GT 650m SLI vs GTX 660m (for Gaming + Console video capturing)

Which one of these would fair better in terms of mobile longevity. I don't plan on playing such graphically demanding games, but more along the lines of "Starcraft 2: HotS", "League of Legends" and "World of Warcraft". I don't want a Desktop because I always travel with friends to LAN parties around the area and I'm not at home much.

The 650m SLI comes with an Intel Core i5 3230M(2.60GHz).

The GTX 660M comes with an Intel Core i7 3630QM(2.40GHz).

All help is greatly appreciated.

 

GT 650M is basically underclocked GTX 660M. Keep in mind that some 650's come with DDR3, 660's don't. Two cards are of course faster than one, amusing that the SLI code does its job well.

Both machines should handle your games just fine. I'd get the second option, better CPU, enough GPU power, and probably smaller/slimmer.

Warning: There are stories about SC2 crashing with GTX 660M's. Not sure about 650M's but my (uneducated) guess is it would be the same with a 650M.

 

IMHO, 660m with i7 quad CPU. You usually can't overclock as high with SLI as a single card, and there can be headaches with SLI setup. The 660m with GDDR5 you should be able to overclock to 670mx stock performance. Although in either case, they're still both 128-bit GPU's so higher resolutions will drag performance down a bit. Plus the quad core is much more "future proof" for gaming than a dual core.

 

Are you sure about that? The theoretical performance ratio between 670MX and 660M is 1.8:1 at stock clocks.

 

Nah I highly doubt it since 670MX is also Kepler and has more memory bandwidth (192-bit channel) and much higher core count. The 660M at stock is already clocked much higher than the 670MX and based on what I've seen of OC on GTX 650 (a higher-binned GK107 mind you) then 660M isn't gonna go much higher. The 670MX definitely should have more OC headroom because of it's relatively low clocks.

 

Well, yeah the 670mx will overclock better than a 660m, but does that mean a 660m won't be able to reach stock 670mx levels with a heavy overclock?

 

Just go for something with a 675mx. 2.5x more cores and double the memory bus. With an unlocked bios the 675mx is a monster overclocker even at stock voltage. Not even two 660m's in sli can beat it.

Alternatively you can go for a 670mx. The 660m still can't touch that.

Clock for clock the 670mx's core is still 2.5x stronger than the 660m's. You'd need a hell of an overclockon on the 660m to reach it's performance.

 

Check out the performance of the 660m vs 670mx both at stock speeds. The 670mx is only about 10-15% faster FPS on average. 670mx should pull ahead at 1080p since it has higher bandwidth with 192-bit compared with 128-bit. But in genera, the 660m isn't trailing by a whole lot.

The 660m has fewer cores, but clocked 40% faster
The 660m has GDDR5 @ 2000MHz vs 1400MHz of 670mx, about 40% faster

 

The 670mx is deffinitely choked by it's slow ram at stock but if you overclock both the 670mx would be the clear winner. It still has potentially 50% more bandwidth giving quite an edge at 1080p. The ram on it can oc to 1200mhz giving it 115gb/s bandwidth.

 

I wasn't saying the 660m could overclock to 670mx levels (I've never looked it up lol) I just thought that saying "the 670mx has more OC headroom" doesn't prove that the 660m can't reach stock 670mx levels.

 

I am pretty sure some people have OCed the 660M to 1300mhz plus on the　core! Let alone the memory. THey claimed performance surpassed even the 675M/580M. So yeah I think the 670mx is certainly touchable.

 

First of all you guys above me are getting off topic here lol. This is about the 660m and 650m sli. Anyways im guessing your looking at the Lenovo Y500 if your talking about 650m sli? If this is true I would say you need to look into more info about the laptop as a whole in the Lenovo section of NBR, because it actually has quite some problems. Personally I say go with the 650m sli. Its a big boost in performance over a single GTX 660m. Keep in mind!! The 650m sli does disable optimus on your laptop. Which definitely impacts the battery life pretty hard. I know you didnt mention anything about battery life, but I think its worth mentioning.

 

Take the 660M because it comes with an i7 quad core. End of story.

 

The 650m sli is anywhere from 15-35% ahead according to noteboocheck: NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M SLI - NotebookCheck.net Tech

In bf 3 though it's almost 50% faster. It all depends on the drivers and the game.

 

So between a GT 650m SLI and a GTX 660m, with the same CPU ( i7 3630QM ), which one would be a better choice? I'm looking to play games like BF3, Metro Last Night...
Ps: Don't need to consider battery life since I'm gonna use it always plugged on power.

 

My vote would be for 660m.

 

I'm also looking to get a lenovo y500 in the future. I don't know what laptops you're looking at specifically, but for the y500, the sli 650m laptop does not have a optical drive (no dvd-rom) and does not come with optimus capabilities. The y580 has the 660m but does come with optimus and a dvd-rom. Also, I've been looking on lenovo outlet site, and maybe every few days I'll see a y580 (with i7 3630qm + GTX 660m LE) for around $700 (possibly less, saw $650 a few days ago). If I were you (based on the games you play), 660m is the way to go. Your games are relatively CPU intensive and the i7 will help with that.

 

Tried out the y500, never gave me any issues while using it, besides the lower battery life. Revised y500 now y510p has 750m sli and haswell Quadcore cpu.

 

Well, can't comment on the 650m's SLI, but I have been very happy with the 660m. It plays BF3 and Last Light @ 1600x900p (native on my laptop) with great results at stock clocks, and I'm sure as others have mentioned overclocking will bump performance as well. You won't quite be maxing games out of course, but I'm assuming that based on this GPU you are looking for a laptop that's a bit smaller is size/form factor. If size/price isn't a factor of course a faster GPU is better, but for my needs of a travel friendly machine, the 660m has been awesome in my 14" machine. Nothing has been an issue to play thus far at all.

On a related but not up to date not, I did tinker with mid grade GPU SLI's in the past, and as HTWingNut has mentioned, it can often be a bit of frustration as some games simply don't scale or behave as expected, where as one better card will at least be consistent.

 

There are many 14" notebooks coming our way with 760m/765m for $1200-$1300 with quad core i7 Haswell CPU's. MSI, Asus, Clevo, Razer (well this one will be $1800).

 

My Y500 GT 650M SLI overclocked to 1120/2250 was playing BF3 at 1080p High and averaging over 60 FPS in 64-player multiplayer. In GPU-bound games like Metro 2033 I got almost 100% SLI scaling. Just something to keep in mind.

3DMark 11 was around P4900. So a single GTX 660M, even if overclocked, is not even close, being that they are the same GPU.

Oh and I got everything for $959. Heehee.

 

NEVER. Maybe to 670M STOCK but not MX.

 

What's the 3dmark11 on the y500 at stock clocks?

 

670MX is barely faster than 670M 'cause the clock speeds are so low. It does run cool and overclock well though being that it's Kepler.

I don't remember so I'd have to check. I recall around P3700 but I could be a little bit off.

 

Hmmm that begs the question, which 14" laptop is the better value: the y410p at ~$1100 with 750M SLI or the Razer Blade at ~$1800 with 765M.

To anwser the OP however I'd go with the 650M SLI. Since the y400/500 are the only laptops with that setup I'd recommend getting one with an i7 or one of the newer y410p/510p models with Haswell i7 and 750M SLI.

 

765m is still going to be as powerful as the SLI setup, so you're using two video cards to perform the same work as one and between the MSI, Asus, and Clevo will likely cost about the same. There are also ample 15" notebooks out now or coming out with 765m that will also cost the same or even less.

I think the mobile SLI setup is a good idea, great innovation, but considering the cost and heat and power versus performance, it's just not the best choice imho. SLI only makes the most sense with the higher end GPU's because they push the performance beyond what you can get in a single card. If they offered 765m in SLI then that would likely push the performance beyond 680m and would be a little bit more attractive.

 

Just being curious: high-end SLI/CF DTRs are burning 200W(+) for dGPUs anyway. Why not squeeze in a slightly different desktop card derivative? This can be noticeably better for gaming (especially when micro stuttering is an issue) and MUCH better for DCC or compute.

 

Starcraft 2 does benefit getting a beefier CPU so i would go with the i7 3630QM + 660m setup or better at the same price point, and as a bonus with Optimus setups nowadays you can utilize QuickSync to livestream games with Open Broadcaster Software or XSplit. (You can record locally as well.)

 

My GT 650M SLI overclocked definitely outperforms the GTX 765M if Notebookcheck.net is to be believed. I fact, it outperforms GTX 675MX and the only single GPU's that can beat it are GTX 770M and above or equivalent.

Like I said, SLI scaling is not something I have to worry about at all with my setup. Plus it works in pretty much everything. I've got games from 1998 that work in SLI. If you're implying that only high-end SLI setups scale well that's nonsense. I'm getting up to 150% increase in performance going from a stock single 650M to 650M SLI overclocked. It's faster than the stock Radeon 6950 in my desktop. All for less than $1000 too which is far below what machines with the aforementioned 700M GPU's cost.

 

I am not saying that high end SLI setups scale well, just that you can buy a single card equal to or faster than a mid grade SLI card for same cost or less and also use less power and generate less heat and noise.

Out of curiosity what is your 3DMark11 at stock clocks and overclocked (and what clocks)? The fastest I have seen is close to 5000, but typically about 3500 for stock and 4500-4800 overclocked. The 765m stock clocks will run about 4200, and likely overclock to 5000.

 

P3758 at stock 790/2000: NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3630QM Processor,LENOVO INVALID score: P3758 3DMarks

P4903 at overclocked 1120/2250: NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3630QM Processor,LENOVO INVALID score: P4903 3DMarks

Not a bad result in my opinion and for the $959 I paid for everything I think it's a steal. I was originally on a $850 budget but I decided to extend it because SLI seemed too good to pass up. Boy am I glad I bought the laptop when I did because Lenovo just stopped selling the second GPU and a lot of people are pissed. Even now with the release of Haswell and GeForce 700M you cannot buy a single card system at the same price point (<$1000) with this performance. What you said about the heat and power is true but I can live with it. It's outperforming the GTX 675MX which itself is an almost 100W TDP chip although my GPU is probably using around the same once overclocked. It's not as if most laptop GPU's are upgradeable unless you get a barebones system so I decided to get the fastest system within my budget, SLI or otherwise.

As far as the GTX 765M is concerned it looks to perform similarly to GT 650M SLI as far as raw shader performance is concerned due to GK106 core with same 768 shaders and similar clock. However, it's got half the memory bandwidth due to the gimped backend. 4 GHz effective GDDR5 on a 128-bit bus is what a single GT 650M has and I expect the 765M to run into memory bandwidth issues at high resolutions and AA. Notebookcheck shows the GTX 765M with 4100 graphics score in 3DMark 11 Performance preset while 650M SLI gets about 3600. But the 765M's lack of memory bandwidth makes little difference due to the low settings and 720p. The Performance preset is all about core speed. I would not be surprised if 765M cannot keep up with 650M SLI in something like Unigine Heaven maxed out 1080p with 8X MSAA, so I fully expect the 650M SLI to keep up if not pull ahead in real games especially if anti-aliasing is applied.

On paper GTX 765M actually looks less capable than 670MX, to say nothing of 675MX. 670MX is using the 960-core GK106 and 192-bit bus from the desktop GTX 660 but what kills it is the extremely low clock speeds. It seems to me that if you can overclock the 670MX by a lot it's got the potential to be a beast.

There's another Y500 owner on here who's getting P5200+. But he overvolted his GT 650M SLI and is running something nuts like 1250/2600, not to mention he got like a golden sample GPU haha. I'm too scared of heat and longevity issues to do that.

 

I found some laptop from Segar/Clevo with a GTX 765m. Is it good?

 

Nice scores. I got about 3200 with a single 650m, but 3DMark11 does not necessarily equal actual gaming performance.

In any case I don't doubt the 650m SLI or 750m SLI for that matter isn't a nice setup. Just that as I stated, single chip can be purchased with similar performance but at less power, heat, and size, and more battery life than an SLI setup. Lenovo did well to price the Y400 and Y500 as they did and hopefully same for the 750m setups.

SLI does have its advantages at higher resolutions no doubt, and am a bit disappointed that the 765m is "only" 128-bit, but it should suffice nicely for 720p or 900p gaming. 1080p will be questionable depending on the game, but the bandwidth does limit the performance a bit at higher resolutions and/or higher AA. Regarding the 8xAA, personally, I think anything above 2x at native is overkill, usually none is needed at native LCD res, and anything over 4x is overkill unless you're running 1024x576 on a 1080p screen.

Which laptop is it?

 

Sager NP7352

 

750m SLI results

NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3630QM Processor,LENOVO INVALID score: P5294 3DMarks

NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3630QM Processor,LENOVO INVALID score: P3561 3DMarks