GT 640M GDDR5 or GT 650M DDR3

I'm trying to decide between getting an Asus n56vz, which has a 650M with DDR3 RAM and a Samsung Series 7 Chronos (15.6"), which according to the specs has a GT 640M with DDR5 RAM.

The Samsung seems like a nicer notebook overall, better build, lighter, smaller profile, better battery life, but I'm wondering what the graphics performance hit will be from going with the 640M. What effect will the GDDR5 RAM have? Will I be missing out on much for not going with the 650M?

 

DDR5 will always win hands down performance wise it is twice the speed of GDDR3, and you can just overclock the core to a 650M or higher. The 640/650/660 are all the same card they just have different stock clocks and memory options.

 

GT640 now with GDDR5? Thats essentially a lower clocked GTX660m.

Ugh nvidia.... Now you have three different names for possibly configurations of the exact same card.

Officially, the name of the card (GT640, 650, 660) became useless and it's best to just refer to the memory type and clockspeeds.

 

its been like that since launch. All models have been released with GDDR5 or DDR3, the latter cant be found on the 660m though.

dont forget that the 640m LE is also the same core, if kepler, it can be fermi.

 

Whats the point of having official specs when every Kepler GPU have been made with thousands of variants?

The Apple GT 650M is even better than the Asus GTX 660M. GT 650M official specs have also changed since it was released.
GT 640M only had GDDR3 according to official Nvidia specs, but there are also GDDR5 640Ms out there now, so Nvidia have changed the specs to GDDR3/GDDR5 now.

Confusing to keep up imo

 

Dell xps is to come with gt640m gddr5. All I can say is gt640m to 650m are very close and likewise 650-660m are very close. Overall I would get the gddr5 as the gddr5 memory is supposed to be more efficient performance per watt wise then gddr3.

 

its the same core for everything like nvidia has been doing in the mainstream segment. The problem now is that the 660m shares that core, and the difference between a high performing mid range gpu to the entry level is severely diminished.

And from anandtech as far as I remember the 640m came with GDDR5 or DDR3

 

Well I may be wrong on the GT 640M specs from Nvidia, but I really think I remember that it said GDDR3 only. Anandtech article says both GDDR3 and GDDR5 though.

Anyways, its messed up when a GT 650M beats a GTX 660M. And not only do the OEMs put different VRAM in it, but they also clock the VRAM higher than the official specs. Like GTX 660M @ Geforce.com. "Up to 64GB/s" it says.
Asus GTX 660M have 80GB/s.

They should have kept the GT 640M as GDDR3 only, GT 650M with both GDDR3/5 and GTX 660M with a bit more cores and GDDR5 imo. They are very alike now like you say

LOL confusing

 

well lets cheat and get the 640m with gddr5 and overclock it to 660m level.. all that in a slean cool notebook.

 

Yeah, its cheaper too

 

sincerely? its best to just kill fermi, dont rebrand it.

640m => 630m
650m => 640m
660m => 650m

660m would be a 650

670m would be a 660

680m = 680m

however to do this, they would lose their stock, and incur on loss of market (that they already did) with the late launch of the parts. It makes economic sense for them to use this strategy.

 

but that does not kill fermi.... 670m and 675m are fermi...

 

that does kill fermi, where did you see fermi on that post?

 

Screw commitments. Kill Fermi already and replace the 670M and 675M with higher clocked Quadro`s

 

next year fermi probably should be dead, at least I hope so.

and then we shall have something closely resembling what I wrote, the 660m will be a 650m and the 680m should be whatever the hell they want.

However I saw an interesting bit of info on anandtech, that the gpu makers are moving for a 2 year launch, dunno if he meant that the arch will stay for 2 years, like nvidia is doing, or we are going to move for the 700 series only in 2014, I do think its the former, the latter doesnt make sense for the mobile market

 

Why not let consumers and the market decide when Fermi dies? The 650M, 660M, and 680M will continue to exist for you, right?

 

you are entertaining the idea that a market controlled by 2 companies is going to have a perfect supply and demand curve, along with consumer curves?

not going to work.

Another example is the OS scenario, there are 3 for you to chose in terms of productivity (no Im not counting even more restricted markets like servers and so forth), one by far has more than 80% share.

Those are imperfect competition markets, user input has little to do with the strategy that a company makes. They round on what they can produce for a certain price that permits that they continue producing goods, and delivering considerable profits.

If you want the only input that a user makes is what type of market that they shall produce more cards, i.e. price constricted choice.

The consumer itself has to adapt to whichever they produce, its not the other way around. Specially on the notebook market, where your choices are even more diminished.

 

I haven't seen a lack of the 650 and 660 on the market. The 680 obviously they are going to charge a premium for.

 

It's great that everyone is talking about crazy overclocks to 660m levels and stuff, the only thing everyone is forgetting is that all of these cards cannot be overvolted and the max allowed core OC is 135MHz as well. Therefore, a 640m won't reach 660m levels because currently there is a limit to OC. Also the DDR3 650m has a higher base core clock which actually makes it faster than the DDR5 edition is some situations (and both can OC the same 135MHz as well)..

 

True, but the Samsung laptop is, in my opinion, a better built machine than the Asus. So I'd be willing to trade a few FPS for a longer battery life and a smaller, lighter, better looking laptop.

If I purely wanted graphics performance, I would probably go with a Sager 9130, or an MSI GE60 with a GTX 660M.

 

Okay, I was just trying to highlight this issue as the thread was mainly about graphics cards. You choose whatever fits your preferences most, GPU preformance is just one aspect . I would choose the Samsung for casual gaming too.

 

For sure, it all comes down to personal needs, wants and preferences.

 

and that is meant to be what?

 

From the benchmarks I've seen, the 640M is, compared to previous X40M cards (relative to X(5|6)0M), a very strong offering.

 

This is not entirely true.
The Max O/C at power state P0 is +135.
However, you can force the GPU to non-boostable power state (P5 in the case of the 650m) , and then clock your core up to however high it will go before your system becomes unstable.
(My 650m GDDR5 maxes out at 1100MHz Core)

 

Is it possible to do that with the samsung NP700Z5C?

 

My 650m DDR3 is plenty powerful for running current games at medium/high at 1366x768 resolution. I have no experience with a 640m DDR5, but I'd imagine performance would be a wash, with a slower core but faster memory.

 

which would be the best if you are not into overclocking?

 

The 650m would probably be faster at 768p, tie at 900p, and the 640m would be faster at 1080p.

 

Sorry, this may be a stupid question, but I've heard of some people being able to flash cards in order to unlock certain clocks and features and such (eg. I heard people flashed 580M's to 675M's), so would it be possible to just flash a 640M DDR5 to a GT 650M DDR5?

 

people have been doing that in the sony s15, though its from a 640m LE with DDR3 to a 640m, so yes its possible, but not guaranteed as per usual

 

My 650M DDR3 is very capable at 768p.

Virtually all console ports can be maxed out.

Only Crysis, Metro and DX11 games cause it any stress.

I don't have a need to overclock yet, which is awesome.

 

what about gt 640 le gddr5 in acer m5? it can be easy overclock to gt 660?

 

On Sony laptops people managed. Up to 1000Mhz

 

but there is ddr3

 

Captain Obvious, is that you? Or you truly asked if you can overclock from DDR3 to GDDR5? I was talking about core clock.

 

I ask if I have gt 640 le with gddr5 can I overclock to 660 performance?

 

Memory has impact on OCing Core clock but I believe you still can or at least close to it... if you flash vBIOS and if laptop will handle those heat.