New GTX 680M review (The truth)

There is no point using your energy in this thread Fox. This along with many other threads have proved that certain people cannot discuss the facts without getting all personal and keep twisting things. You can take a guess on who they are.

I was gonna participate in the discussion but after what I saw in this thread plus the recent history, I won`t be discussing anymore on this site. The AMD people, lets face it, this forum have been hijacked by them since 7970M came out, have no room for discussions with people who don`t share their views.

There have been people who have tried to step in whenever times were rough, giving their support to the few of us who dare to speak of 7970M problems, which really exist, but they have been closed, all due to personal attacks.

The moderators, and sorry if I offense you Mr Fox since you are one, have been, how should I put it, lazy and literally weak in their decision about the whole GPU matter since all they have done is close threads, with no consequences for the people who throws personal attacks at other people. So like young children, they think its fine to do the same when another thread is created, which in turn also get closed, and the whole cycle repeats itself. I am a moderator myself at several forums and I`m shocked how bad the moderator team in this forum acted on the whole matter (which have lasted over several months).

So this is my resignation from any GPU discussions in this forum, and if you moderators feel you need to ban me for speaking up against how you deal with these things, fine. I don`t actually feel too much for this forum anyway right now.
I have been a member here for many years now, have made many posts in this forum, trying to help people, share my experience and ideas, and I have NEVER been in any of these cold situations by fellow forum members while the moderators stood there and watched and did nothing. So that should speak for itself.

So, I bid you all farewell
Cloudfire

 

Cloudfire, this is the second farewell that I've seen you post. You have had some good inputs, and bad - just like the rest of us. Yet you have thrown out more than your fair share of personal AND broad attacks.

Good luck, and see you around as I expect this isn't your last post.

 

R.I.P. Cloudfire, the Nvidia warrior of truth.

 

Ok, that makes sense. It sounded as though you were insinuating that hordes of people with real and serious functionality problems were making up stories and that would be an unacceptable and antagonistic view to take.

I'm glad there are a few folks not having problems because that means there should be a solution for those that do. Anyhow, back to the original comment about the comparison being unfair... I think it is silly to dismiss the performance comparison between competing products as "unfair" because someone with a different GPU is having a performance or functionality problem. It is what it is.

 

I agree with you Mr. Fox. The 7970M has a ways to go, and it appears that the 680M (at least the non-SLI that hackness has) is a regular B.E.A.S.T.

Yes, I am a bit jealous

 

I think they should compare it to both an enduro enabled machine and an disabled enduro one, to more accurately reflect what people can buy these days.

That said, the 680m has me shocked. Memory bandwidth is definitely hitting it THAT hard? But it makes sense, since the desktop counterparts when cutting down the GTX680 saw no change in memory speed/bus so it means memory badwidth does have a huge effect on it. It's pretty cool to have a fully enabled GTX670 tho, even if limited by very low clocks.

To be fair tho, it seems the HD7970m also enjoys a healthy performance increase from memory too.

 

EDIT -

Earlier post - Mine 10 chars

Edited post - Since I do not want to bypass forum rules, I want to say that in my world, for me, the problems referred to in this thread do not exist. Thank you.

 

Maverick, what does 10 chars refer to? (newb alert here!)

 

That is a way of bypassing forum controls for preventing posts with fewer than 10 character.

With respect to the inability of some people to have meaningful dialogue and discuss things without personal attacks and resorting to insults, I tend to take take the "Honest Abe" view of things.

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."
- Abraham Lincoln​

People that act that way provide the rest of us with a very revealing view of their character and diminish their own worth within any community, online or otherwise. They inflict more damage to themselves than what any moderator could ever cause through private message reprimands or handing out infraction points. The loss of respect from their peers is more than adequate punishment in my view. (Personal attacks, when noticed, are dealt with accordingly.)

 

Thank you 10 chars

 

so to summarize which is better 7970 or 680 ?










il get mi coat...

 

Even though AMD has "poor driver support" for their GPUs...I have had no problems and fail to see a reason for paying another $295 for an extra 10% on average... if that.

I use Crossfired 6970Ms too so... I'm around where one 7970M should be...give or take 10%+ performance going to the newer card. (Higher minimum FPS and all that. )

 

The one installed in the machine you use is always the best GPU. The one you don't have doesn't work, even a little bit.

 

*Rolleyes*

Now, imagine if I were to go back and post a historical timeline of this issue with GPU fans shouting down one another? Would you come out as clean as you pretend? I think not. Matter of fact, I know you wouldn't.

If we were to ban all the "kids" who poo-poo your posts (as you asked), there wouldn't be many left. What would be the point of that? Sure, it'd make you happy. You who instigated many of these arguments with your troll-like presentation of "facts" and innuendo against things AMD. We would be banning those who fell for it and fed the troll instead of the troll himself. That's bizarro-world moderating. Where you moderate must be pretty quiet. Sounds like a place that suppresses differing views.

Closing threads is the better option. Why? In every one of the GPU threads, more and more there are those who pause to think if it will be worth it or not to post given the history of GPU threads being closed. You even see posters comment on the likelihood of a thread being closed if it gets out of hand. Also consider that a thread that is closed can still be read. So if there is anything of worth past the first few posts before the adolescent bickering starts, it's archived for future reference.

Moreover, what's to discuss? You posted a link to a review that shows different outcomes than a review on the another site. What more needs to be said? Seriously.

Had you not been one who received infractions for the very thing you're now going on about, we'd be more apt to intercede on your behalf. But as it is, it's the pot calling the kettle, black.

Believe that. Ummppph.


Hasta luego, jefe.

 

Hahahaha this made my day.


And to the actual answer, it depends on what you play/want to do. Make a list of your favourite games and see how both GPU performs.

Both are in a similar position, but the 680m has more possible potential from overclocking due to it being a beefier GPU. When not overclocked, I think any will work well for you.

 

Well said, glad to see a mod put that guy in his place. +1

 

cloudfire stay, let people do what they want. There are mods for a reason.

 

Calm down guys! Screw NVIDIA and AMD, both of them only care about money and you guys are fighting for their GPUs!

 

but... but i dont want to go back to playing games on crappy console.

 

only reason i still have my 360 is for halo tbh

and id like to chime in a bit

for some people it may be worth getting 680m over 7970m
some games 7970m has annoying fps drops i.e. bf3 with current drivers

i havent had anything but smooth gameplay in the games i have tried so far and dont have $300 to spend anyhow
crysis 2 and many other games play great


people have every right to be mad for their expensive card not working and i dont blame some of the frustrations

however the fanboy attitude (and much of it is on the amd side this round) is childish

 

does pc have gt5

 

Never thought I'd see this much drama on a laptop forum

 

Didn't feel like reading through the entire thread but I have one question. Cloudfire has stated adamantly, over and over again, the the 680m WILL beat the 7970m by 15%. Am I the only one who finds it odd that he posts "the truth" and it's a 2% increase. $300 for 2%...honestly...

 

So 7970M is "jacked by enduro" in Clevos so it's not fair? Anyone else see the irony of that statement? Who created Enduro, could it be AMD? I agree with Mr. Fox, AMD should be held accountable for shoddy drivers, shoddy hardware and shoddy support. Yet all I see are droves of people making excuses.

When considering a superior video card, ALL aspects have to be accounted for that include raw performance, features, driver support, game publisher support and reliability. Too many focus on price and raw performance as a criteria which usually fails miserably (the Crossfire 7970M owners are a testament to that).

 

Drama queens tend to create drama.

 

I'm sorry but that is not true. If AMD had worked enough to make their product perfect and without bugs, the 7000 series would be out when nvidia's 900 was out. If people see that nvidia is churning out GPUs while AMD is silent, well, you know what happens then. nv is nothing different. Optimus was full of bugs as well. I'm not trying to compare and show nv down. This is what everyone does. If everyone waited until ALL aspects had been accounted for, it would take years before the final product came on the market.

Enduro is a pretty big step. It is not simply a little mux with two inputs, one output and one control bit. Just because Optimus is already available it does not mean Enduro needs to be perfect the first time. I am not defending AMD. They have been a step behind nv for a quite some time now and several steps behind Intel. That being said, the 7970m is amazing. The 6990m was good but boy did it run hot and consume power. The 7970m finally caught up to nv in almost everything. Let's give a company the credit it deserves. NV has been great but they are not perfect either. I am not sure why this debate is still going on. As Mr. Fox said, the one in your laptop is the better GPU. If you want to choose a GPU and haven't bought a laptop yet, then there is now enough information available for people to choose the one they think gives the best price/performance.

 

Optimus already has 1 year or more to fix and improve any problem it may have (which there were quite a few threads IIRC). Wouldn't it be too harsh to expect Enduro to be as perfect(?) as Optimus is right now even though it was just roll out along with 7970M?

 

But you also have to look at things as they are. "Enduro just came out" isn't going to help people who are having driver problems. And even then AMD has had powerxpress/BACON switchable graphics for at least a year which is the same thing as Enduro.

I learned from AMD's dual graphics that you shouldn't buy stuff and hope it gets better later, you should buy stuff that works reasonably well from the get go.

 

at the end of the day..

both 680m and 7970m are marvels! THANKS TO NVIDIA AND AMD FOR MAKING OUR DREAMS COME TRUE! right?

 

There are reviews of Nvidia gpu's (previous gen) with and without optimus and it's pretty much the same, performance drops with the dynamic switching enabled. Personally. I'd rather have manual switching or no switching at all vs Optimus or Enduro. Switching aside, neither have a perfect product. Nvidia may have less driver issues right now but I'm yet to see a latency free solution from their camp. Not to mention that average life span of the green cards is about 3-4 years. Some are ok with that since they replace their cards every year anyway

 

I agree, both are great GPUs

FIN.

 

And so ends another completely pointless, hundreds-of-posts-length internet drama. Fueled only by speculation, subjective opinions and scraps of leaked dubious quality information based on pre-production models and no real, trustworthy data until the card actually shipped.

The only thing that matters is the (professionally made) reviews and benchmarks of the final product, pitting it against the others in its league and allowing users to make an informed choice. All excuses, etc., are moot and irrelevant. It's all down to the performance, features and price as of this day.

I hope you people, who have been engaged in these long and pointless arguments, look back at the time you wasted on them and think how you could have spent it better.

 

Your fanboy really shines in this post. As a member of these forums since 2006, I've never seen them NOT Nvidia biased. Because this generation looks like a AMD win in terms of price/performance, you can't handle AMD being talked about more than Nvidia for 6 months?

Peace out.

 

Sure it is. It will tell people to be patient by giving them an example of a similar system that was flawed in its infancy (but not in its maturity) thereby not biasing a particular manufacturer.

That's funny. Any idea why a multi-billion dollar company decided to call the EXACT SAME tech by three different names?

You didn't learn that from Optimus? That probably has two reasons. One, that you didn't purchase "stuff" when Optimus was messed up and two, well, let us not go there and get me another warning alright?

 

As it's been pointed out, we're not talking about nVidia's previous generation or what growing pains optimus may or may not have had. They were first to the market (as usual) and now have a working solution while AMD does not. It's AMD that currently has a broken product on the market with shoddy drivers and half baked Enduro.

Aikimox, I'd like to see some data backing up the claim that nVidia cards fail every 3-4 years. Don't point to 8800 series cards either, that was years ago. I've seen many AMD hardware failures (even this 7970M fiasco has had defective ones sold by Clevo) yet none of the same from nVidia's recent mobile chips. I'd guess that nVidia's hardware failure rate is no higher than the industry average for cutting edge electronics.

The fact is AMD delivered a broken product with no software support (and they even admit this) while people are making excuses for them. Who cares if the price is lower if everything else sucks about it? I know there's not a chance in hell I'll ever switch back to AMD unless they fix their driver support. I had enough after dealing with 4870M/5870M/6970M/6990M.

 

Who cares? I do. And so does every "non-rich" boy out there. If no one else cared about it, there wouldn't be a bunch of people on this forum with "7970m" (some even with smiley faces) in their sigs. And no. EVERYTHING else does not suck about it. If if it did, I wouldn't be able to play one of the most demanding games out there (Crysis 2) at an average of 50 fps.

Is someone forcing you to switch back to AMD? No. Is someone putting a .44 Magnum to your temple and telling you to deal with AMD or they will blow your brains out? No. Then leave it be! Honestly, if you had problems with the 4870M, then the 5870M, then the 6970M and STILL bought the 6990M, there is something seriously messed up there.

 

No official software support, black screens, screen brightness issues, defective hardware, texturing flickering in games etc. I can go on and on with issues I've read about with 7970M. Obviously its a broken product even if it works in some games. I got a kick out of the bolded part of your statement.

No of course not, I fell for the low price + Catalyst team's promises to make it all right. What I learned is that paying a premium for nVidia comes with a LOT less headache. AMD and its low price hardware are fine if you have loads of time to tinker with software and registry settings all day long (great if you're a student with time to kill or unemployed).

With that said, AMD has an awesome piece of hardware but its nearly useless without the software (drivers) to compliment it and that's where they fall short every single time.

 

5150Joker,
Your wifi card is listed twice in your signature

 

5150Joker, guess I'll point it out yet again - I am VERY happy with my 7970M crossfire'd M18X R2. Works flawlessly for me in everything except The Witcher 2 (FPS dips to 40 on ultra sans Uber) with 12.7 BETA desktop drivers.

I play Crysis 2, BF3, Mass Effect 3, Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning, Skyrim, Aliens Vs. Predator (the "new" one), Deus Ex: HE, Dirt 3, Dirt Showdown, Driver San Francisco, Fable III, Far Cry 2, L.A. Noir, Max Payne 3, Metro 2033, Red Faction: Armageddon, Spec Ops: The Line, and Bulletstorm to name the ones I have played a good deal since installing 12.7 BETA desktop version. They ALL work perfectly.

Other folks are still having the issues that you describe, but I am definitely not or I'd be on the phone with AW getting my money back or a replacement.

 

Are you sure crossfire is active? Many very experienced members have had the same problem but somehow you don't.

Sent from my GT-N7000

 

I am very sure crossfire is active as I use MSI Afterburner to monitor temps, FPS, GPU and memory usage. I've also tried crossfire disabled to compare it to some of the single 680M stats I've seen floating around the forums.

 

If that's the way you see it, that's your choice. Look at the business grade systems with Optimus 2-nd gen enabled (Precision). It may be the previous gen in your book, but until the new models come out, these are the current flagships. People buy these machines right now as a new gen and see the shoddy switching in action. It's not as bad as the first gen but still miles away from being perfect.

"First to market (as usual)" is not correct. 6990M came before the 580M. 7970m appeared before the 680M. Things are way worse in the business sector. The K3000M,K4000M and K5000M are still being delayed while the new FirePro's are long ready to go. In fact, HP Elitebooks got launched without Nvidia cards and the ETA is end of July. Dell Precision's are still on hold - same reason.

8800?? That was 2 years ago. Last year, we had tons of 9800s dead or artifacting. This year it's the 2x0M series. This is my personal statistics, created from real life experience, not forums. People come to me locally to fix/upgrade their laptops and I'm yet to see a dead 4870/5870m, while the 240m/260m's go bananas every now and then. And all these people ask for an AMD card regardless of the price.

Why does AMD has to answer for Eurocom's or even Clevo's faults? Clevo has been less than perfect lately with their new flagship completely recalled for redesign due to hardware issues. If Dell has a source of good cards, Clevo could also have one. AMD doesn't make final cards it's up to the third party vendors and if one of them makes a mistake - you don't blame AMD

I know you had less than perfect experience with AMD cards (drivers) but honestly, I can't really can't relate to that. My 4870m's were perfect, same goes for the 6970 and 6990m's. I've never had any driver issues with any of my GPU's. On the other hand, I always had issues with Nvidia cards in the past. Last year I gave a shot to the 580M's but latency problem was still present and that's one of the reasons I'll stay with the REDs. 4 Years of bashing, starting with the 2x0M, but it seems that Nvidia never cared about it. So, it will take more than drivers to convince me to switch sides.


Anyway, let's all be happy, it's all good. Give me my RED's. Give Joker his Greens and let's have a few beers!

 

HD Wireless transmitter and the Intel Wifi are two different things.

Aikimox, I mean first to market with new cutting edge features (e.g. SLi and now Optimus).

Well that's just anecdotal evidence so its not really factually based.

Or it could be argued that AMD shipped a bunch of messed up GPUs if Arestavo has a perfectly working Xfire system and everyone else's is broken. Coupled with Clevo's problems, it may not be the PCB makers but AMD's chip that's broken. Who knows? For now I'll stick to my theory - the drivers are the root of AMD's biggest problems.

To be fair the latency was never an issue for gaming. Apart from some very specific software, it didn't have any real issues and was addressed in a later driver release.

I'll drink to that. Oh btw, if 680M SLi has similar issues to 7970M Xfire, you'll see me blasting nVidia as much if not more.

 

Do most people realize that we are arguing over 400pts of difference under heavy overclock (that could be not stable because it's partly managed by drivers) or by a 4 fps difference?

Does it matter if under BF3 at ultra a card does 40 fps and the other does 38?

What is wrong with it?

 

All I know is that.....AMD sucks!!
All this talk about AMD drivers, cards, support etc....leaves a bad feeling of dejavu.....and a I told you so.....

If you have 7970M's and they work properly, I'm happy for you. If not I hope you've learned your lesson and go green next time.

The argument isn't about a 10% to 15% increase in performance. It's about fully working cards in SLI....for that I would gladly pay a premium.

 

I can play this game too..

All I know is that...AMD kinda sucks sometimes!!
All this talk about AMD drivers, cards, support etc....leaves a feeling of a heavier wallet.....and I told you so.....

I have the 7970M in crossfire and they work properly, I am happy for myself! I didn't learn my lesson, because I am a Nvidia guy who couldn't afford the premium asked.

The argument is about price to performance, fully working in crossfire. For that, I am glad I went with the 7970M Crossfire instead of the 675M (rebranded 580M, which was a rebranded 480M - not cool) SLI that was available at the time for the same price at 1/2 the performance.

:Snaps fingers several times:

 

well actually its not a rebranded 480m, the 580m is not a rebranded anything... and yes the 680m sli will be better because sli is just better than crossfire. its all to do with the drivers, and in that respect nvidia wins, plain and simple. not to mention dx 11.1, which right now may be irrelevant but in the near future when you upgrade to windows 8 and the newest game comes out with it, you may regret your choice.

 

I'll have to risk it, here, go against the big bad moderator, and say that what you're doing isn't exactly fair.

On page 6 of this thread you said:
'By far one of the most sensible posts in this thread. +rep. ' on a post where someone said the exact same thing the AMD guys keep repeating: AMD has the best price/performance, and nVIDIA is merely overpriced.

Oh, BRAVO! You've reacted as this is some new revelation being laid upon us by that certain forum member, an indisputable universal truth, rather than merely a matter of personal opinion. And that crack about interesting social experiment on that same page wasn't really needed, especially now that I know what do you favor.

Now, being a former moderator myself, I'm not saying you're not entitled to your opinion being a moderator, but your bias was clearly showing there.

I'm one of the 'nVIDIA fanboys', but, again, being a former moderator, I have to agree that Cloud is/was trolling. Badly. The worst type of trolling, too - the 'claimed innocence' type, where there are no harsh language involved, but it causes the argument to quickly degenerate. I sometimes wanted to reach out and slap the dude myself to make him stop.

But the way the guys in here were behaving was appalling - they kept throwing their virtual feces against anything nVIDIA related, they trolled much more blatantly than Cloud ever did, and the worst of all, they keep on doing it.

You're talking about your tools as a moderator, as if the only options you have are banning, deleting messages and closing threads. I'm not telling how to do your job as a moderator, but that's not accurate at all. A quick private message from a moderator can do wonders. A re-edit of an abusing post, a few well placed warnings in the middle of heated discussion even a quick ban for a day or two to cool off if the warning don't work, all of these can serve a much better way to handle the populace than just banning and deleting posts left and right and closing threads.

I'm not directly saying that that's what you did, and I apologize for heavily hinting that (not because you're a moderator and I should be afraid to offend you, but because I want to respect other people's opinions), but instead of setting the guys talking trash about nVIDIA straight and telling them to respect other people's opinions and keep it civil, your bias towards AMD might have been clouding (no pun intended) your judgement. You are leaning towards their opinion, which isn't fair. Two weeks ago, one couldn't utter a word in favor of the 680M without having droves of people attacking the poster's poor judgement and belittling him, personally attacking him and dousing any enthusiasm someone had about the upcoming nVIDIA's card. And that's not the way a forum about overall laptop hardware should handle.

This isn't AMD's forum. We can, and should, celebrate any new type of exciting laptop hardware that goes out, compare it with each other, help solve issues with it, discuss what is better for one's budget, but not strictly picking sides. Even if nVIDIA would obliterate AMD or vice versa, I would be against attacking people people who disagreed. And so should the moderator team.

 

The 485M(sorry), 580M, and 675M are all 40NM FERMI rebrands as far as I am concerned, as they are only clocked slightly differently with the same exact architecture/CUDA cores.

I like Nvidia drivers more myself. Yet some of their BETAs and WHQLs have given my desktop hissing fits (Tri-SLI 580 Classifieds). Nvidia isn't immune to crap drivers either.

DX 11.1? Someday yes, but by then I will have a new setup. I buy for today. That said many NEW games are still DX9 (Skyrim!).

From what I understand and have witnessed, Windows 8 is more of a tablet OS. There is a reason M$ is offering Windows 8 Pro for a $40 upgrade until 1 January 13. Will it be another Vista/Millennium?

 

Aikimox's statement about nvidia cards does not hold out for anyone but him in the handful of laptops he's ever seen in his life.

We have a LOT of laptops pass through our benches (usually 60-100 new ones per year, and I have been doing this kind of thing for 15+ years) and plenty of them have both AMD and Nvidia cards... and quite frankly with the exception of the nvidia flaw they admitted to, most laptops with nvidia gpus last long after they are useful. Most of the ones that DO fail, fail for other reasons than GPU failure at the 3-4 year mark.

Indeed right now, our most common failure is the MBP with the 6750m/6770m in it.
Then again, it isn't the AMD GPU that is failing... (its almost always the power coupling)

Now, please don't take this as an attack on AMD... its simply a rebuttal for Aikimox.

In the case of AMD GPU vs Nvidia GPU, I give neither the advantage in how long they will last. It really is more about the cooling solution provided for them and users who keep those cooling systems in working order. I consider the two tied in this regard.