680m and 7970m performance on a Clevo P150EM?

I am planning to get a Sager NP9150/Clevo P150EM. I've been going back and forth for months deciding on whether to get the 7970m or the 680m. I realize that these cards may perform differently on other machines, so if any of you who have either card could tell me about your experience, that would be great. I've been lurking the forums for a long time, and I've equal amounts of praise for the cards, but also heard more issues for the 7970m, namely driver issues and problems in specific games.
I play games like Far Cry 3, Skyrim, and Borderlands 2 on my PC, and two of these three games are reported to have annoying to severe issues on the 7970m.
Hustady @XoticPC has told me that the latest drivers have gotten rid of a problem with switching from the 7970m to the Integrated Intel HD 4000 Graphics, but I'm still hearing about issues in GPU Utilization, strange stuttering despite high FPS, and just plain bad driver support.

However, I've only heard good things about the 680m, aside from the cost, which I can afford.
As a person who has an LG Notebook (Xnote P430) with a 520m fitted in, I've had experience with Nvidia. I was stupid when I bought that laptop - I knew nothing about tech - but I've downloaded their drivers and the support seems pretty good. But I'm wondering if I will ever need PhysX in the games I play - I won't need 3D.

I've watched a video review on the Sager NP9150 from XoticPC, who I'm planning to buy this machine from, but I've talked with their support staff on the live chat, and they said that the drivers have come a long way, and perform similarly with similar battery life, temps, and noise. Buying the 7970m saves me 200 bucks, so if you can just tell me what your input is, that would be great.

 

In those titles, my 7970m presents the following issues:
- Skyrim:
- Micro-stuttering
- Weird shadows (fixed with recent drivers)
- Borderlads:
- No issues aside from the fact that setting physx to high causes the game to run poorly in CPU intensive fights
- Far Cry 3
- Dx 9 allows you to play the game maxxed out
- Dx 11 will render weird gray/black blocks in some rare situations (thought I hadn't this issue)

However, aside from Assassin's Creed 3 I find most issues to be tolerable (Far Cry DX11 issue is the exception, very serious mistake). I would advise buying the 7970m and either saving money for next gen or buying better stuff (ram, ssds, the likes). I have yet to have a serious problem with my 7970m and I consider myself a hardcore gamer, CG programmer and modeler. But if you'd rather have peace of mind and not thing "Arrg, what could have been had I chosen the 680m", go for it!

 

I've heard a LOT about the Far Cry 3 DX11 Issue. It's really a thorn in many peoples' sides. I tend to like all my graphics settings to Max in games (maybe uncheck the AAliasing), and being the dashing heroic idiot I am, I tend to get into a lot of CPU Intensive fights. So that might be an issue. But I'll see what other people have to say about the 680m, you seem to put in a good word for it.

 

Think about it this way. 7970m has a few "cons". The 680m only has one : price. If that isn't an issue for you, don't turn it into one. In a nutshell, 7970m = quality/price and the 680m = quality . They are both "equally" powerful (680m overclocked has a LOT of potential over the 7970m stock). Were you considering a p370, I'd say go for the 7970m. It sure has improved with recent drivers, but still isn't quite there yet. Again, I've no problems with it (apart from the ocasional glitch as described in my previous post), and I, personally would rather pay for the 7970m in your situation and spend or keep the extra 300 bucks. But then again, I'm not you, and we do have different needs and possibilites ^^. I do think most people here in the forum will more or less agree with my advice. Ask around! Cheers!

 

Fwiw, I opted to go for the 9370 with a 7970m over the 9170 to avoid enduro problems.

 

Even with the enduro problems,which aren't really even noticeable to begin with, I find the 7970 on the 150EM to be a great purchase. There's is nothing comparable to it in the $1400 price range.........however if you add in the 680 it is now getting into alienware or MSI (questionable build quality/incomparable sound) territory which makes things a bit more difficult to decide on.

 

I'm interested in overclocking with MSI Afterburner, but I've heard that even a change of 1 Mhz in the 7970m completely derails its stability. Is that true?

 

as mentioned as cost isnt a issue its the 680 all the way mate

no issue with any game yet including blops 2/far cry 3/battlefield 3/crysis 2 & 3 beta

only time i get high readings and thats only on my cpu is when i run intel extreme tuning.

you can find some benchmark results in my sig below which will have results from nvidia and ati posted by members.

 

While performance between the two is pretty comparable, the 680m is still the reigning champ (even if only slightly). But for the cost to performance ratio, the 7970m is the better value. As for the driver issues, the 7970m has come a long way with the Enduro problematic drivers; still, the 680m and Optimus are closer to working flawlessly than the 7970m is.

 

I was originally gonna go for the 7970m but after reading the nvidia graphic card has a smoother experience (not only in terms of the driver issue etc but the overall smoothness of the game running), I decided to go for 680m. And god damn, 680m is so damn powerful, it can run far cry 3 at max graphics which blew my mind lol
I need my game to have smooth 'feeling' because I play starcraft 2 and I can't afford any weird feeling

 

It's very simple, if you are willing to spend a large amount of cash and have no time to sit down and look for help on forums to troubleshoot problems, GTX 680M is no doubt the best choice.

 

Okay, I've decided on the Nvidia 680M. Although there were good words for the 7970m from a couple of users, I don't usually have a lot of time to troubleshoot, as hackness stated, and I like smooth, relatively flawless gameplay, and cost has turned out not to be an issue (it used to be that the 680m was 350 bucks more than the 7970m, but now I only lose 200). Thank you all so much for your inputs, you really helped me in my decision.

 

Glad we could be of help. Enjoy your new beast of a laptop