Gettiing a 150EM with a 7970m tomorrow. Is it a big mistake?

Hi guys,

Looks from the discussion over here that the 7970m and its drivers are malfunctioning terribly and in words of some people of the forum, " AMD has released an unfinished product ". I am gonna be needing my laptop practically 24/7 for my usage. Do you think I am making a bad choice ? Or am I better off with going for Alienware M17x and spend the money and lug the extra weight?

 

I have no complaints on my 150em with a 7970m, works flawless for me so far.

 

Just remember the post on here are a very small subset of the people who purchased these systems with the 7970m and that people who have problems are likely to post way more than people who have no problem.

While I have the 170EM so it is not complete apples to apples, I have zero problems with performance and temps. Other than the initial config of the profiles I really do not have complaints.

 

It's only a mistake if you allow all the threads on NBR get to you. I personally have not had issues gaming. It's an annoyance to get Afterburner to recognize my 7970M, but then MSI Afterburner was designed for Nvidia anyway to begin with.

I've been able to play Max Payne 3, Shogun 2 and Deus Ex HR smoothly. All three look incredible with smooth framerate. I'm averaging above 60 FPS with DX11 on, which is just dandy by me. I don't need 120 FPS.

I hope you enjoy your machine, enjoy your games while AMD works out their kinks with drivers and not be bothered by so and so is getting gazillion FPS in a game when you are already getting 60FPS vSynced in your games.

FYI there is no option for a matte screen with AW, and there is no 15" gaming monster with AW. I think the Clevo P9150EM is possibly the most amazing 15" machine ever made. The design is simple, it's not a advertisement or billboard for a company I'm not a fan of, and it's highly customize-able.

 

Why do you make statements like this ? People are not making posts on the NBR forums for no reasons, obviously there is a driver issue with the AMD 7970m with varying results.

In my opinion if you can afford to spend thousands of dollars on something frivelous like a gaming laptop, your probably better off spending the extra money for the 680m...

Just my 2 cents....

 

Not at all. I'm extremely happy with mine (17" version). I only encountered issues because of my own misunderstanding, not really the fault of the computer. I've never owned an ATI/AMD card before this one, but once I realized that Sager had actually installed the 12.7 betas on my laptop, and I didn't need to install Clevo's or any other drivers, everything was great.

So far, this is one of the best purchases I think I've ever made (much happier with this than my last Sager, and I was happy with that when I bought it four years ago). My only real disappointment is the speakers, but the speakers are probably the easiest thing to "fix" by using externals or headphones. Plus, because of the physical size of laptop speakers, it's kind of impossible to make any laptop speakers truly sound "good."

Another small problem that I don't really mind much (because I'm not a crazy power user like some people on this forum are as a hobby), is the extra steps to overclock/control the 7970m; don't get me wrong, it works very well on its own, but it's always fun to mess around with OC'ing to get the most out of it. Even with that said, it's about 3-5 minutes of work getting your laptop setup for OC'ing the 7970m, so it's not even that big of a deal, just harder than it is with nVidia.

TLDR: it worked excellently out of the box but, like many others, I like to update drivers when I get new machines - turns out I didn't have to and actually went through a lot of trouble doing nothing!

 

There are driver issues which will be fixed eventually. The 7970m works, just not as well as it should, same as Nvidia did when optimus was released. I can't see the 680m being worth as much as it is. Still, if you have the money.....

 

That's the problem bro. I don't have the money. So I don't wanna screw up this purchase.

 

Don't worry about it then. It still works and will improve, and Nvidia is ripping people off at those prices.

 

agreed... several people are making it sound generally far worse than it really is. the reality of the matter is that 99% of all games are getting framerates well above 30 fps consistently. Your card is going to get better everytime new drivers are released.

 

...AND you save money!

 

Let me just direct you to a thread of mine. :] This should make you feel a little better about your purchase.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/673687-if-youre-worried-about-buying-7970-a.html

 

The 7970 is fantastic with the drivers Clevo has up on their site. The power management and fan policies are too lax, but the card still performs extremely well, and the driver issues should be resolved in the near future anyway.


The main problem with heat is with the clevo itself though, check this:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...0em-7970m-gpu-cooling-performance-foiled.html



Even with my heat issues I run BF3 on ultra, 64 players, 1920x1080 @ 30-60FPS constantly. It will only improve as drivers and fan policies improve down the road, and when I get this heatsink evenly pressed against the GPU die itll get even better that way too.

 

Just my 2 cents... Nearly all the complaints are user error or just blindly blaming the wrong party. But I forgot, it's ALWAYS AMD's fault, it's never YOUR fault, or INTEL's fault or GAME DEVELOPER's FAULT, or not that it is a NVIDIA FREE MONEY game. And people are ALWAYS TRUTHFUL on forums, they never LIE! Course not, they never bend the truth to make it seem it's ALWAYS AMD"s fault. Cause it's far more fun just to whine, AMD sucks, ENDURO sucks, AMD DRIVER's suck. I'm going to return it and spend the extra $300 for Nvidia, because Nvidia NEVER screw up, and Nvidia OPTIMUSwas PERFECT at release. Nvidia didn't NEVER release hardware prematurely as you many users seem to claim about AMD.

 

Hula I'm with you but... Would u like a beer?

 

You won't. Every thread I've read has more people happy with it's performance with most games than not happy. It's just BF3 multiplayer that isn't doing as well, and I'm sure that AMD knows this by now.

It's just a matter of time before they get it fixed with a good set of drivers, until then there are literally hundreds of other games to play, and certainly at least 10 that will show off your new hardware to it's best.

Don't read into the doom and gloom so much mate, people get mad when their stuff doesn't work properly right out of the box. This is pretty much guaranteed when buying computers, laptop or otherwise.

But if you're really worried, you'll get a couple of years good performance out of the GTX675. Good...performance...

 

Basically if you buy the 680m over the 7970m right now you either have more money than you know what to do with, or enjoy overpaying for similar products. These are the same folks who pay $5 for a box of cocoa puffs when there is a bigger bag of Choco Balls for a $1.50 right next it...............DUUUUURHURRRR

 

Cheers

Spoiler

 

Fine here with my 7970m on a 150EM, the graphics switching is a bit of a pain, having to run a game then quit just to get the prompt to use the 7970m. Once that is done however, all good and smooth in games here with stock driver provided on CD. Suspect further down the track they will release a driver update with some game exe's and windows exe's lists so that the driver knows the most/latest games & programs that need to be run on either GPU.

 

That's my guess too, AMD will develop better 3D vs 2D detection in the future. Also they need to figure out the Flash video.
- Pretty sure a lot of users haven't figured this out. If you play Flash Video in Chrome, or FireFox, or use DXVA (GPU accelerated video playback), 7970M will use the UVD clocks, which are a lot slower than the 3D clocks. Meaning if you want to listen to Youtube while gaming or watch a movie on a 2nd screen, turn off hardware acceleration. Which is beyond me why you need it since it uses less than 1% of your 3610QM...

 

Also, to the OP, most people here with "issues" have altered their drivers with either modded 12.6 or 12.7 betas, in other words not stock. You have to take that into consideration. This is why many here, including me, have varying issues but at the same time not all are exactly the same. I had my laptop for about a week or so on stock drivers before trying the 12.7 beta and it was solid. If you want to only update drivers from one solid release to another, you can always do that. No worries on the 7970M. But if you can justify a 680M purchase, then you already know what to do.

 

I'll just be happy that I'm getting between 45-65 FPS on Ultra in BF3 right now. Just finished a match, and I don't even like this game.

 

Well , all the messages here seem heartening. My 1st ever Clevo in my 1st ever birthday in the USA. Sounds good!