Graphic Cards available for 15 inch custom gaming laptop

Current graphic cards available at the moment for 15 inch laptop are the following even if most of you already know them

For Nvidia:
GTX 560m
GTX 570m
GTX 580m

For AMD/ATI:
6970m
6990m

Maybe im missing some, but i find they are the most high-end cards at the moment. Since i want to get a gaming laptop in the coming weeks, here "my opinion". If i first look at Nvidia, we have the 560m and 580m available options on clevo laptop. Yes there is the 570m, but its available on MSI laptop and some barebone one using the same chassis model. The price between 560m and 580m is HUGE! but the performance is must better. Since i dont want to go over my budget with the 580m, i say to lets look at what AMD as to offer. My next action was to look the difference between nvidia and AMD. People seems to say Nvidia as more software support and up-to-date drivers them AMD graphic card. Now i think and speculate, "well if i go with AMD anyway and take the risk of having less support and drivers". 6990m and 6970m is available for my budget. Next move was to watch if there any problems with both of these cards. Them i found that 6990m is suppose to have heat issues. Which left me with the choice to get 6970m and taking the risk of getting less drivers/software.

If you have opinions about one of these graphic cards please post it here.
What is your experience with the card? Do you have drivers issue? Do you have heat problem? What solution you took to revolve a heat problem? etc...etc..

Ill make up my mind with the experience you had with those graphic cards.

 

Let's put it like this:
If you will use the laptop purely for gaming, then I would recommend the AMD cards (6970m or 6990m - I don't think there are any overheating issues with those cards - there were some stories regarding certain laptop manufacturers, but not necessarily the gpu's themselves) because they are cheaper.

If you will be using the laptop in software that can use the gpu for various calculations (CUDA technology) to accelerate the process, then go with Nvidia.
The difference between 560M and 580M is huge price-wise... performance-wise though, 580M would be about 50% faster if I'm not mistaken.
The 570M would be the decent 'middle ground' so if you can, go with that... but depending on which games you decide to play, even the 560M will probably be more than enough.

As for drivers... actually, AMD got a lot better over the recent years in that department and they aren't any worse than Nvidia from what I was able to tell.

Either way... go with Nvidia if you have use of CUDA tech... if not, then AMD most definitely as it's a much better 'bang for buck'.

 

Can you give me some example of programs using the CUDA technology?

Beside gaming i like to watch movies on netflix. A few years ago i used alot of music creation program but im a bit outdated about those programs. Its primary for gaming with my brother, ill bring it when i travel to my hometown every weekend.

 

if you want to play BF3 on reasonable settings, then go with 580m, it is the best card for BF3

 

I think my best move would be to get a 560m with the best deal i can have.

 

560m is about the price of 6970m, and 6970m has at least %30 over 560m, at least get 6970m (it is STILL the best GPU for Metro 2033)

 

Yeah i should. Its the lact of support and drivers thats scaring me from getting this card and the fact i need to pay 200$-300$ USD + (CAD change rate) more for the P150HM (instead of the P151HM1) + the 6970 graphic card. So to upgrade for a 6970m i end up paying more them the difference between these 2 cards instead.

 

the problem with 560m is that it will be outdated very quickly, if you won't play demanding games then don't worry, if you will, just buy the better GPU

 

I mostly play MMO and RPG games on a PC. Sometimes ill play shooter games. I was thinking of getting a gaming laptop with a 560m in it at the best price and check what 2012 as to offer. If i wanna upgrade, i think ill buy a new machine. Ill end up paying the same price at the end.

 

The 560M can play anything now, but a game as demanding for its time as BF3 in a couple years, it will crush the puny 560M

 

What of the games that are PhysX dependent? Batman AC, Metro 2033, and Metro Last Light are a few that come to mind...I'm an AMD fan myself and run their GPU in my PC. I've played Metro on both my laptop (Nvidia) and PC and must say I notice a difference in effects aesthetics (albeit, small).

I'm torn between choosing the 560/580 in my next lappy or going with the AMD counterpart.

 

Video editing programs that support GPU acceleration...
3d Studio Max (shifts rendering over to the GPU to accelerate it by about 20x), etc.

As for drivers...
As I already stated, AMD got a lot better with their drivers, so I wouldn't worry about it.

6970m in that case would be better for you because it's faster than 560M and as a result more 'future proof'.

Since you stated that you play mostly MMORPG's and such, a 6970M would be more than adequate (along with 560M).

Most games see little to 0 visual improvement when pushed past 'high' settings anyway because the differences are way too subtle to notice (you end up losing FPS on minute aspects you won't even see if using 'ultra').

 

6970 is the better way to go. The 560 is decent, however it is well worth finding the way to save the extra money to get the 6970. As he said previously that GPU would be more 'future-proof'. If you want to be able to play games that are released in the future, the 6970 is arguably the best option. It's a much better idea than buying an entire new system later on.

 

deks is right. its not that nvidia is a better all around card its just they spend more in terms of partnerships and exclusives with software companies, the most notable of which is adobe . also, they are much more aggressive in the non gaming side of their business than amd is.

adobe premiere pro, cyberlink power director (v editing); arcsoft total media theatre, cyberlink powerdvd are some programs that leverage cuda tech. cyberlink does include support for amd slipstream or whatever it is called, but it is not as good as cuda support which it has been offering for a number of years.
adobe is cuda only in premiere pro. they will never support slipstream owing to their partnership with nvidia. i also wouldnt be surprised if they moved their open gl accelerated programs like after effects and photoshop to cuda acceleration instead. also most enterprise level third party media encoders for adobe use cuda exclusively.
ive seen some audio programs use cuda, but since i dont use them nothing come to mind atm.

 

Everyone talks about 'future proofing' how its bs/etc. a 8800m gtx will still play ANY game out there, the 'mid range' 8600m will struggle to play any game from the past few years.... Both came out in 2008...

 

I own an AMD HD5570 on my desktop at the moment. With all the steam games i tried soo far, i didn't get any blue screen or unsupported problems for now. If i go for the 6790m i might try to get the 6990m instead since i got interest on the P150HM. Im pretty sure the 100$ save still work.

Im not really into those kind of programs. As for adobe, well i use it only to read PDF.

 

I have used the 6970m, 6990m, and the 580m. The 580 and 6990 are fairly close in performance with the 580 being faster. The ATI driver support is fine in my opinion. In fact ATI releases new drivers almost 2x as frequently it seems to me. The only problem with the 6970/90s is that they seem less reliable. I have read about many more dead ATI than nvidia cards. If you have a good warranty it won't be an issue but if you cant live without a laptop for a few weeks if the GPU breaks then it may not be worth the risk. It is also worth noting I have seen a strong correlation between people who overclock and under or overvolt and dead GPUs. If reliability is important, plan on running at stock clock speeds (ie don't plan on getting a 560m and OC hoping for better performance at a lower price).

As for cuda, if you don't already know what it is, then you almost certianly don't need it. Don't let it be a factor in your decision making.

I would take a 6970 over a 560 any day as other have stated.
My 2 cents. Good luck.

 

Then AMD would be your best bet as you will get equivalent performance in games like Nvidia cards at a lower price. The only reason I'd go with Nvidia myself for example is because I have use of CUDA tech for my 3dsMax.

And yes, I agree you should probably go with 6990M instead of 6970M if you can. It's essentially on par with 580M and costs a few hundred $ less.

whitrzac
Regarding 'future proofing'... well, it's true that high end mobile gpu's from late 2008 are still more than adequate for contemporary games... but the OP asked about contemporary gpu's.
Mid-range gpu's from late 2008 such as 9600M GT can still play numerous games today at 1280x800 at reduced settings... although, those gpu's can be OC-ed to increase FPS at such resolutions, so I wouldn't worry about it.
It depends on the types of games people play.

 

I plan on getting the option to get a better cpu/gpu paste. Soo ill take less risk. Beside these days im a casual gamer until Diablo 3 come out hehehe. My wallet can't afford the 6990m tough, i wanna be a bit more reasonnable. Also it eat alot more power them the 6970m, i want to have more battery life as its not a desktop replacement.

 

meh... performance wise there's not that much difference between 6970m and 6990m... so you'll be fine either way.

 

15-20% improvement in framerate between 6970m and 6990m, I wouldn't say that's not significant.

 

I always thought it was less than that, in the 5 to 15 % range

Sent from my samsung galaxy s2 using tapatalk

 

By the way, i thank all of you for giving opinions. I settled my choice. Time to get headache with gamut screen quality and wireless cards x_x

 

I've seen both of the 95% gamut screens available with the Sager/Clevo laptops. I personally have the glossy one (aka the B+RGLED on the Dell XPS 15) and have seen the matte version on a Lenovo Thinkpad. They both look fantastic and I highly recommend either.

 

The 6990 has 16% more processors, and from my experience it was noticeably faster. Still the 6970 offers fine performance, way better than the 560m. Also re-pasting won't help with overclocking, none of the dead GPUs I've seen ran under high heat conditions (as far as laptops go), and they were all repasted also (it stands to reason if you OC you probably repaste also). Just my experience with Alienware. Best to check the Sager forum for more info.

 

Depends on how you view 'significant'... and in my interpretation, it's not.
If it was 40% or even 50%, then yes, but you can easily OC the 6970m to cover 20%...
However, it's unnecessary, because both gpu's are already more than powerful enough.

 

if nobody has said this yet wait until the new series is released then you will find a better deal or but new hardware

 

But if you're OCing, then you could OC the 6990m as well...

not taking one side or the other, just noting that it doesn't make sense to compare the two parts that way. If one is 20% faster than the other, then the difference is 20%. It doesn't matter if you could OC it, if you could OC the other.

 

Im not planning on OC as i never OCed any of my system in the past.

 

kaWiCH, you can build a really nice system on many enthusiast custom laptop websites right now with a 6990m for around 1500 depending on your other options. It's a great card that will perform well into the future as far as gaming and if anything, lets hope the new 7xxx series from AMD has the same MXM 3.0b format current cards do on the current generation high end laptops.

I'm thinking as far as what it seems though, they might go with a new revision to bump along with the new platform. Just my 2 cents,

 

Iv seen many of these site custom laptop website and the best i came with were Xoticpc and Malibal. A few months ago i didn't even know of NBR forum. I found the forum by doing some research in google which always came to NBR for my answer, soo i decided to came in. However, the first time i heard the name clevo was someone in a blog saying ibuypower and cyberpower and them i realized why the hell they have the same casing but with not the same brand. I have a bit overextended on the subjet.

The fact is as a French Canadian costumer, i tried to find a good place to get a clevo laptop but they were all much more higher them Malibal or Xoticpc. I tried Reflexnotebook, Eurocom, Powernotebook, etc... I was sold on Malibal when they told me they got a repair department in Canada soo less shipping fee for me and less repair time.

Also i went with the 6790m instead of 6990m to get a better wireless card as my wireless rooter as 300mbps bandwith. At high res settings, there like 4-8 framerate difference depending on the game. Soo its not much of a problem.