Mobile GPU questions

I've been looking for a decent laptop for a month and my head hurts reading all this conflicting information on the net. Every time I think I've found the right one I read something that points me at some else...or is better at 1 thing than the other.

On several benchmark sites I've found, the dual GTX 860m SLI (4gb per) is consistently within the top 10 mobile Nvidia cards, but from what I've read you only get the benefit of 4gb and not 8 when running SLI, and the bus is small, 128bit, but some of the criticisms I see are only mentioning a single card or the non maxwell version.

Other problems I see with SLI are sometimes only getting the benefit of 1 card? Or stuttering? Is it a big/common problem?


Then there's the GTX 880m 8gb, which is new, but from what I read it's similar to the GTX 780m, which is also a similar price. Is there anything added by having a newer generation card? If you had to choose between these two, which one overclocked?

Is there something better than these 3 cards that I'm not considering that is also readily available for similar price? Which of these 3 would you go with for raw power?

 

DO NOT BUY gtx880m there is a card with lots of problems. There are several articles about this issue on this forum.

 

You can click on the "SLI Information" guide in my signature for any questions or issues you have regarding SLI. It should cover everything.

Next, how long can you wait before buying a laptop? Maxwell cards are going to release VERY soon (like 4 days) and the machines should be selling in october. If that's the case you could get a stronger system for the same price =D.

Also, the 880M 8GB card is broken. Terribly broken. It gets far hotter than the 780M for no discernible reason and is very bad for people who like overclocking etc.

As for buying RIGHT NOW, I would go for 780M if you could get it. It's the best on the market, especially as an overclocker. But if you can wait, a 980M will run circles around a 780M or any other mobile card on the planet that exists right now.

 

Hrm....the 780m is several hundred less than the gtx 860m sli, it's still somewhat comparable?

Seriously it's so convoluted, at first I was just looking at vram and thought the 870m 6gb was going to be the best value, but then I read it was just a marketing tactic and didn't add anything. Then with the 860m sli there are 2 different chips for the same stupid card.

I can't imagine the 900m series will be affordable for a while after it comes out...

 

Well the 800M series is actually being cheaper right now due to the next cards coming out soon, but the prices usually swap. If 880M was 900 USD, the 980M would launch at 900 USD. mobile prices don't change all that much in that way.

The 780M should be along the levels of 860M SLI from what I know. Especially if you OC it.

The vRAM thing is mostly a gimmick. But 6GB is not useless on a 870M, and 870Ms are pretty good. But again, in a couple weeks, the 970M and 980M will crush it. So it's up to you in the end. If you're wondering about vRAM and how/when it's used, check the vRAM information guide in my sig XD (wow, did not expect to use two of them in two replies in 1 thread in a row).

 

LOL 6GB is severe overkill on the 870M. It'll run out of GPU power long before it runs out of VRAM.

 

Maybe. It could use up to 4GB at the least though, especially with a little memory OC. But probably a game won't use 6GB in pure textures before demanding more from the GPU itself.

Hey, it might help him in CUDA apps where more vRAM is nice =D

 

Is that much VRAM actually required, or is it just caching stuff like a lot of games do? The memory controller load sensor shows the amount of memory that's actually passing through the frame buffer, and unless it's maxed out, your amount of VRAM is not the limiting factor.

I dunno. I mean, 4GB is what R9 290/290X has and it's perfectly adequate even at 4K. These mobile cards with absurd amounts of VRAM are obviously much weaker.

 

I wish I could say. I don't use such applications, but I've seen it floating around that some of them have a flat-out "more vRAM is better" kind of deal. I can't verify the truth of this, but the 6GB is not a detriment in any way, so that may be a possible benefit.

 

Gaming-wise, I don't think so. But I know, for example, that complex 3D rendering on the GPU can eat ungodly amounts of VRAM. But of course you'd be using a much-faster Quadro or FirePro for that, and they come with huge frame buffers.

 

One must not forget that gtx780ti only have 3gb VRAM

 

Yes, however it has been noted that games have been using up to 3.8GB or so of vRAM depending on settings/resolution (though resolution makes VERY little difference). The 780Ti in some cases is indeed a bit limited by its memory size, and they should have released a 6GB version of that card like they did with the 780. But at least now they'll understand that 2GB is a "minimum" and 4-6GB should be a standard.

The reason the 780Ti only has 3GB though is because it's related to its bus size. For proper uniform memory operations, it'd have to have 1.5GB, 3GB or 6GB memory configurations, and at the time the 780 came out, 3GB was more than enough for lots of games. So I don't blame them all too much. The 256-bit bus cards can easier hit 4GB though, like the 770 and upcoming 980 etc.

 

Once again, just because games "use" a certain amount of VRAM doesn't mean they actually need that much. As you know, some games will simply fill up the entire frame buffer regardless of its size. Take a Titanfall or CoD Ghosts for instance, which perform exactly the same on a 4GB card as they do on a 2GB version of the same card, no additional stuttering on the latter.

 

Titanfall DOES use 3GB+ though. You have a 2GB card and set your texture resolution to "insane" and you will get very low FPS and stutters. All my teamspeak friends have the game and only myself, my friend with a HD 7970 and my friend with the SLI 780Ti were able to use Insane textures without issues. The other two with 680 2GBs and the one with a 540M had to drop to "high" at the most.

Wolfenstein: The New Order too, will stutter like crazy and run pitifully on a 2GB 770 if you force ultra textures on but run fine on a 7970, even though if you set textures to "high" for both the 7970 and 770 2GB cards they'll perform similarly to each other. And here is the proof for The New Order

Yes, games can compress textures a bit or leave some actual caching out, but some games DO need the vRAM. But yes, as for 3GB vs 4GB, the 4GB is not "necessary", but it won't hurt. And in the near future, it may very well become necessary, with how game devs are doing things since they realized they didn't need to hold back on memory usage anymore.

 

And BF4 and Crysis 3 are just fine...

Isn't it hilarious how it's always the ugly games which suffer from performance issues? Guess these code monkeys never heard of proper streaming tech. I always like to rag on UE3, but even it has got them beat.

 

And THAT is something I agree with. Watch Dogs eats up 3.8GB of vRAM above 1080p if you max it... but it barely looks better than Sleeping Dogs which (using 4x SSAA to 4k res at 1080p) doesn't even use 2GB of vRAM. It's called unoptimizaaaaationnnnn! And as I made dead certain to point out in my vRAM guide, amount of vRAM being used != how good game looks. Texture quality for BF4/Crysis 3 is impeccable; lower resolution textures works fine for them. Higher resolution textures of bad textures still looks bad. Just a really crisp bad. But still bad =D.

So yeah, unoptimization is the thing. But because of that, better to have more vRAM than less (up to a certain point).

 

SLI is like having two engines in a car. Unless they don't make a single engine big enough to satisfy your needs and drain your budget, two is an inferior solution in every way.

Tl;dr unless it's two 780/880M you're going to put in SLI then don't do it.

Also, it's not cut and dried that 8xxM prices will drop overnight. Retailers need to clear existing stock first, and bargains can take some time to emerge.

It sounds like OP has a bad case of preemptive buyers remorse. I bought my G51J a week before the in-every-way-better G73 was announced, but that 1800 ultimately still bought me a laptop that I happily wasted waaaaaaay too many hours on

 

XD the 880Ms are already cheap. They're now a measly +$237 or so over 870Ms (previously something like +$400 if I remember correctly). I think Alienware is the only company that hasn't cheapened them yet.

 

I still haven't bought anything yet....

One problem trying to find a 780m is that on xoticpc and "custom" builds cost as much and even more than a new 880m. And if you go with a pre made laptop from the retailers they have older 2.4ghz cpu rather than the 2.8ghz.

I'm pretty tempted to just grab a cheap cyberpower and wait a year until the 900 series is out. This has the 2.8ghz cpu, gtx 780m, ssd and 16gb ram for $1599 CyberpowerPC Fangbook Evo HX7-310 Gaming Laptop Intel Core i7 4800MQ (2.70GHz) 16GB Memory 1TB HDD 120GB SSD NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4GB GDDR5 17.3" Windows 8 64-Bit - Newegg.com For the same price I could get 2x 860m sli, but after reading more into them they seem to have their share of problems. There's even a $1299 cyberpower with gtx 780m which is really cheap and I wouldn't feel too bad if it burned up or only lasts a year.

The main reason I was looking at the SLI was because of those aorus computers with 2x gtx 860m sli and benchmarks showing it beating the 880m, but in reality it may/may not benefit different programs I'm using if they only read 1 of the 2 cards.

 

Eww 5400 RPM 1TB HDD and a 180W adapter? Not me and that XD. If you can wait it out sir, the 980Ms should be out in 1st half of october going by all speculation, and if you wait just over a day for nVidia's game24 livestream event, you should see the release dates for the 980M/970M etc.

If you find that they're taking too long, you could just get a 870M cheap and upgrade later