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Worth upgrading to 980M from 680M?


menko2

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I would say its worth the upgrade if you want to play the upcoming games at ultra. I was running a 7970m which was some what close to a 680m, i was immediately blown away but how the 980m out performed the 7970m, the card runs around 40-50 ish Celsius and peek at 73 ish in gaming and i get almost double the fps i got from 7970m.

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I wonder if the power supply for the P377SM-A is compatible...Delta ADP-330AB-D. It's 330W. Should be able to find that easily.

The P377SM-A uses a 4 pin din (also used in P170EM, P370EM/EM3, P570WM/WM3 X7200 machines) type of connector so unless your machine that type of connector your out of luck, unless it can be modded to suit your needs.

If you have a P150EM then you have the more standard barrel connector (centre pin outer-edge type of connector). You can use a modded Alienware M18 psu, have a look in the hard mods thread.

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1st part of my upgrade is done...3920xm+copper cooler.

In intel ETU I have limited the wattage to 65w in turbo mode. The default was 85w and I think my system was unstable. Temps are up with this cpu installed, inc gfx. 2nd and 3rd core run hotter than 1st and 4th. 1st core is consistently cooler than the rest.

For music production I can definitely see the benefit straight away as a previously struggling project can now run with all fx on. For gaming less so. Without overclocking 680m it seems this gfx is already pretty maxed out, no major changes in 3dmark scores.

Finally, 4Ghz (3991mhz) works with all core multipliers set to 40x...even with the 65watt limit.

Update: It seems heat is an issue. On boot cpu temps can go upto 104c. Cpu will throttle up and down during gaming due to heat. Idle temps of 40c~.

Browsing and watching vids;

Minimum: 36c 44c 40c 45c

Maximum: 56c 72c 83c 82c

I've tried a couple of heatsink + metalpad re-installs and there's always 2 cores hotter than the rest. Right now my 1st is getting excellent temps, but, 3rd and 4th not so good.

The system does deal quite well with the heat by smooth throttling. Due to heat there's no point oc 680m. I recommend skipping upgrading cpu (or go for 45w) and going straight for 980m.

At current 45w setting for Boost Power Max my 3920xm does around 3.7Ghz. Roughly 600mhz more than 3610qm, but, no gpu oc means performance isn't massively improved unless game has a lot more cpu stuff going-on. CSGO smoke is looking smoother than before XD

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have two laptops, one with a 650M and this new one with a 980M. I know the 650M isn't a 680m but in addition to the expected increase in performance there are also new technologies in the 900 series like MFAA. The CPU isn't much different between the two, the new one is basically just a generation newer. Unlike CPUs, GPUs with significant improvements are being cranked out very frequently, so I would strongly recommend an upgrade (although I can't speak for simply swapping out the GPUs, I don't know enough about compatibility for that). For me the next biggest improvement is using an SSD as the primary hard drive and an HDD for everything else (or use an SSD for everything if you got the cash).

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