I'm waiting for a 28nm 150W desktop card from Nvidia, to choose betwen it and the AMD cards. If they take too long to launch it, they will loose a customer.
I think what he means is he wants a mid range card with a mid range price tag, of course just saying that would have been a lot simpler and the chance of it happening when 670s and 680s are in short supply and still selling out is somewhere between 0% and 0%.
Especially, midrange PRICE. no way on earth I, would spend more than 300 $ on any video card. I mentioned the tdp because last-gen nvidia cards are too power-hungry in my opinion, so i wont buy one. This makes Amd the only option.
It looks like Kelper is superior then AMD offering this time around. Something that cant be said for the past 2 - 3 years.
But the GTX660M Mid Range Mobile GPU is too far away from the High End Range GTX 680M.
I would love to get the GTX 680M on the coming Macbook Pro and iMac, but i am guessing lower end will be stuck with GTX660M again, there is a Staggering 2.5x EXTRA CUDA Cores difference between them.
NVIDIA doesn't typically disclose TDPs for mobile GPUs, but the standards are something like 30W, 45W, 60W, and 100W (give or take) -- that's for the entire MXM module. AMD basically targets the same power usages, as many OEMs like to support either AMD or NVIDIA.
I was thinking the same. After more thought, the issue might be the memory bandwidth. If they go 2x 660M cores (~768) I suspect they would need to go the route of the 256-bit memory bus, because 128 would just not feed it enough. That probably means more TDP and a more expensive chip. That would be the 'sweet spot' though IMHO; 'enough' cores with sufficient memory bandwidth would make it a great laptop GPU, without breaking the bank or power consumption. It would also be just slower (likely) than the current 580M with much better power efficiency. I guess time will tell if NV decides to release such a chip.
Even with memory bandwidth limitations, that would still be a nice chip. Those limitations would play into their hands too and keep it away from the 680M. Unfortunately they can't release such a chip this generation because the marketing bastards have plugged that gap with Fermi. Of course, nVidia don't usually shy away from releasing a totally different card with the same name, so maybe we will see a genuine 670M!
Yes, 768 sounds good to me, a perfect balance of Performance and Power on Laptops. Last week i asked and discovered Intel are no longer binning their CPU and instead pretty much produce the chips as spec with little disabled parts. This actually sits right in line with what Nvidia has been complaining about wafer cost. Disabled Parts will just be too expensive and possible no longer provides any financial incentive.
SO we wont be getting a Disabled GK104, and GK107 dont offer any real performance, we are pretty much stuck in the middle of no where.
Sounds like a gap of opportunity AMD may want to explore.
This gap has happened for the line-ups of both companies and it's very frustrating. They've decided to force people who like the mid-range cards to pony up more cash than usual or suffer with lower-mid-range performance. :/
"Superior" if you like paying double the money for something that bests the equivalent AMD branded card in maybe 1/3 of the games that people usually play, ties in another 1/3, and is downright trounced in another 1/3.
FUD much? What are the 1/3 of games where the GTX 680M is actually trounced by the HD 7970M? Can you even name two? If someone has actually tested the two GPUs in a notebook (e.g. not simulated with desktop hardware) and done a thorough comparison, I'd love to see it. We're still trying to get hardware, and I think the same is true of every other site.
the question can also be: can somebody name 2 games where the 680M will trounce the 7970M. Because at this point that cannot be found either.
All we know at this point imo is:
7970M is smaller than 680M
680M has the layout of the 670 while the 7970M has the layout of the 7870. So basically we can assume the 680M will have higher performance. Altough the article talks about 680M having a 50% higher performance than the 675M... the same is true for the 7970M... and that was tested by 3rd parties.
I don't think the G610M is worth it for Ultrabooks. Bypassing the 17 W TDP limit for the CPU this way may sound nice - but the GPU will also consume power. I'd rather have an Ultrabook which lets me up the CPU to 25 W TDP - the cooling system would need to be able to handle this anyway, if it supports a 17 W CPU and a G610M.
Thereby I could occasionally get higher pure CPU performance (higher Turbo modes) and HD4000 should be significantly faster than G610M anyway, even with a hit due to TDP-constrained lower clocks.
The GPU only consumes power when in use, thanks to Optimus, and presumably it will be on a separate cooling apparatus. I do however agree that in general, if you're at the point where you're looking to add a discrete GPU, you should consider laptops that are a bit larger with SV CPUs.
Don't buy something tagged "ultrabook" then, instead look at the almost-an-ultrabook group of notebooks. Clevo 11" comes to mind if you want performance.
The real points why you'd bother with a low power dGPU that's barely faster than the HD4000
What would the equivalent desktop GPU be to the 680M when it comes to FPS? I know there's a lot of architectural differences between laptops and desktops, but I'd be interested to know which GPUs have the same real-world performance.
Right now, the closest you can get is the GTX 670, which is clocked at 915MHz stock on the core and has 6GHz GDDR5. So the mobile variant is clocked 32% lower on the core and 40% lower on the RAM.
Is pure hogwash from the reviews I've seen from the 7970. For Crysis 2, Diablo III, Arkham Asylum, Skyrim, and a plethora of other titles, the 7970 either beats the 680m (by as much as 18%) or is the same, and at worst was just 10% slower in the worst case. Yes, in some games the 680m beats the 7970, however, it certainly isn't worth paying more than double what you'd pay for the 7970.
Link please? And are you talking about the 7970M or the 7970?
Diablo III is an NVIDIA supported title, so I'd be surprised if it's actually slower on their hardware, but stranger things have happened (e.g. DiRT 2 and Civ5 are "ATI" titles where NVIDIA held an advantage for a long time). Arkham Asylum is so old and undemanding that you'd be looking at 300 FPS vs. 290 FPS and very likely CPU limited; perhaps you meant Arkham City? If that's what you're talking about, it looks like the latest Batman with high-end hardware is hitting other bottlenecks on most GPUs (http://www.anandtech.com/show/5818/9). Skyrim also favors NVIDIA quite a lot on desktop GPUs, and Civ5 is basically a toss up.
Where are your "plethora of titles" They're not even there on the desktop GPUs! Switch to mobile GPUs and you're looking at a Pitcairn card that has 1280 cores clocked at 850MHz (a 15% drop from the desktop HD 7870 1GHz) and memory still clocked at 4800MHz. In most titles, particularly at 1080p laptop resolutions, I expect we're basically shader/core limited and the extra memory bandwidth will only help in select titles.
But hey, let's do a reasonable estimate. Take the 1900x1200 results here (http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/548?vs=598) and subtract 15% from HD 7870 and 32% from GTX 670 as a rough estimate. Do you know what you get? Downclocked 7870 on average would be 10% slower than downclocked GTX 670. The titles where AMD leads out of the list (only looking at actual games) are Crysis: Warhead (6%), Metro 2033 (2%), and Civilization V (15%) -- so really, two ties and only one clear lead. The titles where NVIDIA leads are DiRT 3 (5%), Total War: Shogun 2 (6%), Batman: Arkham City (28%), Portal 2 (14%), Battlefield 3 (30%), StarCraft II (25%).
Given we're only estimating performance, it does appear relatively close and AMD will certainly lead in some of their traditionally strong titles, but "pure hogwash" is a stretch. You're also not "paying double", unless you can manage to just by the MXM separate from everything else. You're looking at a $2000 notebook with HD 7970M (and relatively spartan components for storage), or a $2300 notebook with GTX 680M. The GTX 680M will also come with Optimus, so battery life at least won't suck when you're not gaming. For a 15% increase in total notebook cost, that's pretty darn reasonable: 10% better performance, likely double the battery life, and only 15% more money.
Comparing an estimated total system cost to downplay the massive price difference in these GPUs is very disingenuous. And you even overestimate the system price. A P150EM with 7970m can be had for ~$1600-1700. Face it, AMD owns the price/performance mobility crown this time around, just like last generation.
Though that is true, I wish it were true that there were a lot of options to get an AMD mobile GPU. VERY few vendors are using them right now and the only one worth it IMO is the Sager with the 7970m. I'd like to see some Sagers/ASUS machines with the more midrange 7870m to compete with the 660m.
So while AMD may be winning the price/performance war in mobile, they aren't winning the distribution war.
Whatever. AMD owns shit right now. They've got decent GPUs, but their drivers are garbage, ESPECIALLY on laptops. If you're stupid enough to buy a laptop with AMD graphics, either you don't care at all about battery life, or you don't care about drivers. Even at the same price, I'd take the slower GTX 675M over the HD 7970M in a laptop. On desktops, AMD GPUs are better, but they still have driver issues.
Bullcrap. They do need a better iGPU/dGPU switching mechanism to compete with Optimus, but otherwise all this crap about their drivers is FUD. Yeah, their early drivers for 7xxx had issues, but Nvidia had some problems with early Kepler drivers. Driver issues happen with both companies.
Gotta luv the AMD fanboys. Have you even used a laptop with AMD graphics lately? The drivers are a major problem; hell, they're a problem on desktops as well! For one, the user interface is complete garbage that any software developer with have a brain would throw out. You don't use .Net for drivers unless you're lazy and want your product to feel sluggish. On a fast PC, after first boot it will take several seconds for the Catalyst Control Center to appear; on a slower PC or a laptop? 10+ seconds isn't unusual.
But getting back to laptops, if you don't think drivers are a problem for AMD laptops, you haven't purchased a laptop with an AMD GPU lately, at least not from a big OEM. Sony and HP are two of the biggest PC manufacturers and you can't update drivers for shit on their laptops with AMD graphics. If they're discrete only graphics, you can at least try to get someone else to download the drivers for you, but if they're switchable graphics you're screwed. Hard!
It's not all AMD's fault, but it's at least partly their fault. If nVidia can get Sony and HP to allow driver updates on Optimus laptops, AMD should be able to do the same. Why haven't they? Because they just don't give a damn about you once you've purchased their product. Acer is better about driver updates, but they build horrible plastic shit to sell for bottom dollar at retailers.
The only decent laptops with AMD graphics right now are the MacBook Pros, and you'll have to pay homage to the lifeless shell of Steve Jobs by spending more money and running the oh-so-lovely OS X if you go that route. And what do you get? Gaming performance under OS X that's worse than HD 6470M under Windows. So you install Boot Camp and run Windows, right? But than why the hell did you pay $1700 for a Mac that will have lousy battery life under Windows (and you're still up a creek when it comes to getting the latest drivers for Windows)?
Yup, AMD has the best drivers and support for laptops ever! The only laptops with AMD graphics that are worth buying are the ones with Llano and now Trinity. But guess what? You get POS laptops there as well, with their awesome 15.6" 1366x768 displays that look washed out as hell! At least you can get driver updates for those (usually).
I can think of plenty of machines with AMD graphics that look good.
You have the 17.3" samsung with 3d display, Alienware M17X and M18X. Also now that clevo sorted out their issue their 15.6" and 17.3" machines look good too.
You are out of your mind if you assume NVIDIA has stable drivers and AMD does not. Has it ever dawned on you that amd products do not need patch after update to get them running properly.
After having bought various nvidia products in the past and being burned, not a chance in hell am I touching that stuff again.
I've still got products running on AMD and they work fine. Whereas, anything with nvidia in it that is a few years old might as well be thrown away and are typically just collecting dust.
Second mistake is attacking the macbooks, which are excellent machine.
Speaking of quality AMD cards render video like streaming tv on WMC significantly better than nvidia cards.
Thank you for telling it like it is. Amd fans blabber price and fps (even as they lose miserably and then moan price again) a million times as their lips bleed, and they all lie about drivers "being the same", and are often completely clueless and totally ignorant by choice and by default, blissfully ignorant, incapable of admitting a single fact, and utterly foobar and totally broken, but they now love Winzip.
I'll be looking into a desktop replacement at the end of the year and an i7 tf book with this gpu would probably do it for me. some sites say it will be in ultra books but others say no chance
I have (2) GTX670m video cards in SLI in my M-tech laptop, I also have a third generation intel I7 2.4GHz CPU do I really need a gtx680m? Is the performance going to be better than 2 GTX670m's I just don't see it.
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Iketh - Monday, June 4, 2012 - link
I wish Intel would deliver their chips with the same chip packaging as Nvidia...Casper42 - Monday, June 4, 2012 - link
Huh?You mean the 2nd picture above with the 2 square chips?
Thats a BGA package and is only used when you plan to surface mount a chip to a board, ie; NON REMOVABLE.
GPUs in laptops are either integrated into the Mainboard or are delivered in a form factor called MXM that uses an edge connector.
Iketh - Wednesday, June 6, 2012 - link
maybe i mispoke, but im talking about the exposed die with the supportive padding instead of an IHSRaistlinZ - Monday, June 4, 2012 - link
I bet it will cost like $300.00 more than the 7970m too.Spunjji - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
Based on the last generation, $200 wouldn't be surprising. I hope to be wrong!raghu78 - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
GTX 680M costs USD 286 more than HD 7970M. close to 300 buckshttp://www.originpc.com/shop/pc/configurePrd.asp?i...
You can check using the origin pc laptop configurator
HD 7970m was found to be close to 50% faster than 675m by notebookcheck.net
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Alienware-M17x-R4-Not...
My guess is GTX 680M will beat the HD 7970M by 10%. But the price is nowhere in relation to perf. so advantage AMD.
Alexvrb - Wednesday, June 6, 2012 - link
Yeah unless money is no object. Nvidia's high-end mobile chips always did carry one heck of a premium, but ouch!marc1000 - Monday, June 4, 2012 - link
I'm waiting for a 28nm 150W desktop card from Nvidia, to choose betwen it and the AMD cards. If they take too long to launch it, they will loose a customer.thunderising - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
What do you think the GTX670 is? A 300W card?puppies - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
I think what he means is he wants a mid range card with a mid range price tag, of course just saying that would have been a lot simpler and the chance of it happening when 670s and 680s are in short supply and still selling out is somewhere between 0% and 0%.marc1000 - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
Especially, midrange PRICE. no way on earth I, would spend more than 300 $ on any video card. I mentioned the tdp because last-gen nvidia cards are too power-hungry in my opinion, so i wont buy one. This makes Amd the only option.iwod - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
It looks like Kelper is superior then AMD offering this time around. Something that cant be said for the past 2 - 3 years.But the GTX660M Mid Range Mobile GPU is too far away from the High End Range GTX 680M.
I would love to get the GTX 680M on the coming Macbook Pro and iMac, but i am guessing lower end will be stuck with GTX660M again, there is a Staggering 2.5x EXTRA CUDA Cores difference between them.
BTW, why are there no the TDP of GTX680M?
JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
NVIDIA doesn't typically disclose TDPs for mobile GPUs, but the standards are something like 30W, 45W, 60W, and 100W (give or take) -- that's for the entire MXM module. AMD basically targets the same power usages, as many OEMs like to support either AMD or NVIDIA.ExarKun333 - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
I was thinking the same. After more thought, the issue might be the memory bandwidth. If they go 2x 660M cores (~768) I suspect they would need to go the route of the 256-bit memory bus, because 128 would just not feed it enough. That probably means more TDP and a more expensive chip. That would be the 'sweet spot' though IMHO; 'enough' cores with sufficient memory bandwidth would make it a great laptop GPU, without breaking the bank or power consumption. It would also be just slower (likely) than the current 580M with much better power efficiency. I guess time will tell if NV decides to release such a chip.Spunjji - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
Even with memory bandwidth limitations, that would still be a nice chip. Those limitations would play into their hands too and keep it away from the 680M. Unfortunately they can't release such a chip this generation because the marketing bastards have plugged that gap with Fermi. Of course, nVidia don't usually shy away from releasing a totally different card with the same name, so maybe we will see a genuine 670M!iwod - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
Yes, 768 sounds good to me, a perfect balance of Performance and Power on Laptops. Last week i asked and discovered Intel are no longer binning their CPU and instead pretty much produce the chips as spec with little disabled parts. This actually sits right in line with what Nvidia has been complaining about wafer cost. Disabled Parts will just be too expensive and possible no longer provides any financial incentive.SO we wont be getting a Disabled GK104, and GK107 dont offer any real performance, we are pretty much stuck in the middle of no where.
Sounds like a gap of opportunity AMD may want to explore.
Spunjji - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
This gap has happened for the line-ups of both companies and it's very frustrating. They've decided to force people who like the mid-range cards to pony up more cash than usual or suffer with lower-mid-range performance. :/bobburn - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
"Superior" if you like paying double the money for something that bests the equivalent AMD branded card in maybe 1/3 of the games that people usually play, ties in another 1/3, and is downright trounced in another 1/3.JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
FUD much? What are the 1/3 of games where the GTX 680M is actually trounced by the HD 7970M? Can you even name two? If someone has actually tested the two GPUs in a notebook (e.g. not simulated with desktop hardware) and done a thorough comparison, I'd love to see it. We're still trying to get hardware, and I think the same is true of every other site.Riek - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
the question can also be: can somebody name 2 games where the 680M will trounce the 7970M. Because at this point that cannot be found either.All we know at this point imo is:
7970M is smaller than 680M
680M has the layout of the 670 while the 7970M has the layout of the 7870. So basically we can assume the 680M will have higher performance. Altough the article talks about 680M having a 50% higher performance than the 675M... the same is true for the 7970M... and that was tested by 3rd parties.
MrSpadge - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
I don't think the G610M is worth it for Ultrabooks. Bypassing the 17 W TDP limit for the CPU this way may sound nice - but the GPU will also consume power. I'd rather have an Ultrabook which lets me up the CPU to 25 W TDP - the cooling system would need to be able to handle this anyway, if it supports a 17 W CPU and a G610M.Thereby I could occasionally get higher pure CPU performance (higher Turbo modes) and HD4000 should be significantly faster than G610M anyway, even with a hit due to TDP-constrained lower clocks.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
The GPU only consumes power when in use, thanks to Optimus, and presumably it will be on a separate cooling apparatus. I do however agree that in general, if you're at the point where you're looking to add a discrete GPU, you should consider laptops that are a bit larger with SV CPUs.bennyg - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
Don't buy something tagged "ultrabook" then, instead look at the almost-an-ultrabook group of notebooks. Clevo 11" comes to mind if you want performance.The real points why you'd bother with a low power dGPU that's barely faster than the HD4000
colonelclaw - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
What would the equivalent desktop GPU be to the 680M when it comes to FPS? I know there's a lot of architectural differences between laptops and desktops, but I'd be interested to know which GPUs have the same real-world performance.JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
Right now, the closest you can get is the GTX 670, which is clocked at 915MHz stock on the core and has 6GHz GDDR5. So the mobile variant is clocked 32% lower on the core and 40% lower on the RAM.Riek - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
Assuming turboboost is similar on both models ofcourse.colonelclaw - Thursday, June 7, 2012 - link
Thanks for the reply JarredBatmeat - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
So can I swap my 570m our of my MSI gaming notebook and swap in a 680M?JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
Possibly.bobburn - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
Is pure hogwash from the reviews I've seen from the 7970. For Crysis 2, Diablo III, Arkham Asylum, Skyrim, and a plethora of other titles, the 7970 either beats the 680m (by as much as 18%) or is the same, and at worst was just 10% slower in the worst case. Yes, in some games the 680m beats the 7970, however, it certainly isn't worth paying more than double what you'd pay for the 7970.JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
Link please? And are you talking about the 7970M or the 7970?Diablo III is an NVIDIA supported title, so I'd be surprised if it's actually slower on their hardware, but stranger things have happened (e.g. DiRT 2 and Civ5 are "ATI" titles where NVIDIA held an advantage for a long time). Arkham Asylum is so old and undemanding that you'd be looking at 300 FPS vs. 290 FPS and very likely CPU limited; perhaps you meant Arkham City? If that's what you're talking about, it looks like the latest Batman with high-end hardware is hitting other bottlenecks on most GPUs (http://www.anandtech.com/show/5818/9). Skyrim also favors NVIDIA quite a lot on desktop GPUs, and Civ5 is basically a toss up.
Where are your "plethora of titles" They're not even there on the desktop GPUs! Switch to mobile GPUs and you're looking at a Pitcairn card that has 1280 cores clocked at 850MHz (a 15% drop from the desktop HD 7870 1GHz) and memory still clocked at 4800MHz. In most titles, particularly at 1080p laptop resolutions, I expect we're basically shader/core limited and the extra memory bandwidth will only help in select titles.
But hey, let's do a reasonable estimate. Take the 1900x1200 results here (http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/548?vs=598) and subtract 15% from HD 7870 and 32% from GTX 670 as a rough estimate. Do you know what you get? Downclocked 7870 on average would be 10% slower than downclocked GTX 670. The titles where AMD leads out of the list (only looking at actual games) are Crysis: Warhead (6%), Metro 2033 (2%), and Civilization V (15%) -- so really, two ties and only one clear lead. The titles where NVIDIA leads are DiRT 3 (5%), Total War: Shogun 2 (6%), Batman: Arkham City (28%), Portal 2 (14%), Battlefield 3 (30%), StarCraft II (25%).
Given we're only estimating performance, it does appear relatively close and AMD will certainly lead in some of their traditionally strong titles, but "pure hogwash" is a stretch. You're also not "paying double", unless you can manage to just by the MXM separate from everything else. You're looking at a $2000 notebook with HD 7970M (and relatively spartan components for storage), or a $2300 notebook with GTX 680M. The GTX 680M will also come with Optimus, so battery life at least won't suck when you're not gaming. For a 15% increase in total notebook cost, that's pretty darn reasonable: 10% better performance, likely double the battery life, and only 15% more money.
TokamakH3 - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
Comparing an estimated total system cost to downplay the massive price difference in these GPUs is very disingenuous. And you even overestimate the system price. A P150EM with 7970m can be had for ~$1600-1700. Face it, AMD owns the price/performance mobility crown this time around, just like last generation.bhima - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
Though that is true, I wish it were true that there were a lot of options to get an AMD mobile GPU. VERY few vendors are using them right now and the only one worth it IMO is the Sager with the 7970m. I'd like to see some Sagers/ASUS machines with the more midrange 7870m to compete with the 660m.So while AMD may be winning the price/performance war in mobile, they aren't winning the distribution war.
TokamakH3 - Wednesday, June 6, 2012 - link
Yeah, the 660m wins midrange for sure.On the high end, there are a whole lot more 7970ms available than 680ms.
whatthehey - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
Whatever. AMD owns shit right now. They've got decent GPUs, but their drivers are garbage, ESPECIALLY on laptops. If you're stupid enough to buy a laptop with AMD graphics, either you don't care at all about battery life, or you don't care about drivers. Even at the same price, I'd take the slower GTX 675M over the HD 7970M in a laptop. On desktops, AMD GPUs are better, but they still have driver issues.kyuu - Wednesday, June 6, 2012 - link
Bullcrap. They do need a better iGPU/dGPU switching mechanism to compete with Optimus, but otherwise all this crap about their drivers is FUD. Yeah, their early drivers for 7xxx had issues, but Nvidia had some problems with early Kepler drivers. Driver issues happen with both companies.whatthehey - Wednesday, June 6, 2012 - link
Gotta luv the AMD fanboys. Have you even used a laptop with AMD graphics lately? The drivers are a major problem; hell, they're a problem on desktops as well! For one, the user interface is complete garbage that any software developer with have a brain would throw out. You don't use .Net for drivers unless you're lazy and want your product to feel sluggish. On a fast PC, after first boot it will take several seconds for the Catalyst Control Center to appear; on a slower PC or a laptop? 10+ seconds isn't unusual.But getting back to laptops, if you don't think drivers are a problem for AMD laptops, you haven't purchased a laptop with an AMD GPU lately, at least not from a big OEM. Sony and HP are two of the biggest PC manufacturers and you can't update drivers for shit on their laptops with AMD graphics. If they're discrete only graphics, you can at least try to get someone else to download the drivers for you, but if they're switchable graphics you're screwed. Hard!
It's not all AMD's fault, but it's at least partly their fault. If nVidia can get Sony and HP to allow driver updates on Optimus laptops, AMD should be able to do the same. Why haven't they? Because they just don't give a damn about you once you've purchased their product. Acer is better about driver updates, but they build horrible plastic shit to sell for bottom dollar at retailers.
The only decent laptops with AMD graphics right now are the MacBook Pros, and you'll have to pay homage to the lifeless shell of Steve Jobs by spending more money and running the oh-so-lovely OS X if you go that route. And what do you get? Gaming performance under OS X that's worse than HD 6470M under Windows. So you install Boot Camp and run Windows, right? But than why the hell did you pay $1700 for a Mac that will have lousy battery life under Windows (and you're still up a creek when it comes to getting the latest drivers for Windows)?
Yup, AMD has the best drivers and support for laptops ever! The only laptops with AMD graphics that are worth buying are the ones with Llano and now Trinity. But guess what? You get POS laptops there as well, with their awesome 15.6" 1366x768 displays that look washed out as hell! At least you can get driver updates for those (usually).
Meaker10 - Wednesday, June 6, 2012 - link
Don't buy sony or HP then lol.I can think of plenty of machines with AMD graphics that look good.
You have the 17.3" samsung with 3d display, Alienware M17X and M18X. Also now that clevo sorted out their issue their 15.6" and 17.3" machines look good too.
But hey, haters gonna hate.
katana111 - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
You are out of your mind if you assume NVIDIA has stable drivers and AMD does not. Has it ever dawned on you that amd products do not need patch after update to get them running properly.After having bought various nvidia products in the past and being burned, not a chance in hell am I touching that stuff again.
I've still got products running on AMD and they work fine. Whereas, anything with nvidia in it that is a few years old might as well be thrown away and are typically just collecting dust.
Second mistake is attacking the macbooks, which are excellent machine.
Speaking of quality AMD cards render video like streaming tv on WMC significantly better than nvidia cards.
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, July 12, 2012 - link
Thank you for telling it like it is.Amd fans blabber price and fps (even as they lose miserably and then moan price again) a million times as their lips bleed, and they all lie about drivers "being the same", and are often completely clueless and totally ignorant by choice and by default, blissfully ignorant, incapable of admitting a single fact, and utterly foobar and totally broken, but they now love Winzip.
lol - yes they love Winzip
TokamakH3 - Wednesday, June 6, 2012 - link
*citation needed.bobburn - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
Google 7970m review.TokamakH3 - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
I see a lot of graphs showing the 7970m is the fastest card currently on the market.CeriseCogburn - Thursday, July 12, 2012 - link
No more time for the amd fanboy to pretend with tricky worded lies- amd lost again... L OOOOOOO ser
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-7970M.7...
MadMorph - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
I'll be looking into a desktop replacement at the end of the year and an i7 tf book with this gpu would probably do it for me. some sites say it will be in ultra books but others say no chancenocturnal2048 - Saturday, January 5, 2013 - link
I have (2) GTX670m video cards in SLI in my M-tech laptop, I also have a third generation intel I7 2.4GHz CPU do I really need a gtx680m? Is the performance going to be better than 2 GTX670m's I just don't see it.