7970m or 675mx for P170EM?

Hello all,

I have just ordered a P170EM from Mysn in the UK. I went with the 7970m, but I've been having second thoughts since ordering and I'm considering changing to the 675mx.

I thought the new Drivers would put an end to the performance issues, but owners still seem to be having lots of problems. I know they are still in the Beta stage, but what are your thoughts for the official driver?
I don't mind some tinkering, but a don't want to spend hours trying to get games to work, and continually changing drivers. I usually buy games after they have been out for a few months, I assume that AMD would have solved most issues after about 6 months, is this the case?

There is a slight difference in price, the 675mx is 40 pounds more, which is ok, but I can't stretch to the 680m (245 extra)
It says on the Mysn site that stress caused by overclocking will void the warranty, But I may take the risk after a year or so, as I have a backlog of games to play through first. Some games I am looking forward to playing are Saints Row the Third, Just Cause 2 and Batman, then Dishonored, Sleeping Dogs and Far Cry 3.
I understand there is personal preference involved, but do you have any recommendations?

Cheers and I hope this is the right thread.

 

In my opinion if you want a piece of mind, get the 675MX. No hassle. Installing AMD drivers is a PITA, and DX9/simulations run about as well on Enduro+7970M as a GTX 280M (on medium settings, I was just testing it in a controlled way,and they were literally tied)

I guess if you don't play DX9 games, or play/work with hardcore sims, you can take a risk on the AMD's WHQL driver which should come out in the next few weeks.

I regret getting the 7970M personally, wish I had just gotten the 675M and later upgraded to 680M mid next year. No more AMD for me even for GPU's.

Edit: Also with AMD drivers, you often get into problems with Anti Aliasing, and other image quality problems that you just don't see with NVIDIA or can very easily eliminate with any number of NVIDIA drivers that all basically work and install properly. The price for NVIDIA cards is not a luxury, consider it a necessity if you like your free time for relaxation, not more work.

Edit2: Also, the AMD is generating a lot more heat, and using more power...

 

Thanks, all the people saying they were going back to NVIDIA after the 7970m was the main reason for me reconsidering my choice.

If I wasn't limited to buying now, I would wait until the new driver came out, but I have to decide in the next couple of days.

 

sorry, cant agree with the edit2, heat and power consumption is pretty much on par when comparing 7970M and 680M

as for enduro-enabled machines, it seems to me that at the moment its "hit and miss" when it comes to problems/compatibility issues/performance numbers. on the exact same machine with identical drivers and OS users report different issues or dont seem to have any problems whatsoever.

on a non-enduro machine (like yours truly ) the 7970M is a nobrainer: at stock clocks with the newest 12.11 beta drivers u actually get a better performance than with the 680M. when OCing u get about 20-25% more power out of ur AMD gpu, whereas the 680M (in extreme cases) can go as far as 35-40% over stock. but of course, thats also at a 50% price premium

in the end, its up to the user, as always!

cheers

 

Well the problem is that we are talking about Enduro (P170EM). As for Edit2, ok, I was reading otherwise about the 680M. http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-GeForce-GTX-680M-vs-Radeon-HD-7970M.77110.0.html

 

The 680M can go over 50% over stock to around 1040-1050mhz

 

Go ahead, pay extra for massive performance drop.

YOU DON'T BUY A COMPUTER FOR SOFTWARE FFS! IT'S THE HARDWARE PERFORMANCE YOU'RE LOOKING FOR!
Also, related:

 

Save up for the 680. Maybe by then, AMD will have released competent drivers that aren't crashing here and black screening there. Then you can make another topic asking whether you should get the 7970 or the 680! The unstable drivers are what's doing it for me. Performance is pretty good on games that Enduro isn't trying to destroy, but the drivers are really ticking me off. Hell, it's blue screened on me a couple times just sitting there at my desktop. Go to move my mouse and it locks up.

But yeah, save up for the 680. If by then AMD releases great, stable drivers that work on nearly every game out there, I might lean more for the 7970.

 

@ Jaybee83, Cheers, I think you are right with the 'hit and miss' comment, I suppose it comes down to whether or not I want to gamble on getting a miss, the extra power is tempting, but some people seem to have virtually unusable machines.

@fatih64, you are right it is hardware performance I am looking for, but which card gives that to me?

@Srikar I would like to wait, and buy the 680m, but I don't have the option to do either. I need the laptop soon, and I can't afford the 680m.

Thanks for the replies

 

i personally got the 675m, back in september, also changed from 7970m. is looking to upgrade maybe to 680m or 770m next year sometime

 

having previously owned a laptop with 7970m i would go with 675mx as well - i've had far too much hassle with AMD drivers and in the end got bored of waiting for AMD to sort this mess out.. That was nearly 2 months ago and it looks like not much has changed since.

 

There is nothing worse than having those same second thoughts AFTER that expensive laptop is sitting on your desk. I know....I paid a huge price to swap out the 7970M in my P170EM but I'm glad I did because I've had absolutely no problems with graphics since then. Since you asked for recommendations....I recommend the NVidia GPU along with their good drivers.

 

7970M is on par with 680M with this beta drivers. If you don't want to deal with problems just go use WHQL ones it's still far more better than 675MX and "cheaper"

And of course, AC:III and Far Cry 3 problems; Those games are recently relased FFS! Give both some time.

 

wouldnt that be +45% compared to the 720 Mhz stock?

@AdrianClarke: of course u can always go with the 675MX and OC the crap out of it. i hear it has a pretty nice overclocking potential, coming close to 680M/7970M stock speeds

 

My 680m handled 1006 core at a max of 67C, stable on stock voltages So there is plenty room for more.

 

I meant to say to around 1040-1050 for 24/7 and the +50% for benchmarking which lands it around 1075-1085.

675MX overclocking takes it to non enduro 7970M and 680M stock levels.

If enduro is cleaned up then it will be significantly ahead of the 675MX. That is a big if at the moment however.

But given the impact at higher details at 1080p is less the 7970M even with the enduro hit is still going to be at a similar level or ahead.

 

Its on par on some benchmarks, but in terms of gaming experience its very far behind at the moment - especially with older dx9 games. 7970m is perfect in non enduro setup, but until AMD sort this mess I wouldnt recommend it to anyone with a switchable graphics enabled laptop.

 

Yes, I think a lot of us would be much less grumpy about AMD if it wasn't for Enduro, and more importantly for the fact that the EM laptops forced the Enduro passthrough. (no multiplexer etc) So while I may not be buying AMD too readily in the future, for other people with non Enduro machines they may be alright and a great value, but it really depends how they come to grips with their driver QA.

 

Enduro would be fine IMO if they included a MUX setup like alienware, there has not been nearly as much issue on that side of the fence.

 

Totally agree. I wish it was a bit more obvious about the lack of the MUX when compared to the HM models when purchasing the laptop(s). In any case, some fault has to lie with Clevo for not testing some basic games on their motherboards to check if everything performs to modern standards. That would have raised some alarm bells about the lack of hardware bypass.

 

I am not sure clevo could have foreseen the enduro issues and went with a muxless setup to save money assuming it would be much like optimus.

I could have seen myself making the same mistake to be honest.

Don't forget hindsight is 20/20. Muxes take up power, board space and cost money.

 

We can't do anything about Enduro like Alienware's solution can we?

 

Nope. The HD4000 is what provides the image to the monitor.

 

Alienware trace the display ports to a series of MUX (switches basically) these are set at boot and route the ports to either the internal graphics or the dedicated card. Once the machine has started these are set and can't be changed unless you reboot.

As you can see, it MUST be part of the motherboard design to work.

 

If and when GCN gets perfected for laptops, the 7970M would be the clear winner. HD 8000M is going to be based on GCN 2.0, so 7000M owners will be getting major optimization and stability improvements through driver releases at least until mid 2014. My guess is that in a year, 7970M owners will be playing with no issues and will be happy they stayed with the card. Technically the 7970M is based on a better core, it is just Enduro that isn't perfected yet.

Because the 675MX is $100 cheaper, there is great value in either card.

 

With the gloves off both, at stock they trade blows, but when overclocked the 680M has more to squeeze out of and it becomes a desktop HD7870 vs the GTX670 which is usually not too pretty for the HD7870.

 

If you are doing performance comparisons, also don't forget that the GTX675 is really just a rebadged GTX580, and is based on the older architecture rather than kepler.

 

The 675MX is a new card (notice the X) and is a further cut down kepler with 960 shaders (but all rops and memory bus intact).

 

No they're almost same. And if I remember correctly, 675MX used to be 80$ expensive.

Gaming Laptop Clevo P150EM Core™ i7 Gaming Notebook, 15.6" Full HD Glossy / Matte LED LCD, Intel® GMA HD / NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 680M / ATI® Radeon™ HD 7970M Graphics by AVADirect

 

Prices will always be subject to change, so there will always be some wiggle in advisements depending on which way they go.

 

Apparently I wasn't the only one who had this major dilemma. I have a new CLEVO laptop for about 2 weeks now and prior to the purchase I was googling like crazy about the 7970M and 675MX (4GB). I would say the 7970M would be a no brainer, PROVIDED they had proper driver support. I have read hundreds of pages prior to my purchase just to find out how serious the ENDURO issue was and still is. However, at the end of the day I took several aspects into consideration:

1. Hardware wise 7970M is way better than the 675MX, hence it is a matter of drivers to be released - a matter of time.
2. Price - I am not sure how it is elsewhere but my provider actually had 7970M cheaper and asked for additional 60 Euros (100$?) for a 675MX which to my understanding is stupid taking into consideration the performance difference between these cards (fully functional).

And so I bought a 7970M. Am I happy? NO. I used to have a number of laptops with Nvidia gpus and a desktop with GTX580 so perhaps I am spoiled with the flawless drivers they provide. It is just all wrong from the start, I got my first BSOD like the 3rd reboot and, my friends, on a new laptop - is . In general, I can only say this - I've had more BSODS and black screens and desktop freezes in the last 2 weeks than I had with my old laptop for about 6 years. I think it is absolutely unacceptable and just shameful how company's flagship mobile GPU has such a big issue.
Obviously, I have considered many times to send it back and ask a replacement of 675MX, but something stops me. THE HOPE still remains. Sometimes you have a day or two when it works fine, and lately, after I installed the latest beta drivers I don't even get BSODS anymore! Although the 7970 is still being underutilized in some games, things look better...

At the end of the day I would say it comes down to how much computer knowledge and patience you have. If you don't like to mess with all sorts of driver sweepers, rebooting in safe modes and trying different driver combinations or if you simply don't have time for that - at this point I wouldn't recommend 7970M. However, if you have patience, don't mind playing around with some "more advanced IT" and you are a believer that "one day things will get better" - go for it! Because when that day comes - 7970M is going to demolish 675MX, exchange punches with 680M and make many people happy.

 

For me the 675mx would me around $70US more than the 7970m, but I don't think it's a large enough amount to affect my choice.

So you think that the 7970m will still perform the same or better than the 675mx, even with it's issues?

Thanks for all the comments, there doesn't seem to be any consensus on which card is the best option, I think it comes down to whether or not I want to gamble on the 7970m or play safe with the 675mx.
EDIT: Thanks Juozias, just saw your post, I am in the same boat, ahhh!

I've looked at the gaming performance list, specifically for the 675mx how much improved performance will there be with driver updates?
Also, there are no figures for 1080 with lower settings, what kind of effect on FPS would increasing the settings in their 'high' category to 1080 and leaving the rest the same?

 

The 675MX is $100 on powernotebooks.com, with the 7970M being $200. But as Meaker said, it will vary depending on the reseller.

 

I've gotten one BSOD on startup since I switched to 12.11 beta11 on December 3rd. It's a rare occurence, but you can stop it from happening by simply booting up the laptop while it's on battery, or changing settings to power saving before rebooting. When I was using the 12.11 Enduro Performance driver, I didn't get a single BSOD. As for black screens, I've never had one. Not once. I've been using beta drivers since October.

I got quite a few BSODs in the early beta drivers, but I had been doing "clean installs" with Driver Sweeper. Ever since I stopped messing with registry cleaners, the BSODs became much rarer. I simply uninstall the old driver, install the new driver, and everything works as it should for the most part. Gaming performance is excellent aside from Assassin's Creed 3, a game that people with both AMD and Nvidia cards have had massive underutilization problems. I wouldn't blame that on Enduro. Far Cry 3 runs smooth on ultra, though there is an odd shadow glitch that has been plaguing Enduro laptop owners.

These drivers aren't perfect (there are a couple games that will crash if you don't run them in windowed mode) but they have been an incredible leap forward from how bad the underutilization problems used to be. I only have one game out of over 60 on my laptop that doesn't perform well, and I don't think it's the drivers' fault. The drivers are very straightforward to install, and driver sweeper or registry cleaners are not necessary.

I originally ordered a 675mx, but I changed my order to a 7970 because I couldn't wait a month for the 675mx to release. I'm very, very happy that I did so. The 7970 is an extremely powerful card for the price, and though the beta drivers aren't perfect I have faith AMD will fix the remaining stability issues once they release the final WHQL 12.11. My experience with the card hasn't been nearly as bad as some that I have read online and there are lots of happy 7970m owners out there.

The 675mx is good, solid choice for a gpu, but I think you'll end up regretting not the 7970m if you go that route. It's a much more powerful card with a whole lot more potential if you can handle a few issues here and there. I used to only buy Nvidia cards, but I'm much more satisfied with my 7970m than I was with my old 650m.

 

You are exactly right. Look here: Mobile Graphics Cards - Benchmark List - Notebookcheck.net Tech

The 3Dmark11 scores at launch of each card:
680M: P6242
7970M: P5820.3 (and with 12.11 beta, that score has improved to P6500-P6600)
675MX: P3978.5

3Dmark11 is the essential benchmark that pretty much tells you the POTENTIAL of a video card. Obviously the 7970M has a lot of potential, and a ton more than the 675MX at that. It is just being held back by drivers, plus the fact that a lot of games are Nvidia optimized.

 

That is what I was saying, after a number of tries with different drivers I finally got rid of BSODs and can run games that I usually play without black out screens and on high/highest gfx settings so it is all good. However, it is just the feeling that I have of not being able to completely rely on this 7970M as opposed to the Nvidia that I had before... I am not saying that its a bad gpu, not at all, i think it's great, but I am very...very dissapointed in how poorly ATI goes about the drivers. I mean it has been about half year since the card was launched worldwide and there are still those Enduro issues and what not. I like my laptop, I do, it is just I wish the 680M was at least 50-80 euros cheaper I would've definitely picked that one. Now its a whopping 250$ extra to upgrade to it and its just too much, so I will settle with this ATI card as it does have A LOT potential and hopefully with the WHQL (many people have high hopes on this) the main issues will be fixed!

Edit: By the way just ran the free option of 3DMARK 11 and pulled off P6520. Although not sure if that's good or bad as I don't a lot of experience with all sorts of benchmarking.

 

@failwheeldrive - I was leaning towards the 675mx but you have swung me back the other way again. Thanks (maybe).

@Juozias - If you had the choice again, with hindsight, which GPU would you choose?

@Trantalocked - That is a massive difference, another reason to get the 7970m.

Thanks again

 

Hmm.. Well, I am actually still doubting it. The thing is, 675MX as a plain card is considerably weaker than 7970M, therefore, despite all the hassle I've gone through would still make me choose the better one, especially that it is even cheaper than 675MX in some/most shops. 7970M has software, not hardware issues and that makes me believe that eventually ATI will fix all the issues. They are actually being quite active lately, there are beta drivers every few weeks so that gives hope that soon official drivers will come out with the needed fix. Besides, the ENDURO issue is not that dramatic in the first place - it's not like you can't play any games or use any programs, to be honest if there are specific games that you want to play even if they won't run perfectly from the first try you can always (in most cases) find guides on Internet to make them work.

Simply imagine the situation that you pick 675MX and after a month 7970M gets flawless drivers - that would suck wouldn't it? I don't know, I am not agitating to get the ATI card, I actually like Nvidia a lot, it is just that their products are very pricey, especially for the "premium" cards like 680M and then it makes you wonder is it really worth it?

I can only repeat myself - if you are not afraid of some accidental BSODs (which are not very likely to happen with the latest drivers) and don't mind spending some extra time to adjust some drivers, hell, if you don't mind having a gpu which is temporarily not performing 100% on some games (still runs though) then go for 7970M. And if you want a safer option, but also quite a bit weaker - grab 675MX. I am sure that in time, sooner or later - all the issues of ATI will be fixed!

Good luck!

 

If you don't mind spending a bit of effort on it the 7970M does indeed have the potential to go toe to toe with the 680M at stock.

 

What resellers do you see the 7970m cheaper than 675mx ? Everyplace I have checked seems like AMD is 100 bucks more.

I was looking at 170EM but with 175EM1 coming wondering if it will have the same problems with enduro

 

All resellers. nVIDIA is just pricier.

What resellers were you looking at?

 

I'm buying mine from Mysn in the UK, the 675mx is about $70US more than the 7970m.

 

Well I am in Europe, so, for example, in Holland xnotebooks.com and bto.eu seems to have 7970M cheaper than 675MX. In Germany, notebookguru.de also has ATI card cheaper than Nvidia one. Haven't checked for other websites yet, but that's the tendency in Europe.

 

Sager and Xotic both seems have same pricing, on those cards, base is 670mx, +100 for 675mx, +200 for 7970m.

I need a 17 inch but don't know any clevo chassis that don't have MUX problem with AMD 7970m, and from your post 175em1 justs AMD altogether.

I am in the US

 

For you the 680m is $200 more than the 7970m, I think I would consider it at that price, for me it is $400 more, and seems a bit of a rip-off.

A lot of people on here advise getting the 680m if you can afford it, then you get the power without the problems.

 

I was thinking of Optimus right after I wrote that, and yes to a large extent that's true. Optimus is proof that the concept can work very well. However I also think that it takes some very experienced and intelligent people to design such a main board/system, and they must have known that not allowing the multiplexer was a potential risk. (I guess they decided the risk was worth it)

yeah, this really could be hindsight

 

It takes time and lots of real world testing to introduce such a complex system working perfectly. We should see enduro mature over time now, I think the people reporting the issues really gave them a wake up call on the issue =) They could do with more transparency like the old beta days but we are seeing some work now.

The initial design might have been optimus only, it may have been system designers forcing to AMD to release this or not get included. The engineering lab is so far removed from the final product when looking at such choices however it can be hard to know what the situation looked like.

 

I agree that $400 more is a ripoff in your case. Try searching around, there must be a better option/price.

 

I had already ordered it when I started this thread, so I didn't have any other options regarding price. I was just having second thoughts after making the order.

I stuck with the 7970m in the end, I gambled that there are more happy 7970m owners out there playing games and not checking the forums for fixes all the time. I hope it turns out to be the right choice, although I'm sure I'll be on here a few times.

 

Happy to hear you're joining the club, I hope you enjoy it. One thing you'll want to keep up with is drivers. Go ahead and get the latest 12.11 beta (it's beta11) or the 12.11 Enduro Performance driver, and check up every now and then to see if a new driver is out. With the way AMD has been improving driver performance, it's a good idea to stay current. Feel free to let me know if you have any questions, I'm not an expert but I've had my share of experience of the 7970m. Most importantly, have fun! It's a really great laptop.