Longevity of the GTX280m

Hey guys,

So I'm buying a new laptop (next week!), and in it is the GTX280m. Now I know that this card is kind of a rebadge of the 9800m, but I was hoping that with this card I would have the ability to pick up any game for the next two years and know 100% that I can play it…What do you guys think? How long will the GTX280M be able to play any game that is thrown at it? (It’s in the W860CU with the 820QM i7 so I know my CPU will be fine…)

 

You'll be able to play any game for years from now, at the same visual quality as what it is capable of today. Now, today that might mean all the settings are on high...three years from now it might mean the visual quality slider is set to low. But the quality of the graphics will be the same to you.

 

Well, two years is a long time, but it's one of the best options out right now, so you'd be hard pressed to do much better unless you go with SLI/CF route. Who knows if SLI/CF will even take off, or if it's more of a fad that will go away (along with game support for it). Unless you can find an i7 with a 4870 (I haven't seen one myself) you're getting the best you can at the moment.

 

A GTX 280m is basically a mobile version of a desktop 9800 GTX with the same amount of Stream Processors, but with lower clock speeds. I'd say you could play any game regardless of video settings for the next 3 years. However, over time, you will have to sacrifice the more fun settings, such as anti-aliasing.

 

get the new m17x with ATI 4870 with GDDR5 owns the 280M...

 

Two years is a long time in GPU terms. You should be fine with the 280M though. It's a solid card.

 

I'm not interested in the Alienware, I've had bad experiences with them. Just the Clevo please..

 

{... pats dualunderworld's back and walks away ...}

 

A $300 upgrade and a dual core CPU for more than the Sager/Clevo 17" with 280M and i7? Or is there a "new" one that hasn't been released yet?

 

If you want any kind of longevity and value for your money, DO NOT get a notebook for gaming.

 

Well, that's kind of obvious. But the way my life is right now I'd like to have the ability to take my laptop with me and still being able to game. Also, I don't know about you, but when you have 3 brothers and 2 sisters, you'd want the ability to slip your pc away somewhere safe, instead of leaving a massive desktop out in the open.

That being said, the fact that I'm on forum. notebookreview.com kind of makes it obvious that a desktop isn't an option I'm considering....

Back on Topic. Thanks for the responses guys, so I guess I should be confident when I get the W860CU with the GTX280m in that I can run anything with that card for a good two years (with lower settings eventually)

 

Yep, and as Greg Ross mentioned, those lower settings in the future should be pretty equivalent to the higher settings today, as gaming engines progress.

 

I don't necessarily agree with that. A notebook with an MXM slot offers some chance for future upgrade, along with CPU. I've also sold the laptop I've had every 12-18 months and put that money towards a new one, costing me roughly $500 each time. But you can spend that easily on a desktop video card, CPU, and memory upgrade about as often.

Plus game requirements haven't seemed to rise exponentially like they used to. I guess we have consoles and vast number of integrated GPU's to thank for that. Heck, I still have my Vostro 1500 with 8600m GT and have pulled that out time and again, and it still plays most games decently and it's over 2.5 years old.

Best bet of course is if you do want longevity, stick with one of the higher end GPU's like the OP is suggesting. In two years it will be considered a mid grade part, which still isn't half bad.

 

If you want longevity then you really want to go with SLI and a Quad or Desktop i7 since they don't have SLI with mobile i7 yet.

Having said that, I think the GTX 280M will be good for at least another year or more depending on what settings you can put up with if you were forced to lower any. You could also overclock the 280M slightly to gain some more performance in the future.

 

But SLI isn't supported for every game, correct? Not that I would get it anyways, no offense to SLI users.

And just one more year for the GTX280m? Really? Or did you mean one more year without sacrificing graphics settings.

 

I'm just trying to help you out, I'm not here to assume what you want and don't want, I'm just offering you my humble suggestions that I've acquired through years of being a PC gaming enthusiast.

Also, I'd say a desktop is safer around kids than a notebook is, I mean with a desktop all that kids can possibly spill on it is on the keyboard, on a laptop you get something spilled on the keyboard and it's done for in most cases. You can simple put a password on your user account to prevent unauthorized use.

Well everyone has their own opinion and here's mine on the matter. MXM is not widely used enough to be even considered a viable alternative. Chances are you won't even be able to find a replacement MXM card in the future and especially not at any decent cost.

Nonetheless, a desktop offers much more longevity than a laptop, if you do follow the practice of selling your system ever 12-18 months then you are still not getting your money's worth. Of course if money is no object then I guess that point is null.

But to prove my point, I built the desktop in my signature back in the summer of 08'. And it can still manage any game on high settings and it's running on 1 1/2 years. My bet is that it will be able to do so for another 6-12 months at which point a $200 graphics card upgrade sometime during that period will allow me to continue playing newer games since my CPU and RAM are still very much up to par.

So as you can see, when money is an issue, you tend to want to get the most value out of your purchases. Of course, if your situation is different than mine than more power to ya!

 

Okay, but I think that a good percentage of people who buy these monstrous gaming notebooks could be better served by a desktop that can play games way better than the notebook can and a cheap notebook that is actually portable, all for less than the price of the gaming notebook.

 

Considering games for the next 2 years will be mostly console ports from box360 and ps3, the gpu wont matter much. I would get a good cpu as that seems to be the great equalizer -- ie. GTA4.

I have a 8800M gtx in my older notebook, from jan 2008, and it still maxes every game out there, except for CPU dependent games (World in conflict, GTA4, Saints Row2) and bad ports.

Much like the cryengine3 getting dumbed down for the console hardware, so are a lot of future games I would imagine, if they follow the current model at all.

So in other words, your 280m should blast through ANY game in the next 2-3 years, the CPU bottleneck in that time frame is another matter.

 

Monstrous?? A 15 inch laptop is monstrous? I don't think so...

 

SLI isn't supported in every single game but many do support it with the potential of doubling the frame rates too.

I mean it depends on how fussy you are. For example, I can't stand playing at anything other than native resolution but others won't mind lowering slightly and can put up with the blurry result.

 

In terms of power it'll be fine - but it's limited by directx10.0 - so potentially weaker dx11 cards or even dx10.1 could show more eye candy, more efficiently. I expect something like a laptop 5650 would show a dx11 game more beautifully than a gtx280m with dx10.0

 

What? Do you mean an Acer Aspire 5650??

 

No he's talking about the next generation ATI card, the 5000 series

 

Which isn't even out yet. If I was to wait for that card, then by the time that one arrives another card will be on the horizon, etc etc. No one can win playing that game.

My opinion, if the 280m will play anything for the next 2 years, then I would get that.

 

Another thing. Notebooks always get newer GPU's a generation or so late...

 

The question is how quickly, if ever will DirectX 11 be adopted. If it is anything like DirectX 10, never. Even if it does catch on, I highly doubt there will be many DirectX 11 exclusive titles within the next two years.

Buy what you can afford now. Waiting is just a futile cause, unless you know something is just right around the corner (as in less than a month). Or just wait until you absolutely need to buy, and then get whatever will suit your needs.

 

In my opinion, I think DX11 will do fairly well. There are already a couple of titles which support DX11 (BattleForge and STALKER: Call of Pripyat), with a few more coming in 2010. I think developers will be a lot quicker to adopt DX11 than DX10.

 

I agree. However, it's all in number of DirectX 11 exclusive titles. Probably none in the next year or so. New features typically require more horsepower, of which notebook GPU's probably won't support for a while anyhow. I'm curious to see exactly what a difference DX11 will make.

 

a dx11 exclusive title doesn't make any business sense. There will always be lots of people running older hardware.

 

And that's my point too. Even if games are coded to use DirectX 11 it will be standard DirectX 9 or 10 (most likely 9), so the games will still run fine with a DirectX 10 card, just not with all the bells and whistles that in most cases are just marginal improvements or gimmicky. Like with DirectX 10, Microsoft may release a couple DX11 only titles (as was the case with Halo and Shadowrun) just to showcase the power of it.

 

I have dual gtx 280's in SLI in my laptop and quite a few of the games I play support SLI, with more having support added with each driver update. Results of the performance boost vary per game, but happy overall. I expect your single card will last you for 2-3 years as mine will as well barring hardware failure

 

its gddr3 not 5. so there goes that

 

Holy Necro Post Batman

 

Well thank u... it was confirmed later on that it was GDDR3 but according to notebookcheck.com , the new M17x core i series revision has 4870 GDDR5...

 

no the r2 is not gddr5 either

 

As a long-time PC geek I think the G92 should go down in history as the greatest GPU of all time. It's three year old technology and with constant tweaks and process improvements it can hang with any of the latest RADEONs.

I switched to RADEONs because of issues on my M17x with the 280m cards. The performance is really close IMO. My experience with Nvidia drivers was great too.

IMO you'll be happy. In three-four years even folks with two 5870s will be shopping for upgrades.

 

Notebookcheck is NOT a good site for highend stuff, it seems they rarely know what they're talking about in highend reviews.... The revision doesn't have it either.

If the 4870's were DDR5's we'd be talking about how close a single 4870 would be to a DDR3 5870.

 

DX11 was designed to run on DX10+ hardware. It automatically runs on DX10 hardware as a DX11 coded game, just minus a couple of features. So even DX11 "exclusive" really won't be a problem for DX10 hardware.

Now if you love the impact of Tesselation, that's another issue.

 

Good luck then... that seals the fate of 4870s for me... no laptop with that for me.. i'll keep 5870...

 

It's overclocked and uses 3x the power to do the same job as a modern Radeon. That's not really hanging with them, that's hanging on for dear life by your fingernails because you've got nothing else.

 

That has more to do with how stifling and constrictive notebooks are for GPU tech. In desktops, where GPUs can handle more heat and consume more power, both Nvidia and ATI have had to regularly release new GPUs to keep up with each other in the enthusiast class.