7970M vs. 680M - Rematch with driver updates

hey folks, just saw this article here and thought I´d share i think its a nice sum-up of the present status.

Original (German): Kontrollbesuch: Radeon HD 7970M vs. GeForce GTX 680M - Notebookcheck.com Tests

Google Translate: Google Translate

enjoy!

 

Not interested. I guess whoever did the review isn't current on driver development from AMD. There are a lot of changes coming, which unfortunate for AMD, since they are now publicly admitting they released drivers for GCN that don't function properly.

 

Still happy i opted for the 680M (just reading reviews). The driver issues ATI has would bug the hell out of me, so I am happy to be avoiding that this time.

 

@hulawafu: well naturally, there are always a lot of changes coming in the computer world thats not the point. it´s rather a nice overview of the status quo for people wanting to get a new machine now and trying to decide whether they should go red or green.

 

Maybe 6 months ago. But not right now. The new drivers are coming soon, as in next week and following week. Next week will show how AMD's driver adjustments improve on frame latency. Then the following week hopefully, they will have drivers with the memory controller rewritten, that should provide overall improvements for all games, especially DX10/DX11. That's when I would suggest someone to make a decision. If those improvements aren't significant and not as good as I hope they will be, then go with 680M.

As it is, 680M are still definitely the more stable and safe choice. 7970M still has kinks and a few games still have difficulty with it. There are just so many stupid games with UE3 which just doesn't play fair with AMD, so I would go with 680M anyway, just because of that. So many of the games i play are UE3 and it's irritating.

 

AMD is all about hoping
Nvidia is all about gaming (if you can afford it).

 

But if there are price/performance and highprice/allaroundhighquality, my choice is price/performance.I am not afraid about driver installation over driver installation.

 

Can someone run 3dmark11 on single 680m, please? does it really score 5600 marks on the latest drivers? i guess it was around 6200+ few months back

 

I love my 7970m; it's the best value in terms of mobile gpus out right now. I don't ever see it overtaking the 680m though. AMD has made great strides in its driver development, but it can't match the stability, low temps, and awesome overclocking of the 680m. I've only had the latter 2 days and I'm convinced the 7970m can't catch up. There are still tons of minor kinks and issues with the 7970m in certain titles.

 

Nice results. Out of those games only AC3 seems to have bigger issues on the 7970M (and I don't play it ).

 

Its a completely inaccurate review from Notebookcheck as always.
3DMark11 score from July was 6150, that have improved over the dozens new drivers since then.

But whatever, I won`t use my energy on the amateurs back at Notebookcheck. Not the first time they have screwed the pooch

 

Definitely an inaccurate review. For example your 'Prerendered frames' setting will have an effect on all benchmarks. More than likely the default prerendered frames on the NVIDIA drivers are different than the AMD. If I set it to '5' I'll get about 5500 in 3dmark 11 on my 680m. At '1' I get about 6200(the known average). If someone else with a 7970m would be willing to do this benchmark using the same settings then we could get accurate numbers.

 

I don't know about the 680m test. I got ~6000 marks out of the box on my 680m (no optimizations, vbios changes or OC). But it is true that the 310.90 driver is a bit slower in 3D mark than 3.02 etc.

What could offset the benchmarks with the 680m is poor cooling, I know that with the default vbios etc the 680m likes to kick it down in frequencies to stay cool especially at near 100% loads.

 

The two cards evenly trade blows, even when the 7970M is in a Clevo. When the new memory manager is released and the frame latency issue is fixed, it would pretty much be a "pick your color" situation. The gaming experience will be essentially the same. The sad thing is that by the time drivers for GCN/Kepler are fully optimized and developed, the 8000M and 700M cards will already be out of the door, making "7970M vs 680M' a topic of the past.

I wish we could change the number of pre-rendered frames in CCC!

 

I got both cards, the 680m on a P170EM and the 7970m on a P150HM more or less are configured with the same hardware.
I didn't experience particular issues on both cards.. The former was almost perfect since the beginning, except some small problems related to the drivers. The latter i installed thanks to blind flashing jaybee guide.
Because not functioning under enduro, AMD worked like a charm with the so longed beta drivers released after 6 month the card delivering and that solved some hard low performance problems with and without enduro enabled.
Anyway, even if the test rematch goes a little more to the 7970 direction, I've got to say that the small gap of the cards at stock frequencies, is completely fullfilled with the great nvidia stability in overclocking and moreover with modded bios.
The card is extremely stable and gives lot of room for the overvolting/overclocking.
I guess nvidia is overall 15% faster than 7970, and it was born under a good star since the beginning.
Yes, a lot more expensive, but judging the amount of complains and the troubles a considering number of people had with AMD card, I dare to say NVidia 680m is still the first choice at a high price.

 

On AMD it is called flip queue size and it's set to 2. No reason to change it. As for complaints about 7970m, its completely exaggerated. Even on NBR Clevo section, there is only a dozen or so vocal complainers, including myself. Considering the 7970m is still selling like hotcakes, there are very free complaints. As for over locking stability, my impression nearly everyone on NBR who has 7970m, regardless in Clevo, MSI, or AW, everyone overclocks. Yeah I take that as a sign of instability.... Right.

 

i am using win8 pro, my graphic and gaming pgrphic scores still 7.4

 

Are you referring to your WEI, 7.4 sounds right for mobile video cards. Which computer do you have?

 

the test here is 7.7. my cpu is 3610, 16gb 1600 ram, seagate 750HDD

 

Well, with all due respect, I don't exactly agree that the complaints about 7970m is exaggerated. To me, it is as bad as it sounds.

 

That's your personal assessment of the situation, which is fine..........but that does not mean it is accurate. Remember the people who have trouble are going to be the ones that complain, not the people who are enjoying the product. I will admit at the start there were noticeable issues with a few games (mostly just BF3), but after the recent driver updates everything is working as expected. The card is a downright powerhouse, if you deny that then you're stupid........it's also a hell of a lot cheaper, combine those 2 facts and you have one of the best power - to - price options mobile gamers have EVER had.

Think about it before you go spouting off about how much AMD sucks and isn't worth buying.

 

Good for AMD. I'm glad they're sticking to it and getting it sorted out. Looks like it's really an even bet now if the utilization issues are really gone. Of course it took them a year, but at least current users have a good performing machine now.

 

You are getting a little too defensive, aren't ya?

Where in my statement "that you quoted" indicated that I denied 7970m is a powerful card, and where in that quote did I mention AMD sucks and isn't worth buying? And here you are coming off strong calling me stupid. Are you blind or you can't read?

 

I love the competition between AMD/Nvidia, now that AMD has had a bit of teeth kicking over this (a bit like nvidia in the early optimus days) they can get it sorted.

It means neither can get away with something like this for long.

Once this is sorted hopefully we can have some fresh competition and the highest Nvidia cards might need to come down a notch or two in price.

 

Very true :thumbsup:

 

Perhaps I should have worded my post differently, it was not so much towards you personally, but at those who ream on the 7970 at every opportunity so for that I apologize. I still do not agree with your assessment on the over-exaggeration part though

 

I agree Meaker. This can only be good in the end for us consumers.

 

It really comes down to price now. I was very annoyed that WHQL drivers that fix Enduro were 6-7 months out, but at this point the 680M is literally nearly 2x as expensive.
I seem to have been lucky since I never saw a BSOD on the stock Clevo drivers, had acceptable performance in the games I play with those drivers, mostly Borderlands 2, Guild Wars 2, and Diablo 3, and was able to update to 13.1 with a simple install over the old drivers with no BSOD and a fully functional updated CCC.
Honestly if you've got a big budget, obviously go with 680M, but on a budget, spending that extra $240 on a 256 gig SSD is going to result in a much faster machine.

 

Does anyone have any idea of how these two cards compare in video editing capability vs. gaming?

 

That depends entirely on the software you're using and the types of calculations present. As of right now, nVIDIA's CUDA is supported by most developers and it's video transcoding technology is on par with Intel's quick sync. However, OpenCL, Floating Point, and General Compute calculations are far superior on AMD's GCN architecture.

AMD made GCN a "Jack of all trades" architecture where nVIDIA focused on their three markets optimizing each card for their respective segments. Geforce for gaming, Quadro for workstation and content creation, and Tesla for General Purpose Computing.

Take a look at these benchmarks to get an idea on which card will suit you.

Benchmark Results: Sandra 2012 : GeForce GTX 680 2 GB Review: Kepler Sends Tahiti On Vacation

 

I just thought I would add my thoughts here...

I have two M17x R4 machines with EXACTLY the same spec apart from the GPU. I can understand why users of Clevo machines might have complaints about Enduro but on Alienware machines there is absolutely no issues here.

In real world performance the cards are pretty much identical. In benchmarks the 7970m takes the prize. As an example, here are my rough scores in 3D Mark 11:

7970m Stock: 6500
7970m Overclocked: 7100

680m Stock: 6000
680m Overclocked: 6400

Both overclocks were what I would call moderate.

The one game that worked much better and had noticeably better frame rates on the 680m was Assassins Creed 3.

You cant really make a decision on these cards. AMD fanboys will obviously choose the 7970m and NVidia fanboys will choose the 680m.

If they were exactly the same price then I would be stuck choosing one. Considering the 7970 is not far off being half the price of a 680m my recommendation will go to the 7970m purely as it provides the consumer with much better VFM.

 

If you go to this website and check the benchmarks CLBenchmark - Graphics: Raytrace performance results , you'll see how badly OpenCL was nerfed in Nvidia graphic cards, even in the Quadro or Tesla lines. There are companies shifting to OpenCL (see Photoshop Benchmark Results: Photoshop CS6 : Can OpenGL And OpenCL Overhaul Your Photo Editing Experience? ) as it is a standard that can run in most GPUs and CPUs. I for one would rather support an open solution instead of a closed proprietary solution. Even as far as physics engines go, there are already some quite famous ones that support OpenCL such as Bullet ( http://bulletphysics.org/wordpress/ ) physics. I would very much like to see something as good as Nvidia's Physx become open, cross-GPU/CPU and widespread...

 

That's not much of an overclock on the 680m. On the stock vbios i hit 7000 or so score. On a modded vbios(stock voltage) i've hit 8500.

 

Highest I've managed was 8000, on stock voltage. I couldn't push past 1 ghz though. What clocks were you running for 8500 points?

 

I purchased a Sager NP9370 with one 7970m and managed to keep the price 300 dollars below the laptop it replaced(Asus G73JH, another great one). However, if I had to deal with Enduro, I would have opted for Nvidia in a heartbeat over Ati. Thankfully, the 9370 doesn't have the ability to use the Enduro feature, so it was a good match. At only 50 dollars more, the case offered lots of headroom for upgrades later(Crossfire, or SLI), better sound, and seemed like a good deal. I do like the physx feature on the Nvidia cards, but it wasn't lucrative enough and hurts your overall frame rate. I like special effects, but watching papers rustle around, drapes flap, or debris stay on the screen a bit longer, was not a game changer. Not to mention, these effects can be and have been addressed by non-physx features. I felt Ati had finally closed the gap with the latest drivers, and thought it was good enough to head back to Ati. It is a shame that they continue to alienate many gamers over their poor driver support, but their cards are a great deal. Sometimes you just have to be patient with Ati to get their act together. I still think the 7970m is a great deal, but I totally understand the complaints about the card initially. The market needs competition, otherwise one OEM will get lazy and start pushing out crap upgrades and overpriced cards.

 

nice summary ben explained goods and bads of both sides

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

Here's mine at stock voltage with Core @ 1000, RAM @ 2400MHz

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3610QM Processor,CLEVO P15xEMx score: P7873 3DMarks

P7873 :shrug:

I was easily getting 6100-6200 with drivers when 680m originally released in June 2012.

I can get over 8500 too with an overvolt, but just not interested in doing it again.

 

1030 core/2500 mem. Somewhere in that area. I don't remember the exact values as this was nearly a month ago.

@HTWingNut
Try setting prerendered frames to 1 for 3d mark 11. You should see a boost of 200 or so.

 

Weird, didn't seem to make a difference, even went down a bit: http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/5809756

P7785

edit: Hmmm, seems I may have some CPU throttling going on. Turned on max fans and now I get P7927: http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/5809812

I have noticed my idle temps for my CPU have been quite high recently, like ~ 60C. My vents seem clean and I put on fresh IC Diamond only a few months ago. I guess time to give it another thorough cleaning and repaste and see if it helps.

 

Are there more driver tweaks for 3dmark besides this and setting Texture Filtering to High Performance?

 

I don't know. I don't change settings to lower the visual quality, only to increase it if anything. Prerendered frames adds input lag and I'm picky about that so I have it set to 1 globally.

 

is there a temperature/noise difference between the two GPUs? which is hotter/louder?

 

theres a slight temp. difference at stock clocks in that the 680m is a tad cooler than the 7970m, but nothing as significant as to cause a difference in fan noise generated

 

13.2 beta 7

Seems some think Enduro issues is not on topic when discussing the 13.2 beta 7 drivers. I hope AMD will disagree and do something about it.

 

I have a 1 week old Alienware M17x R4 that has the BSOD issue. It isn't exclusive to Clevo flavored notebooks. 12GB @ 1600MHz, an 3630QM using 13.2 Beta 7 drivers.

3D Mark Scores at 940/1375 as follows:

3DMark (2013): 87428, 17397, 4819
3DMark Vantage: P24946
3DMark 11: P7016

Card is stable up to 945/1400, no higher. At that point, it's P7123 in 11, not enough to bother stressing it over.

The BSOD is the atimpag.sys crash immediately after logging in to Windows 7. This is a common issue, something to do with Enduro. Sometimes it boots fine, sometimes it'll reboot 3 or 4 times in a row before its happy. Highly annoying.

For $1800 after taxes and shipping, it's a love/hate bargain. Had I known there was little truth to this bug being a thing of the past I probably would have spent the extra $400 for the 680M.

Anyone know how to disable Enduro? My FN F7 or whatever does absolutely nothing. Also OSD doesn't work, and volume control panel and alien fx don work when in games. Alienware is a little sketchy so far.

 

I can OC my 7970m to about 970/1470 (anything higher causes a BSOD), and all of those functions you cited work for me. You should return the laptop--I would say the m17x is nice, but Alienware's quality control is shoddy.

The 680m is still a better buy, I think.

 

Not really a difference and technically it's cheating