675MX or just another £14 for the 7970m with it's utilization issues........

The price difference between the 675MX and 7970m is just £14 right now, so lets just say they are the same price....

the 7970m is apparently much faster, but it seems its drivers have to be optimised for each game, although some work fine of course (from reading other threads).

Considering AMD are not going to continuously update the 7970m driver (PER game!) once it's superseded, I suspect the benchmarks may slip in years to come vs. the 675's more consistent results, so is the 675mx the better option here over the potentially temporarily high bench marks of the 7970m??

What's your opinions?

 

The latest drivers seem to have fixed most problems. I'd suggest looking up your specific games and seeing if they are working good under they latest drivers. If so the 7970M is the way to go as it does have a nice step up in performance over the 675MX.

 

I don't have a great understanding of drivers, but from what I gathered, updates addressed issues per-game almost?? So while it's mostly working now, will new games in the future, say 2-3 years, down the line also be working and achieving 90% plus utilasation?? (where platform&thermal limits allow),

Or is there a chance it will slip back in to having utilisation issues once it's superseded and not at the forefront of AMD's attention??

 

Honestly I could not recommend ANYONE to purchase a 7970m in an Enduro Laptop.....

I am actually getting rid of my P150EM largely due to the issues I have experienced over the past year with the 7970m "Early adopter".

The Enduro issues will never be fixed, as every new game that comes out required a driver update to function properly "Crysis 3, Bioshock, etc."

Also what I am really sick of is the fact that I can't just turn down the graphics to get a better FPS, all it does is drop the utilization of my card. I actually prefer playing Bioshock on a 660m, because I can just drop the settings to medium and have 60+ FPS with NO blips....

1) Want the best single mobile video card for the money, 680m is your best bet. Anyone who is used both cards on an Enduro laptop will not disagree.

2) Can't afford a 680m, I would either wait to purchase a laptop or go with the 675 MX.

3) If you purchase a 7970m, you are not getting a bang for buck video card. You are sacraficing consistentcy & reliability for good performance on some titles.... at some times..... that's the best way I can describe it.

 

I have yet to have performance issues with the current titles I play. Most DX11 or DX10 games play with little to no performance issues. Some specific DX9 titles have a lot of performance issues. My guess is future games will work just fine. Aditionally, since the new 8000m series card also use Enduro and GNC, I expect we will continue to get better drivers.

I for one would go with the 7970m. I honestly doubt that the 675mx will be capable of playing games, say, year and a half from now, adequately.

Of course if you can choose the 680m... Then it's a no brainer .

 

This +1.. no problems playing Cryis 3, FC3, TR, DMC, Bioshock Infinite & Dishonoured on my 7970.

Batman Arkham City is sometimes a bit choppy in Dx11 but I think thats a overall problem rather than specifc card. I would have absolutely no hesitation getting this card all over again.

 

I would wholeheartedly disagree with this guys statement. I'm running on the most recent official drivers from AMD and have easily maxed most of the recent games which include Farcry 3, Tomb Raider, Sleeping Dogs, and Guildwars 2, all of these play very fluidly and without any major issues. Despite what the havoc cryers would have you believe the 7970m is for the most part functioning well, there is still a bit of work to do on GCN but things are progressing and we should see even more improvement in the coming year.

Unless you are an overclock fiend the 7970m is is the better purchase dollar for dollar, anyone that would argue that is either a disgruntled customer or not correctly informed. That being said when you compare it to the 675mx then thing start to become even more clear, the performance gap between the 2 cards is huge, they aren't even on the same playing field in terms of power.

 

Agreed, and I'm not known for being a very generous Clevo reviewer I play WoW, SC2, Dota 2, Skyrim, and CS source. There's still improvement to be made on some titles, but generally speaking I don't see significant utilization dips if ever anymore. CS source as weird tearing and the walls are all transparent (they look transparent but don't actually show you who's behind the wall, that's would've been an awesome accidental wallhack ) but I don't care since I can probably fix with some tweaks.

I don't think it's realistic to compare the 675MX to the 7970M at this point in time. They're not even in the same league. Like others have mentioned, the next 8000M series will be GCN architecture as well, so drivers will benefit the 7000M series equally. I'd go for the 7970M.

Would be nice if someone could put this point to rest once and for all by testing the two cards in identical systems and showing us if the 675M (or MX) can outperform the 7970M in any title. Would be a nice way to embarrass AMD into better drivers too

 

I still get points of underutilization in games (borderlands2, hitman, tomb raider crysis2 and 3). Enduro is not fixed 100%.
The games are still playable.... so long as you rush past the parts of underutilization. ( in general, these are large open areas with lots of activity going on)
Many issues have been fixed, but if you're nitpicky like me, the few points of underutilization will stick in your memory.
The 7970m is the better card no doubt, but if you think there is any chance you would upgrade from 675 to 680m later on.... take it.
You cannot switch from 7970m to 680m on the same machine later on.

I am not completely happy with my 7970m despite it still being able to run games properly.

While I was choosing my laptop back in September 2012, I was thinking:
"AMD has identified the issue, underutilization is going to get fixed,
and there is progress being shown. The 7970m will be worth the purchase"
But like I said, its not completely fixed, and AMD has released fixes per game, not overall improvements. Actually it seems like AMD barely cares about its mobile users and Enduro.

On paper, 7970m is much better compared to 675mx, but its much different when you OWN the 7970m and actually start PLAYING the games and wish you had gone with Nvidia for the more consistent results and better drivers.
If I could go back in time, I would have chosen Nvidias 680m.

 

Sure you can.

The 680M is faster and has better drivers thus far than the 7970M, but the OP's question was about the 675MX, can you demonstrate for us how the 675MX performs better on X or Y titles consistently, or even close to the 7970M fps rates with the same settings? I'm not saying it's impossible, just that it hasn't been demonstrated so we shouldn't treat it like a given.

 

What? Where did you get this information from, there is nothing preventing you from switching from the 7970 to 680? This is what I'm talking about, there are so many people out that just don't have a clue what is going on with their machine, they think something is wrong when nothing actually is or do an improper driver update than automatically blame their respective gpu...........

As it stands the "under utilization" issue has been reduced to sub ~5% performance loss in the rare game that is actually effected by it. Also, no AMD is not fixing it per game, if you read the change logs in the past few driver updates you'll notice that the fixes are for the whole family, not individual games.

 

It's more an issue hitting older titles as a rule now, with the latest DX11 titles at 1080p its not having the same sort of impact.

 

Guys, again with the underutilization thing? I don't mean to sound aggressive or anything, but I think we need to straighten some things out.

In a game you will not get constant 100% usage of the GPU. That is for certain. Even with a 680m, in some games it will dip to 80% or bellow even. Don't expect to have a beast of a card and not have the FPS dip here and there now and then. Heck, try running games with the HD4000. You expect to see it running a full 100%? Don't kid yourselves.

Yes it is true that the 7970m HAS "underutilization" issues. Meaning that there are some bottlenecks that should not be as sever as they are. However, for a great part, this problem has been minimized. The proof is that the issues that are left are only specific titles, most of them quite old. People talk about "game-specific" drivers being released. Yes, those are the beta drivers. And yes, nvidia does the same thing. What about it? I could run Crysis 3, albeit not as well as now, with the 12.11p drivers. It is natural to have further optimized drivers. And that's what we 7970m users have been getting (again, very very late into the game).

Bottom line is, 7970m doesn't perform good on specific titles and "bad" by default. It performs good on default, and "badly" on specific titles (most notably, DX9 games). I advise you to check out what games you currently play on youtube on a Enduro-enabled 7970m and see how they pan out. Because when one says that they have underutilization on games such as borderlands2, hitman, tomb raider crysis2 and 3, it almost sounds like they were unplayable, or would play much better on a 675mx. They wouldn't (maybe bordelands2 cause of PhysX, buuuut...).

TL;DR - Go to youtube and check the performance of both cards on the games you play. Remember to look for Enduro-enabled laptops (muxless setups) that use the 7970m. Also keep in mind that some games may be more CPU heavy than others.

 

Out of curiosity, where in Borderlands 2 did you get under utilization? I've played through several times on max settings, except for AA (not necessary on 15" 1080p) or physx and I've never had any significant drops in fps anywhere in the game.

 

Just to clarify!

I do not expect the 675 to be on par with the 7970m, however notebookchecks long list of bench marks seem to suggest (with varying CPU&platform performance being a big factor considered!) that at best the 7970m is pulling a 20% lead on the 675mx best results - with ease! and at WORST the 7970m is equal. So I think the extra £14 is money well spent, worst case scenario - its equal "ish" on 90% of titles (especially new ones, slower on old ones) best case scenario its >20% faster :thumbsup:

I know alot of you are saying go for the 680m, etc. just to clarify the 7970m is £14 more than the 675mx so they can be considered the same!

I've already gone up £90 from the 670 to 675 - the benefits are good and paying just over £100 to stretch to the 7970m seems to make sense now we've been talking - £100 ish gives a great boost to average overall GPU power.

- the GTX 680m is £368 more than the 670 so we really cannot suggest it - it's not a realistic option and checking notebookcheck's WIDE array of accurate and inaccurate bench's its seems to only hold an average of no more than 10-15% over a 1/4 of the price 7970m! <-- I think I'm really representing the "value for money" market when I say increasing the cost of the GPU upgrade by 4 times for such a small benefit over a 7970m is to much for my heart and my head - sure it would be nice, but I don't have lots of money so I must be careful - hence why I don't go buying Intel's Extreme range of processors.

I've got some great feedback, so thanks to all who leaned to and away from the AMD card,

opinions aren't facts and my summary is my opinion, I'm not challenging anyone from team green or team red here, its a rough observation with loose accuracy and based on benchmarks taken on various different platforms with random drivers! I prefer this "inaccurate" bench to the "perfect lab condition" bench marks - for a broader real world idea of what might go right, and what might go wrong.

 

I think that there should be a concerted effort (like when the issue first arose) to document any underutilization post 13.1 instead of forum bickering with people who -with all due respect- might not even know what a driver is.

I personally play older titles as well, like WoW (which is DX11 thanks to subsequent expansions and engine upgrades) and I see underutilization very rarely (As in, on some bosses, with certain classes in the raid with certain spell effects), and then I suddenly see fps drop to 20 from 60+ and an Alt-tab confirms that the GPU usage is fibrillating, but like I said, that is quite rare that it's somewhat of an amusing oddity rather than a gripe. When I first played WoW on the stock drivers I NEVER saw anything above 40 fps except in very closed spaces and the underutilization was a constant issue. I'm the furthest from a Clevo/Sager fanboy as many know, so I genuinely think that the people who still complain about underutilization should do the leg work and document/troubleshoot before they come here and make it look like the issue is still there in any shape resembling what it used to be.

 

^ Liked and mostly agree, it's easy to take time to moan about something that doesn't work, its not so beneficial stopping the enjoyment to tell people everything is working correctly and I feel this alone makes it near impossible to gauge situations, as a general rule, I count every plus as 10, and every moan as 1 when adding up opinions

I think some people don't know how to document and trouble shoot, there are alot of gamers that need help = and they may not even know it yet!! I had a mate who'd not even realised his dGPU hadn't been kicking in, he'd been using the HD4000.......

It's easy to call them fools but they are simply not as experienced with PC's and web searching as others. Its the 21st century, web and forum searching is a life skill !!!!!!!!!

 

I am sorry, but it blows me away how disconnected some people are from reality regarding what we should expect as a consumer. I consider myself an above average PC user, and after the past 9 months with the 7970m I am complete fed up. Reinstalling drivers multiple times, reinstalling my OS, having to search from drivers in other websites aside from the manufacturer of my laptop or the card itself.... This is all UN-ACCEPTABLE in my mind, and in the mind of the average consumer.

I am not disputing that if your willing to live with the driver short falls that the 7970m is the best bang for buck mobile graphics card on the market.... But I think it's just CRAZY that we are flaming people for complaining about all these problems.... we should be complaining the support ATI provided us consumers of the 7970m is a COMPLETE joke. If we treated customers like that in my industry we would be out of business.

 

I don't wish to contradict myself or turn in to a "yes man" but I'm not flaming people for complaining I was "mostly agreeing" and I think NeoCzar is flaming people who are not doing the research. - and was trying to defend people (not from anyone in particular) who like me have little interest in the 7970m and just wanted to ask a quick question thats already been debated for months and months and so there is SO MUCH data I can't read it all.

re-installing drivers, messing about - modifying .INF files, the oldschool days of ATI mobility modder...... it's all par for the course when it comes to laptops and gaming - add this to an issue like the 7970m has had, and its really going to p!$$ people off.

And your right it's not acceptable - the MXM standard was supposed to be standardizing laptops and bringing them inline with desktops - work in progress - with more backwards steps that forwards sadly, but I do think from what I read in the page after page of 7970m issues, driver releases over time and the opinions voiced here, I think ATI have been making an effort to fix the issues with relative success, although not perfect, they must put time and research into developing the next gen chip, while learning from the mistakes of this one so as a business in order to go forward, they MUST fix the mistakes - or they will just make them again in the next release and I find that unlikely (although not impossible) - the end result, the bottom line - they are there to take our money, and put it in their pocket, its sad, but that's life - it's a fine line between theft and sale's these days and it's getting annoying in some cases, it seems the only thing keeping the quality and efforts up & stopping the consumers from getting robbed completely is company reputation!

 

Ok,

I'm about to drop the cash on the P150EM with a 7970m to keep my W110ER company and for some future cooler development (once I finish the W110ER chipset blocks)

- worried a little about utilization but I think the recent efforts of AMD has resolved this (mostly!) and at worst 95% of the time it will be EQUAL to the 675mx

- I will be disappointed when Project Shield comes out and I can't use it with my AMD card, but I'm changing to Haswell Q3 2013 so I might switch back to Nvidia then depending on Project Shield feedback.

Thanks for your feedback guys,

 

Owning the 7970m is not just dealing with underutilization and Enduro, its also entering a bad marriage with AMD.

As said above, installing new drivers have given myself and others headaches. I get the feeling that AMD does not seem to care about its mobile users either. Most of the past updates have been crossfire fixes. Heck, the last update broke Enduro, they didn't release a separate package for Enduro users until a day later, so it felt like an afterthought.

I've reported stuff in feedbacks, but I don't see any changes( Specifically, Hitman absolution and Tomb raider. )

If you expect to be gaming in ONLY the more popular titles, which are the fixes and optimizations AMD will target, then go ahead. I just hate to see another person burned by Red.

Also, moving to Windows 8 eliminated my installation troubles.

 

Their trouble seems to be market penetration PC platform, for whatever reason (albeit enthusiasts on a budget). Ironically, next gen game systems are all using AMD GPUs. I believe the Nintendo Gamecube and Wii both used AMD as well.

 

Yes Nvidia is now out of the console game completely, which is part of the reason they will be doing a big PC gaming push. AMD needs device wins.

 

They sure do.

 

I could have SWORN I replied somewhere in here. O_O. My memory is fading fast, or I'm being moderated... *shifts eyes left and right*

Anyway, I'm very afraid for the current trend with nVidia being 100% out of the console market with the way games like to be developed console first. AMD-loving titles get HUGE amounts of frame improvements over similarly powered nVidia cards a lot of the time, sometimes up to even 20fps. nVidia does push for driver updates and optimizations a lot, but it's a lot of work on them, and buying a title to find out that because you bought those SLI 680s you can't run the game that just midnight released on steam... well it's not pretty. *glares at hitman absolution*

Either way, it'll be an... interesting... next 5 years in gaming. There's a good few current games that require SLI desktop cards to get 60fps at 1080p maxed out, far less with recording and livestreaming which are so popular. I think that's just ridiculous really. AMD'll have lots of optimization bias due to Xbox/WiiU/PS4 and nVidia'll get people who either flat out love nVidia or want to use PhysX, which is already so rare. =(.

 

That's what I was thinking too, but then I wondered why NVidia didn't want anything to do with console gaming in the coming gen.

Naturally, I'm assuming the worst: they don't think it will be profitable for whatever reason.

 

I do not think you have anything to worry about. If anything, Nvidia has always been very good from a drivers and optimization point of view. Atleast better than ATI =). I say this not as a fanboy of either side. I have used cards from both companies and am currently getting the 7970m for my new p170em. The performance gain was too much to miss out on.

However, I would have been more alarmed had AMD been out of the console race, that would have made their already slow driver support even slower lol.

 

They have been getting some of the better guys back so hopefully they turn it around and offer some compelling chips, we need competition back in their areas.

 

It's interesting to hear that Nvidia is out of the console industry. Probably concentrating on the mobile cell/tablet industry instead.

Google a little bit and it's also very interesting to see the AMD got the contract for PS4 and possibly the next gen Xbox as well. May explain why the lack of support for laptops.

 

It's also good for us, 7970M users, that PS4 and XBOX 720 will be using a graphic card that's based on 7970M so maybe games will be well optimised for us since similar hardware

 

Nvidia is out of the console market becuase they burned their bridges with sony and microsoft big time.

 

I suppose. But it sounded like they wanted to do so. They acted like the PS3 was a failure money-wise. Which some people may agree to. Sony weren't as ready for a heavily-online console like MS was, even though they came out last, and their machine was often relegated to "I just have one for exclusives" by people with money and "It's free to use, why would I pay for Xbox?" by people with less money. All of these according to what I HEAR people saying, mind you. Not my own opinions with those quotes.

 

70-77 million units for the ps3 vs 75-80 million for the XBOX 360, if you can't make money off that number of units, you really need to examine yourselves.

 

Sympathies go out to them after what happened earlier this year. So yeah, let's hope whomever they're bringing back proves conducive and viable.

AMD just announced not so long ago their entrance into the mobile form factor market. But yeah, a lot of tablets out there utilize NVidia's Tegra GPU.

 

Some info on that:

AnandTech | The King is Back: Raja Koduri Leaves Apple, Returns to AMD

 

7970m will be on order.... I've noticed the 7970m beats the GTX680m in loads of titles (reading the "reassessment by notebookcheck) but in some nvidia optimised titles Nvidia really did BLAST ahead with double the performance of the 7970m but the 7970m was still pulling 60-100+ fps at 1080 on high, so excluding these occasional results the GTX680m would probably loose it's average 5% lead over the 7970m.

I think what can be said is AMD clearly have some drivers issues from time to time, and they can really cause issues, and that's where forums like this really come in to their own, hundered, maybe thousands of people must wind up here to "fix" there issues or educate themselves - what I will say to those people, is get registered, and hit the "Like" button, show your appreciation - as some of the guys really make solving your issues easier - even if it's just finding out whats wrong, at least you know something



Off topic
Nvidia chips are really expensive (I'm not disputing performance, its hard to ignore such obvious advances), like Meaker said if you can't make money with those sorts of units sold somethings wrong,

Off topic
Console were sold at a loss in the beginning, and as the manufacturing processes improve, lithography changes, heat and power consumption comes down, cost of the general build gets cheaper and finally money is made on the consoles themselves, by which point everyone's already asking questions about why they're so far behind the PC platform.
I feel the new console are stepping in at this "mid point" where the technology is cheap to make, chips are cheap, heat isn't a problem etc. and not to far in the future the wider "fanboy" market will start wanting another new console, and will be glad to see further performance increases, and the wallets come out! Developers have "enough" to work with, and them to will be glad to see the back of the upcoming consoles and again no doubt they will be more affordable than "cutting edge" - If you really want to be cutting edge, you wouldn't have a console to start with so it makes no sense at all having all this wild cutting edge and expensive tech, also given that the PS3 has proved how much can be done with dwindling performance.

further off topic
AMD have always had great performance against cost IMO - they where a good choice from a business sense, and I believe AMD can easily afford to give these chips away below cost value, as now games will be developed on the AMD platform the next 5 years should see them taking performance boosts in benchmarks on the desktop platform.

waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off topic
And my statement to all those complaining that their new ps4 wont be powerfull enough or fast enough, it never was!, the RSX was cutting edge for about 6-12 months just like rest of the high end gpus

pshhhh we're so far off topic this could be a different thread lol.... can we get this stuff moved...

 

Congratulations on your purchase. Truth is that 680m is not that much more powerful than the 7970m. In fact, I think it's about a 60 / 40 split in terms of performance in favor to Nvidia. Adding the factor of cost, the edge will definitely go to 7970m. Factoring Enduro into the equation, I'm not too sure about that anymore. Well, I have not been updating myself with this issue, so that may not be a problem anymore. You already know about the utilization issues with Enduro, so there isn't a need to go down that road.

Have fun and enjoy your purchase