Fire Pro 7820 versus Nvidia 2800M GPU....

Hi,

I was going to choose a 8740w with the Nvidia 2800M GPU, until I read up on the ATI GPU. The FirePro seems more capable and more power efficient 50W versus Nvidia's 75w. Does this power consumption difference have any noticeable impact on battery life? Upto 3.5hours is quoted for all models.

Also is the Nvidia likely to heat the laptop more thus causing the fans to run more?

Thanks,

Sam

 

M7820 is more capable in general tasks, benchmarks and gaming, the FX2800M is better in PRO applications.
Power consumption is similar (AMD specifies 50W only for the die, it's close to 75W totally).
Battery life will be similar.
Fans will be more audible with the FirePro due to GDDR5 which runs rather hot.

 

Oh this is very useful. Since I do not game much and prefer the GPU for Video Editing and PhotoEditing help and also want my laptop to be as quiet as possible then the Nvidia seems to be the better the GPU of choice for me.

What is it about the Nvidia GPU that makes it more suitable for PRO use? Is it the CUDA, OpenGL or what support?

Any views on how good the Nvidia is at supporting multiple monitors? I guess it can support at least 2? I know the FirePro has something special for this, Eyefinity I think?

A big thank you for this help,

Sam

 

Personally, I think 2800M is a bit old and too expensive.
I'd go for the FirePro or FX5000M (insane price )
Another thought regarding the fan noise. Most of it stems from CPU anyway.
So, if you get the FX2800M+i7-740QM, the fan may still be quite audible due to the fact that i7 quads run very hot.

Hope this helps.

 

Firepro can only go 5 monitors.

Juniper only has support for Eyefinity5
Broadway, as a result, only has support for upto 5.

 

well as an owner of the 2800M - well i may be the only one on the forum

i can tell you this.

The temps for the 2800M even doing a full GPU render in 3ds max don't go above 75c - which isn't enough for the machine to get up to full fan speed (i usually sit on about 67c on gpu intensive things)

the cpu on max load runs at about 85 tops. (it was 28 in the room though)

with an SSD just browsing or doing 3d / video work - before you do grunt rendering, the machine is silent. the air conditioner the other side of the office (18metres) away is louder than this machine.

when in batt save mode i get a life of about 3.1hours

the 2800m downclocks to 200/120 (gpu/mem) when the card isn't doing anything, and sits on about 40c.

it may be old, but the old card is still quite punchy, and with the new bios update, a few of the issues on adobe cs5 are fixed.

hope that helps you,



oh as for monitors... it supports 3 via the displayport. + vga +edid (laptop screen)

I've only had 3 running at once. two on displayport + vga to a projector worked fine for me.

 

Hi All,

Really interesting posts and thanks for the "experience" post that you made with your 2800M. You do raise a very interesting question with your setup and that is I note that you seem to be upgrading bits like the CPU and the GPU. SO my question is how easy is it to upgrade the CPU and GPU. I am thinking of going for the WD938ET version which has an i5 540M with the 2800M which is available under the "HP Renew" programme so I can get it at a good price. However if I am able to upgrade bits over time then that would be superb. I get the sort of feeling that this laptop is good for this.

so:

1) CPU Upgrade potential (ie from i5 540M to say i7 740M in time)
2) GPU upgrade potential

Sorry if slightly bending the thread, but this is flexibility would also be most useful.

Cheers,

Sam

 

Interesting comment about the CPU. I am not sure that I need to fastest of the fastest since I will be doing s/w development work and not rendering all the time so probably going for the i5 540M over the i7 740M may not be a bad idea after all!! With regard to the price the "HP Renew" model that is available to me only has the 2800M and cost £1400 for the WD938ET which I believe is a good price for the package. Of course I can pay 1600, 2000, 3000... but.... do I need to or can I afford to. Also I believe one can more easily upgrade the 8740w than most laptops....????

Cheers,

Sam

 

1. I think it is impossible because of the different motherboards

2. GPU should be easier to upgrade but you may need different cooling system, too and only what is in the program (FX 2800M, FX 3800, 5000M and M7820) because others are not supported by the BIOS



And isn't the 560M (available soon for pre configured 8740w) or the 580M (not available for the 8740w now?) faster than the 740M and running less hot? OK, only half the cores but not many applications are using all cores anyway...



And £1400 for the WD938ET seems to be a fair price (not many refurbished models are available anyway )

 

Thanks for this. Actually this is sold "as new" as part of the "HP Renew" scheme so the warranty is the same. I will also add the same 3 year next day business warranty for about £60.

Interesting point about your view that i5s could be a good way to go since they run less hot. Also I have seen that they are not that less powerful and as you say a lot of S/W cannot run 4 cores anyway although I guess those that can, would make use of the 4 thread hyperthreading feature with the i5.

I am slightly disappointed in your belief that I may have lots of trouble in upgrading the CPU and GPU. I will have to check this out.

Thanks,

Sam

 

here is a nice overview about CPUs and Benchmarks

Mobile Processors - Benchmarklist - Notebookcheck.net Tech

 

thanks for this. Just seen my desktop core 3 quad Q6600 at 38 as opposed to the i5 540m at 25, and I think that machine goes quick.... so no probs