I'm in the process of purchasing a new gaming laptop and i've decided to go with the MSI GT70. That being said the GT70 comes in a number of variations and i am now stuck between the GT70 0NC-494us model and the GT70 0ND-444us model. Both machines are identical with the exception of the graphics card. The 494us comes with three gigs of the new GeForce 670mx GPU while the 444us comes with 2 gigs of the 675m. I was wondering if anyone here was familiar with the cards and knew which one was the better choice in the long term.

Thanks for your time.

@Donkeycow said:

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Check 1, 2.

@Snail: I made this topic yesterday and for some reason it wouldn't let me post in it, so i made a quick test to see if it was working today.

@Donkeycow: http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/

There's a few threads there discussing just that.

Friendly community and the best place to ask these sorts of questions, you'll get informative answers instead of the usual "lol, buy a desktop,laptops sux 4 gaming" replies that are sure to be incoming very soon.

@Donkeycow: I just purchased the following :

MSI GT70 OND492US from Newegg.

It has a GTX 675MX which destroys the cards you are looking at. I'm getting 54 FPS average in Guild Wars 2 ( the worst optimized PC game since Crysis ) on near ultra settings. ( I keep 2 settings at Medium since they really don't make the game look any better ) that's at 1920x1080p

I highly suggest you upgrade to what I got.

Just whatever you do, try and get windows 7 not windows 8 because so far I loath Windows 8.

GeForce GTX 675M

GeForce GTX 670MX 11% better benchmarks

GeForce GTX 675MX 22% better benchmarks

GT70 0ND-444us is inferior to the GT70 0NC-494us by far.

Check out this, it's worth the extra $300 in my humble opinion : http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4959772&csid=_61

@IMRavnos: Thanks for the input. I'm not willing to pay an extra $300 dollars at the moment, especially considering i'm perfectly content playing games on high if ultra is a bit sluggish. Also the nice thing about MSI is you can upgrade the graphics card (albeit at some risk) so if in a year or two down the road i decide i need some more power under the hood, i can slap in a 680m. Also looking at the site you linked to it actually says the 675m has better performance then the 670mx, and is in fact only a couple of frames behind in most games to the 675mx, so what makes the 444us then so much inferior to the 494us?

edit: On closer inspection some games have higher FPS on the 670mx then the 675m, so i'm still at an impasse as to which is better.

The 494us comes with three gigs of the new GeForce 670mx GPU while the 444us comes with 2 gigs of the 675m.

This wording confuses me. Are you saying that GPU's have video memory? They don't. Graphics cards do but GPU's are, to simplify it extremely, essentially dumb processors. Video memory doesn't mean shit if the GPU is a piece of crap.

On that note, these two cards seem pretty close. Either one will be fine, get the one with more video memory if you want to.

@Donkeycow said:

@IMRavnos: Thanks for the input. I'm not willing to pay an extra $300 dollars at the moment, especially considering i'm perfectly content playing games on high if ultra is a bit sluggish. Also the nice thing about MSI is you can upgrade the graphics card (albeit at some risk) so if in a year or two down the road i decide i need some more power under the hood, i can slap in a 680m. Also looking at the site you linked to it actually says the 675m has better performance then the 670mx, and is in fact only a couple of frames behind in most games to the 675mx, so what makes the 444us then so much inferior to the 494us?

edit: On closer inspection some games have higher FPS on the 670mx then the 675m, so i'm still at an impasse as to which is better.

I don't think you can upgrade the graphics cards in any laptop, gaming ones included.

@believer258: It's not supported officially (therein lies the risk) but the card is not soldered to the motherboard. You can remove it and (provided the replacement card fits) install another one. Also isn't 2 gigs of video memory already plenty? Provided the same cards really are that similar will the extra gig of video ram provide a noticeable difference?

@Donkeycow said:

@believer258: It's not supported officially (therein lies the risk) but the card is not soldered to the motherboard. You can remove it and (provided the replacement card fits) install another one. Also isn't 2 gigs of video memory already plenty? Provided the same cards really are that similar will the extra gig of video ram provide a noticeable difference?

Not really, but if you can afford the extra it might be nice. But you won't really be hurt by going with the one with only 2 gigs of video memory.

Also, laptops are very specifically designed to fit exactly their parts. No, you can't just up and remove a part and put a new one in unless that part is made to be able to (like RAM in a lot of instances). Maybe it isn't soldered to the motherboard but unless it's the same dimensions, that's not just something that you can do. Maybe some dude who does this kind of thing for fun can jerry-rig it to work but if this is your main gaming computer and you can't afford a replacement, then don't do it.

Alright. Never posted on GiantBomb before - found this through a google search as I bought the 670mx. In my opinion I noted the MSI above that IMRavnos posted is extremely overpriced for a 675mx. As you can get this here Sager fully loaded with the best GPU on the market that blows the 675mx away for much cheaper if paid with cash than an additional 2% off with the max discount. This laptop has amazing cooling also.

The 670mx is essentially as efficient as the 675m. Although Nvidia and notebookcheck.com places the 675m above the 670mx the 670mx has higher scores on the 3dmark benchmarks. However, FPS on notebookcheck.com the 675m tends to be higher. You can take this with a grain of salt as I score MUCH higher than those FPS on that site with my sager 9130 I also bought for less than 1200 with the 670mx through that same site I linked. The 670mx is a kepler card which is new architecture and runs cooler. While the 675m is 3 year old technology that runs hotter. Think of the 675m as a quick energy sucker that puts out heat but runs quick while the 670mx has almost the same performance but runs much more effeciently. If you want a REAL cheap 675m go here.

I have been researching laptops for a month. So these are the best deals. Newegg does not compare. Asus/Alienwares are overpriced. MSI's are not bad... but that link above is very overpriced. Generally you will get a 20% increase performance in the 675mx over the 675m and 670mx. Which translates to 5-8 FPS on games. Not worth the price jump.

@ackattack: Thanks for the reply and welcome to Giantbomb. I think i'm leaning towards the 670mx now, even though it seems to be slightly less powerful then the 675m, the cooler temperature and kepler architecture i assume make it safer to over clock.

Thanks@Donkeycow: Thanks! And I agree. A little loss of the frames per second (literally maybe 2-3 depending on the game) is worth it for the heat and newer architecture trade off. Since it's a brand new card - who knows how much better it will become with driver updates ect.

@believer258 said:

@Donkeycow said:

@believer258: It's not supported officially (therein lies the risk) but the card is not soldered to the motherboard. You can remove it and (provided the replacement card fits) install another one. Also isn't 2 gigs of video memory already plenty? Provided the same cards really are that similar will the extra gig of video ram provide a noticeable difference?

Not really, but if you can afford the extra it might be nice. But you won't really be hurt by going with the one with only 2 gigs of video memory.

Also, laptops are very specifically designed to fit exactly their parts. No, you can't just up and remove a part and put a new one in unless that part is made to be able to (like RAM in a lot of instances). Maybe it isn't soldered to the motherboard but unless it's the same dimensions, that's not just something that you can do. Maybe some dude who does this kind of thing for fun can jerry-rig it to work but if this is your main gaming computer and you can't afford a replacement, then don't do it.

You're wrong here. Any Laptop with a MXM 3.0 GPU is switchable. That's the point. It's aimed at the minority of power users who frequently upgrade and, while not covered by your warranty, any other MXM 3.0 card should fit in there as long as the Mobo BIOS supports it. That's the issue, not the physical dimensions in most cases. Laptop manufacturers would rather you just buy a new one so normally the BIOS aren't regularly updated but it's still not that hard to either find a compliant part of just a custom driver online. People do this all the time and it's almost as simple as switching RAM, just with more anti-static protection.