• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

nVidia 860M 4GB vs. 2x ATI 5850 1GB cards

roastbeeef

roastbeeef

roastbeeef

Associate
Joined
20 May 2011
Posts
31
Location
Brighton
Hi all,

I've recently decided to replace my desktop PC (i5 2500k @ 3.5ghz, 8gb ram, 2x ATI 5850 1gb) with a new Lenovo laptop (i7 4720HQ @ 2.6ghz, 16gb ram, nVidia 860GTX 4gb) and my old PC is battering my laptop on all benchmarks. I'm looking through the Passmark and 3dMark scores step by step and trying to work it out before I ditch the laptop before giving it a chance.

  • Should the laptop graphics be better than the old ATI cards?
  • After looking through the detailed PassMark performance the GTX860M was better on a lot of the items, however on DX11 and DirectCompute it basically had no score at all. Does anyone know if this is common with these cards or if it could be a driver issue / bottleneck elsewhere?

thanks,
Matt
 
You laptop is about the same spec as mine, mine is in a clevo chassis with the same video card and although its a fairly decent card I didn't find it that quick. I suspect what your seeing is just how it is, laptop cards are always compromised compared to their desktop brothers, always cut down and clocked back to meet TDP's.

I find mine throttles quite a bit as well which again doesn't help.
 
Ok, so backtracking through lots of benchmarks, an HD 5850 is almost identical in performance to a current R7 260X. So your previous PC should give the same performance as R7 260X Xfire.

Only issue is, the 260X can't do Xfire, so if we guesstimate it would get ~180% of the performance if it could, that then gives you around GTX 960 performance.

So then, we're comparing the GTX 960 to the GTX 860m.

And looking at benchmarks, the GTX 960 seems to be ~100% faster than the 860m.

So, all in all, you've effectively kept the rest of your performance the same/similar but got rid of one of your HD 5850's.
 
GTX 960 DESKTOP, not 960m.

To get GTX 960 performance in a laptop you need a 970m or 980m. Even the 880m doesn't quite get there.

And I assume laptops with a 970m are quite pricey. And you'll still only be getting back to the same performance your PC had. Though obviously with the benefits of that performance being in a laptop.
 
Vince do you play any games on your laptop? Before I decide on it's future I'm going to give it a spin on GTAV tonight and see if it can run dota at 120fps
 
I own an 870m laptop and its been fine with everything. However I bought it last year before the new mobile cards.

If I was buying a laptop now I wouldnt settle for anything less than a 970m

£1050 gets.

Screen size - 17.3in - 1920 x 1080
Processor - Intel Core i7 4710MQ - 2.5 GHz 3.5 GHz
RAM - 8 GB
Hard Drive - 1 TB
Operating System - Windows 8.1 (64-Bit)
Optical Drive - DVD Super Multi
Graphics - NVIDIA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M
Graphics Memory - GDDR5
Warranty - 2 year warranty
 
Last edited:
Have you set the Nvidia control panel to use the 860m when gaming rather than the onboard intel GPU. I have a 960m in mine and it's no powerhouse but it manages most games at fairy decent settings.

If you are wanting a laptop mainly for gaming looking at something with a 970m or 980m would give better results albeit at considerably more cost.
 
I played loads of GTA V on my laptop 860m and was super impressed by how powerful it is. It was only at 720p (13" screen and all) but it really smashed it.
 
The mobile gpu chips (numbers then a "m" at the end like 860m, 970m) are gimped and not even close to their desktop namesakes.

Even a 970m is only about the same as a GTX 760 desktop cpu.
 
That's because they are fitted into relatively smaller chassis with power and thermal limits. I would not call them gimped just designed with thermal and power limits being a priority.
 
I do not - however I will test it. However I thought that passmark was unsuited for testing the power of gaming computers and was more aimed at home users.

Do you have a link to download the version you used as I went on the passmark site and was presented with a myriad of options.
 
sure - I cant link direct to the file because I'm at work, but if you go here:
http://www.passmark.com/download/pt_download.htm
it's called Download PerformanceTest 8 (32 & 64 Bit) build 1047 (right in the middle of the page)

I only used passmark because it went into high detail on individual elements of the test and the basic version of 3dMark11 I haven't doesnt do that

thanks loads - be interesting to see if your DX11 and DirectCompute are as low as mine and you can still run GTAV well.
 
roastbeeef said:
Vince do you play any games on your laptop? Before I decide on it's future I'm going to give it a spin on GTAV tonight and see if it can run dota at 120fps
Click to expand...

I did buddy I played a lot of csgo on it... Averages about 150fps with the bells and whistles. (CSGO is heavily cpu limited as with all source engine games)

What else did I play on it... Defence grid 2 (again at 1080 with bells and whistles it was ok. I used to play a lot of League of legends as well and it handled that fine. Basically there isn't a game I haven't been able to run on mine but some I have to mess around for quite a while to get it playable. On top of that, it might just be me but the GTX gets properly toasty and I find myself cleaning it out and re-applying thermal paste much more regular than I think I should be.

Other than that I havent tried anything new on it. I recently updated my desktop and the laptop has sat again relatively unused, what I would say is the experience will be ok but again I expect that a pair of 5850's, possibly even a single 5850 will match it. Recently upgraded desktop from very similar config to yours as well.

I mean the basics of it are that the machine will give you an ok experience, it will probably even run GTA5 ok if you tone it back. What its not going to be is any better than your aging desktop at delivering frames (unless heavily cpu limited as the i7 really is a peach of a cpu even in mobile form).
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom