Update on Radeon 7970m (Sager/Resellers)

OK, got it. Thanks again!

 

geez. end of the month huh. that's really terrible. I kinda wish I went w/ Sager now, but then again I ordered 29th of April. I probably would not be in the first shipment anyway.

 

Yipee, no sad email from Xotic left! I shall survive!

 

Is the timeframe in which we receive the sad defect email relative to how far our order is in production? I haven't gotten it yet, but I'm assuming that's because my order only just went into production this morning.

 

Mine went into production yesterday. Hope I get it by mid-June..

 

same boat mate, hope we survive until tomorrow morning

 

On the plus side, us 6/11ers will get Win8 Pro upgrade from MS, right?

 

Anyone have any word on the situation with LPC-Digital orders? Last I checked mine was still on track to be delivered the end of this month/early June.

 

I now have to decide if I want to stick with the 7970M and hope I can get it in time, switch to another card, or simply cancel my order entirely and not get a new notebook right now.

XoticPC informed me that they don't have a card for mine since it was from the second bad batch, which isn't a surprise. However apparently AMD can't get them new ones until the 11th. That was the date I wanted my laptop by, so I've sufficient time to test it and if needed get it fixed before I leave for a trip. June 26th is the hard limit since I leave the 27th.

I don't know if I should wait or not. I mean if the chips actually come in the 11th and mine goes in to production and ships right away I would get it with a bit of time to get it ready. However any delay could screw it over.

Getting an nVidia card is an option I suppose, and I'd do it in a second for a desktop, because I could and would upgrade later. But man finding upgrades for laptop cards seems to be impossible so pretty much looks like what I get is what I get.

So I'm also thinking maybe I should just pack it in, cancel the order, and reevaluate the situation in 3-6 months. Just keep my old laptop (mom wants the old laptop and the trip is to visit the parents) for now and reassess when there are less problems.

I dunno. I thought I'd left enough lead time in the order for problems, but I didn't count on AMD screwing up so royally. Can't decide what to do.

 

^If you are not tight on money, why don't you get the 675m, use it until you come back from your trip and then sell the 675m and purchase the 7970m? These come in MXM slots right?

Or you could cancel and purchase from someone else - the only other seller with the 7970m hasn't been affected yet.

Or you could wait and hope they get it to you on time.

 

Either way, you're going to end up being stuck with the old laptop. You might as well wait for it, and there still is a chance it will arrive before you leave.

 

My understanding that any Windows 7 that gets activated after 6/5 is eligible for cheap upgrade directly from Microsoft. Sager or any resellers are going to be out of loop with respect to this upgrade.

 

Yes but where does one get those? So far, I've never seen any stores selling cards as upgrades. An upgrade in theory is different than actually being able to get the hardware.

No if I cancel I'm going to wait. Not doing the vendor dance.

 

We sell video cards =)

Also yea I would just wait, otherwise you'll have an offices space traffic moment

 

Oh man, I ordered a Sager with the 7970m from Xoticpc on Monday not knowing about the botched batch and the delays. Does this mean I'm looking at a July shipment for the laptop with my order just now getting in line (which sounds super backed-up)? I ordered it as a gift to give and was hoping to get it by June 21st. Two days later and I'm still on Phase 1 as well

 

ouch, you're probably not going to see it for a while.

but that person getting the gift is a lucky @#!@%$@!#$

 

the thing is its only 100 off downgrading to 675 for half the performance. and then needing to buy the 7970 card later for around 200-300 bucks. i'd rather wait just three weeks to not have to switch cards and spend
more money.

 

From the outside, I can tell you I have seen this before. Several years ago Asus went through this same thing with the 5870m, early buyers received a mixed batch of cards, many were fine, many had to be RMA'd. After a revamp by AMD, the next batch were fine. Be patient. It is not the resellers fault, but be thankful that Sager checks the cards, because otherwise you would end up with the bad cards and having to deal with RMA process. And in spite of the seemingly eternal wait, 2 days after you get your lappy with the good cards, you will forget you ever had to wait.

This is sometimes the price we pay for being the early consumers of a new card, SSD, CPU, etc. The manufacturers pump up how great it is, then have to get the product out, then sometimes find out they missed something in QC or testing, and a company like Sager finds it because they go a bit further because they have their rep on the line.

I also remember when the 485 and the 6870, I believe, came out, and they were backordered, under produced per demand, etc. Be patient, and when you get your quality card, you will laugh about this.

As for those that are considering waiting to buy later, not only will you get the good, tested cards, but in a couple of months the prices will drop too.

Having followed this forum for several years now, this is neither uncommon for a new rollout, nor is it the fault of any of these resellers. And remember, you may not be hearing about these issues from other brand names.... yet. But that is most likely because they do not do the rigorous testing we get. So their consumers will find out the hard way.

 

I just checked my email and saw the delay notification. I ordered on the May 7th so I can't really complain since there are bunch of people who ordered way before me and still got delayed. I was hoping to get it by the June 7th as a gift to my brother who is moving out of state for his new job. I already told him to expect a huge surprise as soon as my order went into production on May 16. I can tell he is really looking forward to it. This is the worst feeling in the world

 

Didn't see them listed anywhere on your website. So what would a 7970M run me, if I wanted to get one by itself? I understand I can't get one now, just for pricing reference. If I changed my order over to a 675 I'd stick with that until later this year. I just need to consider if it is the sort of thing that I'd be willing to spend money on or not.

 

It'll probably be up later on, once the 7970M supply stabilizes.

Gah, that's terrible. Perhaps you could explain this to a sales rep and consider changing your order to a 675M to receive it sooner?

 

No I mean I didn't (and don't) see any video cards for sale on their site. I don't see a section for it. It was actually something I'd sniffed around for since one of my considerations was to wait for the 680M, since I have a desktop 680 and quite like it. So I though maybe I'd get a 670 or 675, play with that for a few months, and get a 680M later on.

However I haven't seen anyone selling MXM GPUs so I concluded that getting on is probalby pretty close to impossible, and I should look at getting the highest end I could off the bat, since it would likely be permanent.

 

You should try to PM the resellers. One of the reasons many of us choose a reseller is because they can get parts, even if they don't advertise it. I have seen several resellers here that will get or do aftermarket work on these. Since Myth stated they sell them, just PM and ask. I do agree, it will probably be a while before anyone has them for sale as a stand alone, since they are all awaiting shipment to fulfill their original order.

 

I would love to know how much a card upgrade would run as well since I'm definitely considering the 675m now.

 

The card itself will top $400 with all likelihood. If you want the reseller to install it for you (installing it yourself will likely void your warranty) then you will also need to factor in shipping and their service fee, if any.

*Edit: Upgrading laptop GPU's still is not really an economical option. In my opinion, you would be better served to just put that money towards your laptop's eventual successor.

 

And don't forget going from NVidia to AMD you would likely need a different cooler, that can make the upgrade MUCH more expensive depending on what needs replacing. Upgrading from one NVIDIA card to another might not even require heatsink/fan changes.

 

My idea is to buy it with the 670M and wait until some time after the 680M becomes available and then see if I can get an upgrade to it, and how much it would cost.

 

I was just thinking the same thing except with the 660M (want Kepler) - but it's only a $200 jump to get to the 7970M now (well, ~2 weeks) and if you buy 660M/670M/675M today and jump to 680M later you are likely going to pay significantly more:

1) Card (~$450 - conservatively)
2) Installation, etc (~$50)

So, $500 to go to the 680M and you keep your old card (which you could sell and maybe recoup $200 or so)...

$300 process. Nevermind shipping and handling and the waiting for your laptop (probably a one week process at minimum).

 

What would you have them do, then?

Windows 8? Not on my laptop. This is a serious machine, not some tablet or phone.

OR C) It's a plot by batman from the P151HM1 owner's lounge to get revenge for being served a lemon after enduring the SB recall.

These don't work without GPU's, but that would be great if they did. If only they did...

Check Mythlogic's phoenix upgrade plan, it makes upgrading these things a very easy and relatively cheap experience.

Actually no, it won't void your warranty. That's just one of the wonderful things about clevo's.



Now, this whole thing is sort of reminding me of the SB recall, hopefully it won't be that long... This is really irritating for me especially because the only reason I switched to the 7970m was because the 675m was in short supply. At this point I'm seriously considering dropping to the 660m and sending it back for the 7970m sometime in July, but I don't know where I'd get the money for shipping from... I really don't want to be without a computer for any of the summer, it's down time I've been waiting all school year for and once school lets out I'll have nothing to do. Well, except watch SSBM computer player kirbys botch kirbycide after kirbycide, and that gets boring fast.
On the bright side, I finally persuaded my dad to let me put an HD5450 in his desktop, so I can watch movies on it now without dropping frames. Yeah, the bright side is pretty dim...

 

Not to mention the 680m isn't looking like it'll be as good as the 7970m. May as well just order with the 7970m now and wait for it to come in. It doesn't seem like this delay is as big a deal as people are making it out to be. Basically, it seems like one shipment had to be sent back and the future shipments are on schedule as planned.

 

19 days to go... until i have to wait another week to get my laptop built, then another week of shipping. AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

 

Notebookcheck says they're about equal...

 

Well, but I would also be saving around ~$200 buying the NP9130 (P151EM1) instead of the NP9150 (P150EM), since I don't want or need the backlit keyboard, and since they are exactly the same thing inside.

So IF I also need to buy the 180W power adapter of the NP9150, that would add $95.

So in the end it would either be a $100 process (without the 180W PA) or a $195 process (with the 180W PA).

 

He apparently wants AMD to e-mail every end-consumer personally to let them know about the delay and the exact timeframe when they can expect their individual GPU, rather than getting this info from the company he bought his laptop from.

 

Enduro also appears to be a potential issue. As performance with it integrated is severely degraded versus laptops that have a discrete 7970M. It's likely a driver issue - but an annoyance and problem, nevertheless.

 

Not unless you've seen something I haven't.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

That shows the leaked benchmark from April of 4673 compared to the 7970m pretty consistently benchmarking around 5500. There's a screenshot that keeps floating around showing a score around 4900 for the 680m, but that was an overclocked benchmark taken on the same day as the 4673 score.

 

I didn't order from Mythlogic, I ordered from XoticPC (though I'd mentioned that a couple of times).

I think basically I am going to write off the possibility of upgrading. People talk about it, but nobody can provide clear information on to where to get parts and costs. That tells me it is problematic and that few if any people actually do it (since when you ask about desktop parts or RAM or something finding information as to cost and availability is easy).

So I'm going to have to think on what I want to do.

 

Yeah, it seems to be dependent on the game too. Some games are affected worse than others from what I've seen. I still haven't seen whether it can be disabled on the P170 or not like on the Alienware laptops. Also, it seems like people are still having problems with Optimus as well, so I wouldn't say Nvidia has any real advantage in that regard.

 

I think all the Clevo builders and Sager resellers are able to get the parts for you, Xotic included. People just don't list them on their sites, but if you e-mail them and ask, they can get them for you.

 

I don't have a link, but it said so on the 7970m page.

My reply was to everyone in general who was wondering about GPU upgrades.

 

You're correct, it does say that on the 7970m page. Here's the excerpt from it where it states that:

"When compared to mobile Nvidia GPUs, the HD 7970M should perform marginally faster than the GeForce GTX 675M and roughly on par with the upcoming GTX 680M. In fact, rumors claim 3DMark 11 scores of P4500 and P4700 from the 7970M and GTX 680M, respectively. However, since the GTX 680M has yet to be formally announced as of April 2012, the HD 7970M is currently the fastest laptop graphics card available."

Link here: AMD Radeon HD 7970M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

As you can see, that's dated info by quite a bit. At that point, the first benchmarks from the 7970m hadn't yet leaked, while they already had for the 680m. We now know that the 7970m scores much higher than P4500 as the article states. In fact, the score I previously quoted for the 7970m was just the GPU score (around 5500) , while the P4673 for the 680m was the full score. The full score for the 7970m is about P5800. As you can see, that's a lot of ground for Nvidia to make up in a short period of time. I'm not holding my breath based on the info currently available.

 

has anyone else ordered laptop with 7970m from Malibal and have any clue whats going on over there?

 

I think you should check out Malibal's forums for better answers. I thought Malibal made it very clear that they will not be as active as they used to be in NBR and that in case one wants regular updates they should check out their forums. These posts clearly mention that.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...eon-7970m-sager-resellers-46.html#post8540747

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...eon-7970m-sager-resellers-45.html#post8540612

 

Myth, Xotic, and most of the other companies on here e-mail their customers to keep them informed. What a novel idea!

 

I meant to say he can look for answers there by browsing through the posts regarding the same. I doubt he would not have tried emailing them. If he still is looking for answers it can only mean he did not receive an answer or that the answer was not satisfactory.

 

I started a thread in their forums in which they have been corresponding. Its in the general section

 

All this waiting around and I am wondering if I will be done with Diablo 3 by the time I get my laptop.

 

Yes they said they expected to "possibly" ship my 7970 based Satori on Friday, but they could not guarantee it. They will provide more info before the end of the week is what I was told. So maybe they are trying to figure out the situation 100% to see who to email etc. (they do fire off emails once they know the situation or make a decision)

Edit, from yesterday "Hi, I apologize for the delay - but we're still waiting on info from Clevo before we can give a real update. We are hoping to post the update tonight. It's 9:30PM here. Stay Tuned! "

 

According to Mythlogic here it cannot be disabled like on AW:

 

No I did NOT say that. Please read what I originally said before jumping to conclusions and trying to bash on people for your frustration of being without a laptop for the better part of the summer. You want to take it out, go to the gym.

Firstly, I CLEARLY said that they need to give an APPROXIMATE time frame of when they can get this stuff done. If they say between x and y weeks and it takes LONGER than that, then they can release a statement AFTER y weeks saying we had said this but because of such and such problems, we are now looking at a revised time frame of z weeks.

Secondly, I did not say I want them to email every customer. It is not very apparent AT ALL. The company I bought the laptop from is kept just as much in the dark by AMD as we all are so it is pointless to ask them either. All AMD has to do is release a statement on their own website with a notification. THAT IS IT. I should not have to find out about delays from a forum. Or is that too much to ask for?