7970m & GTX680m owner feedback needed

Im having a hard time deciding between the two cards. I cant seem to find enough constructive feedback that will swing me either way.
And I will wire the money to xoticpc within 14 hours of this post, maybe longer if I can resist it.

Please note: Just because one card gives you +5 FPS than the other I would not consider this to make it the better card.

If I go 7970m:

Pros:
Ill upgrade to a 120GB SSD Intel 520 HDD (I wont need more space than that)
16GB Ram

Cons:
Im really worried about enduro bugs, and possible overheating issues

If I go gtx 680m:

Pros:
Adaptive VSync
Great Driver support
Wont have to worry about Optimus nor Excessive heat

Cons:
Ill have 8GB ram
500GB HDD no SSD (but I can always buy a samsung ssd later if I need it)


Both options will include:
IC Thermal
Copper Cooling upgrade
Killer Wireless N 1103

What I need this Laptop for:
It is not my primary Gaming Device (I have a PC for that)
Im not a fanboy I like both Nvidia and AMD
Its mainly my mobile temp gaming machine
I need it to work, as in no funky crashing, overheating etc...

Frequency of needing a mobile gaming rig
Weekly Lan Party
Weekly Mother in Laws visit (Playing with my inlaws)
And the ocasional wife agro case where I need to be in the living room to avoid "your always hiding in your den" comment
Various travel trips about 8/year

Games of Interest:
MMO's - TSW, GW2, PlanetSide 2
F2P - World Of Tanks, LoL, Dota2
RPGS - Skyrim, etc..

Budget: USD 2290

Thanks for your help!

Questions:
Nvidia havent posted drivers on their site for the 680m or I havent been able to find them
Have enduro sorted out their bugs? or is this still a problem
Have you regretted the 7970m option? or the 680m?

 

What's the rig's make?
Alienware?
Sager?

 

You can save a bit of money if you just get ssd and ram separately, repaste yourself, and bin the cooling upgrade(as it's of questionable value and expensive for what it is).

 

Sager NP9150

True, SSD & Ram I will add later anyways.
But the paste... Im lazy.. Ill pay them USD 75 to do it for me.
And the copper cooling upgrade.. Lazy to do it myself too.


However the question is.. should I fear the 7970s stability and just go for the 680? Money isnt really an object here. Its about buying something that works and gives me the least amount of hassle.

Lets say I had billions in the bank.. would I buy a lambo? No... I would still get myself a Subaru STI Limited Edition and be very happy with my choice. Make sense?

 

i bought a 7970m in p150em and i regret not waiting a little longer to get 680m. i've had nothing but hassle trying to get 7970m to perform even close to its potential. If money is no object, go for 680m.

 

I too am in a similar situation as OP. I am on the fence with AMD or NVIDIA. Money is not a issue but I do not want to spend it uselessly. I would go for AMD but Enduro issues are popping over so many threads and crippling performance. Some people have it , other don`t. AMD also had hardware issues from their fault or others irrelevant. NVIDIA is still too new to know if they have such issues or any other ... and I don`t care about PhysX or 3D
From what I saw if Enduro was fixed the card would be better than NV...
What to do :|

 

i would, as of now strongly recommend the 680m. Enduro really cripples the 7970m's potential, i too am considering an exchange...

 

If money is not an issue, then its clear as crystal: go with Nvidia.
Right now, nvidia offers everything in one package, performance is on par with AMD and power consumption tests revealed that Nvidia consumes on average 10W less than 7970m.
When under full load, nvidia gtx680m has 2x more battery time than AMD's 7970m. 1h:50min versus AMD's meager 50min. Source: notebokcheck.com - notebook check Resources and Information. This website is for sale!
Also, when it comes to 3D movies, GPU switching and driver support - nvidia takes it all.

With all of AMD's problems with enduro and Clevo's making it even worse with their low-grade BIOSes, it looks like Nvidia is the way to go for a problem-free computing on a laptop. On the gaming side, things are also better.

Just my opinion.

 

+1 , pretty much this.

Since it's not fixed...choice is easy if money is not a issue.

 

On the other hand how annoying would it be if you spent the extra 300 for the 680m, then the amd drivers were fixed as your machine arrived. All that beer money wasted.

 

Not going to happen. Not even close. I'm still waiting for a driver that fixes Skyrim's Crossfire flickering (9 months after release) aswell as Bad Companys CF scaling...

Go for the 680M and NEVER look back. Nothing but driver problems with AMD.

 

Haven't had an issue with my 7970m

 

I'm loving my 7970m and I strongly prefer Nvidia in general but this thing is rock solid and runs cooler than my old HP laptop did with an Nvidia 9600gt. No problems either except that I have to manually add new games to high performance profile otherwise it defaults to the Ivy Bridge but that's no big deal since you only have to do it once per installed game.

I've done a lot of BF3, Skyrim, FO:NV and the thing is rock solid, silent and cool running.

I'm not overclocking it either, it's damn fast out of the box and i'm happy with it as is. For $300 more the 680m at this point is just hype.

 

Could you describe the problems youve been having, as well any game specific and non game specific issues.

Could you describe the problems youve been having, as well any game specific and non game specific issues.

Your sig says 7970 as well, tell us of your experience with it please


Also worth noting is that I live and work in the middle east, and shipping anything back on warranty will cost me well over USD 200 with a 10 day local customs delay. And every time it comes back Im subjected to a 5% tax on the goods. Customs here dont give a hoot about warranty claims etc...

 

Listen... you can choose to listen or not but what many others are telling you is the truth.

I can not recommend the 7970m to anyone....

Games will not work in DX11 mode.... or have issues in doing so

You will experience random minor issues which are annoying....

Spend the extra $300 bux and get the 680m...

I will likely be returning my laptop to Malibal when I get back home and looking for either a refund, or exchange for the same laptop with a 680m.

I will NEVER buy AMD again....

 

Take a look at the first few pages of the forum,

it seems that the 7970m people are suffering from more problems than nVidia.

Based on that, what would you do? NO one can make the decision for you, it's your money in the end..

$300 for a worry-free system doesn't sound too bad for me at all, especially seeing the amount of issues people are having.

But again, that's only me.

 

or maybe not enough people own the 680m for all the problem to surface, most aren't dumb enough to spend an extra 300$ for same performance.

 

I consider myself to be more of an Nvidia fanboy, but I am happy with my 7970M. My only problem is that it does have utilization issues, but even with those, it still runs BF3 on high/ultra with a very nice FPS, which is all I ask of my card. $300 well saved.

 

exactly and also there are no official driver for 680m so in you are in the same boat as amd users . Enduro and overheating issues are only related to clevo laptop not alienware . besides most people in clevo are not suffering for amd 7970m overheating including me . I can afford to buy 680m but logically I cant think of anything what makes have special feature 680m over 7970 have to reason to buy $300

 

Given the amount of problems, I wouldn't NECESSARILY say dumb.

Optimized power savings, less wattage, game optimizations...

There are reasons people buy nVidia, it's very dangerous to call them dumb.

 

So far only really two people with 680M have been posting frequently on this Sager/Clevo forum. And out of the 2, one crashed and burned, has to be RMA'd. Compared to 7970M, that's pretty dismal I think.

And of the 7970M users who complain, to me it appears to be the same group of maybe a dozen posters. And considering the 7970M is still be backordered, tells me that is probably less than 1% of 7970M Clevo users. Maybe less.

That's just my impression. I haven't run into a single game yet where the 7970M isn't running beyond my expectations. I'm simply stunned by how much more powerful the 7970M is compared to my the 5870M. For $300 less to have something run this beautifully, doesn't sound too bad for me at all.

In order to prime Afterburner, I have to click just one more mouse click. Yeah I probably shouldn't have to, but it's no sweat off my back. Use a dock and I can click Kombuster, then Afterburner and then Steam all within maybe 1.5 seconds.

I'll admit, I paid a total of $15 to change up some stuff for the cooling. But for the record, I didn't have to do it. This is the third machine I've done this type of work on it. It's not much, I'd say about 15 minutes of work. Temps on the 7970M have been great.

That's my experience at least. I think it's worth the effort to problem solve to enjoy this card rather than supporting a company like Nvidia.

 

That's good to know.

I was under the impression that the 7970m has so many issues, but that also can be a bit exaggerated due to the lack of the amount of the 680m on the forums.

But still, it's very, very dangerous to call people dumb for buying something different - same could be said for warranty, SSD from resellers, CPU upgrades, etc. I wanted to point that out.

Opinions may be different, but they're not wrong.

 

Most problems come from 2 things.

1. You need to add your game in your CCC if you want to play them with your 7970M
2. You cant upgrade your driver like other laptop. Since the P150EM work with Enduro you need special driver who work for both intel and ati card. Or if you really want you can do a custom install for the display driver. Anyway short story, you are still better with stock driver.

My experience was pretty good, everything work great. The only issue i had is with Enduro crippling the 7970M, but it's the way the P150EM and 7970M work. Everyone have this issue and i think only some kind of new driver can solve this.

I explain the thing in another post

So if you want to play Battlefield 3 with 60 FPS on med/high buy the 680M, if you want to play Battlefield 3 with 40 fps on ultra and not be able to lower your setting to get a better fps, buy the 7970M. I'm the kind of gamer who want to play with 60 fps so yes, i wish i had waited for the 680M.

 

I do like that you had said it's his $300 and agree. I don't think the OP should be making a decision on my opinion or any other. He should take the time to do his research, well beyond this forum from biased posters and make a smart, and well thought out decision.

Saying that, I wouldn't say dumb to choose one product over another. But I do think it's dumb to base a purchasing decision just because the same few dozen people are posting and creating numerous threads and ignoring the fact that tens of thousands of 7970M users aren't complaining. I don't see this being remotely close to being a epidemic. What I have observed is that there are a few NBR members who are determined, and tenacious and frequent posters.

I also see that there is huge amount of unfounded expectations. I think it's ludicrious that they would expect 99% GPU usage all the time, when it's very common for games not to use 99% of GPU, but 7970M seem to have been singled out to be the exception. And I also find it ludicrous that just because the 7970M is based on the 7870, that users expect a card running on 180watt PSU to be performing at the same level of a desktop that is running on 600watts.

I would like to see this please. Just point me to the posting that demonstrates this. I would love to see that the 680M gets 20+ more FPS than I do.

 

Yeah, i mean some kind of custom setting with med/high to have 60 fps.

 

Just tired of seeing all the 7970m bashing because of like Hula said, a dozen people posting their problems over dramatically. Most of the problems are user errors as well. Complaining about performance on a Beta driver, Beta's have problems, if you don't want problems, don't use them.

 

Ok. 60FPS constant isn't that important to me, but from what I have played of BF3 on Ultra, it's been a smooth experience for me. I bought Close Quarters over the weekend and didn't have any issues. Good times.

I'm not going to dispute what you said. If somehow a 680M user can have constant 60FPS all the time, without any drops in frames (which I HIGHLY doubt), then go for it. But I would say, if you didn't have an FPS meter on and just focused on having fun in BF3, 7970M will perform well, my experience.

 

Until AMD can run 3D Vision gear, getting an nvidia card has its merits. As for "adaptive Vsync" being one of them, I'm not so sure. I've tried it on a few games, and the tearing when the framerate dips bothered me enough to set it to "forced Vsync" instead.

 

Even with Enduro problems, most games you play can still be maxed out no problem, except for BF3 unfortunately.

I'm running 7970M with zero problems.

 

Hulawafu77 can you respond to my PM?

 

How many games does utilize 3d feature? The answer its quite few. It just like physx which only few game utilize it. So 3d is useless until most games start to support and doesn't justify 300. Besides that there is not even official drivers for 680m in the first place

Sent from my LG-P500 using Tapatalk 2

 

If this turns into another 680M vs. 7970m thread, I'm locking it down..

Talk about what features your card has / problems it has,

not about the other. Some comments are on the borderline of intervention.

 

I don't believe the heat issues are AMD vs NVidia related, I think that is a Sager vs Alienware comparison. This is still extremely early in the 7970m lifecycle for drivers. I'm fairly confident most issues will be straightened out in the near future. The only question mark in my opinion is Enduro but it does appear to be working well already for a lot of people. Nvidia spends more money for better drivers. If you are willing to spend $300 for similarly performing hardware with better drivers then the 680m is the way to go.

 

Hmm... let me break down my feedback even further...


1) Most people do agree at this point that both the 680m and 7970m have about equal performance....


2) Most people would agree that the 680m's Optimus feature is much more functionality than the 7970ms Enduro feature...

3) There has been confirmed issues with the 7970m probably largely due to lack of proper drivers "Dx11 features, optimization, full utilization of the graphics card, etc."

4) I think its quite obvious based on Nvidias history that they are safer bet for regular updates for drivers that will further optimize their card.

5) In my OPINION $300 for better piece of mind and reliability is a small price to pay. I spent $300 on a 256 gig SSD which aside from boot times, and running large Office / Project files I see no real performance gain at all.

You decide......

If I could add one piece of advice. I would really limit making your decision to the known facts, and opinions from people who are un-biased... Some people have a tendancy to support a piece of hardware they purchased just to further justify it in their own minds.

If someone like myself is giving you an opinion to go for Nvidia even though they own the AMD card and are likely stuck with it, that to me only further validates how unbiased the opinion is.

Food for thought....

 

Well everything runs perfectly after some tinkering, except the BF3 Multiplayer. And seeing i bought this Laptop for Bf3 its kinda a dealbreaker for me. I guess alot op people play bf so thats why i dont recommend it. As for other issues like manually have to add games, etc. they dont bug me personally but i can imagine it annoys some people.

 

most games I have tried so far have GPU under-utilization issues, which sometimes are bad enough so my 6970m gets higher framerates. Games affected are BF3 MP (sp is ok), All Dirt games, all ARMA games, Batman Arkham City, Crysis 2... Only game I have found not to have this issue so far was Metro.

To troubleshoot this issue I have so far tried all available drivers, manufacturer's, beta, etc, reinstalled my windows 5 times to be absolutely sure there was no old driver causing an issue, have taken out almost all removable hardware from my laptop including 3 out of 4 ram DIMMS, sold my 2920xm CPU and replaced it with Ivy Bridge 3720qm, reinstalled windows onto a different SSD, tried disabling 2 or 3 CPU cores to check if its a power draw issue, etc.
Result is always the same, even re-sellers are getting the same results on their machines so they cannot argue that its only a few people with the issue - it affects pretty much everyone with a clevo EM series 7970m as far as I know.

 

i would take hulawafu's posts with a pinch of salt - he does have an unfortunate habit of spreading bs somewhat and might be looking at his 7970m with rose tinted glasses. I have asked him to prove his claims (of no gpu underutilization issues) several times which he promptly ignored.
Many users may not be aware of the issue with their 7970m as even though its under performing it still gets you decent fps when compared to previous generations of mobile gaming cards, and not many people will bother to check if their GPU is fully utilized whilst in game.
My problem is that on paper i should be getting much better fps with 7970m than my 6970m or desktop GTX 480, - but instead in some scenarios its worse, far worse.
And yes. at this point I do regret my purchase and wish I could swap it for 680m, even if it cost me a few hundred to do it. I'm bored of waiting for drivers or trawling forums in search of a magic fix - this card has been out for nearly 3 months now... if people like hula keep denying that there is an actual issue with these cards then it wont be taken seriously by AMD and the fix will take even longer.

 

actually, every gaming card I have owned would run very close to 99% utilization in almost every game, exceptions are where vsynch was switched on or there was some sort of frame limiter enabled. GTX 680m is running at 99% utilization in those same games, as does an alienware 7970m with enduro disabled, so your argument is once again bs.

 

The 680M runs cooler, the 7970M is cheaper.

 

Currently owning the x7200 with the cheapest and lowest performance video possible, the 460m sli.

I thought at first that i otta be gettin the 7970m CF, but what pushes me towards the 680m regarding of the higher price is the CF scalling on the 7970m, which of course is driver related.

Nvidia sli workes better, driver wise, thats why i choose 680m, will be choosing. Apart from that i#ll be getting 4 gb ram per card, and physics with cuda.

Now if i were to compare them in single configuration, for someone who plays only games, perhaps the 7970m is the better choice, if there are fewer problems in single config. I don#t know.

What i do know is that i#ll be gettin sometime i nthe future the 680m sli in my x7200, hopefully before the end of the world.

 

But that ONE that crashed and burned was a self user installed upgrade not directly from Sager/Clevo (if you're referring to hackness). Not sure if it makes a difference, but who knows.

For the 680m, other than cost it's hard to find fault with the 680m so far. Solid performance, very cool running, low power consumption. Appears there's overclock potential that still needs to be tapped, although as it stands there's really no need at the moment. Direct nVidia driver support is nice too. I am not a nVidia nor AMD fan, I buy what makes most sense to me, and real or not, considering the number of posts at NBR and similar gripes elsewhere regarding the 7970m is what deterred me from going AMD. Hopefully AMD can get their drivers sorted out soon, because to be honest, if they can nip that in the bud, and clean everything up, I see no reason to spend the extra $300 for the nVidia GPU considering their relatively small performance differences.

 

I own the 7970m and must say that I'm really dissapointed with the crippled performance. I knew what kind of frames I could expect when I was buying me clevo , couse alienware laptops were tested first and didn't know about the enduro implemented this way in clevo units so I went for it. But like arcticjoe sayd- for almost 1.5 months I'm searching the forum for a magical fix , I't took my a lot of time reinsttalling all sort of drivers , os a few time annd it still isnt working like it should. It's not only me but every one owning a clevo suffering from under utilization in bf 3 , crysis 2 with dx 11 and many other games. The people who arent dindt check it and are amazed from the performance the 7970m is giving- but it should give more. Close quarters run fine but once you try karkand maps you'll find them unplayeble..Try out shift 2 and youll get 20 fps at nighttime. I dont care about overheating- the laptop fan rpofilles are designed this way so it shoul be safe- I remember my old g51 with gtx 260m runnign at almost 100C all the time and after 4 years my friedn I sold it to stil run it perfectly-even overclocked.
To wrap this up It is complicated for me to refund and change this card for the gtx 680m, but if it wasn't I would do so. If you have the choice and money go for the 680m for sure, As we dont have any confrimation that a driver or some kind of possible fix is in progress and nobody know how long if any will come in recent days.

 

I would care to say it is.

But who knows, weird things tend to happen, although we should always keep in mind that the GPU is a delicate matter of power

 

But seriously is it really that hard to install a gpu? Hackness had a modified vbios, very high OC, and ran furmark which is notorious for burning nvidia gpu. I'd attribute it more than that. I really hope putting the 680m in myself isn't too hard because MALIBAL is sending me on and I'm sending the 7970 back in as an exchange.

 

Adaptive v-sync is gone on the GTX680M with 304.79, maybe they'll bring it back in future release.

 

It's fairly straight forward, Take the heatsink off, clean them all with Isopropanol alchohol (99.9%), put your GTX680M in, reapply 1.0mm thermal pads onto the big and small memory chips and 1.5mm for the big green blocks. Screw the memory plate back on, apply thermal grease onto the die, screw the copper plate back on .

Check the link in my sig if you want to know how a GTX680M's board looks like.

 

I'm sure they'll do a better job than me since it goes through the check by both Clevo and Sager.

 

yea ive looked your thread over extensively which is why i dont attribute it to an install error. It just looks so simple

 

Ok Ive come to a conclusion:

Im going for the GTX 680 M.

The reasoning behind it:
1.) I want something that works out of the box
2.) I "Fear" AMD's 7970m (on Clevo, NP9150) reliability I could easily be one of those unfortunate people who have received a card that is not performing as they expected it too, or worse.

Thank you all for your help and your valuable feedback.

Bellow are just some of the "real world" comments that I liked.

I certainly dont want to go through this.

This is probably where I would be if I had opted for the 7970m

Thats what I was thinking.. by profession Im a backend IT Infrastructure Engineer. And although we manage to solve the most mind boggling problems on our own.. sometimes its just simply things we cannot solve due bad firmware, or drivers. In this case we force the vendor to comply, and they have to.. or they would loose a lot of money. But as a 7970m owner I dont have that sort of leverage over Clevo.. So I may just be ignored. And I know theres not much I can do about it.

This is something I can relate too very much, and out of previous experiences this particular point really made me not want to risk it again.


As much as I want to go for the 7970m and not out of monetary reasons mind you, the risks are just too high.

 

I wasn't questioning your ability, only that I wasn't sure where the 680m came from. But it sounds like the seller is willing to exchange it? I hope?