for themselves if it is true or not.
It's just gets really annoying after awhile.
So, when comparing (for example) 7970m and 680m it would be really nice to know what exactly is so much better in Nvidia drivers that it's worth this extra premium.

 

i dont get why people defend the product they buy cloud, im happy to see better and better gpu technology coming out. We all need AMD and Nvidia, without them both we wont see competition and new cards every year. Remember the 8800GTX desktop cards? they lasted like 2 years before anything could touch them! i dont want that again, keep the cards coming. ill always go for the best card, i dont care what brand, just give me my frames per second.

 

Both red and green have had, and will continue to have driver issues, some better than others.

I will buy a machine that does what I want it to do and give me the best possible overall day to day real life gaming experience without having to o/c the hell out of it or keep posting pointless benchmarks to justify my purchase or wave my about.

 

This is even worse logic than your previous post. You're saying if a rabid Nvidia fanboy makes an absurd statement, it's ok for you to do the same and call it fact? Righto!

I generally don't make statements unless they meet one of two criteria:

A. I've experienced the issue myself.
B. There are numerous reports of an issue.

In this case, AMD drivers, I meet both "A" and "B" criteria. I've owned ATi/AMD video cards and experienced the poor drivers first hand, and I've read numerous reports about the poor drivers.

I can say though, I haven't experienced any driver issues with my current AMD processor and graphics card.

 

Cloudfire calling someone a fanboy?? Hello pot....meet kettle.....

 

Yes I agree. Nvidia had their share of problems too in the past, and I am not saying that they are problem free either. Yeah 8800 GTX models had major problems, but to be fair that was due to a resistor problem, a hardware defect, not drivers. But the way Nvidia handled the whole issue was pretty bad. If this was an exisiting problem today, either pushing out flawed products or bad drivers, I would buy stop buying Nvidia for shure.

I am not looking at you as a fanboy though. You are one of the few objective people in this forum. Kudos

 

Dam, I joined this forum to rid myself of fanboys.

You're right Cloudfire, alot of people have put their money on the 7970m, myself included. The problem is when people become emotionally attached to their purchase, and it starts to blind them of fact and objectivity.

 

That still doesn't make his statement any less true. And, as someone who purchases both brands equally, I believe I can fairly say Cloud isn't even close to being a rabid fanboy. Whenever a read over this thread, I see Cloud making relatively fair statements, and the AMD portion of the NBR community jumping all over him. Calm down people, it's not life or death. Just a video card that's going to be outdated in 6 months or less.

 

Nah the clear majority of threads is without fanboy discussions TBoneSam. This
GPU thread however did not go very silently

 

Any conclusions now are not accurate. Let's just wait for AMD and Nvidia to release their official drivers for their flag ship mobile GPU then we can compare. But so far there is no denying 7970m is a great OCer.
In this current technological age both AMD and Nvidia are great companies and I'm sure both will be reliable with the maturity of it's drivers through time.

 

Man that is so sad to think about. I`m not shure if thats a good thing or a bad thing though. To own the best or to see technology progress

For shure. I think it shocked everyone to see how great 7970M performs at stock, then how good it can overclock even without getting hot. Die shrink and new architecture at the same time is boasting pretty good results. I just wish Intel could do the same with CPUs

 

Yeah AMD are sure taking their time to prep the driver for 7970m. It better be good. And I'm pretty much 99.9% set for 7970m as 680m's $300 extra for a card that's gonna be outdated in 6 months is not cool. I may as well use that $300 for 8970m or a 9970m when the games get the better of my 7970m

 

I understand that you had problems with your ATI card, but it still doesn't make it true that Nvidia is better than ATI.

I see that you completely misunderstood what I wrote.
I didn't call anything a fact, all I did was pointed out that, from my experience, there are as many problems with Nvidia as there are with ATI and that the use of this argument in this thread doesn't have any merits until the quality of the actual drivers for 680m and 7970m can be compared. So it would be really helpful if everyone dropped this "driver problems" argument until at least they can prove that 680m has superior driver support.
And before calling my statements absurd please read my post again and try to understand what I said.

 

i hope, with so many good games coming out soon, they are probably trying to test them all out before they release a driver, especially now that they are only releasing drivers when needed