realistic lifespan of 680m

Hello,
I've got a serious question. I'm a console gamer (halo, COD, skyrim), and play indie PC games on my cruddy desktop that is sporting a 4 year old ati radion HD3650.
I'm not really a PCgamer, but i figured most of you guy's are and would give me an honest response.
what is the actual lifespan of a 680m before it won't be able to play games at 30fps?
will the 1300 cuda cores of a 680m give me at least 3 years worth of 1080p gameplay?
based on previous laptop graphics cards, how long before the 680m is complete junk that can't play crap?
Also, i don't understand how graphics cards evolve year after year, will the 680m be a laughing stock next year or do companies like nvidia do incremental increases on GPU power.

 

I honestly would say it should last at least 2-3 years, but it ALL depends on the games you play. Latest and greatest shooters like BF3, etc probably 2 years before you need to start cranking down settings or resolution. IMO 580M/675M is still a pretty powerful card, despite being a 1+ years old, shouldn't be anything to sneeze at (as an example as a "last" generation top tier card).

For me, my R2's 5870M CF are showing their age, but still do almost all my gaming I want, only BF3 I had to turn down to 1680x1050 and mix high/medium settings for it to be 50-60+ FPS.

 

I thought you don't play BF3 anymore? ;O

 

2 years is maximum lifespan.

 

It all depends on your gaming expectations. If you don't mind running games at medium settings and counting 30 FPS as an acceptable framerate, a 680m should roll pretty well for 3-4 years barring a massive ramp-up in graphics quality in the next couple years. There are still people out there running current games on GTX 8800m's from 2007. There comes a time when the part just can't hack it in modern games anymore, but for someone who's willing to sacrifice eye candy and smooth framerates for longevity, you can push a top-tier part pretty far.

 

I'd say typically about 3 years from the date a top end card is released is a realistic expectation.

GTX 285m was from beginning 2009, and it will struggle with any new game at more than low details. GTX 485m is starting to show its age and is 2.5 years old.

 

Hello, Mr. Fox I hope you read this!

I just bought an m18x R2 after being a happy m15x owner for the last 4 years! I ordered the m18x with 8gb RAM, bluray drive, just the standard 3630 ivy bridge processor, just the 7200rpm 750gb (no ssd, but in the future...) and here's what my question is about: I ordered it with a single 680m 2gb.

I was torn between the dual 7970's and a single 680m, but after reading your post about it in another thread, I went with the single 680m. MY QUESTION IS: I've read that you installed the 680's on your setup in sli. If I wanted to do sli 680's in the next year or 2..where in the heck do I find the card to buy? All I can find are the 4gb cards on ebay for $700 !!. I don't really want the 4gb, as it will only use 2gb in sli with my other card. Where can I find the 2gb version? Help me please!


The whole idea of this thing is to be able to play SC2 on ultra with tons of units on screen, because I play a lot of multiplayer. I also mess with BF3 occasionally. In the future I may want to play some graphic intense games..still waiting for Freespace 3...Volition/Interplay are you listening? SHEESH!

 

Agreed.

It also just depends on the evolution of games to be exact. A SLI 485M stills runs games great to be fair.

 

I'd say the environment in which your laptop is will also play a crucial role in the life of the computer itself. If you tend to keep things clean and keep dust off your system, then it'll last longer. You should open it up once every 6 months and clean all of the ducts, fans, etc. and re-paste your GPU's every 12 -18 months to increase the longevity of your CPU and GPU's.

 

You went with a single 680 over 7970 crossfire? Bummer

 

failwheeldrive: did you not read this part of my post?
I was torn between the dual 7970's and a single 680m, but after reading your post about it in another thread, I went with the single 680m.

The 680m clearly has less issues...I could cancel the order (hasn't shipped yet) and reorder with the crossfire 7970's, but I do..not..want..issues..ever!

I mean..clearly you like the 7970 because you have it...

 

I like the 680m too I would own one if my budget were higher

I would prefer dual 7970ms over a single 680 however. Crossfire is substantially more powerful than a single 680m, and I'm not aware of any "issues" with dual 7970ms, especially since they don't use Enduro if I remember correctly.

As for buying a second 680m, I would just go through your reseller to get one. It will be very expensive though.

 

I just gave up on my Gateway with the 8800m. It lasted four years, and could have made it a few more months if the darn thing didn't keep crashing while playing games. I'd expect the 680m to last at least as long. I expect one year on ultra, year two on high, year three-four on medium, year five on low and I should look at a new computer. I play mostly MMOs and that was about what the 8800m did for me depending on the game. For instance, SWTOR was much less demanding than Guild Wars 2. But it still isn't at the point where the 8800m can't play the games if you turn everything to low so you have to decide how much that would bother you. Honestly it could do most of GW2 on medium except for any large scale battles where it would come to halt and you'd watch a slideshow while everyone else killed the dragon.

 

thank you all for your responses. I should give some more info about what i would need. i would be satisfied with 30fps, 900p resolution, HD textures, 2-4x anti-alias.

This is what i'm hearing from a lot of people and is what is really scaring me. i need mobility and i want to get into pc gaming, but why would someone spend $1900 on a 680m laptop to play games on ultra that will be obsolete in 2 years. when they could spend $1000 on a 660m laptop thats can play games on high, that will also be obsolete in 2 years?

is it better to buy the post powerful gaming laptop and make it last as long as you can or is it better to buy budget gaming laptops and buy a new one once it can't play games properly?

Is ultra gaming really needed to get a decent gaming experience?

 

If you're buying a laptop, just get the best thing you can afford. It will have better performance, more features, and will last longer. And no, ultra settings aren't needed for a decent experience. Millions of people are perfectly happy with consoles, and they're sure not anywhere near "ultra."

If you want the best experience then yeah, you gotta max out games.

 

People on here seem to be somewhat obsessed with 1080p and every setting cranked to the max. First of all, at 1080p, antialiasing hardly makes a visible difference. Put it at 2x if you absolutely insist on having it active. For anioscopic filter, 8x and 16x look pretty similar, and you could probably take that down to 4x or 2x as default texture resolutions increase.

Also, I find ridiculous levels of motion blur annoying as well. These things, combined with the fact that 1680x1050 looks great too, lead me to believe that a 680M will last as long as DX9-11 are supported.

Heck, I've also got an old HP with a 1GB DDR3 Mobility Radeon 4650 that can still play games at its native resolution of 1366x768. Honestly, the 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo probably holds back that machine more than the GPU.

I do own a 680M btw, and see no reason to use 8xAA and 16xAF all the time.

 

Don't be ridiculous. The 680M may game at 1080p and max settings for 2 years, but after that it will last at 900p then 720p easily into 4+ years.

When it still plays everything at 1080p, just like my 6970M?

 

For the 680M... it's best to compare it to a GTX 570 on the desktop side.

It can run Crysis on highest settings at 35 FPS solid during high action sequences. There are only a few select laptop GPUs that can equal that performance level.

I'd say that 3 years isn't out of the question. What with the overclocking capabilities of the GPU? Pfft, 3 years is almost guaranteed. My 6970M is plenty powerful now that I've gotten used to it again, but when I had the 7970M, I don't know if I'd want to upgrade past that within two years at the dead minimum. They're scary fast for laptop GPUs.

 

I believe you meant 670.

 

Why do you say that? The 6970m isn't even 2 years old yet.

I'm the first one to say that I don't think you need top end graphics or native resolution. I played LOTS of games on my Dell Vostro 1500 with 8600m GT including Bioshock and Crysis / Warhead at 1280x800 on my 1680x1050 screen and with mix of low/medium detail. But native resolution is ideal and some games at low detail just don't offer the same experience. Some games they look perfectly fine at medium detail.

My desktop GTX 460 struggles at 1080p in BF3 unless I drop settings to mix of high/medium. The slew of upcoming soon to be released games Far Cry 3, Crysis 3, BF4, Dead Space 3, Aliens Colonial Marines, Metro Last Light, and Bioshock Infinite will likely cause issues running at 1080p with the 480m/485m or even the 6970m at medium to high detail.

It depends on the person's level of tolerance for detail, framerate, and whether they need/want native resolution. But if you want to ensure that a GPU lasts you 3-4 years then you need to buy a top end card.

 

If your goal is merely 35-40fps at 1920x1080 and you don't mind dialing down the MSAA, I think it will deliver acceptable performance for several years. There are so many lower end mobile graphics cards that can run most games just fine at 1080p. Even the old hp envy 15 I purchased back in 2009 with AMD 5830m, which is much, much weaker than the 680m, still runs all the latest games at 1080p with most settings maxed, I just need to reduce MSAA or use FXAA instead for some games.

The next gen consoles are going to be based on 64-bit PC architecture, and PC's can already scale graphics settings up or down. Multiplatform next gen games released in 2013 and 2014 aren't suddenly going to become more demanding on PC graphics cards, if anything, they might be better optimized to make use of modern CPUs and more RAM, less reliant on the GPU.

Eventually, however, more and more consumers will adopt 2k and 4k displays, even for laptops, and you might decide to upgrade when you realize you can't use your laptop to run games at native resolution on your 60-inch 4k TV.

 

A single 680M will get you performance that is on par with 580M/675M SLI or 6990M CrossFire. So, very respectable gaming performance, but not a benchmark killer by current standards.

Personally, I think 680M is a better choice than 7970M simply because the AMD product is not consistently good, and neither is their driver support. The quality of AMD driver support is less consistent in a multi-GPU setup than it is with a single AMD GPU. If and when it works properly, 7970M CrossFire is undeniably a very powerful GPU setup. And when it is working perfectly, the product displayed on your screen is not as aesthetically pleasing as NVIDIA. The 7970M is better for GPU computational work than 680M, but if gaming is what rocks your world, NVIDIA is your best choice.

The price of 680M is the deal breaker for most folks that opt for 7970M versus 680M. That should change in the near future if history holds true. NVIDIA is always very expensive when releasing new products, but the price typically drops to roughly the equivalent of AMD's budget-friendly flagship. You're going to have a difficult time finding any 2GB Dell 680M cards anywhere, and if you do the price will be similar to the Clevo 4GB version. You might as well go for the Clevo cards and hang onto your Dell 680M card for warranty purposes. Just buy a new pair of heat sinks from Alienware and leave them attached to the GPUs.

 

Wow I typed a whole response and it logged me out so I lost everything.. awesome.

But I was saying: thank you for your advice on sli parts and where to get them.
Also saying: Just going to take delivery on it, and if prices on the 680 drop, or a new card comes out (680mx?) between now and Dec 25 I'm going to return it (that's the end of my return window) and re-order appropriately.
If the single 680m struggles in Far Cry 3 and I read that the 7970's in crossfire are tearing it up just fine, no brainer return and change. So far I've read the 7970's are having issues with Far Cry 3 though.
I feel it in my veins though, that both these cards have been out since summer, and something BIG is about to land just before x-mas. If it does, I'm returning to get that!

Oh yeah I was also saying that there's no way I could afford 2 4gb 680's off ebay + heatsink/fans from AW to do the sli on my own. That would be like $1200+ on top of the nearly $3g's I just spent on the m18x lol.

 

The 680MX will likely be unavailable because of its power consumption and heat generation, this is why it's inside a desktop - not a laptop. It also doesn't make sense for Alienware to redesign anything with the R2 when the R3 is half a year away, and the new batch of processors about 3 months away.

If for some reason Alienware decides to go through all of this trouble for a few months of sales - also considering the market for this system is already pretty small - it would be a complete waste of money as the 680M is only 15% behind in performance, which can be accounted for when overclocking (another feature the 680MX cannot do without even more power and room to breath)... We are talking serious adjustments all for a couple months of sales. I find it unlikely, but I suppose anything is possible...

You'll be happy with the 680M, don't worry about anything. There's always someone, something better - it's only a matter of time.

 

No the baseline performance is around the level of a GTX 570. The chip itself is based on the GTX 670 though. However the difference between a GX 670 and a GTX 570 is about 75%.

 

What a silly question:
Just reduce the lifespan of your ownership, sell your notebook and buy better technology every year like I do

Shure you lose a little money along the way, but much better with the feeling of a fresh new notebook than a old torned down notebook that you are sick of

 

One thing is that you have to play 1080p with the highest settings.
Another thing is that you can play 1080p with a lot of old GPUs, you just have to lower the graphical goodies, such as MSAA, shadows and stuff like that.
And in many games, you don`t see much difference between highest setting and medium if you play on 1080p...

So if you are a old guy that are afraid of changes and you really like old torned down notebooks, you can use that 680M for a long time...

 

Well, I'm an old guy that likes change (as long as it's good change). Faster and more powerful is my idea of good change. There is no such thing as computer (or motor vehicle) that has too much horsepower.

That being said, a single 680M is going to pack more punch than most mobile GPUs for a long time. Very few laptops have video cards with this kind of horsepower, so today's cutting edge mobile hardware is still going to spank the daylights out of many so-called "gaming laptops" for at least a couple of years. Putting things in perspective, there are a number of brand new "gaming laptops" that are being sold with comparatively anemic video cards.

Using the M17x R2 and M18x R1 as examples that epitomize what it means to be a gaming laptop, even with legacy hardware like 4870M, 5870M, 6970M, and 6990M CrossFire or 580M SLI, both machines still play games better (and have higher benchmark scores) than some of the so called gaming laptops that are being marketed as such today.

 

The other thing to consider is most gaming desktops aren't even as powerful as a laptop with Ivy Bridge and 680m. Like my desktop with GTX 460m and Sandy Bridge i5 quad core performs about half as well as my Sager notebook, and most people even those who play PC games, don't upgrade their hardware to top end.

 

Yeah notebooks have taken a great leap with the latest architectures..

Kinda crazy to think that I have a GTX 570 that can turn in to a GTX 580 with a simple vbios flash...

 

I would say 2 years from right now until the 680m is struggling. With the new consoles coming out next year we are gonna see a pretty huge jump in requirements. Glacier 2 in Hitman: Absolution is a pretty good example. It isn't even truly next-gen, but it is starting to have some of the features like Global Illumination, insane texture sizes, and lots of DX11 effects. Maxed out Hitman takes more than 2 gigs of VRAM and will make a desktop 680 cry. Once games using Unreal 4 and other truly next-gen engines are the norm current cards are gonna be hurting.

As others have said I think about 3 years from release for a top-end card is a reasonable benchmark. The 580m is on track to match that estimate and I would wager the 680m will as well.

 

No problem. I have 4GB

No seriously, looking forward to the games built on the Final Fantasy engine and Unreal 4

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Honestly everyone today is sunk when the next-gen engines hit. Even if you have the vram the bandwidth limit on current cards is going to murder your performance.

That is why even people with the 3 gig desktop 680 cards are having trouble with Hitman, one you start playing with 2.5 gigs of stuff in vram those giant bandwidth numbers start to seem a lot smaller.

Should be a fun couple of years though, bunch of new IPs with the new consoles, sexy new engines, it is gonna be awesome.