whats going on with the 6970m

You probably won't believe me, but Apple decided to put the 6970m in their new Imac.

 

You're right, I don't believe you.

 

iMac 27” Quad-Core i5 3.1GHz/4GB/1TB/Radeon HD 6970M 1GB english

 

no one ever believes me

 

I believed you (but I already knew it to be true)

 

Now if only Apple would embrace DirectX, and everything else necessary to become a legit gaming OS.

 

You have angered the Jobs... You have been scheduled for re-education. Don't be alarmed, the turtleneck squad will be at your door shortly....

 

Quote from the Xotic-PC forums, with a thread entitled Just got off the phone with both Sager and AMD:

 

Mac's card is not the same card though.

 

How do you figure that?

Mr. Mysterious

 

^ 1GB of RAM whereas ours has 2GB.

 

Probably because they cards are physically different. Same 'chip' different board/ram.

 

According to what I was told, VRAM doesn't matter much in the graphical performance of the card with the exception of supporting multiple monitors.

Mr. Mysterious

 

noo you're ahead of me by 3 days ~_~
I'm 6/16 phase2 with the 6970m

 

So I finally decided What I was going to buy today, a Satori P170HM on Malibal. I had read this post previously so I contacted them to ensure they still had the 6970M as it was still on there site. They said they just sold out... and were in the process of removing it from there site.

So I cried a little, and decided I would just suck it up and buy the Nvidia 485M, then during the Checkout I was talking to a representative and asked "I know that the 6970M was just removed is there a new graphics card coming out soon?"
the Representative asnwered "that they couldnt comment on that and that there was an NDA in effect"

Is this normal? or would it be wise to wait a couple weeks since i really didnt want to drop $600 on a chip unless it was necessary and for a new one to come out ina month or 2? any advice is welcome!!

 

My advice: Unless you need a laptop NOW.....wait.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Yeah, I dont need one now... so I guess I will hold out, hopefully its not for to long my pc im using I built back in 2007 and its on its last leg...

 

Update: I got my laptop with 6970M and I played battlefield bad company 2 with no issues. This laptop is amazing.

 

Finally, some good news! Enjoy your machine, sir

Mr. Mysterious

 

The only company that I think still has them is Mythlogic, and I would like to use them but I could buy a 485m from malibal for less...
Doesn't seem worth it...

 

Which is why many resellers are pulling the 6970m from their site, and more than just me have said it's for reliability reasons......

 

My laptop shipped on the 20th and arrived on the 21st. Unfortunately, I had it sent to my parents' address in order to avoid provincial taxes, and they chose the slowest shipping option when they forwarded it to me, so it probably won't get here until Monday. >_<

So has it been confirmed that the 6970M was discontinued due to stock issues, and not actual problems with the card? I'm a bit worried after hearing some of the problems people have been having, because it would suck to have to send my laptop away to get it fixed or replaced so soon after getting it.

Also, has anyone underclocked their 6970M or reduced the voltage to try to save battery life while idle? Is there any disadvantage to doing this, such as long-term damage to the card?

 

Translation: AMD made a bo bo.

Notice regarding AMD 6970M Graphics Cards

 

Thank you It's amazing really... Blazing fast. I was installing the game and youtubing the videos at the 1080 resolution and I checked the CPU usage, it says only 10%. The keyboard and surface doesn't even warm up while gaming the battlefield bad company 2 for 20 minutes with everything at max, AAx8 and AFx16 at 1920x1080. I see some users complaining about how the trackpad is rubberized, it doesn't even bother me, infact, I love it.

 

See? I told you that your card will probably <s>burst into flames and make you buy an nVidia</s> work perfectly fine! Remember?

And the coolness is because you bought a Sager/Clevo. Good for you. Now, come on BF:BC2, so I can <s>knife you in the back like a shadow in the bushes and take your tags to display on my wall</s> do some rush/conquests with you and own some noobs from our Sager laptops.

 

lololoooll

 

Lol nub. It used 25% of battery while playing BFBC2 at max settings and 40% screen brightness for 20 minutes. So I assume my laptop can game anything at max with 40% brightness for 60-90 minutes.

 

That's not the point. The point is that the manufacturing process is different.

 

You gamed on battery and it didn't do anything? I.E. No difference in performance on battery vs plugged in? That's weird. Are you using DirectX 9, 10 or 11?

 

This really makes me worried. My 6970m has been working fine so far, but what if it decides to fail after my warranty is up. This sucks.

 

Your Nvidia card might fail after your warranty expires as well. Nobody is guaranteed from that. Most likely if your ATI card is bad, it'll fail before your warranty expires.

 

Seeing as how you cannot buy a laptop without at least 1 year warranty, I'm quite sure that if it's a bad copy, it'll fail before that time. If it's not bad, and lasts you clear up past the year's warranty, it should last you a longg time.

 

Nope, no performance difference. I'm on the balanced settings. I'm sure it's DirectX 10 or 11. Game is smooth with VSYNC on. (Partial occasional screen tearing (horizonal lines shift) when I move around quickly but it's very minimal so I turned on the VSYNC and it's smooth with no tearing.) My screen is set at 60Hz so I'm sure the FPS is beyond 60 without the VSYNC

 

What are you basing that on? None of us know exactly what the problem is.

 

Thanks for the official stance on the card, it seems Kobalt have either been given the short end on 6970m batches or the cards themselves really have an issue on them which shows up during stress testing.

 

Why is Sager the only one with these problems and not Alienware?

Bad batch would explain it. But not stress tests that alienware does not perform. Users of M17/18x should have discovered it through use too.

 

So far with Battlefield Bad Company, the FPS at 1920x1080 with everything max buy AAx4 and AFx8

MAX FPS: 130
MIN FPS:32

Average fps: 75

 

Clevo and Dell both buy these from AMD:



...and then make different versions of these to sell to consumers:




If Clevo has a failure problem with their cards and Dell doesn't the issue probably doesn't exist with the AMD GPU.

 

I'd believe that if you were on DX9. If you're on 10 or 11 and it's maxed out, that game requires a decent bit of CPU power as well as GPU power... I don't see how you could get 60FPS on battery alone; at least ONE of your modules should be power-starved.

 

I'm basing it on common sense. What are you basing your worries on?

 

No, you're basing it on an initial trend and assumption, but you really don't know if that's the whole, big picture or not. None of us do until some time passes. We don't know the exact problem(s) with the card.

I'm basing my worries on that something wasn't designed right with this card and there could be other underlying (not obvious) effects.

Think outside the box dude.

 

What box? What wasn't designed right?.. Dude, paranoia much?

 

I've been gaming for 5 hours straight on two different med-high demanding game, highest reading temperature recorded during the 5 hours of game play was 80C. Looks like thermal paste upgrade and cooling is doing well! I LOVE MY 6970M!!!! NO ISSUES! SO BEAUTIFUL!

 

If you want a temperature-raising game to test, try Borderlands, Fallout 3, Metro 2033, ... or... uhh... Well I had two more I used to use, but I forgot their names now. But those three usually throw my temps up.

 

with the 6970m? I played BFBC2 and Mafia II

 

Yeah, but (at least with me) higher graphics doesn't mean higher temps. MW2 can throw my GPU sky high, when CoD 4, World at War, Black Ops and BF:BC2 don't. Metro might be temp-happy, but I think Fallout was bad. I *KNOW* borderlands likes to make em run hot though. Especially if you max it out, which you should easily be able to do (not so much for me.. T_T.. I want a 580M...)

 

Clevo does not manufacture videocards. Everybody gets their cards from Foxconn don't they?

Clevo used to make Alienware in the first place.

 

Okay, I guess you think too simply to understand.

So I guess the initial design of the Sandy Bridge chipset had no problem, since there were no immediate problems with it. Haha. You might want to look that up

 

Josh how about relaxin a bit and letting people have their opinion ?
Why can't we all just get along ?

 

Try the original Crysis. Still one of the best looking games today. 89.5 degrees on my 6970M. No FN + 1.