AMD Radeon HD 8970M Unveiled

"AMD Radeon HD 8970M “Neptune” Solar Series GPU Performance Unveiled With MSI GX70 Notebook"

Read more: AMD Radeon HD 8970M "Neptune" Solar Series GPU Performance Unveiled With MSI GX70 Notebook

 

7.5% faster than 680M. I am dissapoint.

Good find.

 

7.5% faster than stock 680m is not something impressive indeed, we should keep 7970m in that case (and wait until 780m blows 8970m out of the water, I thought they would trade blows..)

 

this cant be true, no way, not unless thy have a 8990 planned.
Also it doesnt actually say that neptune is 8970 right? it only says 8970 vs 680 and then put neptune on a chart vs the 680

 

I was planning on switching over to 780m later this year, and unless it's a wash (which I doubt) this about seals the deal for me.

Nope, it's neptune alright.

 

oh, well in that case, its very disappointing to see that

 

That is very good if consumes half the power . Am I gonna be able to buy separately this card and insert into my GX60?

 

Worth noting that GX70 is APU based and that 7970M in an APU-based laptop only had less than 5k 3dm11. Not sure how the advertised benchmarking was done but if it was 8970M+APU vs 680M+i7, the 7.5% would be a gross underestimate on a level playing field..

 

If we think that the 680M and 8970M was tested with the same CPU, and the 8970M score 2.0 and the 680M score 1.86, that means 8970M is 7.5% faster than 680M. Then I`m very dissappointed with AMD.
If we think that the 680M was tested with i7 and the 8970M was tested with Richland, then yes, it could mean that 8970M is indeed faster than 7.5% over 680M if you test it with an i7. But note that this is 3DMark11 Performance score, aka overall score. We don`t know how much the CPU or the GPU contributed.

Nice to finally see some news about upcoming GPUs as well as the upcoming notebook from MSI although GX70 looks exactly like GX60

 

Im just going to say that Im disappointed, for one, narwhal is a much cooler name, for seconds they dont change baby diapers. Not that I have kids, but I would get that for the possibility, like a SUV

 

Meh. This year's GPUs are bound to disappoint when compared to the upgrades we got with Kepler and GCN last year. I'm holding out for Maxwell.

 

You brave soul. I can`t wait another year. No way.

GTX 780M saw a 20% increase over 680M though. So hopefully someone can deliver this year too

 

True. AMD's APU's are garbage and severely limit the gpu's potential. We'll just have to wait and see what it can do with a 4800MQ. The 780m will destroy it no matter what though. lol

 

if the increase is < 10% I bet even the Fermi guys will wait until Maxwell.. I hope 780m will really score 30k in vantage and +7k (hopefully) in 3dmark11, so that AMD cannot release this BS.

 

This is not surprising to me in the least. This has not been an advertised "enthusiast" card based on the first slide (old slide). So for it to be 7.5% faster than the 680M and not being an enthusiast card seems about right. However, I also wouldn't be surprised if it's about as fast or even slower than the 680M as any "benchmark" done by the manufacturer tends to be an overestimation of performance. My 580M SLI (Fermi guy) is starting to feel a little long in the tooth but still plays most games maxed. I can squeeze out another year, and wait for Maxwell for the next ugprade as that is looking to be quite a significant upgrade over Kepler. I still have enough juice in my rig to get another good year of gaming. I seem to be getting a good 3 years out of my systems and this rig will be about 3 years old by the time I need to upgrade to Maxwell.

 

lol I guess it's kind of different for me though, I've only had my current notebook for a little over a month. If I still had my NP9150 I'd no doubt be looking to upgrade to a 780m.

 

Oh man, if you OC that SLI, you can get better performance than a single 680m OC'd. You are certainly set until Maxwell.

 

problem is the 8970m in this case is paired with an AMD mobile CPU, maybe results will be better if its with a i7?

 

That has yet to be confirmed.

 

Let's see when we can actually test the 8970M and 780M properly side by side.

 

That's might won't come, almost all new laptops use AMD graphics because their lower heat and energy consumption, Nvidia have lost PS4, Xboy 760, their tegra 4 is a crap, they do not have APUs, it is no way they can keep up themselves from only high end GPU sales...

 

I thought I would just aptly point out to the NVidia fan boys. If it weren't for AMD being a good competitor and releasing the 7970M last year then right now the best you guys would be running would be a 675MX. Nvidia only released the better part after they realized how good the 7970M was.

The same will happen here. The 8970M is a more efficient/tweaked 7970M so slight performance increase. The real competitor will be the 8990M. The fact of the matter is green needs red and red needs green from a consumer point of view anyways.

 

Most laptops come with AMD cards because they're cheap, not because of any performance benefit. I know the 7970m cfx is slightly more energy-efficient than the 680m sli (not sure about single cards though) but the 680m still runs cooler than the 7970m in every notebook that I know of.

I couldn't care less about whos GPUs are in next gen consoles. I'm more concerned with gaming PCs, and Nvidia has offered better performance and stability than AMD for the last couple years. That may change in the future, but if the present situation is any indicator then I'll be sticking with Nvidia for the foreseeable future.

I haven't seen any documented proof or evidence that there will be an 8990m.

 

Maybe you should jump over to the 780m thread and see that I credited them for that highly.

There will be no 8990m. This is the high end chip. People here are forgetting that those cheap garbage APU's are only good for bottlenecking.
The real performance of this thing will only be revealed when we get some proper benches in a Clevo or an Alienware with an Intel cpu.

Btw. How am I a fanboy when I want to buy one of these? You're quite funny my AMD loving friend. lol

PS: "green needs red and red needs green" I completely agree with that. We need AMD to put up competition to drive down prices and move innovation forward. See what happened with intel? No competition,no innovation. Haswell is pathetic. Barely a 10% upgrade. AMD can't compete so intel doesn't care any more.

How would it be more efficient in a dual card config when it's not in a single card system? The 680m will consume a lot more power when overclocked and overvolted. That's normal but stock vs stock it should be more efficient.

 

failwheeldrive:

7970M vs 680M consuming similar amount of power while their performance about identical.
The new generation GCN Radeons has significant improvement in power consumption side, the best example is the new 8750M vs. 640M (identical performance), but for Radeon half the power is enough. Scroll down to the power consumption areas in the links.
And if consoles use radeon graphics, that means games will be more Radeon optimized, making it even more efficient. Sorry but I do not see long future for Nvidia, unless Intel will buy the company...

 

Don't we need to see the 8970M tested in combo with an i7 first? It's guaranteed that the APU severely crippling its performance.

 

I am actually fair to both sides but could never afford to buy a Nvidia top end card. I have no choice but AMD. Thankfully they are still around or I wouldn't bother gaming as it would be too expensive.

 

A conversation with the guys at upgradeyourlaptop revealed that they're currently testing the 8970m's they'll be putting on sale in june/july, and they noticed about 30% improvement over 7970m.
Supposedly they'll offer only the 8970m, in 2GB and 4GB flavours.
Another dude in the alienware forums initially reported in a conversation with them that they'd be offering 8990m as well, but that's not what they told me.

 

I assumed it would be the same with single cards, I've just never seen the numbers for single card setups.

I could see that helping optimization in some console ports, but I still don't think Nvidia is going anywhere. Nvidia should be able to continue to offer excellent driver support with next gen titles as well, so even if AMD sees an improvement in optimization it doesn't necessarily mean that Nvidia won't be able to match them. If there's one area that Nvidia easily beats AMD in, it's driver support.

 

That's huge pile of you know what. lol

It's in the best interest of any game dev to make their games run on both systems. Nvidia will stay strong and will continue to provide awesome driver support. Also you have no idea how strong Nvidia's Tesla and Quadro ranges are. Those gpu's are everywhere. Their main income is coming from that. Nvidia k20x's are powering the words strongest super computer and Europe's strongest super computer not AMD Firepro's.
They don't need intel at all. Their project Denver will reduce cpu dependency significantly next year. There's a bright future ahead for gpu's while separate cpu's will fade away in a few years. They'll be integrated on die with the gpu. Intel knows this. That's why they're developing Skylake which will be a drastic change.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

 

True, not confirmed officially but tested by a german reseller.

Where have you heard about 8990M? If the 7.5% is true, it almost look like 8970M is nothing more than a clocked up 7970M.

Thats more like it. 30% improvement on the same architecture would be awesome. GTX 680MX (780M) also saw 20-35% in games over the 680M so there could be some truthness to it
2 and 4GB means that they will continue with 256bit bus.

 

Tegra 4 is crap?? You must be thinking pc gaming market also is bigger than tablet + phone, right? Nvidia is a successful company (the second most in its field, Intel being the first) and what they did with Tegra is called a change of strategy (which I am sure was evaluated with many, many sophisticated computer models back in the time), and it turned out to be just right.

 

NVIDIA Tegra 4 Slower Than Both The Nexus 10 and iPad 4, NVIDIA In Trouble With Tegra 4 Chips, Qualcomm Says Snapdragon 800 Easily Beats Tegra 4.
Too many troubles, this year will tearing apart Nvidia, you will see...

 

I wouldn`t call Tegra 4 crap....
(Lets look at something thats been tested by users instead of what some CEO of a company says. iPhone 5 is slightly slower than iPad4)

 

lol at you again. Those were early benches and it was stated that drivers caused it. Look at the newer benches Cloud posted! Tegra is beating everything by far.

You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. You just want Nvidia dead. And they say I'm a fanboy. lol

 

Even these correct numbers, that is may still not enough to convince manufacturers to use Tegra 4 in their devices. Tegra 4 should compete with this year's hardware, such as Galaxy S4, Iphone 5S, etc. Besides performance, the power consumption is the most important for phones and never was strong part of nvidia chips.

Competition is always good, so why would I want Nvidia dead? Although I still mad at them they killed ugly mod 3dfx...

 

Here is the Samsung S4 and the HTC One, all brand new and not even released yet, against Tegra 4
PS: Antutu is a CPU benchmark


http://androidandme.com/2013/03/news/antutu-benchmark-samsung-galaxy-s-4-vs-htc-one-vs-nvidia-tegra-4/

 

Add the Notes too : Samsung Galaxy S 4 benchmark came from Laptopmag, HTC One benchmark came from our review device, and the Tegra 4 benchmark came from NVIDIA.

And these were only CPU tests, we have to wait for 3DMark tests to see how good is GPU.

So now, let's just go back to the topic guys; Radeon 8970M .

 

S3 (US version) and Note2 has the same hardware, why S4 and the new Note should have different?

 

This makes sense. AMD's drivers suck (or at least are very much delayed and rarely released) so if the AMD hardware benefits from better game optimization in console ports it will balance out with Nvidia's far superior driver support and gaming feature set. Both companies are incredibly close to each other. Fantastic for us consumers. I just wish Nvidia would lower their prices a little. I would love to try out a modern card from them.

Also great news about the 8970M, 30% increase in performance sounds gr8. I just hope power consumption is still the same or perhaps even better! I am glad there will be a 4GB flavour. After playing crysis 3 I found 2GB to be lacking lol

 

Samsung and Apple use their own chips. They won't adept Tegra 4 or any other chip for that matter. Also. While Nvidia was know to have crap power efficiency they've made a 180 turn. Now they're focusing all their effort on improving their efficiency. Their target for next years Maxwell is an 80% performance/Watt improvement. Their whole range will be based on Maxwell. From phones to their supercomputing lineup so I'm pretty sure they're confident they can achieve it. I like this new turn Nvidia made. It's extremely beneficial for us mobile gamers and it's also good for nature.

Go Green!

 

I can't wait to see if those benches for 8970m were done with the AMD APU, fingers crossed, that way Nvidia will have to step up their game... again

On a side note, compare tegra 4 with its real competition, those graphs/benchmarks are up against last years tech and older, even the S4 is a pretty unfair comparison, it being a qualcomm chip, wait for the ones with exynos 5 octa, that will be a beast and worthy challenger to the tegra 4, I recon it will be the better of the two, the new big LITTLE architecture is going to be a huge succes imo . ^^

 

You guys should make a Tegra 4 thread....

 

i come in here expecting another April fool joke and get a debate about mobile GPU instead.

 

+30% performance and less power? Hmm, looks like a 4GB 8970m upgrade might be on my radar. Let's see what green has got coming.

/ waits patiently

Joke is on you then

 

That's basically all we can do for right now. We just have to patiently wait for Nvidia to unveil there team of cards.

 

one thing to note for people who already have a Kepler / GCN card (I have 7970m), the coming family of GPUs will be outdated in a year, guaranteed. I will get 780m though

 

Simply sell on the 8970M/780M February/March next year before the new gen hits the shelves. Still get a pretty good return on it.

 

So is the 8970M still mxm 3.0 b? Backwards compatible with the M17x R4? Looking forward to seeing more come out of this.

 

MXM 3.1 is the standard now, but yes, compatible with all current gen machines.