Sager NP9150 / Clevo P150EM - 675mx or 7970m

As the title states, which graphics card would be better?
I've heard there are issues with the 7970m, and the GTX 675mx is 100$ less.
But I also heard that 7970m can perform same as 680m, so I don't know what to get.

 

7970m is at the top of it's class when it comes to value. It will outperform the 675mx as well, although the 675mx is still a stellar card. The 7970m is not quite up to par with the 680m as far as performance goes, but it's awfully close.

The issues with the 7970m have almost exclusively been Enduro-related. Get a rig with no Enduro and there are very few driver issues with the 7970m. NVidia has fewer driver problems across the board, but you certainly pay more.

 

I'm going to get a Sager NP9150 / Clevo P150EM.
Does that come with enduro?

 

The NP9150/9170 do use Enduro, the NP9370/9570 dont.

 

Any machine with dual card capability will be able to run without enduro/optimus

 

the sager np9150 isn't dual card tho, so i cant run it without enduro? so i should get the GTX 675mx?

 

Yes, that's the rule on the current machines, single card machines are enduro/optimus for clevo/sager.

The 7970M has more performance potential but the 675MX is more consistent. The 7970M has improved a lot and when working well is on par with the 680M, at 1080p in modern titles though it is likely it will maintain a lead over the 675mx.

 

So even with the problems with endruro, it's still better than the 675mx? so should put out another 100$ for a card that's having issues, or just stick with the 675mx?
I also find it funny i posted this on the xoticpc forums hours ago, yet this forum has a reply from xoticpc while i dont have one on their forums lol

 

I would personally go with the 7970M but as someone with a lot of experience I tend to be able to get round any issues I hit.

The 7970M has about 6000 3dmarks in it where as the 675MX is at around 4000, so that is a pretty big difference there, it comes down to how you think you will get on with it.

 

what issues have you had?

 

go 7970M, its 6640 pmarks in 3dmark 11 actually.
No issues, besides some beta driver quirks, wich are now almost compeltely fixed, so its the few enduro issues as well (i really havent suffer any).

 

Mostly issues seem to relate to older DX9 titles at the moment.

Also the lack of performance increase when dropping down resolution.

 

So if I lower the resolution to increase performance, it doesn't actually help? But on the 675mx it would, right?
What are DX9 titles? Is Aion / Guild Wars 2 / Lineage 2 DX9 titles?

 

And how is sager customer support? Should I order directly through sager or through a reseller like xoticpc or mythlogic?

 

when it comes to service and customization, id go mythlogic all the way based on user feedback here, theyve got a very nice and customer-friendly business going. that doesnt mean that other resellers are bad tho!

 

It depends on the title, in most titles you do get the performance boost, and even in affected ones you get better numbers, just not as good as it should be.
IMHO you dont need to lower anything with this card, i play everything maxed in ¨older DX9 titles¨ and really never needed to lower my graphic settings a bit (borderlands 2, crysis 2, for ex).
The main complaint about 7970M has always been BF3 (wich i dont play btw), and only in multiplayer games and certain maps. This has been mostly fixed by the driver updates. Right now the serious complaints have almost entirely ceased.
There will always be one or two extremists or frustrated lads who keep pumping on the issues (some of them dont actually own the card anymore, because they switched to the 680M)
There will always be some games (AC III??) that doesnt run properly in your card (i dont think nvidia can claim everything runs perfectly on their side as well).
All the titles you mention run great in 7970M as far as i know
The new drivers keep getting stabler and better as well.

So dont go for an old card and spend the extra 100 for a premium one.
In 675M lowering settings works great improving perf in old games, in 7970M maybe not, but then again you dont need to lower anything with it.

 

The 675M is old fermi architecture, the 675 MX is kepler and OP is referencing the MX.

To OP, what do the words anisotropic filtering, tesselation, and multisample anti-aliasing mean to you? If they mean a lot to you, go for the 7970. It's the most powerful card for the price and most (not all) of the enduro issues have been solved.

On the other hand, I have the 675mx and I enjoy it. My most demanding title is metro 2033, which i play maxed out with some settings turned down just one notch, and i get a stable 30fps with all the eyecandy.

TL;DR - If you are a knowledgeable user, able to troubleshoot your own problems, and you want the best performance go 7970. If you want to play games on high settings and not worry about anything, go for the 675mx

 

1080p : 7970M is better by a long shot.

If you use lower settings, underutilization issues start to kick-in for the 7970M and the gap with the 675MX will gradually become narrower. It might become a problem for some games if you are looking to get consistent 120 fps in order to take full advantage of a 120hz monitor, but so far I have never encountered this issue.

 

I'm glad I found this thread. I'm also planning to buy a NP9150. The 680M is simply too expensive for me, so I'm left with the 675MX and 7970M. Is there a general list where I can find the average fps that people get using the NEW drivers (13.1 or 13.2) for the 7970M? Since there have been so many new drivers, this information becomes old fast.

 

That's the problem since it's ever changing it can be hard to do a proper comparison as it becomes obsolete pretty quickly.

 

This post http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/707367-3dmark-released.html with new 3D mark results has several users with the 13.1 drivers.

 

I have 13.2 beta6 installed. The thing will always be how you perform the benchmark in order to compare. I can only tell you i can ran almost all titles maxed with no issues, so far i only had to lower AA (to low MSAA) and blur (to medium) in Crysis 3, for it to run smoothly (20-25 fps average i guess), but this is a very demanding game anyway (with everything maxed i think i was getting avg18 fps or so). Rest i have tried is skyrim, witcher 2, crysis 2 (in HD and dx11), starcraftII, sleeping dogs, hitman absolution, borderlands2, all run very well maxed (maybe witcher 2 needs to turn off hiperreal, but I still think is fluid enough with it on). And i am talking about stock clocks performance.

 

That sounds odd, I get 55-60fps on high with motion blur off.

 

When AMD releases new drivers, are they fixing their drivers such that they can run existing games or are they getting at the roots? The difference is that if they're releasing new drivers to fix current games, each time new games come out we need new drivers.

 

high or ultra? if its ultra, maybe i need toturn motion blur off, anyway i find it perfectly smooth to play with ecerything in ultra, and only a minor low in blur and MSAA

 

I'm second from top on all settings but motion blur (I hate motion blur).

 

Well... I've ordered mine with a 7970m and both Derek and Roland told me that "most of the issues have been ironed out with the 13.1 and 13.2 beta drivers". Chris from prostar told me the same thing. So hopefully these 3 lads weren't just trying to make a sale by lying to me.

 

The enduro issues have no really manifested themselves as much in DX11 titles, so it sounds more like a general driver issue.

 

And what about the dx9 titles I play (because you know 90% of games are
Still freakin dx9)

 

For what it's worth, I leave Enduro off all the time, and I still have a few issues with both 13.1 WHQL and 13.2 beta 7. I'm not sure if I can recommend getting the 7970m on a Clevo.

 

Honestly, the most severe issue I had was with Assassin's Creed 3. The game is practically unplayable in any setting. Apart from Far Cry's 3 DX11 artifacts, the card behaves well. There is that issue of underutilization, like playing Battlefield 3 at 60% utilization (about 40fps, so its ok for me), but I do believe that being a new generation with a new architecture (GCN), AMD has a bit of an excuse. We should see drastic improvements with upcoming drivers, IMHO.

 

7970m, will be much better... Especially if you ever descide to do anyhting as far as openCL or openGL.
I love my 7970m, I will vouch for it anyday.

 

Assassins creed 3 is just a bad port, you get very bad issues even on Nvidia cards.

 

Well I don't plan on doing anything with OpenGL or Opencl.. I really will be using it as a gaming machine. I'd rather not spend the extra 200 on the 680 but I will if I have to. I play quite a few games. Hawken, world of tanks, and a lot of others but most of them are dx9 and I honestly am really worried about problems

 

Well those titles you listed are under Nvidia's wing IIRC.

 

Is it bad I'm terrified of my soon to be 7970m?

 

Nah, don't be. If you are upgrading from something generations old (Like a 335m like I did) the performance increase even when it isn't performing perfectly is insane. Don't stress it a bit. MOST of the time the 7970m performs quite well. Though it has taken them a year the drivers are getting better and can only go up from here.I had one and switched to the 680m. I love the 680 and wouldn't look back, but If I wouldn't have gotten a discount on the 680m as a trade in I wouldn't have done it, the 7970m worked fine for everything I played except for BF3.

The general rule of thumb is this: Ignore the idea of a performance problem and play. If you are enjoying the game and don't see anything wrong with it (Like the artifacts and stuff) then just enjoy the game don't worry about the FPS/utilization.

 

What's wrong with bf3 as I play bf3

I did have prostar tell me that if the 7970m isn't working for me I can send the laptop back and they'd swap the 680m in for me (of course I'd have to pay shipping both ways and the difference in cost)

 

I'm upgrading from a 335 as well, but only to a 675mx. I like hearing about an "insane" improvement.

 

335 to 675mx is still gonna be insane

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

Well just look at the numbers, 72 shaders to 1344 and while not directly comparable, it's not far off.

 

I have had the same dilemma, the GTX 675m vs the 7970m in a P170EM, but simply for Photoshop photo editing and video editing work.

Can anyone tell me how they would compare? Am I likely to come up against Enduro problems with the 7970m when using Photoshop and Lightroom?

Thanks.

 

I could not have said it better, its been like that since day one for me, if i dont turn HWinfo to check usage i fully enjoy my card, and 95% of the time with it on i enjoy it as well.

7970M and ati in general sweep the floor with nvidia in that department, so 7970M all the way my friend.

 

Yes only the titan desktop GPU has not had it's compute innards ripped out in nvidia's lineup so for that sort of task the AMD chip is much faster.

 

Yeah Right now ATI is the stronger of the two as far as those areas go. Not to mention that the 7970m is stronger than the 675m anyway.

 

Well. My I gave my girlfriend the M11x R2 I had after I got my new laptop and she just recently upgraded to a 670mx in a NP9150 and I have used it. It IS a monster upgrade no matter which way you look at it, on paper or in practice and it does not disappoint at all. She was blown away by the difference. The M11x R2 I gave her was the first laptop that could run any game at all that she had ever had. With this being the second she has fallen in love with it completely.

Not to mention that I couldn't get her laptop over 63c on a bed running both prime and Kombuster at high performance battery. This was after I changed the paste of course.

The 670mx is a fantastic card, I assume that the 675mx can only be better.

 

The card wont clock up on battery by the way.

 

wow, my thread really took off lolz.
Anyways, i think i've decided to go with the GTX 675mx.
I looked up an overclock, and they increased the performance by 35% without much temperature incrase, very low actually. And unlike the 7970m, the performance will increase if i lower the resolution, among other performance issues. (unless i read that wrong) The GTX 675mx is just more stable.

Anyone know if there have been any specific issues with the np9150 that i should know about though?

 

that was to be expected of an nvidia vs. ati thread @really took off

 

I've had my np9150 since Jan of this year and I was debating whether to have the 680m or the 7970m.
I didn't bother to look at older tech as it is extremely inferior to either of the two.

I picked the 7970m because it was cheaper and was said to be better at some things.
Anyways, since having it, I have never had a single problem with any game I tossed at it.
I play many games and my laptop runs pretty cool. I leave my laptops on 24/7 and many times, this would run 12+ hours of pure gaming with not one single problem at all.
Playing high end games using 1280x800 res because it's the native res for my projector which is on nearly 24/7 too.

So, all the problems people speak of, I have never experienced a bit of it. And I get very high FPS even using a lower resolution. If my projector was higher, I would use that. Even though it can display that, using the native res have the best picture quality.

Too bad you made this thread and feared the 7970m, it's just so much superior compared to the one 675.
All the reasons you went for the 675 was not even the right reasons.

My brother has the 675 but his doesn't come close to the 7970m.

Though, it's still a major upgrade from an old junky card though.