AMD Announces Radeon HD 8970M High-End Mobile GPU

MojoKid writes "AMD is announcing its Radeon HD 8970M. The mobile GPU is based on a design that has a few small feature changes that have led it to be unofficially labeled a Graphics Core Next (GCN) 1.1 part versus AMD's previous gen GCN 1.0 technology. AMD claims that the Radeon HD 8970M is significantly faster than NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 680M in a variety of tests, but high-end laptops that use AMD hardware are harder to find these days."

Comments

Re:There should some kind of standard

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

There should some kind of standard for laptop video cards both slot and cooling / space in higher end systems.

It vaguely exists; but the real-world utility is kind of a clusterfuck. Only the most monstrous of desktop replacement machines implement 100% to spec, availability of replacement/upgrade parts is spotty, and even within the bounds of the spec there is a bit of a morass of thermal envelopes and other variables.

For better or worse, The Market appears to have spoken in favor of slim, rather than modular, on this matter...

Ya well AMD

[Sycraft-fu]

Have you fixed your drivers yet? I have a laptop with their previous 7970M and man, it has been a trial. To being with performance was hamstrung really badly by under-utilization. It is set up in an Enduro config, meaning it passes its video through the integrated Intel GPU, just as nVidia does with Optimus. However they had continual problems with underuse. That is now mostly fixed, though it took over 6 months for a driver, but there's still big issues of stuttering and such. There's a driver coming "real soon now" that has been that way for a few months. Also they make getting it rather hard. If you go and download the driver from their site, you get the "notebook verification tool" which says that it isn't compatible with my laptop. You have to go find the actual driver file elsewhere and install it.

So really, I am a little unimpressed about their bragging compared to the 680M. The speed of the 680M was more impressive since it actually worked when it was launched. The best hardware is not that impressive if it isn't backed with properly working software, and AMD really seems to like to drop the ball on that. I've been rather annoyed at the problems I've had with my laptop and the length of time it has taken to fix them.

Re:Ya well AMD

[hairyfeet]

How much of that can you blame on AMD though versus how much of it is Intel cockblocking? After all the reason Nvidia got out of the chipset business was intel cockblocking and Intel has been making it pretty clear that the future to them is Intel APUs with Intel boards and Intel support chips like it or lump it, so I have to wonder how much of the problem is Intel refusing to give jack shit to AMD to help interoperability as far as samples, docs, and specs.

Ultimately if you are going with an AMD GPU you'd probably be better off pairing it with an AMD CPU as that seems to be the best combo as far as drivers, at least from what I've seen at the shop. Lets face it CPUs haven't been the limiting factor in games for awhile, hell the new XBox and PS4 are both using chips originally designed for tablets and netbooks for the love of Pete. So unless you are one of the handful that need every bit of speed you can get (which I would argue why are you on a laptop if that is the case) you'll save some money by going all AMD which can then be used on a real performance booster like fast SSDs or more/faster RAM.

Re:Ya well AMD

[blackraven14250]

It's all on AMD, since NVidia, despite being cockblocked in the chipset market, is able to produce a reliable driver and has done so for quite a few years now. On top of that, there's just as many problems with ATI graphics on AMD-based systems, which indicates there's no real problem that's being caused by Intel.