AMD Announces Radeon HD 8970M High-End Mobile GPU 56
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."
Ya well AMD (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)