Light to moderate gaming with Ivy Bridge, 660M or 670M?

I'm thinking about getting a Malibal Lotus P150EM that will mostly be used as my house laptop/day-at-the-in-laws boredom killer. I already have a desktop that can handle my higher-end gaming needs, so the gaming role this needs to fill will mostly be time-sink games like Civ5, Minecraft, Terraria, and other games like that. I envision a lot of time sitting on the couch playing games while my wife knits.

Since the base system uses the HM77 chipset, I plan to use the i7-3610QM to take full advantage of all that Ivy Bridge love.

My choices are the 670M (Fermi, 1.5GB GDDR5, 75W TDP) or the 660M (Kepler, 1GB GDDR5, 50W TDP). I understand that the 670M is clearly the better performer, but I find the lower TDP of the 660M appealing (I'm not as concerned about battery life, but if I can lower the heat this thing generates without sacrificing too much in terms of graphics capability that would be nice.)

Is the 660M a wise choice for someone in my situation, or would I be better off sticking with the 670M which is a better performer with more memory? If I'm playing simpler games that require the GPU, is it possible to reduce some of the power and heat by underclocking the 670M - thus giving me the option to use the GPU at normal or overclocked speeds should I require it?

 

You will be fine with the 660m, and could probably even get by with a 650m. I use my laptop for a similar purpose, and since I don't mind playing at 720p with low/med details, even a 550m works for me. With the 660, you'll probably get 1080p medium.

Simpler games may even be able to run on the HD4000, you might be surprised.

 

Lol a GTX 660m only able to run medium at 1080p? Even my old ATI 5650 could do that! (in Crysis, Metro 2033 etc.)

Nah, you're looking at high settings, easily. Sure, not maxed out by any stretch of the imagination, but definitely high up there. GTX 660m is no slouch!

If you get the Kepler card you benefit from directx 11.1, TXAA & FXAA, Adaptive V-Sync and GPU Boost vs the Fermi card. Also a lot less heat.

 

660M GT over the 670 any day of the week, buying re-labeled cards is like going backwards and people should not support either company who do this.

Oh lets put a bit more chocolate in our chocolate and call it double chocolate! Idiots, we want caramel in our chocolate not more chocolate!!!

As mentioned above, new tech, runs cooler and draw less power while producing betters results, has new features and a newer DX grading and is well new not 2011 with higher clocks. High 1080p for the majority of games and anything less intensive maxed out easily.

 

Thanks for the advice everyone, I'll most likely go with the GTX 660M.

 

Look at the 660m scores, you will find it plays most games at 1080p just fine.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

Most games will run at 1080p\high (some ultra) at more then 40fps.

 

I hope next year we get replacements for the 670 and 675 m cards that are not rebadges, very cheap of nvidia.

 

They are already released as a gtx680m was available in a lot of manufacturers yesterday. gtx 680m is over twice as fast as a 670m.

 

This, i think the 660 will suit you fine, especially if its not your main gaming rig.

 

You should be able to do heavy gaming with those specs. I am able to play BF3, WoW or any other competitive game at 1080p all day long with just a 5870M.