Sager NP9150 Owner - Upgraded 7980M to 680M - Noticeable Difference

Like many, I went with the 7970M when I ordered my NP9150, thinking that it was within 10% of performance of the 680M, and $300 cheaper. I struggled through the ATI enduro problems that have plagued the card, and had decent performance in some games...modded drivers from this forum helped. I recently decided to say "screw it" and bought a 680M on Ebay. The difference is quite noticeable, games seem more smooth, and I'm not seeing the random frame rate drops that I had with the 7970M. Buying a laptop with the 7970M was my first purchase of an ATI/AMD product, and will be my last. When it works as advertised, it's a good card, close to the 680M....but 35ish percent of the time it doesn't work like it should, and either gives bad performance or random frame rate drops that aren't associated with what's being rendered.

Long story short, I should have spent the extra money and went with Nvidia. At least in this case, they aren't "only 10% better" than the 7970M, they are really closer to 50% better.

 

Virtually identical experience to you, I too upgraded to a 680m within 6 months of having my machine. This difference really was noticeable. Glad to hear you fixed it for your machine.

Sent from my GT-I9305T using Tapatalk

 

You might have ditched that 7970m just a hair early. I think you also may have just had a bum card. Granted, I seem to have a really good one - but now that one is easily able to tweak voltage values, getting max performance is really easy with these things. Prior to being able to flash a different vbios to my card, I was honestly a bit disappointed. But now I can game at 1000/1400 all day long in the upper 80s without breaking a sweat. I love this thing and really am looking forward to the release of Mantle to see what kind of improvements it will bring since I primarily play BF4.

Prior to being able to flash vbios' to this card, mine would only run at a max of 0.975. Even flashing to just a stock 1.05 was an awesome boost. I currently run 1.075 and have run 1.1 which is where the score below was attained from.

Good luck with your new setup! Sounds like your happy which is the most important thing.

 

I will have to disagree on this one, I had nothing but issues with my previous nVidia laptop and so I went for AMD Radeon HD 8970M (similar performance to 680M) this time, and gotta tell you the truth... I couldn't be happier!! It has ran everything I've thrown at it in the past week with near-perfect results. The only thing I could say that I miss a little is 'proper' PhysX support, but that aint a deal-breaker for me.

Perhaps you need lessons on how to install AMD drivers properly, or how to get the most out of your GPU.

PS. Cant believe the prices that nVidia is charging for their GT 780M, absolutely extortionate! Considering the 8970M gets pretty close to its performance and its half the price.

 

Let's stick back to the topic of 7970m vs 680m with Enduro, and not ATI vs Nvidia. Otherwise, the argument will just go to lalaland.

So, back to the 7970m with Enduro. I too, was one of those people who started with the 7970m, but moved to 680m. Even after over a year, I'm still not sure if this problem is fixed. Some say yes, others say no. To me, when I pay a premium to buy a product, I expect it to work as it should. After reading the threads in this forum, it is a multi stage process to "Possibly" get the 7970m to work "maybe correctly". Seems to be more of a hit or miss fix.

No offence, but to those owners of 7970m who claim that their 7979m can work flawless and run BF3 at 80 FPS (not sure what settings, but assuming ULTRA) with no screen tearing, why don't you guys write a detail tutorial step by step instruction and help those owners who are having problems. It seems every month that there are people wanting to dump their 7970m and move to the 680m. It's still $500 to get the 680m. And yes, Nvidia is ridiculously with pricing their vid cards.