Opinions on the best MXM 3.0b cards at the moment

I am currently trying to figure out what would be the best choice among type B high-end cards available.

Radeon Mobility HD 5870 looks good, best price, but already a bit dated and underpowered tessellator unit
480M is madly overpriced, too big TDP for small performance increase
470M is a better in price than 480M, better TDP, good performance. But, still bit overpriced IMO, especially comparing to AMD parts.

I am not too money-saving, but I don't want to pay a lot for negligible returns.
I want a new card pretty soon, unless you know of something new/clearly better bound to be released in next weeks.

Thoughts?
Thanks in advance!

 

Go with whatever you want.

Forget Tessellation. Just forget it. Doesn't matter if Nvidia wants to tell you how much better tessellation is on the 460M/480M, the framerate is just too low for actual play.

Lots of people forget DX11 while has tessellation, it's not the main focus. It's only the main focus because Nvidia is shoving it down everyone's throat and every review site. It's like Nvidia trying to make people believe GPU accelerated Video encoding with CUDA is actually good when it's horrible. There is a reason why x264 has no plans at all to use GPGPU or CUDA, none, zero.

DX11 with Shader 5.0, DirectCompute and Multi-threading is what Frostbite 2 engine will be focusing on for their BF3. And in my opinion, you can use DX11 in any game, just turn off tessellation and you should see good performance. Soft shadows etc, and other interesting shader etc. will make use of the other DX11 features.

With HD5870M overclocked, performance between 480M and HD5870M isn't that far apart. So if you want to go with money go with that. IMO skip 480M. If you want Nvidia, go with 470M. Either HD5870M or GTX 470M should do you fine. Either you like Nvidia or you don't.

There haven't been any announcements from either AMD or Nvidia about replacements for the GTX 470M or HD5870M.

 

Tessellation while playing a game comparison. Pretty much makes things look slightly rounder, but when playing, you likely won't notice.

Left: Tessellation off / Right: Tessellation on

 

Thanks, that is a good comparison. Rep+

Are there any other functional advantages of NVidia over ATI or vice versa?

 

We're about a month away from the official announcement of the Mobility 6900. You may want to hold off until then, because it will dominate everything which is currently available.

 

Well, a month till announcement means even more time (two months?) till cards will hit the market, the price is also uncertain.
Also I've read that current (low-end) Mobility 6xxx are simply rebadges of 5xxx generation crystals?

 

The only reason why one would want to go with NV over ATI would be for either the gpu accelerated physx or cuda. For physx, the only game that is changed by which physx method you are using is mirror's edge and those added effects are pointless imho. Now CUDA is pretty useful if you have stuff that use it like media transcoders and the like.

 

In the medium level range of mobile GPUs, ATI clearly champs over NV with the little 5650 powerhouse.

 

Good point about CUDA. Though DX11 DirectCompute makes it somewhat less relevant in the future.

I am not really interested in mid range, I want the best card.

 

i think the 470 or waiting for the ati 6000 series is best. I love cuda...i am ripping 100s of dvds and it saves me so much time and I wonder why ruckus says it sucks. Granted remember you need a program that supports it and there are no good free ones that support it. I got 2-3 external DVD roms up to convert movies lol

 

Just Cause 2 also used Cuda Water effects if you have a Nvidia card.

 

What cuda ripper do you use

 

Yes, it's looking like the low-end 6kM will be 5kM rebrands. The 6800M is probably a 5800M rebrand as well.

It's a gamble to wait. They could release as soon as late Jan., or as late as March/April.