AMD HD 6990m vs Nvidia 580m GTX - Discussion Thread

Nvidia is offering their slower GPU for $300 more in a single config, or $600 more in SLI. Did Nvidia get owned this time?

/discuss

 

Graph is somewhat misleading. The difference will probably be somewhat minimal between these 2 cards. ATi/AMD have always been better bang for buck, especially in the laptop world. Doesnt suprise me much tbh, nvidia flagship cards for laptops always carry a stupid price tag.

 

The graph has already been posted in another 580m GTX thread. Note that in the footnotes it is mentioned that ATI used an equivalent PC GPU for the 580m GTX results.

 

Worth taking note of is that the graph does not go down to 0%. It is chopped off at 60%.

 

Also, it should be assumed that the 580m is the 100 % value. Would be better if indicated.

 

Amd already put out a request for websites to pull that graph, because the desktop gpu equivalent card still performed better than the stock 6990m. So its more like similar or slightly better performance but at a much lower price, still a good deal.

 

I believe the graph is misleading on some points. But still, the 6990m is going to be better than the 580m, I don't doubt that. Maybe not by 20%, but by at least 10%, and at a cheaper price point, why would you pick the 580m?

 

here is 1 reason

Maybe because some people need laptop 3 weeks ago and 3 weeks ago only 580M is available

 

Not if you got an alienware

 

Some people wants no other than Clevo product

besides you sure 6990M already available in Alienware 3 weeks ago ?

Note by available i meant the GPU already in builder hands ready to build and ship in 3 days

 

Yeah little_one. I know what you mean, and if this was 3 weeks ago I would of bought the 580m instead. I mean right now though.

 

Lets see for me so far :
1. PhysyX on Batman AA,Mafia 2
2. Proven overclocking ability

3dVantage 16221 on GPU . 3d2011 3733(GPU Score) on 0.87(stock) voltage
3dVantage 17578 on GPU . 3d2011 4035(GPU Score) on 0.92V voltage

see here http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/595787-extreme-gtx580m-overclocking.html

needs to compared to 6990M overclocking though

3. 3d on Clevo model

 

NVIDIA offers PhysX and CUDA.
Of course, software has to be specially tailored to take advantage of these features (Batman Arkham Asylum, Adobe CS5).

Generally speaking, the AMD 6990M offers a better value.

Cheers .

 

In clevo machine 6990M price = 560M + $ 170 . Great deal !

 

1. Don't play those, but that's pretty cool that they have that. I'm sure if more games took advantage of that technology, Nvidia would be much more popular.
2. I hope the 6990m over clocks well too.
3. Wish it had 3d on the m17x, but I'll just hook it up to a 3d TV anyway.

 

Is there any indication Nvidia will come out with a 590m? Or are the thermals already too high?

 

The 580M has maxed out Nvidia's options. Nothing beyond the GTX 560 Ti is feasible as a mobile GPU.

 

Heh, Nvidia has worked there way into a bit of a corner huh.

 

Much as you won't see a 6995 card either. They've both maxed out.

28nm for the next gen, next year.

 

yeah, both hit hard at the 100W TDP marker. I thought AMD would never take that last little jump, lol. But they did, and I cannot say I do not like the results

 

I can't wait to get my 6990m. I'll be posting lots of benchies, temps, and fps in my games.

 

I'm curious how beneficial it would be to upgrade from the 6970M to the 6990M, or to just overclock.

I love my system right now, however once the 6990M was released just a couple weeks after I got my laptop shipped to me (had to wait 2 months for the screen to arrive to Xotic), I began to wonder what kind of upgrade options were available to me.

Decisions!

 

If you already got the HD 6970m, i would just keep it until 28nm cards appears.
I bet these Clevo / Sager's will accept the new cards.

 

The 6990m is about 15-20% better than the 6970m. It's not worth the time, or hassle to upgrade however, because if you think about it, 15% is only 46fps on the 6990 vs 40 fps on the 6970.

 

those who have the m17x r3 with 580m+Optimus? have you ever encountered the Optimus-related problems where in the game detects only the integrated GPU and unable to switch to the discrete one?

 

Maybe because some people have been down the ATI road with the 6970m and won't go back.

 

There have been a lot of posts lately about whether it will be possible to use nvidia drivers for the M18x w/580m SLI instead of sticking with the Dell drivers.

Does anyone know if M18x's with the 6990m CF would be subject to the same restriction?

 

Overclock. I easily OC my 6970 past 6990 speeds. Definitely not worth the money to upgrade.

 

What frequencies are you running your 6970M at?

 

Not quite true. 715/900 with the 6970M =/= 715/900 with the 6990M because the 6990M has more Shader Processors unlocked. However, in order for the 6970M to be good, it has supersede the 6990M's clocks by 20-25% to evenly match the two on paper.

 

This is true. I'm too lazy to look up specs, but the 6990m is NOT just an overclocked 6970m like commonly thought. The actually shader count on the 6970m is like 960, vs the 1120 on the 6990m.

 

That is correct fgocards. But, I have compared my vantage runs to others with that of a 6990. The guy in the M15x forums with a 6990 and a beaver as his picture lol. My OC 6970 gpu score was higher than his stock score. I know they are not the same cards.
Edit: At Walzii, I OC my card to 830/1150 when I game and bench.

 

Here is widezu69's vantage run post.

Here is my vantage run.

 

in addition, the HD6990m has more TMU (texture address units, basically), onboard. So for at least certain games, there should be a performance gain based on that alone. Of course, these units are tied to the shader blocks

 

True, but then again his small OC already beat your OC'd score by 1k. If he can OC to your same clocks, the gap will increase.

I mean you had to overclock your GPU by 22% on the core and 27% on the memory to get a 600 points advantage from a stock HD6990m.

He overcloked his HD6990m by 8% in the Core and 11% his memory and overcame your OC'd HD6970m score by 1k.

Of course if you have an HD6970 GPU or an nVidia 485m, it is not worth it to upgrade unless you want the absolute best, because the price difference for the performance is not that great.

 

That was the only point I was making. I was just telling fgocards that it is not worth the upgrade when the 6970 is already so powerful.

 

6970m and 6990m are both fantastic cards. Now back on track, 580m vs 6990m...

Which one has more overclocking ability? nVidia has the tendency to run hotter in the first place, so I feel that you have more OC headroom with the 6990m. Yes or no?

 

bumping this question >_<

 

Sorry, I don't own a 580m but as far as I know this is more or less an Optimus problem, not a GPU problem. Optimus is still VERY buggy, and does not work near as well as manual switching does like the AMD cards support on the Alienware laptops.

 

i see, i wanted the nvidia physx but i dont want the optimus that is why i'm considering 6990m. i'm torn between these two. sigh.

 

If it helps Physx isn't a huge boost and is only supported in about 3 games. The 6990m is a good bit more powerful too, which should make up the difference.

 

well, GPU Physx is supported in about 30+ games right now, iirc.


But only Batman AA (and I never cared for it, since walking past paper to make it ruffle is a 50/50 chance whether it works or not, and the cape animations aren't really realistic, even with Physx on ) - this is from my i7 2600k/GTX580 desktop).

and one other game I don't recall right now, actually matter for GPU Physx, as the rest purely suck, or are just paid off tech demos (that claim to be games).


Lots of games using CPU based Physx, including quite a few console games.

 

I don't see how anyone can say the 6990m is a "good deal more powerful". If it's even 10%, I'll be legitimately surprised.

And plenty of games utilize PhysX, what are you talking about? If cloth need be rendered, PhysX is probably there. Cloth is pretty common, because I'm sure parents aren't fans of nudity.

Anyway, there's really no reason to get the 580m with pricing the way it is.

 

Plenty of games use Physx. Just not the GPU kind. So already, getting a nVidia GPU for Physx isn't usefull. In addition, games have to be specifically coded to use the GPU for physx - there is no workaround to make a CPU physx based game run the GPU Physx variant - which also has a generally seperate featureset from the CPU version.

GeForce.com - Get the Most Out of Your GPU

and click on "physx" on the left hand side.

Which of those games have you actually played?

For me:
Batman AA: makes the cloak different, but generally still unrealistic (I'm told it makes the cloak different, I've always played this game with GPU Physx set to advanced - so I think it looks like crap, and that's without seeing the other version, I'd assume I'm not missing much). Also interesting to note, the console versions didn't use Physx.

Mafia II: No difference. Maybe in a mission there was a cutscene or a glass breaking differently? I dunno.

Mirror's Edge: Physx only made the game slower in the ONE area that uses them: glass breaking. And this is with a GTX580 + i7 2600k. If this setup cannot handle this effect (which, btw, also happens in this game without Physx), then I'd have little faith in this gimmick actually meaning anything. Especially since it doesn't add anything to the game.

Metro 2033: I have no clue where Physx was ever in this game. But whatever, maybe it was on the allies cloathing (they gotta be dressed or else nude ), but then, they are always cut off from you via silly game mechanics and storyline.

Cryostasis: No clue this even had Physx if I didn't check. Luckily, I got the game free from eVGA, so I didn't have to spend any money on this.

SuperSonic Sled is a tech demo. Not even a fun tech demo, unless if you are one of the people that find fun in the chase the dot flash games.

Darkest of Days: If you even call this a half decent FPS, you are not a PC gamer. I'd bet a majority of people, if forced/requested to play this game will agree with me on this.

So in the 7 games I have played (some rather extensively) with GPU Physx, I haven't found any good reason for them to have it... I've played the games on both my old i7 930/HD5870 CF setup, and when that died, my i7 2600k/GTX570 SLI setup (later stepped up one to a GTX580, and sold the other). Just my opinion on GPU physx... it's rather useless in the games that have it. In some cases, terminally useless (mirror's edge and cryostasis come to mind...).

 

i've a video of a desktop i7 2600k+6870 run Alice 2 with high physX using CPU, will an i7 2720QM+6990m do it, too?

if so, do i need to do some mods to just to force the cpu to run physX?

i don't play a lot of those physX games but Alice for one, is what i'm intending to play and i've seen the difference between off, low and high physX settings, it does some pretty cool additions to the gameplay and cosmetics itself.

‪Alice Madness Returns: PhysX on CPU Test - ATI/AMD GPU PC 1080p‬&rlm; - YouTube

there are other videos, too. allowing physx on cpu. but i want to know if a laptop (particularly 2720QM) can do that, too?

 

Buy this fast and then regret for the next two years

 

please delete post -- wrong thread

 

On the 28th of July my m17x should arrive. Specs: i7 2820, 8gb 1333mhz, 2x320gb RAID 0, 6990m. Someone mentioned that it would be better to have some single gpu benchmarks. I will get the newest drivers for catalyst and the gpu and run some tests and post them if no more benchmarks have come out by then. I plan on running pcvantage, 3dmark11, 3dmarkvantage and hopefully cinebench11.5. Anyone suggest other tests to run? thanks

 

I think so. I know the ATI GPU can't have it enabled but I do know you can still force the CPU to do some form of PhysX. However, I don't know if the CPU is entitled to PhysX set on 'High' that you wanted or it can only run on 'Low'.

 

Current benchmarks on the two actual mobile cards with an actual mobile processor proved this isn't so. (was a benchmark around here somewhere that was 3rd party done in a clevo laptop)

They are similar in power and one is better for some things and the other for others. Long story short the 6990m and 580m are for all intents and purposes roughly equal.

Things may change as drivers mature of course.

Truth be told, at the prices we are seeing at resellers even if the 6990m is 5% slower in everything its STILL the overall better mobile GPU due to price and performance/price alone.