Geforce GTX 280M V.S. Dual Geforce Cards

I have been looking into gaming laptops as I am traveling to China as an exchange student for a year and carrying around a Desktop just isn't worth it(Before one of you tell me to invest in a desktop). I noticed the 280M is going to come out soon at Sager and from the Benchmarks ive read its one of the best. But theres one thing that confuses me and thats the "Dual" card sets. I see laptops like Dell's XPS with Dual Geforce 9800GTs , would these be faster than the single 280M? Infact I noticed alot of Sager's laptops with only single cards instead of dual. Maybe theres something I dont get, can anyone on here give me some enlightenment?

 

more heat problems with dual cards and the 2 cards dont equate to 2x speed usually more like 1.3 to 1.5x

 

It depends, with some games you can get up to about 1.8 times increase but on others there will be no diffderence (in some cases using SLI will actually decrease your framerate)

 

I would recommend getting a laptop with a single powerful card rather than 2 lesser ones (like GTX 280M vs dual 9800M GTS) but if you're looking for the best performance then dual 9800M GTX is a good option. You might also want to wait for laptops to come out with the GDDR5-equipped HD 4870.

 

If you plan to travel with it, I can assure you M1730 will not be suitable; with the power brick in a backpack, it will weigh about 6 kg. In the summer, you sometimes get 40 degrees C in the city there, which isn't gonna to help with the heat. I'll probably have to spend this summer in Beijing, and I'm certainly not looking forward to lugging around the beast of a laptop in sweaty T-shirt.

In actuality, 280m GTX isn't that powerful, its just another rebranded 9800m with more shaders at higher clock. 280m are more powerful than a single 9800m GT, and far more so a 9800m GTS granted; but it's gonna to be considerably weaker than 9800m GT SLi, in real games that has decent multiGPU scaling. Plus CPU is gonna to be the bottleneck mostly, cos either solution is already near overkill for games at decent solution.


What are your choices of laptop?

 

If I suggest I would say take 2 cards as it will have two different GPUs rather than 1 gpu. So while gaming they work parallely so hence more power. If SLi was that bad then why would people pay 1k for it also why Nvidia would introduce it?

 

I think this is relative the size of the person carrying it, and it's a risk reward decision too. My rig weighs way more than that, and I have no problems getting it to and from work every day on foot.

It's worth extra weight to have a decent setup, and as a student, you're only going to really be two places most of the time when you use it.

I would say, wait for the something with a 9800m when the sager dealers start clearing out stock. Unless money isn't a huge issue, then I'd say go for the D900F.

 

Ya you can wait for 98m

 

https://secure.pctorque.com/system-configuration.aspx?SystemsID=49
The Sager 5797 was looking good to me, I was thinking about the 2.9GHz duo processor...(the 3.06 Ghz is like 350 dollars more, doesnt seem worth the 2 ghz.) However this model doesnt offer the dual sti but it has 280M GTX as an option or the single 9800M GTX. But Ill check out some of the other Sagers too :X.

 

Would be great if OP mentioned types of game he'll play.

 

no the 280m is not better then sli 9800m gt. most of the laptops you see with one card are 15 inchs or smaller and they usually just do not have the room for the other card.

 

so the 280M GTX 1 gig would not be better than the dual 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GT?

 

true. 10 char.

 

The reason it's so much more is because it's overclockable. Ofcourse... if you do your research before buying any CPU can be overclockable.

 

A quick glance at the 9800M spec sheet will tell you that. I mean no offense, but I do believe you should do some more research.

 

however take note that some games do not support sli or CrossfireX, and most that due support sli and CrossfireX, the performance increase is about 30%. Basicly in desktop terms:

GTX 280m = 9800 GTX (with a smaller chip)
Dual 9800m GT SLi = Dual 8800 GS SLi = Dual 9600 GTO SLi

I would like to see which card does better in Crysis.

 

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html
This website throws me off, it rates the GTX 280M at 4 and the GTX SLI 9800M as 3...just one position over it. I suppose what im really interested in is if its really this minor of a difference if it is, im fine with the one card(280m) as long as it doesn't mean being able to play 'high' in a game and having to lower it to medium.

 

I always prefer a single-card solution when possible, especially in a laptop.

A 9800M GT sli setup will be faster than a single GTX280M most of the time (every now and then SLI won't work well in some games), but the difference wont be huge, the 280M offers a much better performance/price ratio, less power, less heat, less size, etc

 

With a 280, or 9800gt or comparable you should be able to play pretty much every game on high with a good fps. Crysis is different xD. Also depending on your rez will change this situation too. But still, any of these cards will let you play a recent game on high with a good fps.

 

I understand the SLI 9800M GTX will be faster than a single 280M GTX, but will the difference be minor? And yes , I've read the specs but it means little to me, I don't have a huge knowledge of graphics cards.

 

no one can really tell, the 280m is not out yet, and only benchmarked by one of the most unreliable sources(edit: two actually, notebookcheck and nvidia themselves). i would guess that the 9800m gt sli will beat it by at least 20% and 9800m gtx sli will beat it by at least 30%.
also since no one mentioned this, i would like to point out that sager/clevo have no support in mainland china, you have to ship your laptop to where ever you got it from, in case something happens(it's unlikely though, clevo laptops are very tough and reliable i heard). that's plus one for dell.
you also have to consider weight and battery life, the clevo would probably win here.

 

for some odd reason I get the feeling the GTX 280m will be faster than the 9800 GT SLi in Crysis.

But yea, the 9800 GT SLi should be a little faster (my guess is 5-15%) than the GTX 280m on SLi supporting games.

 

Well then ill get the Sager 5797 Notebook then with the 280M if the difference is that minimal, it seems like a better notebook and better deal than the model with dual GTX. Lighter, slicker looking and cheaper. I was thinking about the XPS though, I had a dell inspirion before and I got such good support from them. (Their basic warranty was great, they would replace any better with no questions asked...it was pretty much an accidental warranty too). but ive heard so many good things about the qualty of sager. Anyone know about Sager's support?

 

With all this uncertainty about the GTX 280M, which is by most accounts going to be underwhelming, I'd seriously consider buying in to one of the upcoming Radeon 4800 Mobility cards. These are supposed to be versions of the desktop 4800 cards rather than rebranded from the previous generation (like nVidia's GTX 280M, which is more like a rebranded and tweaked card from TWO generations ago). By the few accounts I have seen, the mobility 4800s kick some - search for some reviews and benchmarks.

One laptop to start with could be the Asus W90VP, which has the ATi 4870 Mobility. You will find a HUGE thread with discussion of that in the Asus forum/Owner's lounge, and it sounds like that is an absolute kick machine. That is, it will be as soon as the early bugs have been worked out. Pretty sure they'd support your machine in China as well.

 

i would wait for some hd4800 series laptops as well. asus w90vp might not be a good choice though, it's got gddr3 instead of gddr5, that's 50% bandwidth chopped off. the op seems to be set on getting one of the two laptops he mentioned.

 

I'm wondering what kind of difference to expect in NV's Badaboom... would 9800m GT Sli trump a single GPU?

 

I look into the Asus. I actually havent done too much research into those.
Edit:Whats the difference between the GTRs?

 

what's a gtr?

 

GTRs? what do you mean?

 

Just get SLI rather 280m single GPU.

 

sorry, meant gddr

 

Have you looked at the new NP8662, a 15-incher GTX260 aka 9800M GT?

 

it's more like a 9800m gtx

 

yea, the GTX 260m is an overclocked 9800m GTX

 

yea, the Asus W90vp may have dual Mobility 4870s, however they are in GDDR3 (plus it's HUGE and weighs 13LBS.). Essentially the Mobility 4870 is exactly the same as a 4850 with + 50MHz. I would suggest getting the GTX 280m (in games like Crysis, it should be faster than the Mobility 4870) or wait for ATI's Mobility 4870 "GDDR5" version (substantially faster than GDDR3 version).

 

I wonder how the 4860M gddr5 will rank in these cards.

 

I guess 1st if its in crossfire.

 

according to ATI/AMD the Mobility 4860 GDDR5 is about 10% faster than Mobility 4850 GDDR3. It's limited by its lower stream processors and 128-bus. I can't wait for the Mobility 4870 GDDR5, it should still have its 256 bus and 800 stream processors.

 

Are you saying 800 stream processors and thats also in mobile?
Even Geforce GTX 295 (Desktop) have less than half of 800 stream processors.

 

Ati specs are diffrent then nVidia specs. So it's not the same as having a nVidia card with 800stream processors.

LOL

 

yea. ATI's 4800 series (excluding the Mobility 4860 GDDR5) all have 800 stream processors. But you can not compare this to Nvidia's GPU's since they both run on totally different architecture. It's like comparing 800 BB guns to 128 Uzies (at least that's what Nvidia said lol)

 

They do count them differently. I could be wrong but IIRC, Nvidia's shaders can do 3 operations while ATI's can do 5 operations (basically how complex the shaders are). Nvidia counts there shaders individually while ATI multiplies their shader number by 5 (for best case scenario). So GTX 280M = 128 shaders, 4850/70 = 800/5 = 160 shaders. The reason that Nvidia's shaders usually seem to perform slightly better is because ATI's shaders are often underutilized.

EDIT: 800 BB guns are worse than 128 Uzies, they put out your eye causing more pain (than a direct death = fear) and are less likely to get you arrested.

 

hd4860 has 640 shaders, it's got the r740 core.
it's still faster than hd4850 because it's clocked 150mhz higher.

i'd take 800 bb guns over 128 uzies any day, but that's just me

 

yeah i'd say the 280m is better off than 2 cards. sli drivers are tricky, as is sli itself, with 16x and 8x slots, etc etc.. and the heat that goes along with it.

 

this is just wrong. sli drivers are great for dual gpu applications, and they're pretty good at tri and quad gpu applications as well. sli itself is less tricky than it's ever been. the slot question isn't something you have to worry about in these sli laptops. the heat is a concern though.

 

i didnt say its better, just on average it will provide similar performance of lesser cards. we are not talking about 280m gtx vs 280m gtx in sli. the sli will no doubt come out on top, im referring to a 280m gtx to, say a 9800m gt in sli.

 

no we have pretty much agreed that 9800m gt sli will beat 280m gtx most of the time.

edit: sorry, it's GTX 280m. nvidia are now using previous suffixes are prefixes.