7970M vs. 680M - review showdown!

ok here we go guys, lets see whos boss this gen

Test GeForce GTX 680M vs. Radeon HD 7970M - Notebookcheck.com Tests

in english:

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rough summary: without enduro, 7970M beats 680M by a hair, with enduro 680M is a tad faster. strangely, some nvidia-favored games actually seem to run better on the AMD card, which could be due to nvidia driver issues on the 680M. all in all, it looks like 680M and 7970M are pretty much on par!

enjoy!

cheers

 

great article! I can't wait to see how these two beasts progress as they get better driver support. And hopefully enduro isn't a flop..

+rep

 

While I feel a warm fuzzy feeling for not plunking down twice as much cash for a 680m, those charts really drive home the Enduro performance hit. It seems to be very significant.

 

thanks mate!

as for features (gpu switching) and heat/energy consumption, the 680M was definitely declared the winner in that article (id agree when looking at the respective results), but that still wouldnt justify the horrendous pricing for the card, especially seeing that the performance results are basically equal.

and yep, enduro really does have a significant performance hit. the author of this article even kinda "begs" clevo to include an enduro off-switch in future bios versions in any case, seeing this data makes me kinda happy that my machine doesnt have gpu switching

 

I kind of expected more of a difference. They really need better drivers though.

 

Both better drivers. Got to remember AMD drivers suck too. These cards were never going to be too far apart.

 

maybe you should start a petition for clevo to enable us to turn off enduro and make our clevo's run without the intel hd4000...

 

oh gods no. Not another petition

Sounds like AMD hit another home run Go AMD!

Mr. Mysterious

 

That's weird, on BF3 and most games the 7970m on a clevo gets slightly better results than the alienware with 7970m... but then the clevo had a 3720qm while the alienware had a 3610qm...

 

I'm starting to think that the 3610qm bottlenecks the 7970m slightly...

 

I doubt that considering it's more powerful than most Sandy Bridge desktop GPU's that use more powerful desktop GPU's.

 

Why are these articles always written in German? It would be nice if they could pay somebody $10 bucks a hour to translate the damn thing to english

 

keep in mind thats BF3 single player, where clevo 7970m doesnt seem to have much issues. multiplayer is a different story on clevo.

 

Oh I don't doubt it, I'm getting very unstable FPS on multiplayer. I've been playing on the same servers/maps where I played with my GTX 560m getting about 45-50 FPS on low settings 1080p. and on my 7970m I'm getting 30-60 FPS and sometimes goes down to 20 or lower FPS for a few seconds (ultra maxed out), my 560m never went that low ever on the SAME server/map I used to play.

Is this a matter of lack of official driver support or are AMD mobile cards in the past like 6990m always have been unstable FPS on bf3?

 

this is probably cuz enduro has a more significant effect on perf in an alienware than a clevo. i doubt that the cpu would have any effect at all,except maybe when comparing a dual core to a quad.

haha yeah suuure, lets get on their nerves with petition-galore

haha seems like sometimes it really does pay off to understand german notebookcheck actually has an english site as well, just that they take a while to translate their articles

Sent from my GT-I9001 using Tapatalk 2

 

<----For 10 bucks, I could translate it like a boss, lol

 

AMD sure did a great job this time, closing down the gap that was left behind by 6990M vs GTX 580M. No way is the premium price going to justify now that the performance difference is almost nil.

 

only reason to pay for gtx 680 with $300 more than 7970m is better driver support and stable FPS performance, easy overclocking with nvidiainspector, stressfree driver installation, all of which I'm willing to pay for.

 

and dx 11.1, and cuda, and 3d vision.

 

True true, but $300?
This cash could be used to upgrade your video card further down the road instead of using it now for some features which are marginally beneficial.
If the price difference was $50 or $100 USD then yes, I would got with the 680M in a heart-beat. But $300 is a rip-off.

 

aduy, do you mean dx 11.1 is not supported by HD 7970M? hmm... never knew that....
I think that after a couple of months, when more mature drivers comes out, both cards will show true colors. Anyway anyone think that the premium price tag is gonna come down anytime? Like upgrading to GTX 580M was +$395 i think (Sager np8150 from xoticpc)?

 

no the 7970m support dx 11.1 also

 

7970M supports dx11.1 as well. price tags for mobile gpus arent really known to change much, if at all.

Sent from my GT-I9001 using Tapatalk 2

 

Feast your eyes on this, guys

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...o-gtx680m-4gb-overclocking-result-p170hm.html

Going for a 680M is starting to feel a whole lot better.

 

with that 2920xm i am interested in how much that is contributing to that score... others with 2920xm have gotten similar scores with 7970

 

I am laughing with joy... ohhh sweet jebus praise the lord.. for us HM owners
I can only guess 7970m owners are now pissed... LOL

Go 680M...
See sig..

 

.....and yet they have audacity to put a price 300$ higher than 7970m. how appropriate.

 

Yeah, that's what they keep saying. If the 2920xm is that much contributing to the score (which it shouldn't), then how come the results are the standard 5941 prior to the overclock?

If these are indeed the true results and if it is completely stable, then you have to agree it succeeded the expectations.

 

I guess you can't read. 7970M users have broken 7K also...

And this is benchmark, you still don't know what stable clocks the 680M can run at in games for hours. Also he raised the voltage, which is damaging. I personally would never raise voltage and just raise the clock speeds.

Still not worth $300 more.

 

and why would they be pissed? the 7970M has also shown to be able to break 7k in 3DMark11 and maxxes out at mid to high 60s°C when stressed, thus has the same OCing headroom as the 680M

sooo....wheres the revolution here with the 680M? still not seeing it, especially not for 300 bucks extra

 

Meh, you'll always have to say the last word no matter what happens, so why even bother?

*shrug*

 

*shrug* I don't see why you are getting excited about paying $300 more still.

 

1. I didn't pay an extra $300 for it.

2. You're dead set on trying to bring everyone down just because you went for the 7970M. You're never letting us enjoy our purchase, no matter what.

I've had enough of this game.

 

To be fair, that is a lot extra money for not much benefit. Still if you're willing to spend that much, good Luck to you

 

You're getting angry because others are saying they don't share your opinion that 680M achieving same score as a 7970M for $300 more is exciting?

I guess being forced to recognize that 680M still hasn't proven to be $300 more in performance is ruining your enjoyment in purchasing the 680M. How sad for you. Don't see why me posting my opinion should take away from your enjoyment of the notebook.

FYI you did pay $300 more. 680M upgrade with Deviltech is $399 Euros which is $500. 7970M upgrade is $200. I love math.

 

If money were no object, I'd get the nvidia no problem just to be rid of Endure-slow.

 

everyone seems to be forgetting how god awful Optimis was when it was launched. Give it some time and enduro will get better.

 

And the same goes for drivers. Thats a good point Fenryr.

 

We also don't know if the 680m will also have issues.

 

That's my concern too. But I really don't want to spend $300+ for similar performance.

It was but how long did it take and it still has its share of issues.

Just give us the option of Optimus/Enduro or manual switching. I 100% prefer manual switching.

In either case we don't know if 680m will have any issues yet. But I can't begrudge someone for spending the money if that's what they want, and with current 7970m issues I can't blame them. I was leaning that way until I spent my extra $300 on a 512GB Crucial M4 SSD.

 

Can't say that I agree with that in the Clevo models. Maybe with the AW rigs but certainly not 15" Clevo/Sager.

Quote:
Originally Posted by HTWingNut
I was leaning that way until I spent my extra $300 on a 512GB Crucial M4 SSD.

Good grief, Hotwing.....how many TBs of SSD space do you own now?

 

double post - please delete

 

I would prefer this also. Just button to turn on 7970M and disable iGPU, or turn off 7970M and enable iGPU.

I'll be testing the thermals on my rig with my the grease and pads I chose. Hopefully results will be good.

 

someone get a petition going!

 

We want hardware switching. I'm in.

 

Even if it were a BIOS option at boot up, i.e. "Press F5 for Intel GPU" / "Press F8 for dedicated GPU" or whatever. Only time you'd want to switch is when you went on battery, and if you had to reboot, oh well. A physical switch or button would be ideal though. Then it's either ON or OFF no software nonsense to screw up.

 

Yep, I'll get on the soap box, please allow us to disable Enduro, or disable it as much as possible. We bought these machines for gaming primarily.

 

formal petition thread?

 

I'll be the first to sign, go for it!

 

I'm not so sure its even possible. I still want it though for enduro and optimus.