Battery life 7970m vs 675m questions

Greetings all,
I am in the neighborhood for a new computer, most likely the Sager 9150.
As far as graphics go I am looking at the 675m or the 7970m. The 680m is out of the question. Had it been a $250 upgrade, sure, but not for $500 at this point. (Does anyone know if they will slash the price like AMD did with the 7970?)

The 7970 is obviously more powerful and would be nice for the small amount of gaming I do, but in my case I am looking at a laptop that will get me through several hours of class a day (close to 5 hours)

I have heard of people getting up to around 5 hours with the 675m/optimus in the 9150. How does the 7970 fare? It uses less energy, but the integrated card software switching can be glitchy and inefficient?

Personal experience from owners of the 9150 and the two graphics cards would be very helpful here!

 

On board gpu disabled 7970m is better (I have both cards) but Optimus is a success where as enduro is a big fail, if you need on board for mobility, I would say burn the cash and buy 680m, don't buy 675m ATM as there is a fair chance games will be much more demanding in near future, IMHO.

 

I dont get it, will you be gaming in class? if not it doesnt really matter, you can run off the integrated gpu. I do not know if those laptops will get you 5 hours though, def not on performance settings and if you arent in performance settings it doesnt really matter what card you have then. Get the 7970 without a doubt, its a much better card. If you must have nvidia then buy the 680m (although its much more expensive), just because the '675m' number is close to 680 doesnt mean its near the quality/performance of the card. The 7970m/680m blow the 675 out of the water...

 

I appreciate the replies.

The issue that I have with the 7970 is that the Enduro seems clunky, from what I have heard it does not always use the integrated card for applications it should, meaning it uses the dedicated card when it shouldn't. If there was a way to turn off the dedicated card manually and only use the integrated card when I am in classes or on a plane etc, I am sure I would be fine with the 7970, but for whatever reason, no GPU company wants to make that an option. (Is there a reason they don't?)

Optimus works better than Enduro, which means battery life is longer. With the 675m, or rather Optimus, tests have gotten as much as 5.5 hours in a 9150. I would take even 5 hours, but 4 hours is probably not going to cut it.

Unless someone can confirm 5 hours with the 7970 I am leaning toward the 675 and wait for the 680m to come down in price (or maybe a rebadged 680m of the next generation). A $400 difference is just too much at this point in my life/budget.

 

I totally hear you bro, wait until August 15th, chances the 680m rush will cease are great with price difference which will eventually pull the prices down, I would say within a month 680m will be 150 on top of 7970m, sit tight, you don't need it before classes anyway right?

 

Well classes for me start August 13th, so it would be kind of nice to get it before then.

Right now Xotic pc is offering a ram downgrade option and Amazon is offering corsair vengeance ram for $119 shipped for 16gb in two sodimms.

That is a nice upgrade for what would probably end up being $50+-

So what kind of battery life are you seeing?

 

Well, keep specs minimal and get 680m, then eventually you will upgrade within the year, now you only need a7.2 hdd and 4gb, forget about ssd now, as buying gpu off market is twice more expensive while ssd and ram are cheaper

 

Yeah, that may be the way to go, or just wait and see if the 680 will come down enough to justify the purchase. Thanks for the help and time!

 

Yeah Enduro is such big fail I get 4 hour battery, can watch a 1080p movie with full brightness on my LCD and then get an average of 65 FPS in Max Payne 3 on Ultra.

Darn it! Why did I buy such fail? I don't understand how I can be having so much fun with fail!

Though 5 hour might be tough. Maybe possible, but you can just get a 2nd battery or charge between classes.

 

I would get the 7970m. However you don't need to take an expensive computer to class do you? An 11.6" x121e/x131e will do the job. The 675m takes 70w more then the 680m when fully stressed and we all know 680m is about 50-80% faster then the 675m. The first upgrade in mobile tech for 2 and a half years has happened. 675m is basically 2 and a half year tech and the most power hungry gpu for a laptop ever made.

 

Sarcastic much ? LOL Even at its best, Enduro is not optimized. i would say, 2-3 more driver revisions before it works the way it was meant to work

@Spring1898
Last weekend, i got 3 hrs running on my 7970m on pure battery. The integrated graphics is shutoff on my computer...but i was pleasantly surprised getting what I got...this was on my deck doing light tasks like surfing. The card clocks down to 150/300 when not under stress

But even with optimus and 680m, it would be difficult to get 5hrs on battery.

My suggestion is to get to class early and find a spot near a power plug

 

We have a 9 cell battery in the M17x versus the 8 in Sagers so battery life mileage will vary.

 

So do you guys think that in the relatively near future the drivers will be out to make Enduro more efficient? If that was the case it might be worth getting the 7970 and then waiting for the drivers to catch up. From what I have heard 5 hours is not easy but possible with Optimus. 4 hours seems more standard with 7970m.

That is still impressive considering the power of the GPUs, but I just need about 5 plain and simple. Sure I could get a small laptop but I don't want to buy a second unit. Plus when I travel I don't want to bring 2 computers. One to do work while on the plane, and another for when I get to my destination.

 

You're in a tough position because performance and battery life are on opposite sides of the spectrum. Sure you MAY (keyword: MAY) get 5 hours once in a while but real life battery life to me has always been worse than what the documentation says. If you want a top of the line card you cant be too picky about battery life or else you will need to get something a bit smaller. All I know is best case scenario for an m17x is 4 hours with a 9 cell battery, so I have no idea what that translates to on a Sager with an 8 cell battery.

 

I would get the 7970m anyway... Enduro issues are probably temporary anyway, and we know the 7970m is a MUCH better bang for buck (especially since its basically on par with 680m in games and crushes it in compute performance).

 

OP I think you should try to talk to one of the resellers here on NBR for a slight price adjustment so you can get the 680M with Optimus if battery life is a serious concern for you.

edit : Or you could buy an extra battery with your laptop.

 

you are averaging 65fps on iGPU? I would love to see some screenies of that..

BTW please let's drop this fanboy business from now on, it doesn't make any sense, yes Enduro as of now is flawed and has nothing to do with your gaming on battery...

 

There's really no point in getting the 675m. Last gen tech and last gen performance. Either spend $200 more and get 50% better perf with the 7970m or spend $500 more and get 50% better perf and better drivers with the 680m.

imo the 7970m is the better value but if you can stretch an extra $300 then the 680m is good too.

 

Do you mean they might reduce the price of the upgrade? Who do you have in mind?

I was mainly looking at Xoticpc since they seem to have good prices and options and I have heard a lot about them.

 

Battery life with Optimus will not be better than 7970M... Enduro with Zero Core shuts down the 7970M when not in use.

 

optimus also shuts down GPU, that is why it is switchable graphics.

 

As long as Enduro is working as it should, there should literally be no difference in battery life between 7970m and 680m since they will both solely be using the HD 4000 GPU. I can't personally vouch for Enduro, but was just impatient and didn't want to wait for issues to be sorted out so ran with the 680m. I'm happy so far, but I may have been just as happy with 7970m.

 

^^ exactly, they are both marvelous cards, if I was buying a new laptop I would have chosen 680m, but upgrading the GPU is very expensive aftermarket so 7970m makes more sense.. at the end they are very similar cards and powerful enough to drive us nuts

 

Call em up or shoot one of the reps here on NBR in the Sager section of the website a PM and see what kind of deal they can get you. Plenty of resellers here and I'm sure one would bend the price a little bit to accommodate you. If that doesn't work out, just buy a spare battery with your laptop so you'll have twice whatever battery life you end up getting out of the 675M/7970M.

 

guys, regardless 675m is last gen tech, thought the question was which has better battery life, 675m or 7970m theoretically..

whats happening on the august 15th ?

 

Hello All, I asked this question a while ago. But since I figured it out for myself I might as well post an answer.

Both the 9150 and 9170 got a boost in battery life thanks to the Bios EC update that reduces draw power by near 20%. As such both the 9170 and the 9150 with new batteries should get very close to 5 hours on a charge with the dedicated cards disabled.

The 7970m comes with the option to "force" the use of the integrated card, effectively taking it out of the power equation
The 680m has a similar option by switching the global settings to "integrated" which does about the same thing. As of this posting there is still a little fan issue bug, but that will eventually get remedied.

With both of those settings applied, the draw power between the computers is effectively equal and both should get close to 5 hours.