Should I wait for 7970m enduro fix or get 680m

7970m SLI and wait for a enduro fix, save myself some money

or

get a 680m SLI and pay more w/ slightly better performance

Which should I get?

 

I dont think Enduro works with SLI, so you should be alright with 7970m. With single cards its a no brainer, 680m or 675mx... You should also see if 675mx SLI is available - if it over clocks well it will probably surpass 7970m performance.

 

680M SLI will likely have much better driver support out of the box, and the cards will run cooler than the 7970Ms. AMD will likely catch up, but it will take some time. But the price difference is quite big, and even a single 7970M will manage most modern games just fine. Enduro should be no problem with crossfire configuration.

 

It's called Crossfire with Radeon cards And yes, I'm positive that Clevo shells with dual graphics don't support enduro or optimus. And 675mx so far has been weaker with oc than stock hd7970M (in GPU scores, the total scores were biased because GPU was used for physics score).

 

The 9370 doesn't offer switchable graphics at all. So you'll have no trouble with Enduro or Optimus in the least.

 

I'd suggest the 7970m's as well

 

I got 7970cf , and it walks over any game thrown at it. Use a clean install of 12.8 and u will not be disappointed

 

In my experience....I would support the Company with the better driver support. Just saying....

 

AMD has a better record for drivers past few years than Nvidia. Just saying...

 

Don't know about that. It seems both camps are always saying their drivers are worse than the other's. When I bought my 580 gtx, the Nvidia driver forums were full of posts like "I will never buy another Nvidia card again", and now the same goes for AMD with their 7970M and overall crossfire troubles.

They are usually both pretty bad (or good?), at times one su*ks less than the other.

 

I second this. Over the years it's gone back and forth. For the recent past, Nvidia has definitely been on their A game, but only time will tell whether it sticks. I personally was a huge ATI guy but switched when AMD bought them due to me predicting some turbulence on the horizon. Now I don't think I'll ever shy away from Nvidia.

 

I personally don't see it your way at all. AMD buying ATi saved ATi. If AMD hadn't bought them, ATi would not exist at all. And I also think AMD has improved ATi's drivers, improved their technology and more competitive. I just think overall, AMD was a great thing to happen for ATi.

The other part, I also think AMD won this round again. They beat Nvidia to the market and they have more laptops now running APU which just cuts out Nvidia completely. Intel did the same thing, for majority of laptops, they don't require Nvidia's dGPU, just gone, why bother with switchable. AMD's Enduro has been resolved within a single generation, it took Nvidia years to do that. 7970M is slower than 680M by just a margin but $300 cheaper, wow, that is quite a feat. That is INCREDIBLE.

 

Linus Torvalds would agree with you .... Linus Torvalds says “f–k you” to NVIDIA | Ars Technica

And, for the record, I respect your opinion because it was you who got me researching the "issue"

Anyway, I posted this because I thought you'd get a kick out of Linus's picture

 

Considering the title of this thread and that AMD still has yet to fix a serious driver issue with the 7970M for nearly 6 months now, this statement bears little weight.

 

lmao awesome find, thanks for sharing the link. Watched the whole video, funny and informative.

While I agree that the Enduro issues have been going on long enough, help is coming. And like others have said, it took nvidia a year to fix Optimus. New tech is often unpredictable, and it can take a while to work out the kinks. I might not have been this optimistic if I had been dealing with Enduro for 6 months, but my experience with the 7970 is so much better than the one I had with the 650m. I had so many compatibility issues with optimus, I never got Saints Row or Binary review to work, and almost every single game I played regularly crashed. I know the 7970m is a much higher end card, but it has been SO much more stable. I read threads all the time about games not working properly with Optimus, too. There's one in the gaming section right now about Doom 3 BFG edition. My point is, no card or technology is perfect.

 

anything to back that up? from what I have seen Nvidia release new drivers 4-5 times more frequently than AMD and they tend to respond to issues far quicker.

 

There is no "record" that AMD has better drivers than Nvidia. It's always a back and forth battle. Also, forget the Enduro thingy here. There is no need for discussion about Enduro since there is no switchable graphic option here in the 9370.

From what I heard, SLI has been the better option when compare to the CrossFire. However, the 680m SLI is significantly more expensive than the 7970m. It's a $500 price difference. Look at my spec, the only reason I went with the 680m was because of the Enduro issue. Is CrossFire that bad to justify the extra $500?

I will like to see some benchmark before pulling the trigger.

 

I just saw the state of the newly released amd 12.11 beta drivers from anandtech, my god I'm glad I got the 680gtx even if I was ripped off. Could be another few months till it's fixed.

 

Look at the graph again. Even without the DX9 improvements implemented, 11.12 is basically crapping on the release driver. When 12.11 is under the hotfix, it is only by a couple+ frames, and in three instances you see 12.11 beating the hotfix. Now, HOW Jarred is seeing nearly the same performance at 1080p/Ultra with BF3 as the stock driver is a mystery. I am seeing huge single player FPS increases on Ultra over the stock driver. Remember that he is using a Sony laptop, and it may be possible that the hotfix segment was designed more for Clevo laptops.

AMD stated in the 12.11 release notes that the DX9 fixed driver would come out soon. They have also stated that they will continue to work on new drivers, talking about the 12.11 WHQL and 12.12/13.1 drivers to come. The driver team seems very excited. For now, bask in the glory of amazing performance improvements in DX10/11 games!

 

I'd say the 7970M is now worth it's reduced price compared to the 680M.

 

The 7970M fix is here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...12-11beta-major-driver-update-12-10-cap1.html

Should do now

 

jaug is right as always!

It's a massive performance gain, I'm seeing framerates that are better by 15-20% across the board, sometimes by as much as 100% is games that were heavily affected by enduro. Plus, 7970m stock benchmarks are now on par with (even better in a lot of cases) the stock 680m . Lot's f stock 3DMark11 scores are now 6500+, which is high, even for the 680m.

 

680m will get much higher marks after overclocked since it has higher performance per clock. and actually i think the stock clock of 680m is underclocked.

 

Yeah I would think that too, but explains why it's so insanely cool. We've been through that several times now, the real OC of the 680M is just unreal, can't wait to get hands-on

 

No doubt, it's the better choice for overclocking, but some of the new overclocked 7970 3DMark scores are absolutely insane (approaching 8k.) With more time and driver releases, we will likely see that number grow. The 7970 is looking better and better compared to the 680m, especially with the cost savings.