So i installed my 680m and returned my 7970m and...

The difference is kind of insane guys! due to enduros crippling of the 7970m in clevos i can confirm i am seeing an average FPS INCREASE of 10-25 in the following games:
Skyrim
Dead Island
Batman AA + AC (framerate increased nearly 20)
The Witcher 2
The Secret World (framerate increased 25 with higher settings!)

all results determined with both systems overclocked significantly

In addition i noticed a significant reduction in screen tearing, especially in dead island. no artifacting. MY OVERCLOCKS NOW DO SOMETHING BESIDES LOWER UTILIZATION.

Please dont get me wrong. I really really really did not want to switch due to the cost and the potential the 7970 has. I was really really rooting for them and praying for a fix. It is highly discouraging that Clevo and AMD both have failed to acknowledge the issue at hand. I commend Sager and Myth for taking action to help the consumers as well as malibal for acknowledging the issue, extending my 30 day exchange warranty, and sending me the 680m.

I wanted to share this so that people on the fence could have the facts. This is not a thread to bash the 7970m.

And since I know the first response will likely be "can you test BF3 please!?":

You buyin?

 

Congrats on your new GPU

 

oh and btw my temps dropped from 84C to 74C

 

You will probably notice some games with temps of only 55C, I noticed that with Black Ops. 74C is the maximum temp Ive ever reached from gaming though.

Have you uncapped your frame rates in Arkham City? The default limit is set to 60 fps even if Vsync is disabled.

 

Congrats, Kev! Good to see you can now play your games without pulling your hair out. Haha.

 

Me jelly. If only the magnitude of these 7970m problems were discovered earlier...Those are some impressive improvements.

 

Yeah its a pretty awesome GPU. For people who have the money, its the #1 choice
And as an extra bonus, is that for people who want even better performance than that, we have Saltius vbios, which give us way better performance with a 2-3C higher temperature trade off since Nvidia clearly made a GPU with very high overclock potential

 

Sounds like you may have had a defective card............those fps gains are far beyond anything that would have been caused by the enduro issue. Normally we are seeing a sub ~5fps difference in games effected by the enduro issue compared to alienware owners. Personally I'm not having a lick of trouble with my 7970 running BF3 at full 99% uilization and stable frame rates, it's the same with every game I throw at this thing.

Call me jaded but there seems to be a lot of other people that don't have any problems aside from the minor enduro issues (3fps is minor when the card has no driver btw), they just aren't being a vocal as the ones with problems.

 

Could you tell us what kinds of framerates are you getting now? Min, max, avg?

 

7970M had so much promise and unfortunately too many issues in the clevos. Still seems like a good choice if you went AW.

I have just ordered a 9150/680M and hope all the initial positive reviews continue to hold true.

 

Yeah pretty much this, best choice seem to be Clevo = 680M and Alienwere = 7970M

 

I am so glad I changed my order from the 7970 to the 680. It was 245 more and I feel its worth it. Now if Clevo could have added a disable Enduro feature as found in Alienwares, I would have stayed with the 7970. I did not get a Alienware because I wanted the best 15 inch laptop available right now.

Glad your happy with the change you made. Kudos to Malibal for working with you.

 

For all the criticism that AW gets for their look it's things like switchable enduro that show why they are a real gaming company and the clevos are really consumer devices with premium components. Is anyone really surprised, other than clevo, that enduro is having issues right out of the box?

 

Considering the limitations Alienware users are having with the 680m I'd say that statement isn't quite accurate.

 

On average, my games are playing at 65C. I don't see if go over 75C ever, even on Crysis 2 all Ultra.

I am not jealous.

 

Clevo's do have some issues with the heatsinks apparently and seems to plague the 7970m's more than the 680m so it's likely part of the problem for high temps.

 

I dont know but all the games that im playing they have 100%utilize, i mean all games!!
because no enduro support.
and i have nice temps and frames.

 

Is the AW with 680M having issues with enduro ? The AW design is proactive, or perhaps they properly tested and realized the 7970M issue before committing to final production, either way it is the kind of thing you expect from a company that is selling gaming machines.

Let's face it all computers are basically the same it's the implementation ( and features ) that provide categorization. For gaming, imo, it's pretty simple - performance and how you deal with it (heat). How's the clevo 7970M doing vs the AW 7970M in those regards?

I am just stating my opinion. I have a clevo ordered. Probably for the same reason most anyone else considers one. It is cheap and works reasonable well ( most of the time ).

 

I'm really jealous !

After 1 month with my P150EM this enduro issue driving me nuts. Call me a dreamer but i still have hope for this issue to get fixed one day.

 

And it will trust me,sager and amd are working for the solution already as we talking now.
be patient for a while

 

Sounds like the price is worth the performance improvement after all! Just too bad its too much for me to afford :x

 

The AW with 680m doesn't have Enduro, that is AMD, so short answer, no, right answer, they can't have that issue. It seems the AW with 680m's have possible issues, Sagers/Clevos with 7970m's have possible issues. Now may I roll my eyes at your response?

 

Optimus is NVIDIA's "Enduro" technology FYI

 

There are 0 problems with Alienware with 680M.

The "problems" HTWingNut speaks of, is that the Dell 680M doesn`t overclock as high as Clevo 680Ms. Could be because of the turbo boost, could be because Dell have some lame limits in the bios etc etc. But there are vbios made by certain modders in this forum that have fixed it. Sort of. All you need to do is flash to a new vbios

So yeah, as it turns out
Clevo > MSI > Alienware, in terms of overclocking scores I think. Good news for this subforum

 

Yes thanks I know that. I was speaking about the main issue with the 7970M, which seems to be enduro related, and he answered with 680M issues ( which I havent read any yet ). Not really what I was talking about.

 

Why would all games have 100% utilization?

Some games don't stress the GPU much and still get maximum frames and some games use the CPU quite a bit. There is only a problem if performance is low along with low GPU utilization.

 

The AW is muxed, and has nothing to do with being proactive or realizing the issue, it's the way they design their laptops. AW users turn off the HD 4000 and Enduro and use the 7970m exclusively to avoid the throttling issue. It still exists, it's just they have the option to turn off Enduro, Clevo owners don't, well EM users at least. HM users that upgraded don't have the issue for the very same reason, Enduro doesn't even exist on that machine. I think a muxed GPU is the best way to design a gaming laptop though. Clevo took what is likely the less expensive route so there is no way to disable Enduro or Optimus.

 

@Wingnut I feel we have gotten a little off track here.

My point was AW has a design ( switchable bus ) that allows users to get around the problems that it appears enduro may be causing right now. I feel this design is a proactive approach to the design of a gaming machine. By itself it has no purpose, simply allows the user/manufacturor to decide ( for whatever reason ) who has access to the bus. Clevo for whatever reason hasn't decided to take the same approach.

So now I can speculate. I don't believe AW designed a switchable bus by accident. With no purpose or thought to it at all. It is not the simplest nor the cheapest way to design the interface. As AW isn't in the graphics business per se that would seem to me to indicate purpose. I would guess it was done to allow a dgpu full and unimpeded access from igpu and technologies like optimus/enduro. I am sure it wasn't a cost savings move.

I might be given them too much credit but I know one thing for sure hit, miss, or accident the AW design probably looks like a smart move to frustrated clevo 7970M owners right now.

 

......Contradiction much?.....

The 680m in AW's are having issues on the same level as Clevo 7970's, and by that I mean they are both software limited. For AW it is a Dell BIOS/vBIOS issue, which is far far FAAAR less likely to be addressed or fixed than the issue with Clevo's 7970. In fact Sager is already producing/testing drivers that attempt to fix the enduro issues.

Why can't people just agree that both the 680 and 7970 are stellar cards that perform at similar levels (unless modified with an unsupported vbios of course ). It's sort of like comparing a BMW to a Mercedes, both are the pinnacle of German engineering ..........basically you're driving the electronic version of a fricken luxury sports car in your laptop

 

Lol it easy to hate amd because they are amd not nvidia. I guess everybody forgotten about the optimus issues when it was released by nvidia and it took them a year and half to get it proper . I am no taking sides , had all my life nvidia but I decided to go to amd this time . Had my share of 8000m nvidia gpu fireworks

Sent from my LG-P500 using Tapatalk 2

 

I agree with you. Manual switchable graphics is completely the way to go. I just wouldn't give AW the credit for doing this specifically for the 7970m, because that isn't the case and that's what your initial post sounded like you were implying. But the fact that they DO it does show some advanced thinking on AW's part and know automatic switching can offer some headache. I give AW kudos for that. Sager/Clevo products are high quality, and I guess you could call them consumer products but are really marketed towards gamers that want a "business-like" chassis. Clevo's also severely lock down their BIOS or really offer sparse options. However vendors like Sager and Mythlogic also have the opportunity to improve on that but typically do not. It's usually just a minor tuned BIOS like Sager's offering of the Fn+1 full fan speed, but not much else.

I mean check out the BIOS of the NP9150. There's NOTHING there... lol

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^ Whichever GPU you are purchasing it's going to be an excellent product, each has it's own advantages and is suitable to different people. The 680m OC's like 3yr old main-lining taurine (Redbull) if you're willing to risk flashing the vbios and possibility of subsequent part damage after, you basically have yourself a desktop gpu in a laptop. Whereas the 7970 will perform at essentially the same level stock and stock OC's even higher than an unmodified 680m, all at a substantially lower price.

Basically if you're like me and not willing to modify any portion of the gpu (doubtful I will even OC any time soon), then the 7970 is going to probably be the better option. On the other hand if your willing to put the effort/cash in and accept the risk factor you can have a ridiculously powerful unlocked 680m (670 desktop gpu).........can't fault either option imo.

 

so more people go for 680m now?

 

You are so full of BS that it isn`t even funny.
Find me ONE thread in the alienware forum where they mention problems with the 680M. Yeah thats right, you can`t find any, because there are no problems. I don`t even have to look around to find threads dedicated to the 7970M problems, wether its in the Alienware forum or this subforum. They range from everything from high temperatures, dead cards, enduro problems, flickering pictures, black screens, big crossfire problems, low GPU usage, sudden drop in FPS in games etc. So yeah, you enjoy your fantastic GPU and AMDs brilliant drivers, while the rest of us live in the real world and is able to see whats really happening.

Now stop spreading lies and grow up.

 

There are some problems with 680m, though they are likely isolated cases and/or driver problems.

i.e: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...vo-p170em-sager-np9170-owners-lounge-171.html

 

Well yeah, of course 680M will have some problems along the way here and there. All products do.

 

I agree with cloud, if you have a clevo, the 680 is the only way to go right now I'm afraid, the 7970 just causes too many issues

 

You could say the only way to buy a car is to get a bugatti veyron. But not everyone can afford it, or truly need it. Some people tend to settle for less.

But still, if I could decide now, i would go for the 680m.

 

I was skimming the alienware forms for the first 3 pages and have not found 7970 issue except for the guy in m18x forum where he had CF and screen shutter problem . Other than that I found nothing. You should know that , temperature are clevo problem because they messed up the design AW dont have the problem .enduro=low gpu = sudden drop FPS usage all are the same problem caused by mostly (90%)amd and other (10%) clevo because the didn't implemented MUX technology . However , amd addressed the issue with sager , if you read the stickes and they said they are working on it . Most of the post are related to the same issue which is enduro if you noticed here. I am not defending amd but remeber nvdia took about year and half to sort the optimus problem , remembered that !. you are just being like the guy who you responded to , so why not follow the advice you gave him

 

if i had read something like im doing these days before buying the 7970M with 170EM i would have never bought the 7970M, sadly i didn t know about NBR :-/.

Now all i can do is pray for a solution to Enduro, otherwise next year when i have some money ill buy a new GPU to replace this 7970M useless VGA. I have always been an AMD fan, but this situation really changed my mind, nVidia is the way to go unless u have either Clevo HM or AW.....

im very upset sorry

 

I was gonna get the HD7970M but back then I was already seeing people posting utilization issue and reaching 90C threads on the HD7970M, so I changed my mind and went for GTX680M and was also the 1st one in NBR that actually tried and tested the GTX680M, the RMA was sad but seeing how good the GTX680M was before RMA, I'm satisfied, also the RMA was free of charge.

Optimus may have taken NVIDIA a long time to fix but right now it's fixed and Enduro isn't yet. I wasn't buying it past year, I was buying it this year, if you can afford it of course people want something that's already working at the time they wanted to buy.

 

Come on dude. Its not just Enduro thats the problem. Its the horrible AMD drivers that is a big part of the problem. Its not just Sager that struggles, but also Alienware owners have issues.

On the first page you find this poll about 7970M Crossfire. This is not Enduro related problems btw..
Are you Satisfeid with your AMD 7970m Crossfire - View Poll Results

For any company, thats a ridiculous statistic. 38% of the 7970M customers unhappy. Dell themselves say they haven`t got any solid drivers from AMD, so they ask people to wait. And people here should also realize that Alienware people have Enduro problems too, its just that they can disable it. So they too have a non functional automatic switching system (but without the performance hit). But its ok for most people, since they can enable and disable the IGP with a few key strokes. Except Sager owners.

Here is some other reading material from Alienware owners who have problems with the 7970M
http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/679533-7970m-driver-issues.html
http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x/680142-7970m-cf-lol-recent-vantage-test-cards-go-absolutely-bonkers-me.html

 

seriously after owning both the difference is night and day. anyone who isnt acknowledging the issues with the 7970m is just trying to justify their purchase in their head and experiencing a severe case of denial... or they really dont know squat about how a GPU is supposed to perform. am i happy i switched? yes! was it worth $295 bucks? in my opinion yes! i dont have to worry about when my computer will perform the way its supposed to... i have no more screen tearing... higher framerates, better drivers, better switchable graphics, physx, better battery life and i dont have to around with registry entries just to get the damn thing to overclock. oh! i forgot to mention! overclocking actually does something now because i dont have utilization errors! im done with AMD.... when im spending 2k id rather spend 2.3k to get something that works as advertised and has a much more intuitive interface with better drivers

 

I said on the post that amd7970 CF had issues and need to be fixed . Also the driver are not horrible except the horrible part is were to have enduro and CF need to be fixed . Otherwise just be patient a little bit to fix the problems and improve the drivers. I mean nvidia had problem with optimus before they sorted out and took em long time. At least give amd time to fix the problem but certnatly not year . They addressed the problem and they working on it .

Good day to you sir

 

Haha after all your ranting on the Malibal forums? Congrats on the new card. Still happy with my 7970M, and I'm hoping that Enduro issues get sorted out.

 

Can't you just sell your 7970M and put together some extra on top to buy a 680M?

 

Same. I'm happy for all those with the 680M, happier still for those who got to switch and I feel bad for those who are frustrated with their 7970M. I'd be on that boat if only I played their kind of games. Luckily for me, now I only play SC2 while I wait for TL2 and CS:GO. The issues are there, but with those games, I don't get to see that ugliness. So I'll survive. Switching to 680M is not a problem for me either.

 

I'm sure there would be plenty of HM owners that would like to get ahold of a 7970m on the cheap.

 

You could be right. Should I or or should I not? Depends on the price.

 

Yeah but with that logic, he would be selling the issues and horror and giving the new user the new headache of the original user. Ever heard of buying a use car is buying another ones problems?

How would you feel if someone is trying to sell you something knowing that he isn't happy with it because it has issues and now wants to sell it to you to get rid of a headache?