GTX 880M- How long will it serve me?

GTarablus

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Feb 10, 2013
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Hey guys, I'm about 3 days away from getting me new laptop, MSI GT70 Dominator Pro-890, and I'm very afraid that the GPU doesn't have that many years in it.. This was the only time for the next year at least that I could buy a laptop so I had to get the 880m. The GT70 is actually upgradeable in the GPU department, but do you guys think I'll need to upgrade in the next 2-3 years? Just to clarify, I mean how long will it run games on high+ settings? Medium and below I believe it has at least 5 years.
And how well do you think Shadow of Mordor and Far Cry 4 will run on my PC?
Intel i7 4800MQ 2.7-3.7 GHz
12 GB Ram
NVIDIA GTX 880m 8GB GDDR5
 
Solution


The 880m will easily play SoM and Far Cry 4 at more than playable framerates, pushing 40-50 frames with all the bells and whistles, if more. If you really want to get into the nit and grit, check out some other benchmarks of what you think are comparable games using the same hardware to see how long your pc may last. I hate to say anything is "future-proof" due to the ways pc gaming has evolved in the past decade or so. Hardware that's been released can go out of date within the year, if less than that. Anyways the dominator pro has good specs for running high quality games in it's form factor.

I run a dual 280x and i5 4670k setup and it's working...

chiefpiggy

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Nov 11, 2013
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The 880m will easily play SoM and Far Cry 4 at more than playable framerates, pushing 40-50 frames with all the bells and whistles, if more. If you really want to get into the nit and grit, check out some other benchmarks of what you think are comparable games using the same hardware to see how long your pc may last. I hate to say anything is "future-proof" due to the ways pc gaming has evolved in the past decade or so. Hardware that's been released can go out of date within the year, if less than that. Anyways the dominator pro has good specs for running high quality games in it's form factor.

I run a dual 280x and i5 4670k setup and it's working fine with even the latest titles, so you should be fine (and you still get 8 gb of effective vram compared to 3)
 
Solution

GTarablus

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Feb 10, 2013
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Awesome, I'm a little more optimistic now lol
and I did see as many benchmarks as there are on youtube but there aren't many..
And what would you say be the first graphics setting to lower? (After AA)

And 8gb is a lot, way more than any game needs haha
 

chiefpiggy

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Nov 11, 2013
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I would definitely suggest getting a program that displays frame rates on screen while you're playing a game, i.e. FRAPS. Using this, you can see how your gpu is doing in game and tweak different settings based on the results. That's probably the best and most dynamic way of figuring out what settings to tweak.
 

Nitro192

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Jul 7, 2013
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The GTX 880M is about as good as a GTX 660. So it'll hold up for future games but not at Ultra settings obviously. Medium-High, you should still be able to pull of 60fps at 1080p in most games.
 

GTarablus

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Feb 10, 2013
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Yeah I'll obviously have The GeForce experience and the built in FPS display. I'm 24 hours away from my first real gaming PC and I'm insanely excited haha
I'll have to do some catching up to games I missed on my PS3 like Crysis 3, AC4.. Anymore games you can recommend to show off what my pc could do?
 

Nitro192

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Jul 7, 2013
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I've got an i5 3570k Overclocked to 4.4Ghz and GTX 680, Best games to show what your rig can do are:

Crysis 1-3
Crysis Warhead
Splinter Cell Conviction
Splinter Cell Blacklist
Skyrim
GTA4
Max Payne 3
Mass Effect 3
Assasins Creed Black Flag
Tomb Raider
Battlefield 3 and 4
Call of Duty Ghosts
Hitman Absolution
Watch Dogs
Wolfenstein The New Order
Lost Planet 3
Alien Versus Predator

If you like Driving Games:

GRID
GRID Autosport
Dirt 3
Need for Speed The Run
Shift 2 Unleashed
 

GTarablus

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Feb 10, 2013
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Thanks Nitro192! Haven't played a bunch of those so I'll give em a try.
And another question about the future with 880m, as a Kepler card it should be support DX12 right? I just couldn't find any place stating mobile cards will be supporting it lol
 
The GTX 880m is a pretty powerful GPU for a laptop but compared to a desktop graphics card, it is only as powerful as the GTX 660 Ti. But that is still a pretty good desktop GPU. You can click the link below for some info and benchmarks:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-880M.107622.0.html

According to the following article, all DX12 will be compatible with current nVidia GPUs.

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/178904-directx-12-detailed-backwards-compatible-with-all-recent-nvidia-gpus-will-deliver-mantle-like-capabilities

For an idea of the GTX 660 Ti's performance you can click the following link. I will stress that it does not mean the GTX 880m and the Intel i7 4800MQ will provide that same performance. Especially since the test rig uses an Intel Core i7-4770K @ 4.2 GHz.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GTX_760_DirectCU_Mini/6.html
 

GTarablus

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Feb 10, 2013
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Hey so after reading a bunch on the GeForce forums it seems the 880m has a terrible throttling issue, some claim on purpose. Only flashing a new vbios by svl7 can unlock the 880m's full potential, what do you guys think about this? And how difficult is the process of flashing vbios and what are the risks? Pretty sure this'll be my last question :p
 

chiefpiggy

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Nov 11, 2013
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http://forum.techinferno.com/nvidia-video-cards/2166-%5Bguide%5D-nvidia-vbios-flashing.html

I just scanned the internet for a tutorial on flashing a vbios. I don't think there are any real risks of flashing one but I would take extreme caution in following the steps so you avoid bricking your gpu :p

Heat is also an important issue, someone using the svl7 vbios had a considerable jump in frequency (954 to 993 MHz) which is a very good jump, but the person recorded a jump from 75 degrees Celsius to 80 degrees Celsius. This is a completely stable number, but just keep it in mind to monitor your heat