I'm speaking as a 980M user (Illegear RS-15, now no more sold, replaced by the more powerful D-series T_T ),

the 970M > 960M in many ways.

the 980M = 970 desktop, but if you're daring you can overclock it to be on par with 980 desktop.

970M = 70-80% of 970 desktop. Slight overclock will be able to outperform stock 970, especially with the fact that 970M comes in two flavours, 3GB (not some lame ass 3.5GB+512MB) and 6GB variant, therefore it does not have desktop 970's Archilles's Heel issue.

Sure, the VRAM isn't a performance "increaser", but the increase in VRAM allows you to bypass certain limitations, like how much you can stuff in SYRIM games (the mods, essentially, which makes a huge difference). In the case of say, MXM based GPUs where 970M is 6GB VRAM and 980M is 8GBVRAM (not sure about the upcoming 990M, AFAIK it won't be cheap, and I doubt it'll be below 6GB VRAM for the MXM ones)

Still very much situational, perchance.


4k screens aren't exactly mainstream, and i'm talking about pure solid 60Hz / 120Hz ones on laptop devices. I don't see how today's current laptop GPUs (sans the 990M, since at this point its not yet mass produced yet) can even achieve a stable 60fps on all-out-ultra settings (like GTA 5) on 1440p, let alone 1080p (there are some really monster benchmarks using Clevo 980M sli systems on a desktop processor, but then again its not based on latest hardware revisions, and IIRC they're all based on 17" screens).

But back to the topic, 970M > 960M in the sense that the price you pay for the upgrade is worth the leap in the performance.

if you really need it. When I bought my laptop from Illegear 980M's difference to 970M was I think slightly cheaper, around RM1000 and slightly below.

If you ask me, might as well wait for the 990M to come out first before deciding whether to go between 970M or 980M, because a single 990M > 980MSLI... roughly nearing to Titan X kind of performance. When that comes out the 980M and 970M will drop. Even then 980M running at full power, you get some hiccups.

I still think you should opt for the 970M, because after all the PS4 and the XBOX One are using AMD's APU, which is somewhat on par with GTX970M.


Therefore, on practice and in theory, if you do it right, the 970M will last you the entire XBOXOne and PS4 lifespan. Besides, the 970M vs 960M difference isn't small too, so I think it will hurt buying the 970M (or even 980M if it exists) but it'll be worth the 'gaming lifespan'. Of course most PC settings are different from PS4 and XBoxOne settings, such as 1080p on the Z5 vs the below 1000p (not even 720p on the xbox), but there are some things that I think if you don't skimp out on that, it would be worth the investment.

Not exactly,

let's assume that DX12 is that "Midas Touch" that Microsoft has been trumpeted (most of it as the "key" for XboxOne to supposedly gain the advantage it badly needed after getting thrashed by the PS4 on all fronts), it still will suffer from hardware based bottlenecks. However, if you reflect that on the PC, most of the time so called "polished AAA" games with similar hardware (like using Radeon HD78xx that's comparable to the ones in the XBoxOne and PS4) won't yield similar results, but far inferior results. Expecting even DX12's APIs that would move overheads from the CPU to the GPUs (in fact it will use all GPUs, including the embedded integrated intel GPU if there's one) won't really help if the cost of processing power alone is trunked by the poor optimization of games, like in the kerfurfle of Batman, and The Witcher 3.

So for a portable gaming machine, rather than taking the risk just because "on paper" it looks powerful, shouldn't it be better for the owner to buy a 970M (besides, its a buy once can't upgrade unless you changed the entire mobo) than a 960M and be at the mercy of optimization which may or may never come at all?

Well, I'm sure you're right about this, but it doesn't change the fact that for many PC counterparts of the console games, you can't expect "oh PC version of the PS4 should be running a dual core, and HD78xx, and yeah, it'll work just the same, because it doesn't.

Not forgetting to mention that on paper alone the GPU on PS4 would outdo a GTX960M, so that's why I've been suggesting that the potential owner should really go for the 970M instead of the 960M. Even then the 970M is not marginally "better" than overall PS4 system's GPU, but at the very least with proper "tinkering" it should provide satisfactory gaming that should be a little bit above what you can get from the consoles, therefore that Z5 purchase with a 970M would outlast the generation of the PS4/XBoxOne