HD6970m vs 485m, both with i7 2920xm

New review of the 485m at Tom's

Looks like Nvidia's 485m is around 4.16% faster on average than a mobility HD6970 card. Now that speaks quite good for the HD6970m.


What a fine pair of GPUs eh? Man I hope I can afford a machine with an HD6970m soon. Sandy Bridge ain't looking bad either.

 

Lol, I read that as 41% and I was like but my next laptop will most definitely have a 6970 or two in it as well. Glad to see such nice GPU's.

 

How does the TDPs of the two GPUs compare?

 

I wonder if the guys at MXM-Upgrade can mod the 6970M into a FirePro M8900... If so, I am totally stuffing one of those in the Elitebook when the money is flowing!

I know the 6970M is 100W TDP.

 

Too bad there is a lot of people that bought the 485M already. They are always 1 month late. I guess its a good thing for the people that waited in line for these cards because price : performance will defenitely will go to AMD on this one.

 

Not sure about TDP, as far as power consumption goes, it seems the 485m consumes less power at idle, but more power at load.

Dunno about thermals, sorry.

 

Well, it is still a slightly faster GPU even if more expensive. At least they didn't buy a 480m

I am really looking forward for overclocked results from both cards. Tho I am going for AMD's card again this gen

 

Go to the X7200 Owner's Lounge in the Sager/Clevo section if you want to see the results from both cards. There is one guy: Tirenz, that has a 6970M Xfire setup. I'm not sure if started overclocking the cards.

 

I figured hardly any of those who opted for the GTX 485M actually have it yet, due to the Sandybridge recall. One of the positives of the recall is that it may give some of us enough time to change their GPU from the Nvidia to the ATI. If ATI get a move on this is exactly what I will do.

 

Thanks. Power consumption is what I was interested in. I know that TDP is not exactly the same as power consumption, but it's nearly the same. I guess I should have read the linked article.

Looking at the charts, it shows that the 485 consumes less power at idle than the 470 does??? I wonder how that is. However, it does consume way more at load. It also shows that the performance per watt is nearly identical between the 485 and the 6970. I guess it really comes down to the price difference.

 

nice! This is good news as I have been rooting for the blackcomb for some time.

 

Something funky with those GTX 470M load numbers... no way is it using just 6W more than full CPU load.


Good to finally see an apples to apples comparison from a machine not supplied by Eurocom.

 

Awesome results! BlackComb is a very powerful card indeed. 4.5% is a negligible difference that can change with better drivers/vBios/etc, IMHO.

 

Yeah, at its price, I don't know why anyone would pick the 485M over the 6970M.

P.S. inb4 thread closed.

 

Probably going Alienware. I am not exactly fond of Sagers, but I guess price will determine the winner.

I know MSI nor Asus will be getting HD6970. I still want that GPU though, seems like Sandy bridge+HD6970 is quite a nice upgrade from my current machine.

 

Interesting results. I always wondered how they compared

 

I contacted MXM-upgrade for more information..

to check if these aren't engineering samples and if they had cash discounts.

I'll let you guys know.

 

It would be interesting to know if their MXM card could fit my GX660R. That way I would buy a 920xm and use throttlestop to have a powerful quad core to help push the performance.

 

It was available for the M17X R3 shortly before the recall. Unless your talking about the R2.

 

I thought they were offering the 6870M? I also hope that the people at MXM-Upgrades could mod-tune one of these suckers into a FirePro. I so would love to run one of these in the venerable 8740w.

 

They were, it was supposed to be 6870M, 460M, and the 6970M. apparently AMD had some issues with there cards or Dell had shortage of stock and they weren't able to sell the 6970M at launch.

It was only available on the euro websites, it didn't make it on the US site before the recall. The price of the 6970M was $150-$200 more than the 460M.

 

Huh, good to know then!

 

Excellent comparison thank you sir. Looks like nvidia will need to lower their margins on this one to compete with ati

 

The 6970 is by far the better bang for the buck.

If only the 6970 was 3d compatible

 

it's just need a retailer to package a laptop with it and 3d

 

Like granyte said, just to elaborate a bit more, the HD6970m can use stereoscopic 3D, but it doesn't use a propietary technology like Nvidia. You just need to aquire a sterescopic 3D software with glasses (and compatible panel/LCD) to use it.

Since this approach is "free" in the sense it doesn't require propietary software to use, Nvidia also provided the support with their own "free" non propietary form (which I forgot the name lol) besides the regular Nvidia 3D Vision.

 

It's probably due to CPU throttling in the 485M system.

 

No evidence really needed. Powermizer is known to cause CPU throttling issues. Doesn't look that bad in the charts however. PowerPlay (ATi) can do the same thing too.

 

What exactly is rubbish about my suggestion when it has been shown that powermizer and powerplay can throttle down the cpu?

At least do some research or google it...

 

Update:

It's been confirmed today (18/02/2011) that all the 6970M cards currently available for tests and early reviews, are in fact engineering samples!
There's still no solid info on when exactly the finalized units are supposed to appear (perhaps right after CeBit).
So, I'd encourage you all to take the preliminary tests with a huge grain of salt.
As soon as we have some news - you'll know right away.
Thank You

 

with the 6970m and 2920xm how much wattage does it consume at peak loads and what kind of psu will be shipped with said products?

 

Well, if you bother to read the article, you would find this

2920XM+HD6970 will probably come with 180w PSUs, altho a 150w solution is possible. The later being not a good idea if you plan on overclocking.

 

Strange that power consumption for the machine with gtx 485m is much higher but battery life is better with the 485m?

My NP8170 with GTX 485m comes with 19v x 11.57A PSU ~ 220VA

 

Ah well i guess i'm not going to get to change to the 6970 in time than am I... I should be one of the first in line when sandy bridge ships again from clevo...

 

Also note that the CPU load is 115W with the 6970 but 104W with 485m? That doesn't make sense. CPU load should be near equivalent if it's in the same machine.

 

I contacted MXM-upgrade, and they told me it was an engineering sample.

Will have to pass on those engineering samples..

 

Anyone else notice Tomshardware is biased toward AMD?

Nvidia FTW!!!!!!!!

 

Warning sarcasm does not translate well on the internet.

 

Basically they took the system and loaded the CPU to the max but left the GPU idle.

The difference in power was that of the idling GPUs.

 

it's all in the execution..