The 680m thread where no one talks about it's red competitor.

Just sold my XPS L702X and am looking to buy a new laptop with a 680m.

Any new reviews and analysis would be much appreciated.

 

You may have better luck in the "What notebook should I buy" section.

 

Sorry, should have clarified.

I'm sure on the laptop I want, I would just like to read some further analysis on the 680m.

 

best advice, ALOT of it comes down to what you will be using your system other for than gaming. give WNSIB a go

great gaming card, fairly cool running from what I hear, as well as expensive. Slower in many CUDA Apps than the 580m/675m and even slower yet in OpenCL.

Gaming = good
Pro Apps = BAD!!

 

as far as benches go, the 680m will get you the highest possible numbers. There is about a 300-400 3dmark11 point difference between the typical higher overclock in the 680m vs the card we can't mention in this thread lol....so 6800 vs 7150...the highest I've seen the 7970m get on 3dmark11 is over 7200 (edit: 7200 with tesselation on, i've seen almost 7800 without tess)...while the highest I've seen the 680m get is 7600

As far as fps in games go, it really depends on the game...some games favor amd, some nvidia, so it is best to buy for the game that you are interested in. You should ask which card is better in a certain game and either look it up in reviews or someone here will point you in the right direction

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

and another:

Test: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M im Schenker P702

 

Isn't the 7970m a better choice though?

edit: just messing with you guys

 

both cards are +/- 5% so it sorta depends on your budget and what you're comfortable with buying

EDIT...hahaha, i know you were joking, but i had to answer it anyways lol

 

Alienware Canada would not be shipping any of their laptops with a 680M untill the 19th of July, ..and just a few days ago I was getting impatient. I might just buy / customize an M17X with a 7970M. The $300 dollar cheaper price seem not bad.

I have no problem OC'ing with either card really...

But really getting impatient with the long wait for the 680M.

 

Understood. Thanks so much for your input, I really appreciate it.

I feel the same having waited this long for the 680m in the Clevo, now I just need to pull the trigger and buy the thing.

 

Just now AW.ca will ship both cards not 'till the 20th, .. So I'm going green obviously..

 

I have a NP9150 with a 680M that should come in tomorrow night. I can run some tests for you if you'd like, but I believe there's another thread like that already... I'll edit this post to include it in a minute.

EDIT: Here you go: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...rks-would-you-interested-seeing-gtx-680m.html

 

Apparently the 680M will run even cooler than it seems to be from benchmarks in Clevo. It runs wayyy cooler than the 7970M (I think it was 75 C on furmark with an OC) and even when there was a terrible cooling system in the Clevos. So in a laptop who actually has an efficient cooling system, it should run ridiculously cold.

 

that's great, keep the good news / update coming

 

Do the latest generation Clevos have problems with cooling? I ask because that's what I am planning on purchasing.

 

I have tons of benchmarks incoming... Just if I didn't have a job, kids, nice weather. I might be done by a week ago!

My CPU and GPU so far have not exceeded 75C in gaming and benchmarks.

 

Haha, I feel ya with the job and nice weather part. Don't think I could afford the 680m if I had the kids though.

I look forward to the review!

 

By "problems," what do you mean? They run hotter than people seem to like, getting into the 90s in burn tests like Furmark/Kombuster. The chips are all rated to 110C, but nobody wants it to run that hot. I suspect no one would complain except for the fact that Alienware systems are reporting to run 10-20C cooler under load, albeit in the m17x vs a P150EM.

There is a thread about this though, and it's not difficult to fix yourself, should you desire: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...ected-clevo-solutions-here-please-sticky.html There you go. The main thing though is the foil tape mod, it seems to be doing wonders for people: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...0em-7970m-gpu-cooling-performance-foiled.html

Of course, a brand new laptop should NOT require extensive DIY cooling mods to run cool. I dunno, it's really up to the end user.

 

Sorry, I was just replying to the previous post about the the Clevos having problems with their cooling systems. Wasn't sure if that was the previous generation or what.

 

Well it seems like we have several versions of 680M like we do with the 660M and the 650M etc.

Clevo is without turbo boost, and the Alienware version actually have turbo boost with clocks higher than the Clevo.

Clevo 680M:


Dell 680M:

 

Hmm, that's kind of disappointing since I just bought a Clevo about an hour ago. Oh well.

Thanks for the info Cloudfire.

 

Welcome back Cloud

Dell 680M has less vram but uses extra thermal/power room to have boost clocks. Makes sense to me.

 

That boost really isn't a big deal since they can both max out at 853MHz with stock drivers and overclock.

 

da** xoticpc just pended my order (M18x with SLI 680m) because Alienware doesn't have the 680m yet!

any idea when they will start to ship them?

 

I want to post some OC results, but was hoping to get the vBIOS mod worked out so I could do max OC. But for now may just run with stock OC (853 GPU / 2400 vRAM)

 

And to create more confusion, MSI is doing their own configuration with the 680M too

 

Huh? Perhaps MSI is actually allowing the Turbo Boost as well?
*Fingers-crossed*

 

Doesn't look like it, boost clock is the same as the stock clock, => no turbo boost.

 

lol...well, welcome back from the dead! Things were kinda quiet around here without you

 

The stock clock is 720 MHz (719 MHz, it seems) so I'm not so sure that is an accurate assumption.

According to another, more elaborate, post from Cloud on the bottom of this thread (thanks Cloud!) :
MSI GT60/70 with GTX 680M and Optimus - Page 6
it looks like either MSI have the Turbo Boost on, or they really upped their 680M's clocks.

Either way, that's mainly wishful thinking.

 

Here's what I meant.

Spoiler

Also, MSI's is factory overclocked.

 

Bah, marketing ploy. Unless MSI can reach over 853MHz with regular OC tools, they just bumped the clocks 50MHz to be "faster" than the competition.

 

Oh, I see. Thanks for the clarification, xMAR.

 

So why is 853MHz the highest overclock people are testing? Is it a hardware limitation of some kind? Or is that just the highest stable overclock we've found so far?

Is overvolting an option with the 680M? My 260M was overvolted to 1.05v (from 1.0v) while gaming and gave me no trouble for almost 2.5 years, though I acknowledge that my case may be the exception rather than the rule.

 

Take a look at post #422 here: 680M is OUT! - Page 43

I would post a direct link to the post, but the forum is acting goofy.

 

Thanks man, it was good to do something else for a change

Yeah, as of now it seems that Alienware owners get turbo boost from 719MHz to 758MHz. Clevo owners get the lowest clocked at 719MHz without turbo boost. And MSI get a 680M without turbo boost but is the highest clocked of all, 771 MHz. Its a bit funny actually since MSI notebooks only have one system fan, while the Alienware/Clevo have a dedicated GPU fan.

Thats MSI for you

They did the same with GTX 560M too.

Asus and a bunch of other OEMs 560M


MSI 560M

 

Oh my.

I am feeling better about my decision to stay green, though I don't know if overvolting is worth the risk. This monster already outperforms a stock desktop GTX 570 at stock clocks and voltage.

 

OC'ing the 680M (core and memory) and staying stable with grounded temps is what we're interested.

Usually a GTX-M GPU that could stay stable at a 120+ MHZ core (plus..) and memory of 100-500 MHZ (plus from stock) is pretty good.

I'm hoping to have an M17X with a GTX 680M sometime Aug..

 

This is getting awesome I hope MSI shows their real power, I would love to see some good 15" competition

 

I don't think MSI will be able to do any better than others without overvolting, which is highly unlikely.

 

HT what did you clock your clevo 680M core/mem to? Hopefully we can compare yours with Widezu's Dell 680M.

I would pick up a 680M about november, just wondering which vendor should I go with because I would like to OC as high as possible.

Also, voltage control, have anybody figured out a BIOS mod for either the Dell/Clevo?

 

widezu likes to push the envelope as to how far something can be pushed...so his won't be a good 680m to compare to lol...

i bet he scores similarly to the one other maxxed overclocked, with highest vbios profile score that i've seen...~7600 3dmark11's

 

For some reason my machines always seem to drop off in performance when I go past a certain clock. I'll edit this post with images once this last test finishes so you guys can see what I mean.

As you can see, after 1200 memory clock, the card seems to become unstable, or for some reason not perform correctly. It doesn't keep up the proper clocks at 1400MHz memory. I thought perhaps my performance loss was due to the graphics switching, as I hadn't specified 3DMark 11 to use only Nvidia's GPU.

I am only allowed 6 attachments, but after manually telling Nvidia Control Panel to only use the Nvidia GPU for 3DMark 11, this is what happened at 1150MHz memory: http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll312/xX_Ace_of_Spades_Xx/cb0e76d3.jpg

Something is awry here, and I intend to find out what.

I will continue to edit this post until another is made in this thread. I have confirmed that forcing use of Nvidia GPU for 3DMark 11 on a Sager NP9150 for some reason or another does NOT work as intended. Here is the score again at stock clocks: http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll312/xX_Ace_of_Spades_Xx/a214c0c7.jpg

 

you are running out of juice...that's the issue. You need more voltage to sustain the higher clocks...the system will try to accomodate your OC but can't so reverts to lower utilization/clocks

plus, with your specific card, maybe 1150 vram is too high regardless of voltage. Nvidia rates the 680m at 900mhz vram...you probably have 1 ghz rated ram for safety and 1150 is too high

 

Slick it's plugged in, how can I get any more voltage? Or do you mean overvolting the card? Either way, look again you'll see I redid stock clocks forcing Nvidia.

I am rather new to overclocking, so was the one run I had at 1200MHz video RAM likely just a fluke that it could hold out that long? I have restarted the computer and set 3DMark 11 back to picking which GPU to use. I'm going to do a run at stock and see if I am still in the ~6100 neighborhood and then try 1GHz RAM again.

 

hackness didnt need to overvolt his to get a stable max overclock if I remember right.

It looks like your GPU is throttling like crazy

 

The card seems to be working correctly again starting from stock clocks. I'm currently testing the max core and 1GHz memory. If this is stable I'll step the memory up 50MHz at a time. The core doesn't seem to be an issue. If it is though, 800MHz down from 854MHz isn't that large a drop.

I attached my retries, again allowing Optimus to pick which GPU to use (it's always picking Nvidia, but this seemed linked to the throttling problem). 854/1000/854 performed remarkably well, scoring 7020 points.

The 1050MHz memory run finished and is now attached. 3DMark 11's reporting didn't change, so I suspect Slickdude is right at this is about as well as my card can do. I'll put the memory back to 1000MHz and call it a day. There's Steam sales to partake of!

 

7k 3dmark11 is nothing to sneeze at...just remember, every card is different and you have to look at your specs to see what you can and cannot do. the 680m's have rated 900mhz vram...you are running it at 1ghz which is a better than 10% OC over spec...perhaps that's the best your card can do? If you ever have the heatsink off, look at your ram modules to see what kind of ram they put on your card. if its rated at 900mhz, then you are doing ok.

And my post earlier, i was referring to overvolting. If you want to go higher than your 7020 3dmark11 score, you'll need more juice. 7k looks like what your card (and i suspect most 680m's) will do on stock voltage

 

What's the stock "extra" voltage on the GTX 680M? And how high have people overvolted theirs? I believe my stock "extra" voltage was around 1.0v on my 260M, which I pushed to 1.05v for extra performance. The card only started failing after 2 years, at which point I underclocked and undervolted (even when compared to stock) the card. That's where I am now, actually.

 

The MSi DOES come factory overclocked, it's a part of the S-Bar feature (not available in barebones like 16F3) named "Turbo Drive Engine" it basically overclocks the graphics card by a very little fraction from the stock clocks

 

the highest I've seen on a 680m is 1.037v...this is pretty high and I don't think it is sustainable over the long term...this allowed for a massive 1ghz\1.2ghz overclock and 7600 3dmark11's

but again, i don't think it is sustainable over any length of time. If you run 1.037v 24/7, you might as well have the warranty service number ready...because you will need to call it eventually

Tyranids' 7k is a more realistic expectation with these cards