Xotic PC NP9150: Striking Back At Kepler With Radeon HD 7970M

[montage]

[citation][nom]uglynerdman[/nom]you guys at toms hardware really arent aware of whats going on in the tech world... i mean srsly after all these crappy laptop reviews with bad choice for components/performance and now you not knowin about the enduro issues, It plagues both alienware, the whole 7000 series with a muxless design many problems globally, ppl who dont have the problem dont use gpu intensive applications or dont care about frame rate/stuttering/ dont know how to see theres an issue.oh well awaitin the toms hardware fanboy trolls to downrate and uprate you on not knowing "hardware" probs[/citation]

There really is no need to be rude, even if some of your points are valid.

Now, you at Tom's could try to reproduce these issues, for example on BF3 multiplayer with 64 players (say Caspian border). Please show people the MIN fps too, since that reveals the issues pretty well. Also try to lower your graphics to see if you can get a better fps readings (I promise you will not).

It would be great if you could add this information to the article, and join Anandtech in putting pressure on AMD to fix this issue for us users. We would be forver in your debt

 

[uglynerdman]

[citation][nom]montage[/nom]There really is no need to be rude, even if some of your points are valid. Now, you at Tom's could try to reproduce these issues, for example on BF3 multiplayer with 64 players (say Caspian border). Please show people the MIN fps too, since that reveals the issues pretty well. Also try to lower your graphics to see if you can get a better fps readings (I promise you will not).It would be great if you could add this information to the article, and join Anandtech in putting pressure on AMD to fix this issue for us users. We would be forver in your debt[/citation]


They SELL OUT, they dont really try to give users the advice they need and the components they should get for price/performance. If you read previous laptop reveiws you would understand what I mean, There is no real price comparison, they go for the more expensive processors, when the first the QM's will make the exact same results in fps. The article talks about price and all this nonsense. You can get a free hd 1600mb ram. a entry i7 and a 680m for 1800 and it will make the 7970m look like garbage, does all the things the card does, has lesser power consumption! actually works! ETC.

THIS and IM a AMD fan! i know when my company has released a garbage product and i know when a site is peddling it for "advertisement" purposes. Toms hasnt been giving the advice that someone with a real knowledge of value and what you need to get to game would give.

 

[arcticjoe]

It is the best mobile graphics card regardless of price right now. That it has an issue such as this is very bad and should be fixed, but if someone wants the best, then they can get a laptop that can disable Enduro or doesn't support it at all. They shouldn't have to do this and that they do after al of this time is despicable, but that doesn't detract from the 7970M's capability when you work around the Enduro problem.

problem is that many laptops cannot disable Enduro because manufacturer has gone with the muxless design. I own one of those laptops and for the last 5 months its given me nothing but grief. I have wasted several hundred hours troubleshooting this issue and AMD only now (nearly half a year after 7970m was released) have acknowledged the issue.
My previous machine with 6970m was faster in several games than 7970m, which I have spent a lot of money to upgrade to... Really poor show from AMD here, if I could spend extra £300 to upgrade to 680m I would in a heartbeat.

 

[custom90gt2]

I am also disappointed that the blatant enduro problems were never discussed in this article. My NP9150 with a 7970m has been plagued with enduro issues since day one (BF3 is for the most part unplayable online). AMD hasn't even acknowledged the problem, let alone came up with a solution. My guess is they want to sweep it under the rug, and with articles that ignore the issue, it seems possible.

 

[arcticjoe]

Some laptops can disable Enduro and without it, the 7970M is far better than the 680M. A 670 is a good card, but the 680M performs nothing like it because of its huge memory bandwidth bottle-neck. Throw in some AA and the 680M comes to a halt in comparison. I'm not saying that Enduro isn't a problem, just that without it, the 680M wouldn't be able to beat the 7970M if you use some good AA.

i dont think that is correct, from what I've seen 680m beats 7970m on more games than 7970m does 680m... and once overclocked 680m absolutely creams overclocked 7970m.

 

[arcticjoe]

BF3 results look fine to me

BF3 single player is ok, multiplayer is a whole different story. Main issue with this "enduro problem" is that in affected games you get nearly identical fps whether you play on ultra or on medium settings, so my 6970m could get higher and more stable fps than my 7970m with everything on high. With 7970m as I decrease detail my GPU utilization decreases, but fps stays the same. And I am not talking about 60fps or higher, - on all medium my fps can range from 25-40 on some maps, which for multiplayer gaming is pretty bad.
Increasing GPU clocks does the same thing, - utilization drops, fps stays the same. In several games my utilization touches as low as 40% and up until very recently AMD have been pretending that nothing is wrong. Best case scenario is that we will get some drivers before the end of the year, with 60-70% of this cards lifespan as a top performing mobile card spent being faulty.

 

[zymphad]

How can you possibly do this review without mentioning the Enduro issue? It's everywhere now. It's posted on Gur3D, Rage3D and of course NBR can't mention 7970M without Enduro and even AnandTech confirmed this issue exists. AMD themselves have made statements to recognizing the issue.

 

[WickedPigeon]

First - Thank You TH for this review. I am so happy to see custom laptop reviews and issues discussed.

Second - I am a Sager NP9170 owner and ordered my rig from Exotic about three months ago.

I loved the Exotic experience - great customer service. But there were so many configuration choices to make and I had a limited budget and limited knowledge. Given my limited budget and what games I play, I opted for the 670m and put the extra budget into a SSD and an extra HD. I had read about the issues people were having with the 7970 so I went the other way. The 7970m was so new and AMD and Clevo still need time to figure out the drivers - you aren't sacrificing much by choosing one of the other options - 670m, 675m, 680m. The rest of the rig is solidly built - HM77 chipset, choice of processors, memory and more.

With the "basic" 670m I couldn't be happier. Frame rates in games is great. Video editing is fast, as is everything on this beast (there are a few minor issues with the sound card and a sticky keyboard) but overall a great gaming laptop at a great price.

Again thank you Tom's for including Gaming Laptops in your research - keep it coming - I know I needed all the help I could get when trying to configure my laptop.

 

[Menigmand]

Thanks for the review, I would love to also see some details about the quality of the screen though

Framerates are important, but image quality should also be in focus, and it's one of the areas where laptops sometimes disappoint..

 

[Guest]

It's poor form to post this type of review so long after the Enduro issues have been known about and still not corrected. In fact, those issues are so easily researched now that the last page of this review outright smells like an AMD pay-off.

This is the type of review (from another site) I referenced when I purchased my np9170 w/7970m, but unfortunately due to Enduro it's outright lying to the readers and influencing them to purchase a far inferior product. I'd highly suggest an addendum to reference the Enduro issues.

You mention that you "searched for hardware". If you had even typed in "7970m vs 680M" you'd have encountered MANY forum posters dropping $300-500 outright to swap out their 7970m for the 680M.

I personally swapped out the 7970m for a 680M on my order, last-minute, because I'd rather drop an extra $250 on a sure thing than wait for driver updates to let my high-end mobile GPU actually perform like a high-end mobile GPU.

 

[montage]

"Price was probably part of the problem, since the GeForce GTX 680M costs about $245 more than the Radeon HD 7970M. We think Xotic PC was looking for the big value score, and our research shows the company probably made the best choice."

How extensive was this "research" of yours, if you didn't find a mention about the Enduro issues? The 675M is of much better value IF the Enduro issues are never solved. Do not buy this laptop configuration from Xotic or any other Clevo reseller, until they fix the issues.

 

[mannam]

How can this article be published without mentioning or better yet even trying to test for the HUGE Enduro issue.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]montage[/nom]Please tell me how that affects gaming on 1080p resolution. You have some fps benchmarks to show us? AMD has packed more memory bandwidth on their cards to handle with Eyefinity and gaming on high resolutions. I'd say it is pretty unlikely that I will ever use my 7970M above 1080p.But enough of this 680M vs 7970M, the main point is that at the moment the 7970M is flawed because of Enduro technology. For laptops that have the ability to disable Enduro, this still means they cannot use the powersaving feature of switchable graphics (which they also paid for).[/citation]

Tom's tests with MSAA obviously show that it matters at 1080p. The 660 Ti is substantially worse at MSAA than even the 670, so the 680M is substantially worse than even the 660 Ti.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-660-ti-memory-bandwidth-anti-aliasing,3283-13.html

8x MSAA is arguably overkill by some people, but 4x MSAA is not. The 660 Ti drops about 20% while the 670 only drops about 15% and the 7870 drops only about 12%. The 680M, at best, would not be able to even come close to the 660 Ti. It'd probably end up at losing around 30%-40% at mere 4x MSAA.

 

[montage]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]Tom's tests with MSAA obviously show that it matters at 1080p. The 660 Ti is substantially worse at MSAA than even the 670, so the 680M is substantially worse than even the 660 Ti.[/citation]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5818/nvidia-geforce-gtx-670-review-feat-evga/9

Now compare 670 vs 7870

 

[blazorthon]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5818/nvidia-geforce-gtx-670-review-feat-evga/9

Now compare 670 vs 7870

Outdated drivers/game profiles/game versions and the 680M doesn't come anywhere near the 670. The 670 has a huge ~75% or ~80% lead in memory bandwidth over the 680M; I'd have to re-check specs to get more accurate.

 

[montage]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]Outdated drivers/game profiles/game versions and the 680M doesn't come anywhere near the 670. The 670 has a huge ~75% or ~80% lead in memory bandwidth over the 680M; I'd have to re-check specs to get more accurate.[/citation]

Good for me then, I guess. Now if the card only worked as it should...

 

[meltbox360]

Montage, come on you are just trying to find a way to break him down. "Oh you're right? Yea but...."
Okay there is an issue but he was arguing over the potential of the card not over enduro crippling it.

As a side note I look forward to retesting this series of cards in a year or two. I have a feeling those who went green will start to see the effects of reduced bandwidth... Perhaps not though? Honestly I wonder how these two architectures will age is all.

 

[montage]

[citation][nom]meltbox360[/nom]Montage, come on you are just trying to find a way to break him down. "Oh you're right? Yea but...."Okay there is an issue but he was arguing over the potential of the card not over enduro crippling it.[/citation]

Huh? I just commented that he was right about the memory bandwith, and since I'm by no means a hardware expert, I couldn't really argue any further. Just saying that its good for me if the 7970M is better in this area, because I own one.

It is frustrating to buy a 1800€ laptop only to find out it doesn't perform as it should. We have waited AMD to make some acknowledgement of the issue, but so far AMD hasn't directly commented the GPU under utilization issue. People are tired of this silence, and want AMD to take action. We just want to create awareness both to push AMD to fix the issues, and also to prevent new buyers from making the same mistake as we did (getting the 7970M).

Hopefully AMD will solve the issue, but it is not sure if its even possible.

 

[arcticjoe]

680m overclocks a lot better than 7970m, you can push its memory clocks from 900mhz up to 1300mhz, giving nearly 45% increase whilst your temps are still lower than with 7970m.

 

[cangelini]

All,
I have an email out to AMD about the Enduro issues you've pointed us to. Up until this point, I've seen a lot of data, but no answers as to what's going on with the situation. Hopefully we can update this story shortly to provide some of that.
Thanks,
Chris

 

[arcticjoe]

many thanks cangelini, hopefully this will put some pressure on AMD to quickly resolve this. We saw no response from AMD until this issue started getting some public attention.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]arcticjoe[/nom]680m overclocks a lot better than 7970m, you can push its memory clocks from 900mhz up to 1300mhz, giving nearly 45% increase whilst your temps are still lower than with 7970m.[/citation]

GPU temps shouldn't be hindered by much from memory overclocking, but how hot are those chips getting (semi-rhetorical; no software measures memory temps because there aren't sensors for this)? What sort of cooling do the memory ICs have? Do all laptops with the GTX 680M have comparable memory IC cooling? Is this cooling adequate enough for the ICs to not increase wear and tear on them dramatically? These are only the first few questions that one must ask about it.

With the 7970M, assuming that you get a laptop that either doesn't support Enduro or can disable it (I realize that many, perhaps most, can't disable it), you don't have to worry about that and even then, MSAA is affected by more than just the memory bandwidth and the 7970M would undoubtedly still have superior AA efficiency considering even the 7850 and the 7870 have better AA efficiency than the 670 (although the large GPU performance difference between them makes it difficult for them to catch the 670 like the 7970M should easily be able to do to the 680M when Enduro isn't an issue).

About Enduro, I'm really not going to be optimistic about it being fixed anytime soon, if even on the Radeon 7000 cards. However, given the issues, it seems like AMD should have made it so all laptops with it can disable it if the user wants to (requiring all supporting laptops to have any hardware or lack thereof to ensure that this is possible). I'd go as far as saying that it should be disabled by default on all laptops with it if it is causing such trouble.

 

[Crashman]

Guys, when you run a game with the included driver, it defaults to the integrated GPU on the FIRST RUN. So, you exit the game and find a popup menu.

The popup menu asks if, at next application launch, you want to use the AMD or Intel GPU. You choose the AMD GPU.

Now, this is supposedly the feature that "everyone with the problem" wished they had. And the feature is here, so I'm waiting to hear more specifics about how "the problem" persists when the AMD GPU has already been selected.

 

[montage]

[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]All,I have an email out to AMD about the Enduro issues you've pointed us to. Up until this point, I've seen a lot of data, but no answers as to what's going on with the situation. Hopefully we can update this story shortly to provide some of that.Thanks,Chris[/citation]

Great news! Hopefully you big guys can get more information out of AMD.

 

[arcticjoe]

wont disagree with you on disabling enduro, unfortunately for those with switchable graphics implementation that will not be possible as only iGPU is connected to the screen.
re: 680m, cant really answer questions re: temps, I'm a 7970m owner so I can only go from what I read. Not sure if it would be a valid comparison but 7970m memory comfortably OCs up to 1600mhz and uses the same heatsinks as 680m, so if anything I would expect 7970m mem chips to be hotter.