Thinking about switching from 7970m to GTX 680m (NP9150)

SAGER-NP9150 FROM XoticPC

Sooo I've been having LOTS of issues recently while updating drivers and such. Sometimes I blue screen, some drivers give me worse fps, etc., etc....

I used to have the 12.7 beta drivers and everything was flawless. I recently tried the 12.8 drivers and after that, everything went downhill. Dropping FPS, blue screens, blah. I even tried system restore and it successfully restored but made no change in performance for games.

Currently I have nothing installed. Whenever I install CCC or CAPS and stuff, it drops my FPS in games dramatically (100+ FPS to 40+ FPS)... It's really starting to tick me off. I'm wondering how much extra cash it would cost if I wanted to exchange the 7970m for the GTX 680m...

 

For MYSN it is around 350€

 

I would go back to the stock Clevo drivers for now (the ones that came on the disk with your laptop) if you intend to keep your 7970m... I had bad luck upgrading drivers as well and it went back to a mostly stable state after going back to stock drivers.

 

mine were preinstalled. didnt come with a disk

 

ull be happier with the 680 honestly for gaming.

u should contact xoticpc i think they value nbr members and their reputation. tell em your problem with the laptop is purely 7970m related. alot of ppl are willing to let you upgrade basically for the difference if you woulda gotten the 680m in the first place.

 

I upgraded mine directy through Sager within a few days of my 30 day return period, It was pretty simple since I live an hour away. They charged me 245 no sales tax while Xotic wanted to charge me 260 + tax for setting up the exact same thing through Sager. So far the upgrade has been well worth it, all of my games run great except for low clock speeds in Guild Wars 2 (new game, expected issues).

 

If you did purchase the extended warranty, you probably want to do it thru your reseller. Ask for a spec upgrade to 680m vid card. They will link you to Sager tech support. A service ID number and RMA number will be issued to you, along with instructions to return the laptop.

FYI, it is going to cost you more then $245. $245 is just the video card. You will be responsible for the round trip shipping. I have to pay about $45 to ship to Sager, and about $25 to ship it back. The $45 includes the $17 dollar shipping charge, and the rest is insurance for $2200. $25 is the shipping charge for shipping the laptop back to you from Sager.

Once Sager upgrades your vid card, they will provide a link to you for payment. The payment is $245 plus shipping charge (and hence the $25). It's going to cost you a little more than $300 total.

 

I think this is assuming he's within the 30 day period. If not, I think you have to just buy the 680M, full price.

 

Or wait for the updated drivers for the 7970M.

 

The wait is probably going to be until HL3 releases haha... who knows

 

latest info is within a month for new drivers. If your going to have to shell out cash, why not wait a month or two and see.

End of day its not my cash, but if you can hang on it may save you a few bucks. If no fix comes, it wont cost you anymore to have waited.

 

ill just wait for the new drivers... hopefully get some luck!

 

October 31 is their deadline for the new catalyst enduro drivers, I'd wait, the 680m is going to cost you a hell of a lot of money that you don't need to spend.

 

We are kind of getting to that part of the debate that reminds me of the old saying: "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush"

To save some from Googling ........

Proverb

a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush

1.It is preferable to have a small but certain advantage than a mere potential of a greater one.

 

I'm not sure that really applies in this case, when the clear cost advantage is in the favor of the 7970m owners, and once the performance is brought up to parity there's little advantage to the 680m, which would be oddly reminiscent of the 6990m vs 580m debate. Spend $300 more and get minor performance gains? BUT IT'S NVIDIA! That's basically what the debate boils down to once the driver issues are fixed.

 

@Netherwind..... LOL....you are right. I guess what it comes down to is my time and frustration level has value and as soon as that 680M shows up in my mailbox, this board will never see me again because I'd rather be gaming than checking this board every day and I won't be frustrated. Yes, you're right, I took a hit on cost but at this point, it doesn't matter

 

Unless that bird sh*ts on your hand (not likely though)

 

Either way you go, go for the way that makes you feel better, and as you say dont ever enter NBR again, its like browsing some items price after having bought it. If telling AMD in the face "i dont want your product, u can shove it..." and spending money for the higher end card to forget and enjoy, makes you happy, then definetely go for it.

And if i were you i wouldnt be reading NBR anymore, your decission is already closed and taken. Well maybe you can post your ATI card in the sellers forum of course, then its good for you the issue gets fixed, you would get your money back at least.

 

What would you guys recommend to someone still within the 30 day period? How much does it cost to get the 7970m switched out for a 680m? I'm happy to wait if we can expect a future driver to actually fix this issue, but I somehow doubt we will.

 

I'm normally pretty skeptical as well, but this time it really looks like they figured out the performance problem at AMD and that will be fixed with new drivers within 1-2 months. Check the 7970m logging thread. It would be hard to believe that they would let their flagship mobile card run at 35% performance for ever, would ruin their reputation.

Probably costs 350 to 400 including shipping to upgrade.

 

My advice for those who are still skeptical: wait. Don't even do the 30-day trial. It hurts our resellers. If whatever AMD is working on will actual solve most of the performance problems, then the 7970m will be a very good deal for an EM series laptop. The 7970m can beat a 680m in quite a few popular games when in an Alienware with Enduro off. If you have the 7970m right now, it is your choice, but in my opinion I say KEEP the 7970m. Bets are that the problem will eventually be fixed, and gaming is still fine in many games. Save $300 for your next upgrade (or $800 is that is what is being asked of you). If you don't have either card and have tons of money, get the 680m. Even if the 7970m gets fixed the 680m will still have better continuous driver support.

I haven't been as active lately because it seems futile at this point to discuss any further. We have said every thing that can be said. Come mid next month, we should all be back testing this supposed Enduro-fixer from AMD. Hopefully it involves being able to set the 7970m fixed with the iGPU just as a pass through.

 

The operative word there is "if". Can we be sure that this issue can even be fixed with a new driver?

 

They already said that's not how it works because some things have to run off the IGP like Intel's apps and stuff like that, beyond that though, everything should run off the dGPU and not the IGP.

Edit to reply to the guy above me: Yes it can be fixed, it's been proven to be fixed, Jarred got 100% utilization on ultra in the alpha drivers he was using.

 

AnandTech - AMD

"Obviously, the GPU isn't being maxed out in terms of what it can do in many of our test cases, and our complete benchmark results back this up. Especially at lower detail settings and lower resolutions, the HD 7970M isn't scaling to the sort of frame rates we'd expect."

There are games the 7970m can't run well at max settings. I'm happy to scale down the graphics if I can get an increase in performance, but Jarred isn't seeing this in the preview drivers. Can we expect a future driver release to fix this issue? Or will we continue to see low performance even as we lower the settings?

 

I think because they were alpha drivers we can't read into the low spots too much, from what I understand no performance enhancement has actually been put into these drivers all the work has been focused on enduro 5.5, they're actually behind 12.7/12.8 in this regard at the current time. AMD is committed to two driver updates before the end of the year for Enduro users. This one may be more focused on fixing the utilization problem rather than upping performance as the next one may be.

 

What concerns me is that the 7970m seems to perform fine on the Alienware models. So can we see expect to see our performance issues resolved through driver support, or will the lack of a MUX on Clevo/Sager notebooks mean our cards will always be bottlenecked by the iGPU?

 

Can't think of a reason why AMD won't be able to fix it through drivers. The mux/muxless is not the problem, it's AMD driver team.

Even on desktops, they are having performance issues with 7xxx. The 7xxx and 7800M+7900M are the new GCN architecture which is a huge departure from what AMD has been developing past years. So it's a big change for the driver team. The GCN has more in common with Nvidia FERMI than it does with previous AMD GPU's.

 

If the NBR community is confident that the issue can be fixed for mux-less laptops, I'll let the return period expire and wait for the drivers.

 

More like AMD has to, if they don't, they are going to lose to Nvidia. It's way too far along now for AMD to ignore switchable graphics. This is what people want, even on high powered laptops, mobility and battery life means more than ever.