I can upgrade to 7970m, Should I?

I just called sager and they said I could upgrade to the 7970m in my np8150 it will only cost roughly 500 with shipping taxes ect.

what reasons should I be thinking when upgrading from a 6990m to a 7970m are their any great games i can play with 7970m that I cant with my 6990m?

should I wait one more generation?

 

I upgraded a 6970M into 7970M in my laptop and I think it was a great upgrade. The card is nearly twice as fast, yet runs a lot cooler.

 

You should wait. The power difference does not mean that there are games you can no longer play with 6990m. The difference will be that whatever you play at with 6990m you can play with more settings with 7970m.

I went from Hd5870m and so far I am able to play the same games I used to play, except maxed out now. They weren't unplayable, but maybe I had to drop resolution or a setting or two before.

A similar thing will happen with you, except less dramatic. I would advise to wait if you want a massive upgrade. If you have disposable income and you don't care/mind paying that much, yeah upgrade.

It's a better card in all fronts, specially DX11. It's a good upgrade, but it won't be earth shattering in the sense of you can now play things you were unable to before.

I took too much time and words to convey the same point over and over. Sigh.

 

6990M is a fast GPU and is able to play just about everything, except the very latest with maximum details. You can with lower settings at 1080p though and that is by no means bad graphics.

It all depends on you: Do you have to play everything maxxed? Do you consider the 6990M as too hot?

 

I just upgraded my P150HM from 6990 to 7970 (two days ago), and it almost doubled the performance and got 10 degrees celsius cooler!

 

It's really hard to say, honestly. I upgraded from a 6970M to the 7970M and am not looking back. The 6970M wasn't a bad card on any front, but with the 7970M there are no sacrifices when it comes to what settings I enable to get buttery-smooth frame rates.

Would I spend $450 again to upgrade to the 7970M? Absolutely. That said, with the next generation right around the corner, if I were in that position again I'd probably wait to see what the 8000 and 700 series have to offer, and whether or not those cards are compatible with our machines.

 

It all depends on the game you play, not all games are going to get a 200% frame rate increase. And what game/settings with 6990 to 7970 are you getting those double frame rates? It is not directly proportional, double the frames.

 

After I upgraded from a GTX 485M to a GTX 680M (which isn't much different to a 7970M), my laptop no longer feels like much of a compromise in performance compared to a desktop. The upgrade is worth it and you will definitely notice the difference.

There is no guarantees that the next generation will work or how long it will take to fix if it doesn't and you can always sell your current GPU.

 

@Tsunade_Hime, I should probably mention that in 3Dmark11 went from 3500 to 5900, in Heaven went from 30 to 55, 3DVantage 14000 to 23000, not really double, but a worthy 6 month upgrade in my book. And then the temp going down that much. But 3Dmark06 only gained 5000 points. It's still a lot of upgrade. A few years back I bought a new notebook for only 1000 points increase...

 

what do I plan on doing?

Well I bought a 1200 dollar gaming tv for 3d movies and gaming.I can play all games in 3d but have to lower the settings to medium or high. If I were to buy a 7970 maybe I would still be able to run max settings in 3d and that would be worth it to me. Im content with the 6990m but double the performance sounds inticing I bought a 8150 over a mx18 and now I can get the same performance back then 6months ago for only 450. im using my laptop like a desktop and I would hate to buy a 7970m if a better card gets released 6months later i was thinking more of getting the power and keeping it for 2 years then upgrading. however i was not expecting the 7970m to be so powerful.

do you guys think their is a better card like the 7990m coming out soon or even the 8790m coming out in the next 6-8 months? becuase i dont mind medium settings for 3d and can wait for an even bigger jump. or what about selling my 6990m, is it hard to sell a 6990m? and how much could i sell it for...really need your help guys as im heavily medicated on anti anxiety meds and need some more brain cells.

 

Yeah I figured you were quoting synthetic benchmarks, like I said actual gaming benchmarks will be nowhere near that unless it is optimized for that card.

 

7970M will give you around 50% better performance in games at Ultra, far from double the performance

 

More people think I should wait now. Do you think the8970m will be compatible

 

If 7970M is, then yes. 8970M is still the same architecture as 7970M, and they will probably share the same power requirement but performance between those two will be different because AMD have improved the architecture and the silicon.

There won`t be any MXM revisions that will allow higher power draw than 100W anyways for some time so you are good to go I think.

There is maybe one thing that may block this option though: If Sager/Clevo doesn`t give you BIOS support for the card. Not shure if this could happen

 

Do you buy notebooks just to run benchmarks? The numbers you're citing aren't really all that meaningful when it comes to real use.

 

Because of that, I don't think the 8970m will be a huge jump from the 7970m. Unless they make the 8970m closer in spec to the desktop 8970.

 

Ideally, wait another generation.