Of the currently Available GPU's...

[Persona]

A little bummed about this situation was well as I'm finally in a position to pull the trigger on an order and want to go with the 680M (no more Radeon drivers for me)....

I'm in the exact same position as you man . On the bright side, it gives me more time to save up money so I won't feel as guilty about spending ~3k on a laptop

[FloorPizza]

Thanks for the replies, Gents.

I've seen the reports on the 7970's performance, but also all the driver problems.

Still sitting on the fence for now.

[Mr. Fox]

No need to be on the fence, bro. Good things come to those that wait... 680M is just going to get better with mature drivers. Remains to be seen with 7970M at this point.

Wow, i think i got that cpu rocking now!

Spoiler :

Attachment 82581

ACHTUNG! COWABUNGA! ANDALE, ANDALE, ARRIBA, ARRIBA, YEE-HAW!

A new record. *Virtual High 5* +1 Rep - one small tweak is going to put your overall Vantage score at 40K or more.

I'm super happy for you Brother Painmaker. How does 3DMark11 rock now?

[maverick1989]

Thanks for the replies, Gents.

I've seen the reports on the 7970's performance, but also all the driver problems.

Still sitting on the fence for now.

If you are talking about the Enduro issues, well, you are not going to face them considering you have a R2.

I don't know what other driver issues you have seen. I have played a multitude of games and haven't had any problems.

[mikecacho]

Being a hardcore Nvidia user i made the switch to radeon with my most recent pruchase being the R4 with the 7970M. I went with the 12.8 "modded" drivers weilding great stability. Games tested so far are Crysis 2 and Metro 2033. But when it comes to driver issues i've had my fair shre of issues with nvidia drivers as well so i would not only single out Radeon since my experience has been great so far.

[Sub-Xero]

Call Dell and tell 'em you really need that 680M (or you will shoot a puppy). A friend of mine ordered an M17x just yesterday w/ one so anything's possible although it too wasn't listed. We are in Europe but still all AW hardware is built in/shipped from Shanghai so the source is the same.

Odd that they couldn't do that for me since the part wasn't even in their system. Are you absolutely sure that your friend placed an order with a 680m in it? He received an order confirmation and everything listing the 680m in the components? If so, I think I'm gonna have to call my sales rep again.

[Mr. Fox]

Yep, there are some 7970M owners out there that are satisfied. And, there are a number of 7970M owners that are not because of their poor experience with the product. The quality of the product is very inconsistent, to say the least. It's been that way for a while now, and while both do have issues with drivers, the frequency of issues to those of us that have owned more AMD (ATI) video cards than NVIDIA it hits very close to home. For those that are having good results with 7970M I can honestly say that I am very happy their experience turned out so good, and wish I could say the same. I wouldn't wish my AMD experience on an enemy. Well, maybe... if they were a really bad enemy I might...

[mikecacho]

Also owning an R1 with Sli gtx 260M, i had a hell of a time with Nvidia drivers being stable with most games but that was with the 200 series cards as time goes on and research is conducted finding the best suited driver becomes fairly easy if you are willing to put in the research.

[maverick1989]

That's funny coz in my experience, there are a LOT of 7970m owners that are happy and a few that are not. Note that this is the batch that do NOT use Enduro, as won't OP. Let's include all details here so we don't accidentally mislead members shall we?

[mikecacho]

Oh yeah.... I dont use "Enduro" as it seems more of a hit and miss, but i must say some games do respond to the Enduro fairly well such as Crysis 2, i recieved about 5-8FPS increase (12.8 modded drivers BTW).