Vortex III with 680m or Vortex III elite with 7970m crossfire?

E

edgez

Active member
Hi everyone,

As the title suggests, I'm thinking of buying a gaming laptop soon and wondered which one would you go for out of the two?
I have also heard of lots of issues surrounding 7970m cards with the whole enduro thing. Are these enduro and under utilization issues relevant with crossfire too? I would love to get the 680m sli setup, but I just can't justify spending over 2000 pounds on a laptop.

Any feedback would be appreciated.
 
Iroquois Pliskin

Iroquois Pliskin

Enthusiast
There's no Enduro problems in P370EM Crossfire HD7970 solutions, the only thing you should be worrying about is AMD's XFire profile inclusion on a game-by-game basis in the latest driver installments, which enable the benefits of XFire in the first place - double the performance.

Not to say that Nvidia doesn't have to do the same with their SLI setups, both companies go head-to-head in this regard and support their multiple-GPU configurations.
 
rickne

rickne

Master Poster
680 everytime. I have two machines with Xfire and both are more hassle than they are worth. Plus ytou wont get physx support.
 
Iroquois Pliskin

Iroquois Pliskin

Enthusiast
A powerful single-card solution is always best. With XFire, or SLI it is always hit, or miss in terms of doubling the performance depending on each game - a software dependency.

BTW, the P370EM has a better sound card by Creative. : P Maybe you could call them, see if they can spec you a Vortex III Elite P370EM with a single GTX 680M.
 
J

JustT

Active member
I was looking at both myself, ended up getting a single 680 as crossfire seemed a lot of hassle also the heat out put from duel cards would be greater than a single card?
 
E

edgez

Active member
Iroquois Pliskin said:
A powerful single-card solution is always best. With XFire, or SLI it is always hit, or miss in terms of doubling the performance depending on each game - a software dependency.
Click to expand...

I understand that I wont be doubling the performance with crossfire, it rarely does....but with the config I have chosen on both machines the single 680m will cost very similar to the 7970m CF. Surely there must be some gains with CF though? On paper the 7970m in Crossfire should wipe the floor with the single 680m, but as certain people have pointed out with the hassle of crossfire and drivers etc, i'm really stuck in making a desicion in which to opt for.....

Has anyone in these forums purchased the 7970m crossfire machine? How is the performance and stability?

Thanks for the responses :)
 
E

edgez

Active member
JustT said:
I was looking at both myself, ended up getting a single 680 as crossfire seemed a lot of hassle also the heat out put from duel cards would be greater than a single card?
Click to expand...

Yeah I guess both the heat and also the noise would be greatly increased....I will for sure also purchase the Zalman nc3500 laptop cooler, as the reviews are positive in running the laptops a little cooler.
 
Iroquois Pliskin

Iroquois Pliskin

Enthusiast
edgez said:
....but with the config I have chosen on both machines the single 680m will cost very similar to the 7970m CF. Surely there must be some gains with CF though? On paper the 7970m in Crossfire should wipe the floor with the single 680m, but as certain people have pointed out with the hassle of crossfire and drivers etc, i'm really stuck in making a desicion in which to opt for.....
Click to expand...

I'd go with XFire P370EM. Myself, I'll be ordering a SLI 680 later on, though if the choice of either a single 680M vs XFire 7970M presented itself for the same price, I'd definitely go with the 7970Ms.

Has anyone in these forums purchased the 7970m crossfire machine? How is the performance and stability?
Click to expand...

NoteBook Review forums have all the relevant data & benchmarks, see their Gaming/GPU, Sager & Clevo & AW M18x sections. Linky - http://forum.notebookreview.com/

But here's a review for you - http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Notebookcheck+alienware+M18x+R2+review

First link in the search field, XFire 7970M setup on a different chassis, though the performance carries over to different brands. As you can see, if the driver has a profile for a specific game, then the performance often doubles.
 
A

Alloid

Bronze Level Poster
I have dual 7970m, for me it is fine. But not all games is optimized for CF and this is some kind of problem.
Anyway CF is going to be more powerfull than single 680m, and new drivers will be out in this month.
 
E

edgez

Active member
Alloid said:
I have dual 7970m, for me it is fine. But not all games is optimized for CF and this is some kind of problem.
Anyway CF is going to be more powerfull than single 680m, and new drivers will be out in this month.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback. I think, for me, it would be a smart idea to see how the hotfix/new drivers are with the 7970's before I make a solid choice, I think at the moment I am leaning towards the crossfire setup. I just hope AMD do a good job in their next driver release.
 
N

Ninjax

Bronze Level Poster
TranceCommunity said:
You hardcore Gamers are crazy :)

Ive a 7970m in a Vortex 3 and it handles everything with power to spare.

Why have 2? :)
Click to expand...

performance , as per the thread I linked, 7970mxfire beats even the desktop 680GTX in a lot of cases ....
and for me that means 2-3years of good performance, and my moneys worth (note to upgrade laptop graphics is extremely difficult) so
I prefer to buy once and enjoy long term ..., I hate the feeling one gets after buying new kit and then 8months or so down the line
wishing I had just paid the extra $400 or so for the better hardware ......
 
K

kam67

Enthusiast
Everything I have heard/read seems to suggest to go with 680m - and, not sure, but SLI often seems to be more trouble than it is worth. I am am also eventually going to ask PCS if they could spec the p370em (vortex 3 elite) with a single 680m.
 
G

Gazzafaegreenock

Bronze Level Poster
just bought a vortex 3 Elite, BF3 on ultra @ 1080. around 85fps average..sometimes 95-100... steady as a rock....so glad i didn't go for the expensive 680.
 
M

msremmert

New member
Sorry to semi-hijack your thread!
I'm so glad I've bumped into this actually. I am in literally the same boat as you and I've been Googling around and researching for the last several hours.
I'm about to purchase a laptop in the next week or so but I'm bouncing between a single 680m in the Vortex III, or a X-Fire 7970m in the Vortex III Elite.

I'm a bit of an Nvidia fanboy to be honest and haven't touched an ATi (still can't get used to calling them AMD) card since the Radeon 9000.
I know for a fact that I can just buy the Vortex 3, I can go straight to Nvidia's site, download whatever drivers are floating around on there and it will just work and my life will continue uninterrupted.

I'm not too concerned about the Physx aspect but I'm hearing too many ugly things about the AMD drivers. Or a lack of...
My gut says 680m but that Vortex 3 Elite sure looks nice...
 
E

edgez

Active member
Ninjax said:
performance , as per the thread I linked, 7970mxfire beats even the desktop 680GTX in a lot of cases ....
and for me that means 2-3years of good performance, and my moneys worth (note to upgrade laptop graphics is extremely difficult) so
I prefer to buy once and enjoy long term ..., I hate the feeling one gets after buying new kit and then 8months or so down the line
wishing I had just paid the extra $400 or so for the better hardware ......
Click to expand...

I agree with this, I bought a laptop 2 years ago and I tried to save money and go with a cheap laptop, now 2 years later my settings mostly need to be low for the games to be playable. This time around I want to spend a decent amount so it lasts 5 years at least. I guess if I'm gonna be spending over a grand on a laptop another couple of hundred for another 7970m is acceptable and recommended. I just can't justify the price on the 680m though, it's robbery!

I have usually gone green with graphics in the past, less hassle. But the price difference is so great between the 2 cards in the elite that I have to reconsider, even with everything negative that I have read about AMD.
 
E

edgez

Active member
msremmert said:
Sorry to semi-hijack your thread!
I'm so glad I've bumped into this actually. I am in literally the same boat as you and I've been Googling around and researching for the last several hours.
I'm about to purchase a laptop in the next week or so but I'm bouncing between a single 680m in the Vortex III, or a X-Fire 7970m in the Vortex III Elite.

I'm a bit of an Nvidia fanboy to be honest and haven't touched an ATi (still can't get used to calling them AMD) card since the Radeon 9000.
I know for a fact that I can just buy the Vortex 3, I can go straight to Nvidia's site, download whatever drivers are floating around on there and it will just work and my life will continue uninterrupted.

I'm not too concerned about the Physx aspect but I'm hearing too many ugly things about the AMD drivers. Or a lack of...
My gut says 680m but that Vortex 3 Elite sure looks nice...
Click to expand...

I'm finding that the choice between the two is taking up more of my day than I would like!!
One minute I'm with the 680m the next with the crossfire rig!
I think my choice will become more concrete once the new hotfix/drivers are out from AMD.
 
N

Ninjax

Bronze Level Poster
I dont think hot-fix applies that much to the elite model , since it doesnt use enduro , (i could be wrong of course)
 
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