7970m wait for fix? or switch to 680m?

i play mostly BF3 (off and online) and also total war series games, i dont mind frames going down to say low 30s or high 20s mementarily for a few seconds, its the way AMD is handeling this that is making me not too happy

 

i get 40 fps as well, but then it dips to bellow 30, sometimes as low as 24fps. My previous laptop, which I sold to buy this one with, could get more stable fps with a 6970m. I find that fact a bit depressing and just cant be bothered playing until its fixed.

 

no i wasnt aware of it, otherwise I would have waited for 680m to come out.
Right now even if I convince my seller to swap out my card, I will be without a laptop for 3 weeks.

 

Yeah I know it sucks. I actually waited for the 680m to come out. Then I went to notebookcheck to see the benchmarks and it was nearly equal to 7970m. Never got to know anything about the Enduro issues.

 

The 7970M/Enduro problems still not fixed? Good lord

 

For me the enduro is just frustrating me more and more, and I must say that people are not over exaggerating the issue. As battlefield is nearly unplayeble, only maps that I could play are close qarters, as low 30's are unacceptable if you wanna be a competetive player. Also I just enjoyed perfect 15 fps in sleeping dogs while driving on open streets, on no mather what settings. This isn't exaggerated, the card is for some just unusable.
And for the OP if he still wants an answer, if I knew before how the card performes, I would never bought it. If you have the extra cash go for the 680 wit out a doubt, or if you dont I would go for the 675 as I belive that perfomes better stability wise, I would rather get stable 45< fps on medium to high , than unstable 20-100 on ultra.

 

It's only being investigated at the moment, it took AMD like 3-4 months just to find out that the Enduro issue exists, investigation was only initiated like 2 weeks ago. Still not even sure if it's fixable.

 

They say so, but my personal opinion is that thay new about it much earlier.
For example PCSpecialist.uk whis is the resseler I bought my computer from stated in the middle of june that amd is investigating problems regarding 7970m and working on new drivers.

***announcement***amd 7970m drivers not playing tennis***announcement***

Even sager was aware of the problem back in the beggining of july when they posted theyre logging thread. I think many resselers contacted AMD earlier than 2 weeks ago. They must know it at least for two months now but they didnt let the public now anything , untill like two weeks ago when caveman-jim and catalyst creator on twitter posted that they are working on it.
But why is it taking so long????

 

Because it's still only offcially being investigated.

By the way the beta driver posted before the logging thread wasn't tweaked by AMD, was by Sager for testing purposes and that's the only test driver that's been released. Then Sager started a logging thread that wasn't focusing on the test driver but also other issues regarding to HD7970M, but the logging thread was later on requested by AMD through Sager to be taken off, they may have received enough information or tried to hide the issue (As you can see there were 2-3 threads going on about people think AMD is trying to hide the Enduro issue, and that's before we got caveman-jim's attention).

I don't think AMD has really taken this as a serious problem until hulawafu77 got caveman-jim's attention, after caveman-jim talked to AMD, they start to show some signs and prioritised Enduro issue as high priority.

 

Would be nice for AMD to officially say that they are actually working on the problem and how it is progressing, so far they havent officially acknowledged that the issue exists. Would AMD even tell us if this problem cannot be fixed via driver update? Or would they keep quiet and stick with current, un-official "we are investigating" stance, until next gen of cards arrives?

 

I don't think they "officially" care as evidenced by their statement over 3 years ago: AMD provides tools to PC makers, he said, who make the final design decisions on how the GPU will perform in different power-usage scenarios. But sometimes the laptop maker won't make the best choice.
AMD: MacBook issues giving graphics bad rap | Nanotech - The Circuits Blog - CNET News

 

pretty sure that would have been in reference to some sort of thermal / power draw throttling issue, where they are technically correct - if a laptop does not have appropriate thermal system or enough juice to power a card it has no choice but to throttle down performance to compensate. In our case its a little different, as these cards have been proven to work just fine without enduro enabled.

 

Exactly!!!! I agree with you. So AMD and the laptop manufacturers are looking at each other and we are left holding the bag (GPU)

FWIW...I'm ok with my game running at 24% GPU for the time being but, to answer the OP's question, I would have gone with the 680M while my laptop was still in production for the $300 premium even if the price to performance ratio is to expensive had I known what I know now. But, now that my laptop is past 30 days, my reseller wants $900 + shipping for the swap so I'm simply going to wait till the 680M drops, which it will eventually, and swap it out myself.

I've learned a lot of lessons in my life the hard way....this is just another one.

 

Holy smokes, $900 for the swap. For that price you can buy the card and swap it out yourself, and then sell the 7970m separately.

 

I asked Sager if there is any recent news about a possible 7000m Enduro/power gating utilization fix. Here is the reply:

"not yet, all the info we have now is still. it's being reviewed.


Sorry,"

My guess is once the problem is located it could be a month for WHQL to come out. We might not see a fix until the end of the year.

 

if we ever see one, that is

 

Maybe its a christmas present? "With Love, from AMD"

 

For delivering a failed product? Yeah

 

Cloudfire, I know that as an Nvidia fanboy this is very exciting for you, but why bother posting here? You have no vested interest in this thread, you dont own any AMD products and your sole purpose here is to gloat.

 

Anyway, I was reading a Rage3D forum, and the latest update from caveman-jim is no update from AMD yet.

Well, I shipped mine last Friday back to Sager for the swap. Shipping is fairly cheap, only about $17. Insurance for USD$2200 lappy............... USD$25. My goodness, my shipping totals up to about a little over $40.

 

That's cheaper than a PC game at standard rate

 

Agreed, his remarks are quite annoying. Oh well, I'm jumping ship, seeing as it seems to be the thing to do. Absolutely fed up with AMD.

 

i have a p170em with 7970m and i have to say i very regret buying this amd piece of trash , i downloaded bf3 dlc to find out that the new maps "Sharqi Peninsula specifically" would give me 21 fps when im at the middle of them which render a first person shooter useless , i would fire a whole clip at somebody without even scratching him due to the jerky fps , this is at ultra settings "which it suppose to run smoothly" when i thought i would get smooth fps at low settings i was very wrong , what i got is 5 more fps , the card insist on running at 50-40% at heavy action it is like the card is giving you the middle finger , anyway anyone reading this dont even consider amd it is cheap because it is broken , 300$ for the nvidia is a high quality functioning product not a hot steaming pile of amd is , i will never buy amd products again ever .

 

so the 675m would be a better option then? save some money toward an upgrade next year?

 

21 FPS is really low, guess I'll have to try the new map out on the GTX680M and find out how the FPS is like.

 

actually i think going for 670m maybe be a good idea, just stick with slightly lower resolutions (or overclock it) for like 8 more month, the saved $200 can go towards an upgrade making it less painful Also i am guessing the reselling value of the 7970 is quite low now?

 

It should go back under the bridge from whence it came

 

I feel the exact same way about the 9150EM w/ the 7970. I waited over 8 months with no laptop to wait for this and now I regret it very much as it can't even play a game that a 540m played on high w/ no problem. I am also past my 30 day return so I'm just stuck w/ this POS laptop

 

You should be able to reach some kind of an agreement with your reseller (e.g. switching to a 675m or 680m) since they sold you a defective product. Pretty sure no 30 day policy holds here, and you are protected by consumer rights.

 

also i dont really think its AMD's fault to be honest, there are no problems with the card as proven by alienware, its the way Clevo designed their motherboards (correct me if i am wrong here)

 

So you mean Enduro was meant just for teh LULZ?

 

the problem exists on alienware when enduro is switched on, its just that alienware has a mux that allows the card to bypass iGPU. IMHO its definitely an AMD problem as enduro is an AMD function, it just seems to be poorly designed / implemented.

 

I'm quoting you just in case you edit your post after feeling silly so that there is a proof and reminder of you actually saying it's not AMD's fault. Hehehehe.

Just kidding, of course. Yes, you're wrong because Enduro is AMD's design. Since it doesn't work, it's their fault. Clevo, or even Alienware, aren't responsible for designing motherboards that have to work around issues that AMD designed. Yes, Clevo made the cards, but the features on that card is not something they have to fix. That's AMD's responsibility.

 

oh yeah true, i forgot about enduro

 

and what the hell is this pos enduro , i didnt ask for this feature . i dont understand why it cant be disabled? i mean if i can remove the 7970m drivers and disable then why i cant disable something utterly useless that is ruining my experience.

 

i think enduro probably has a hardware component to it

 

That's what the AMD's quitness seems to point towards. It would probably mean no fix is coming.

 

has anything like that happened before?

 

I don't think there is any other reason why they would stay so quiet about the issue. Just doesn't make any sense businesswise. They might be tring to overcome the issue, but have thus far been unsuccessful.

As far as I know. Same kind of thing has happened to Nvidia. They didn't stay quiet though, and promised all sorts of fixes and enhancements. Turned out there was nothing they could do, as the cards themselves were bad (referring to an another user's post in NBR)

 

You know ... all of this is good news for AW owners, there will be an overabundance of semi-new second hand 7970M in the market that they could use without problems because of the mux presence, in case they fry their 7970Ms or want to upgrade from a lesser compatible card. As a matter of fact it makes sense to buy a gpu-less AW from a reseller if you get a good deal on a second-hand 7970M. I saw some for 450 USD on eBay a few days ago.

 

Don't forget HM owners.

 

switched to the 680m thank god. works great

 

Hi urmytlkal,

did you find a driver that works well with heroes of newerth?

 

Did you try one of the modified drivers on the front page here?