8970m in p150em

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I would very much like this 4gb upgrade, and I love my p150em too much to sell it right now...

 

You find yourself running out of video ram often?

 

Eyenfinity rawr!

 

Not that great an option with 2 displays lol.

 

I'm not saying it is a must at this moment, but I do run large monitors off of my laptop when I am at work( 3 different locations). Ok, so I can only run 1 xtra over 2560x1600 and 2 over usb 3 displaylink. Also, why are the other top cards running 3/4 GB but the 7970m 2GB ? All Graphical(mathematical) applications are increasing their GPU rendering capabilities. So, I chose AMD for a reason. I've started to look more into it, and 2 things are pretty clear right off the bat : 1)Compute performance is AMD's area. open cl. raw calculations. 2) Bandwidth : Why does the GTX680m have such relatively low bandwidth compared with the high VRam ?( lower bandwidth/higher mem vs 7970m's higher bandwidth/lower mem) How does that make sense ? The way I see it as a consumer, we had to wait for the 7970m to get good drivers, but it is a damn good card I figure AMD actually has the upper hand in that they lack in the software, not the capability of hardware. Gaming aside, if you are not going to use your laptop for anything else, well that's really a damn shame isn't it ?
Why shouldn't people be interested in upgrading to a slightly better card ? 10% performance increase or whatever is maybe incremental to some, but in the case you would use it, double the vram is not. Not arguing with anyone but myself here I guess. I don't know enough to lecture anybody on this. I am going for pro cards for my workstation desktop build (halfway done), but why would I choose the 780m for anything other than gaming is maybe my question ?

 

I was under the impression that the 8970M is simply a 7970M rebadge and overclock? So you will be able to make up the performance difference for free with an overclock (even more with an overvolt).

 

It is exactly that, a 50MHz bump to the core clock and doubling of the VRAM is the only difference. The only advantage I see to a 8970M is its VRAM capacity as the 7970M can easily be overclocked to 900MHz+.

Sent from my SGH-T889 using Tapatalk 2

 

I overclock mine to 1050 mhz without any problem. GC Gelid Extreme. Good temps.That's not my issue. Anyway, if it will work somehow with my 150em, I will buy it. Eurocom says it can, my local retailer insists it can't. Is the vbios the only issue when dealing with different retailers or do you have to take other things into consideration ?

 

1050mhz on stock voltages? uh?

 

Yes According to afterburner that is the case ;-) I don't mess with the voltage! I monitored my temps and got very good fps in Crysis 3 , although that was quite the ordeal for my poor 7970m I expect. 1050mhz core clock, 1400mhz memory clock. I have read several people doing that. Tried 1100mhz once, but that was a no - go :-(

So exactly how much " head space " does this "rebrand" have for overclocking ? If I can treat it like I treat my 7970m + a little extra & double vram , I would buy it Not only that, but I've already got a good deal for potential resale of my laptop - The 8970m would only benefit me there.....
I don't keep a laptop for more than a year/year & a half, so as to get value back for my purchase. Keep the OS light and the VM's heavy. But you grow fond of things I guess. Actually, I just made up my mind. Selling the p150em. Going for p157sm with 8970m. Selling in January/February 2014

 

Some cores can go beyond 1ghz on the stock voltage, I had one.

Considering you can also add extra juice to the 7970M for overclocking there is really 0 benefit of the 8970M.

In fact since your 7970M seems to be a good sample the 8970M may turn out to overclock worse and therefore perform worse.

 

Yes, from what I'm reading it would seem you are right. I am fortunate to have a good sample. Is it worth it to get the GTX 780m though ? From what I read, the 780m follows in the footsteps of the 680m with somewhat crippled overall compute performance. GPU - boss for example, rate the 8970m above the 780m solely on the grounds of way better compute performance, even though it falls behind totally in the gaming department...

 

There is a gap but it's not worth moving from your current setup for it, you would be far better waiting for the new generation before getting a new system bearing in mind the 780M does not work in EM systems.

 

1400 mem is too low. waste 1050 core

 

Yeah, I have since raised it to 1550. Still no problems

 

Yeah certainly no point shifting from a 1050/1550 7970m at the moment.