Just a day after Intel and Nvidia released their new mobile processor and graphics technologies AMD is firing back with its new lineup of graphics cards. The AMD 7700M, 7800M and 7900M all use a 28-nanometer manufacturing process making them more power efficient than the 7000 series released last fall.
The AMD HD7970M is the king of the castle in terms of performance for the new 7000 series. According to AMD the 7970M will run games such as Deus Ex:Human Revolution 15 – 20 % faster than NVIDIA’s top of the line GTX675M GPU. The following chart also shows that the AMD 7970M will trounce the previous AMD 6990M that was itself not slouch:
You’re looking at a 45 – 50% performance improvement of the AMD 7970M over the 6990M, that’s a huge leap forward and great news for gamers. As far as benchmarks for the 7970M, NotebookReview forum member SlickDude80 got ahold of the 7970M graphics card and installed it in his Alienware M17x laptop and ran 3DMark Vantage and 3DMark 11, the results are impressive. The AMD 7970M got 6,125 3DMarks in 3DMark 11 and a whopping 20,256 3DMarks in 3DMark Vantage:
3DMark Vantage AMD 7970M score:
3DMark 11 AMD 7970M score:
If you’re into gaming then those scores will obviously have you salivating, and if you’re not into gaming just rest assured knowing they’re ridiculously high for a mobile graphics chip.
At the moment there are no laptops announced that will have the 7970M GPU, but we’re sure they will start to appear soon.
As far as the 7800M and 7700M graphics cards, the 7800M will be a mid to high-end range class of performance graphics cards while the 7700M will serve as a mid-range performance card with the emphasis on power savings. We already know that the 7700M will be inside the upcoming ENVY 6 Ultrabook leaked last week, so you might expect to see the 7700M in other Ultrabooks that offer dedicated graphics.
Here’s a run down of each of the cards specs:
| GPU | Core Speed | Memory Speed | Shaders | Memory |
| AMD 7970M | 850MHz | 1200MHz | 1280 | 2GB GDDR5 256-bit |
| AMD 7870M | 800MHz | 1000MHz | 640 | 2GB GDDR5 128-bit |
| AMD 7850M | 675MHz | 1000MHz | 640 | 2GB GDDR5 128-bit |
| AMD 7770M | 675MHz | 1000MHz | 512 | 2GB GDDR5 128-bit |
| AMD 7750M | 575MHz | 1000MHz | 512 | 2GB GDDR5 128-bit |
| AMD 7730M | 575 – 675MHz | 900MHz | 512 | 2GB GDDR3 128-bit |
To see more about the new 7000M lineup from AMD you can get all the details right from the lion’s mouth at AMD.com.
Now we just have to wait for AMD’s Trinity processors, designed to compete with Intel’s Ivy Bridge chips, to see the full picture of how AMD will be able to compete with Intel and Nvidia this year.
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