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R9 M290X
Xellon1001
Member Posts: 2
Was looking at this laptop http://www.xoticpc.com/force-1763-22054-m290x-msi-gx70-destroyer-barebones-p-7103.html
The card itself seems to have some juice - http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-R9-M290X.108643.0.html
My Concerns are bugs, driver issues, etc. Right now I have the 5870m back from 2010 and I've run into several issues where support for the game in question says "its a driver issue" or something with your video card. I was especially disappointed with the issues I had playing Blade and Soul (CN).
Does anyone currently have the M290x or the M295X and ran into any issues playing mmos? Particularly the ones rated high on the website and Elsword especially.
I am the bone of my sword
Comments
What sort of things do you run into that you blame on drivers? I've got a (desktop) Radeon HD 5850, which is the same architecture as your laptop card and shares the same drivers even, and haven't run into driver problems with it. You do update to the latest drivers when you run into driver problems, don't you?
One way that you can get driver problems with laptops is if you're using switchable graphics. In other words, the laptop uses the Intel integrated graphics when not playing a game and the discrete card when playing a game. Anecdotal evidence from a couple of years ago is that Nvidia got that working better than AMD, but both were far from perfect. That can easily cause driver problems if the discrete card is not running when it should be or is running when it shouldn't (which wastes power and drains the battery), but other than that, I wouldn't worry about driver problems.
What I would worry about, though, is power consumption. Nvidia's Maxwell architecture is far more energy efficient than AMD's GCN. That means you can get the same performance for considerably less power consumption, and hence less heat output. I wouldn't necessarily dismiss an AMD video card out of hand if you're getting a large price discount on it relative to what it would cost for a comparably performing Nvidia Maxwell GPU, but you should be aware that an Nvidia Maxwell GPU with a given level of performance will be much better for your laptop than an AMD GPU with exactly the same level of performance--or, for that matter, an Nvidia Kepler GPU. It's not just an Nvidia logo that matters; it's also getting Maxwell (GeForce GTX 950M, 960M, 965M, 970M, 980M) as opposed to Kepler.
Nah, its not switchable.
problems like this -
on the blade and soul forums, it seems to occur for anyone that has an amd video card. The odd stutters happened the min the fps drops to 59 or below (seems to be fine if it stays at 60 or above). Ofc, I tried the latest drivers at the time as well as the factory state (which doesn't even run the game) and several betas and past drivers.
On Elsword, if you repeated an action in your menu such as upggrading your blacksmithing (you would have to do it several hundreds of times but its the only way to lvl up the blacksmith), the game becomes very slow when you hover your mouse over the menu but not during any other time. Elsword support told me to do the same thing, upgrade drivers even though I had the latest. Then theirs the fps lock issue with windows 8 where the gpu doesn't even matter. Had to go back to win 7 so I can play at the games fps cap of 83 in pvp and this issue has been going on since win 8 first came out.
graphical glitches on a few other games.
Honestly I'm just used to amd but perhaps I should consider nvidia. Perhaps their drivers/cards are more stable (assuming this)?
The GTX 965M seems to be slightly weaker then the m295x but not by much or rather doesn't even matter. I dunno, any suggestions will be useful. I'm in no rush. I guess...... I just need to make sure the card I get has no issues with my fav games (elsword, blade and soul, black desert when it comes out, couple games from steam like doa, dynasty warriors, street fighter and a few Japanese games).
budget - $1250, can go a little over if necessary, laptop only.
What I use my laptop for - Gaming, recording games, Video encoding then upload to youtube, watch anime + programming + some graphical designs.
Current laptop - AsusG73jh-A1 i7-720m ati 5870m 8 gigs of ram, SSD win 7 64 bit.
edit - sorry if what I said is kinda all over the place
I am the bone of my sword
That sort of stuttering strikes me as more likely to be a game engine problem than a video driver problem.
That said, it used to be that AMD and Nvidia both optimized drivers for average frame rates, and not for frame rate consistency. Then Tech Report had a great article demonstrating that consistency mattered and both AMD and Nvidia were all over the map with erratic results. Nvidia took this seriously before AMD, but today, both optimize for frame rate consistency, not just averages. So there's not really a difference between the vendors there anymore, though it's possible that the fixes didn't get pushed back to that old of cards.
Why are you looking at a laptop in the first place? That looks like a whole bunch of things where a desktop would be massively superior. Higher end gaming laptops only make sense for people who want to take a laptop with them and do such demanding tasks while away from home. If you're a business traveler who spends two months per year in hotels and want to play games after work, then sure, get a gaming laptop.
But even if you need a portable laptop and also a high powered gaming rig, it doesn't follow that they should be the same device. On your budget, a lot of people would be better off getting both a cheap, portable laptop and also a powerful gaming desktop. Intelligently spending $400 for a laptop and $900 for a desktop will get you a desktop that handily outperforms a $1300 laptop and also a laptop that is far more portable than a $1300 laptop.