Is the 7970m worth it?

C

changpion

New member
Hi everyone,

Just want to get peoples opinions on this matter. I'm thinking of getting a vortex III, and I am wondering whether the 7970m is worth the extra £130 over the gtx 670m. I've heard a lot of troubling things such as overheating, driver problems, performance problems etc with the 7970m, although I know in theory the 7970m should be much better for gaming. Is it worth the extra money and hassle?

Cheers,

Thomas
 
J

jacobpov

Active member
changpion said:
Hi everyone,

Just want to get peoples opinions on this matter. I'm thinking of getting a vortex III, and I am wondering whether the 7970m is worth the extra £130 over the gtx 670m. I've heard a lot of troubling things such as overheating, driver problems, performance problems etc with the 7970m, although I know in theory the 7970m should be much better for gaming. Is it worth the extra money and hassle?

Cheers,

Thomas
Click to expand...

I have none of the issues you've mentioned above except driver problems there are indeed driver problems I am waiting for an update.
 
M

M3zxu

Silver Level Poster
it's roughly 3x faster than a gtx 670m -> pick your poison ;)

It has it's issues still because there are no official driver out for it, the current ones are pretty much something the manufacturers had to create themselves for the card. Overheating is not an issue if the heatsink and paste job have been applied correctly - every card has the same issue. Performance problems... well, there are times that the card is not using 100% of it's potential, mainly because of the current drivers. It's much more future proof than a 2 gen old gtx 670m.
 
I

icehot

Member
I think I maybe uniquely positioned to answer this question, the Vortex III is basically a Clevo P170em and I have had 2 of them. One from a manufacturer before I'd come across PC Specialist which had a fairly decent spec but with the nvidia 670m and a sandybridge. I ended up returning it due to too many dead pixels and since then I'd done some more research and found PC Specialist and specifically liked that they did the same kind of laptop but with the dead pixel guarantee. So anyway I ended up buying one with the refunded money from the old one to get the Vortex III with 3720qm and the 7970m - I tell ya what if you are into gaming do not even bother with the 670m, it'll run games like Portal 2 fine (just about gets 60fps most of the time) and other older opengl games etc, but want to run Crysis 2 decently? You need the 7970m, it's so worth it, the performance is incredible, and looking at recent benchmarks very comparable to the 680m too.

However although I've not really had driver problems and I am used to gaming with ATI cards so I know the drivers will get better and better, the card does run very hot. I don't think it's a problem as after extensive research, I've found the 100% fan only kicks in at 93c and drops off again when the card goes down to 89c, however on hot days the card can and does hit 100c if you're gaming quite extensively. Based on the fan profile being like it is, and the fact it is a laptop i'm sure it's not too much of an issue that it runs hot - I would like it though if the heatsink was better and kept the card in the mid 80s.

Overall though in answer to your question it's worth every penny, and it will only get better with more drivers! Infact official drivers may alter the fan profile maybe :)
 
T

tom6561

Gold Level Poster
So I currently have the Skyfire II with a 670M, it'll run Crysis 2 on 1920x1080 at a stable 35/40 fps, it does sometimes drop as I move into a new area but I'm almost certain that's my slow hard drive bottlenecking. Since it's a different chassis I'll just give temperatures as a rough guideline, could be way different but it maxes out at just over 80C, which isn't that bad. It'll run most games from the last year on ultra, not usually 60fps but 40 or so.
 
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