RJTech - ATI 5870 as an option for Clevo W860CU

This is probably old news for those of you in the know...

I just noticed this tonight while playing around with W860CU config--

http://rjtech.com/shop/index.php?dispatch=products.view&product_id=29778

I'm kinda kicking myself for ordering just a bit too early. How many of you would cancel your order just to get the ATI card (vs the GTX285m)?

Edit: Also offered for the W870CU--

 

i would, considering how fast nvidia's reputation has been fading away lately...

 

Right now the benchmarks for the Mobility Radeon HD5870 do not indicate much better performance compared to the GTX 280M or 285M. dx11 is nice but if you cannot run dx11 games on max details and FullHD with a high end card it is kinda pointless. Plus most games are still optimized for Nvidia... what good is buying a high end card just to end up with clipping issues and stuff. Sure, these are driver issues but you never know if they will adapt the drivers for the Mobility Radeon HD5870 in that respect. Needless to say that in games supporting phyX the GTX 260M / 280M / 285M will be faster anyway - although there are not many games out that support phyX.

With a clevo barebone you also never order to early. You can still swap your current GPU with another MXM 3.0b card. I would wait for the GTX 3x0M. Most likely they will not support dx11 but perform considerable better than the GTX 280M/285M and the Mobility Radeon HD5870.

For now your GTX 285M can run everything. If in one year more dx11 games are available and your card does not perform to your satisfaction anymore you can still decide on an upgrade then.

 

>.> theres no price difference between the two, I see no reason not to get it with the 5870. Its also built on 40nm vs nvidia 55nm.

 

I actually ordered the Sager 8690 from PC Torque (I know, it's the same as the W860CU). $1554.50 complete/shipped sans OS. But I guess I can always sell/trade the GTX285m for the ATI or resell to purchase the GTX380 later.

I guess this is what sucks and yet exciting about being a gamer. The only real return on investment is the enjoyment you get from playing games (or modding) with the machine.

 

I've been waiting for this.....im currently on a Asus G51 w/ a 260mGTX.....but i want DX11 and a higher res screen, also my gf wants my asus.

 

Pretty much sums up my feelings, add on top the stuttering caused by Nvidia issues on the M980NU and I feel less than charitable to them right now, and would rather take ATI. (even if official drivers only last a year, even with bugs, at least they generally arent full of issues causing your machine to stutter and freeze )

 

There is a 10.3 beta release of the Catalyst Control Center out on the web.
The driver has excellent covergae for the mobile cards including the 5 series.
So I wonder if this is the start of the promised monthly driver updates from AMD/ATI that has been touted around.

For comparison I have just ran the benchmark on Dirt2 on my Desktop
Specs:
Core i7 965 @ 3.2 (Not OCed)
ATI 5870
3gb Ram

Game settings:
1920 x 1200
2x AA
Ultra Settings

Using the 10.2 CCC Driver I got the following results
MinFPS = 45
AvgFPS = 54

Using the 10.3 Beta CCC Drivers I got the following results
MinFPS = 54 +20%
AvgFPS = 62 +14%

Am sure you will agree thats pretty impressive increase for driver update

 

I thought it would be more expensive than the gtx 285m. But I saw that the ati mobility 5870 was significantly cheaper than the gtx 285, while configuring a W860CU. Heck, the gtx 285 was even cheaper than the gtx 280.

Does this make sense to anyone? Seems like up is down and down is up.

 

I'm the last person to complain about lower prices-

 

The 5870 uses a smaller core die (and there's a fixed size per wafer, so smaller die = more dies per wafer), and a 128bit bus width which simplifies the PCB, even with the GDDR5 it's massively cheaper to produce. I'd guess we're seeing some of the benefit of that here

 

The 5870 will run like ice in a Sager. OC that puppy to 850/1200, and you'd still be hard pressed to break 75C. I'm tempted, but I'm still in decision mode. Not sure if I want a desktop, or even just a PS3 to tide me over.

If I did, it would be the W860 with 1600 x 900, 5870, and 6300 wireless from RJtech. I'd get an i7 620M from shirley, and from newegg a 250GB 7200 HDD, 4GB 1066 Kingston, and Windows 7 64-bit. All said and done, $1500-1550. A good $500 cheaper than my NP5797 was.

You know you've moved on to power user status when you only want to assemble the notebook yourself

 

Why go with such a low res? Is is bumping res down from native that bad? Im considering buying one myself, but with the HD display.

 

I'm making do with a 1366 x 768 screen as is (if you're contemplating over the lack of vertical pixels). The DPI should be similar to what I'm using now, and I'm content with that. In the past I have had an HP with 16" 1080p screen, and the DPI was borderline ridiculous. For a 17" screen, I would choose 1080p, but my favorite is WSXGA+, and I happen to have a 20" monitor with just that...The 5870 should have no trouble gaming at 1080p, and I also have a 1080p 32" LCD when gaming at home on the couch

 

interesting, this is just what I was waiting for. The asus with its missing ports and expresscard etc is sadly something I will skip. I wonder if the ati display port & eyfinity is included in this.

Would be great if the 15" AW had the ati also.

Will exoticpc offer this as well??

 

I think it is partly to do with personal opinion and tolerance. For me, I simply can't stand how any game looks when you drop the resolution, the lack of definition, the blurry look and the nice crisp details that you lose. I went with the 1600 x 900 screen for exactly this reason but also because of pure gaming performance. With a Full HD screen, you will be forced to drop the resolution in some games or you get decent performance in others but you won't be able to push the settings up too much, you also lose quite a bit of performance.

With the 1600 x 900 screen you can play at native res for pretty much every single game and get better performance so you can increase details if you wanted too. Games still look great on this res.

 

My argument for the 1080p is that if you want a full multimedia and games laptop then theres no other screen which fits the bill. The full HD will allow you to watch Bluray movies at their best with an external player of course. And games play fine on the 1080 res with the GPU provided. Granted some will have to scale down but I dont think overall it falls to personal preference like laptopnut said.

 

1920x1200 screens are even better for this. Its a shame they're becoming harder to get, I prefer the 16:10 screen aspect.

 

Yeah I think we all miss the "old" 16:10 days.

I agree 100%.
I would rather have more performance on a slightly lower res screen.
Don't really care if I could watch 1080p content on a laptop, I guess it's all personal preference(got a PS3 for that ).
@ laptopnut how is the quality of your screen anyway?bright?
I've had my fair share of disappointing screens.

 

I don't watch any 1080p content either and although the GPU can deal with gaming fine at full HD, you will always get better performance with the 1600 x 900 period. The quality of the screen is excellent, very bright, crisp and glossy. I have had to turn down the brightness slightly. I think it is the perfect compromise between future / current gaming performance and eye candy.

 

I see the pros and cons for both argument, and as said before I think it boils down to persoanl prefference. I have hada 900p HD+ Dell laptop and I recently got the full HD 1080p Sager. After comparign the two I can see a deffinate increase in screen quality (The Sager having the better screen). This maybe not as apparent for the 900p Sager vs the 1080p Sager but it givesa good idea.

That all said I thought the 900p screen was gorgeous on the DELL so I guess you wont be dissapointed either way. all depends on what you want.

 

Thanks a million ...lol
+rep bro

 

I ordered the Full HD since I usually connect to a 1680x1050 LCD HDTV anyway.

 

I really dont think you would see a major boost in performance with a 1600x900 screen over a 1920x1080... we're talking like 4fps.

 

Not necesarilly+ those extra FPS might make a demanding game playable.
It's all personal preference so I say get whatever makes you happy.
Personaly I like to game at a screens native resolution, everything just looks crisper.

 

The very few benchmarks that have been done so far show a difference of 10 fps between the two different resolutions in favor of the 1600 x 900 screen. Some other games may not show much difference at all.

If your minimum fps is not very high then 10 fps can make a huge difference, in fact, even 5 fps could.

Now imagine the impact in a game where the minimum fps you got was a lot lower than 37 fps, say something more like 25-30 fps.

Edit:

Here are a few more benchmarks comparing resolutions:

We Both have the same laptop model, same 4GB DDR3 RAM, he has a 320Gb HDD, I have a 640GB HDD, he has the i7-720QM but I have the i7-820QM. Both have same GTX 285M with the same Drivers and same stock clocks.

I just did a few more comparison benchmarks and these quite clearly show the performance difference in resolution more than the other ones:

Notes:

Having looked at the Batman AA benchmark results from Vitor711 it looks like he has Vsync enabled somewhere so I have removed the results until an update from him

 

If your dipping that low, it may be time for an upgrade all together.

 

Not necessarily, you can dip low in poorly optimised games and console ports but you still might want to play them.

 

I think the problem with the above Benches is the RAM, only 2GB? I think you would greatly benefit from at least 4GB ?

 

Lower native resolution will always yield better performance than higher native resolution when gaming.

Obviously if a game runs good at 1920x1080 it will run even better at 1600x900.

The idea is to future proof your system as much as possible when gaming so that when you encounter games that start to tax your 1920x1080 / 1920x1200 systems, the 1600x900 / 1680x1050 systems are able to handle it much better at their native resolution and don't require sacrificing native resolution gaming or having to dial back as many eye candy options to achieve acceptable performance.

Of course if you love a lot of real estate then most likely you will be willing to make these potential now and later sacrifices of scaling down resolution and detail options to have that increased real estate for everything non gaming.

Or if you're like me and prefer 1680x1050 / 1600x900 or similar on the desktop on a 17" screen, then it is a win win all around.

And going from 2 to 4GB of memory isn't going to close the performance gap in those benchmarks. It is a product of better performance at lower resolutions regardless of the memory.

 

The desktop nvidia gtx 380 is coming out yet, so the mobile 380m will be very long. Plus dx11 will be beneficial to 5870 as more new games coming out optimize dx11

 

Well, for me i do want a higher res....my current g51 has a 1376x768 res, and its killing me in games like totalwar and counterstrike, its just to low for me.

 

How is it killing you? Does the UI not scale dynamically with the resolution and is fixed?

 

He's blaming his inability to pwn on his notebook.

 

i think id pwn just little on a diff screen. stuff scales ok, but in some games text and other stuff doest look great, one is empire total war. If i out put to a external screen, it looks alot better. I also like to have desk realestate, and i'm willing to buy a new laptop, or upgrade every year or so.

 

So? I've played at non-native 960x600 for years and I am only beginning to play on 1440x810 on my W870CU. Stuff doesn't need to look great to kick *ss. Native 1366x768 looks pretty decent to me. I know, I play on my 1201N with that resolution.

 

It does not have to look great, but if I had the choice and cash I would probably go for the best possible resolution (I like playing at higher resolutions, for example when I used to play CSS prof a while back)

 

I agree, i duno im a fan of higher res? And i have the cash to buy it, so im a happy camper. Some games look better at higher res imo.

@hobo....im in need of one CSS player -=] Still play some?

 

1366x768 is not a bad resolution to play games on if you ask me, just played the first stage of NINJA BLADE on that res and it looks awesome.I know it's basically a XBOX port but still it looks great.
On a side note it's a fantastic action game if your into that sort of NINJA action.

 

its not a bad res....but its less than optimal, at least for me and the few games i play. I also like the actual desktop space ya know?


The below games have been my biggest problem at that res, all others are fantastic.

CS:S
Empire Total War

 

I used to play a lot of cpl_mill back in high school. And that was before they redid the radar so I couldn't really see the dots very well at native since they were small and my eyes were bad, and because my poor 6600 Go couldn't handle 1920x1200. But lately I just play cs_office and de_dust2 pubs and I haven't lost my touch one bit yet, mainly because this mouse hauls so much win.