AVADirect Clevo P170EM Part 2: GTX 680M Grudge Match
by Jarred Walton on October 15, 2012 6:50 PM ESTAVADirect’s Clevo P170EM: GTX 680M FTW
You’ll note that I skipped discussion of the various benchmark results for general performance, CPU speed, synthetic graphics testing, and even LCD testing. All of the results are available in Mobile Bench, but more importantly nothing has really changed in those areas compared to the P170EM with 7970M. Other than some variation in PCMark 7 scores (which is pretty common), the CPU performance is basically splitting hairs. Thus the focus for this second P170EM review is squarely on gaming performance, so let’s quickly recap the situation.
If you want the fastest mobile gaming GPU your money can buy right now, NVIDIA’s GTX 680M is where it’s at. There are a few titles where AMD’s Radeon 7970M comes out ahead, but there are far more instances where the GTX 680M has a substantial lead. More importantly, NVIDIA has a track record of releasing their Verde Notebook Drivers every time they put out a beta or WHQL desktop driver. They’ve been at it for more than two years now, and outside of the first month or so after a laptop first goes on sale (e.g. before the next official driver update), you should be able to update your NVIDIA GPU drivers—regardless of whether or not you use Optimus. AMD is working to get Enduro to that same point, and there are a few games that suggest with more driver enhancements AMD could even close the gap with NVIDIA, but I cannot recommend a product today based on promises of driver support tomorrow. Hopefully everything will be in place by the end of the year so that the next time we do a mobile GPU head-to-head we won’t have to worry about discussions of driver support.
As for Clevo’s P170EM, subjectively there are still some elements that I dislike, but I’ve beaten that horse enough. I don’t think anyone is really concerned about how nice a laptop looks if they’re considering a P170EM; they’ll be going after raw gaming performance, and that’s what the P170EM delivers. It also manages to keep the CPU and GPU relatively cool, even under sustained 100% loads for hours on end—the types of load a gaming notebook is likely to see when fulfilling its purpose. The question then is what sort of price/performance you’re looking at. As I noted in the 7970M conclusion, the competition right now for a high-end gaming notebook basically consists of three options: MSI GT70 (iBUYPOWER Valkyrie CZ-17), Alienware M17x R4, or the Clevo P150EM/P170EM. There are slightly lower performance gaming notebooks as well (e.g. the Razer Blade, ASUS G-Series, Samsung Series 7), but the GTX 680M in particular is about maximum GPU performance, even if it costs a bit more. So if you want a GTX 680M, let’s look at the various online prices (as of October 15, 2012).
AVADirect’s Clevo P170EM Gaming Notebook is what we received for review, and they appear to have the most memory and storage options of any of the Clevo P170EM resellers. That can be overwhelming if you don't know much about computer components, but for enthusiasts we love having options. We'd like to see their configurator updated so that it changes pricing in real-time, and the ability to narrow down some of the search fields (e.g. only show 8GB RAM and 240/256GB SSD options) would be nice to have as well. Their support throughout our review period has been good, but then I haven't really had any horrible experiences with companies as a reviewer. For most people, the final decision is going to be made based on pricing or other features, so let's look at that aspect.
We configured a P170EM with a GTX 680M, i7-3740QM (i7-3720QM if the 3740QM wasn't available), 256GB Micron M4 (or 240GB/256GB alternatives if the M4 wasn't listed), 8GB DDR3-1600, Intel Ultimate-N 6300 WiFi, a DVDRW, and a matte LCD; for those components, the price comes to $2276. A semi-complete list of other P170EM resellers includes the Sager Notebooks NP9170 ($2299), XoticPC (Sager NP9170) ($2199 “Autumn Sale” and $2133 with cash discount), ProStar P170EM ($2299; $2230 cash discount), Origin EON17-S ($2489), Mythlogic Nyx 1712 ($2271 w/glossy LCD), Eurocom Neptune 2.0 ($2563), and Digital Storm x17 ($2395). Of those P170EM-based offerings, about the only really noteworthy difference is that Mythlogic actually has an option for a chiclet backlit keyboard (for $100 extra); the other differences mostly come down to component offerings, and I’m sure if you call any of the companies you could custom-spec a build with identical components.
Looking elsewhere, iBUYPOWER’s Valkyrie CZ-17 is probably the least expensive option in terms of pricing, often beating the P170EM by nearly $200 for otherwise identical components (currently $1925 with i7-3720QM, ADATA 256GB SSD, and otherwise similar components to the above notebooks). In fact their Battalion 101 is a P170EM based notebook that costs about $250 more than their CZ-17 for otherwise identical components. As I’ve said in the past, I’m not sure that any of these companies are inherently better or worse than the others and their prices change frequently, so it can’t hurt to shop around. As for Alienware’s M17x R4, aesthetically I still think it’s the most pleasing of the notebooks, but at roughly 20% more for a similar configuration to the above ($2644) that’s a tough pill to swallow—plus it has an uber-glossy edge-to-edge glass cover in front of the LCD.
Given my gripes with the keyboard and touchpad, I’m not going to be handing out an Editors’ Choice award, but if you can overlook those areas the Clevo P170EM certainly deserves props for being one of the fastest gaming notebooks this side of the dual-GPU behemoths (e.g. Alienware M18x and Clevo P370EM). I’d also say it has the best cooling of the current trio of GTX 680M options listed above, and that’s definitely an area you should pay attention to when looking at high-end gaming notebooks. And that’s really the star of the show here: NVIDIA’s GTX 680M. Yes, it will set you back an extra $195 to $350 (depending on notebook vendor) compared to AMD’s HD 7970M, but it's generally impractical to look at just purchasing a GPU upgrade for a notebook so we have to look at the total notebook cost. Looking at AVADirect, a reasonably configured gaming notebook (e.g. i7-3610QM, 8GB RAM, 256GB M4 SSD, Intel 6300 WiFi) runs $1822 with the HD 7970M compared to $2096 with the GTX 680M. That’s a cost increase of 15% for a typical gaming performance increase of around 20% at high quality settings (e.g. 1080p 4xAA). Add to that the proven track record of NVIDIA's driver updates and for gaming purposes, that extra $200 is money well spent.
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JarredWalton - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
It should be possible, but buying a GTX 680M module on its own can cost $900 or something insane. If anyone has a good link to where you can find just a GPU upgrade for the P170EM, please post. Best I can find right now is on eBay:http://www.ebay.com/itm/CLEVO-X7200-UPGRADE-KIT-NV...
Needless to say, waiting for the Hotfix at this point is reasonable. Barring that, I'd suggest selling your existing system and buying one with GTX 680M rather than just paying for the GPU upgrade.
Wixman666 - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
Don't worry about it.. the difference isn't large enough to upgrade the video or take a bath on selling then buying the other unit.TrantaLocked - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
Great review Jarred!Jamahl - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
Fact is this is a very Nvidia-friendly gaming suite - that's why this site consistently scores as an outlier for Nvidia. As a rule of thumb you want to subtract 10% from the overall result to find the true position of the Nvidia card - true as in what the majority of the tech press find.Even then this particular review is pretty horrible on the 7970, as it has had the best performing games removed (Crysis and Metro). Quite why those are worth removing instead of the complete Nvidia outlier Portal 2 is a mystery (I'm sure we all have our suspicions), but there you go.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
You include Crysis and Metro and then suggest our gaming suite needs updating? Give me a break. We removed Crysis as a test game for laptops about two years ago... when Warhead was "only" two years old already. When we revise the gaming suite next time, I'm pretty sure we'll drop Civ5, TWS2, and some of the other games. DiRT 3 was originally an AMD game, but NVIDIA has long since caught up. Civ5 was also an AMD game. Total War: Shogun 2 is an AMD title as well. You see the problem with your assertion that we're "NVIDIA-friendly" yet? So here's the full rundown of the fifteen tested games:Batman: NVIDIA
Battlefield 3: NVIDIA
Borderlands 2: NVIDIA
Civilization V: AMD
Diablo 3: Agnostic
DiRT 3: AMD
DiRT Showdown: AMD
Elder Scrolls Skyrim: Agnostic
Guild Wars 2: Agnostic
Max Payne 3: NVIDIA
Portal 2: Agnostic
Sleeping Dogs: AMD
Sniper Elite V2: AMD
Total War Shogun 2: AMD
Witcher 2: NVIDIA
Final tally:
AMD Titles: Six
NVIDIA Titles: Five
Neutral Titles: Four
The problem you're having is that NVIDIA has generally spent more time and effort optimizing for games, which means that some of the neutral and AMD-sponsored games are now running better on NVIDIA hardware than on AMD. Or maybe you think it's unfair that when we sort alphabetically, NVIDIA titles happen to occupy the first three slots and AMD has three of the last four? Going back to run games that few people are still playing just to try to make things "fair" is actually being the exact opposite. Crysis and Metro? Please. Why not Crysis 2 at least -- oh wait, it's an NVIDIA title.
Brainling - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
Crysis and Metro? Seriously? It's almost 2013, we're four full game cycles away from the release of Metro, and much farther from Crysis.For that matter, my 670 barely breaks a sweat on Metro at 1200p max everything , why would you test a 680 with it? Is it a yawning test to see how bored the graphics card can seem?
silverblue - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
I don't think it's NVIDIA's fault as a whole that they offer better support than AMD. It's also worth showing games like Portal 2 and DiRT Showdown which have very high framerates because it's interesting to find out why one architecture might monster through them (6xx series) where another might not (7xxx series).I've never actually played Crysis, but from the benchmarks, it looks amazingly inefficient and not a complete representation of what a graphics card can and cannot do.
I used to defend AMD's drivers quite vehemently; after all, they'd never caused me any issues. However, when I see issues with Enduro, poor and non-existent Hybrid Crossfire scaling, GPU underutilisation, slack support for driver command lists, poor video encoding quality... need I go on? AMD could make the best hardware around (and, in reality, it probably does), but what would really benefit them is shifting resources to the software development side. If they're going to be powering two of the next consoles, it's in their best interests to get software support up to scratch. Hardware is all well and good but if the software support isn't completely there...
BiggieShady - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
On the last page, instead of "I’ve beat that horse enough" there should be "I’ve beaten that horse enough". To Beat is an irregular verb - beat, beat, beaten. You should use past participle here - beaten. Or just stop beating the poor horse :)Tijgert - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
For starters the GPU IS upgradeable (see eBay) and over time, with the release of newer GPU's, it will make financial sense to do so. Right now if you can get a great deal on a system with a 7970m you still get the second best performing card in the world with a future upgradeability guarantee (MXM is a standard, not proprietary tech).I think the reasoning of a relative graphics performance increase equal to the total price increase being reasonable or financial sound is something only a teenager or rich madman would swallow.
Given that all the other bits don't increase equally you end up paying a lot for a little.
The screen resolution stays the same, the battery lasts just as long, the CPU doesn't tick any faster, the amount of memory doesn't increase and the Gigs on your SSD don't increase either.
As long as you can get great visuals (even if not at 4xAA and enough detail to see textured zits) at a very playable framerate, you're doing just fine. Just enjoy it and wait for that 690m or 700m or whatever MXM 3.0b card to come out that's better and just upgrade.
FYI I'm on the fence on getting a completely tricked out 2200 euro (yes, euro) system that's three months old for 1560 with a 7970m... or saving for a 680m... see, I'm actually a graphics whore too even if may sound sensible at times...
JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
If a notebook supports the newer GPU with its BIOS/firmware, you can upgrade to a newer GPU. However, just because MXM is a standard doesn't mean all MXM GPUs will work. Take for example the last-generation Clevo notebooks; I'm pretty sure the P150/170HM received the necessary BIOS update to work with 7970M/680M. However, the generation before that AFAIK can't run 7970M/680M. The cards will fit but they don't work properly. As I note below, you can't buy a P1x0EM without a GPU, though, so there's not a real need to compare pricing of just the GPUs. I'm reviewing the P170EM and looking at 7970M vs. 680M, not talking about "should you try to upgrade your older notebook with a 7970M or a 680M?"For your 7970M setup, wait for a week and then maybe we'll know if you should trust AMD's updated drivers.