AW15R2 395x or 980m?

Has anyone gotten their hands on a R2 with the 395x yet? I'm seriously considering the DKCWF04M build with the 6820HK processor but not sure if I should pop the extra coin for the 980 or if the 395x will be good enough when mobile.I haven't found much information at all on the 395x as far as power draw and heat issues go. Are there any substantial benefits to the 980m over the AMD chip that I should really take a look at?

I plan on the amplifier with my 290x for home use where I run 3 24" 5760x1200 for things like Elite, iRacing, and ARMA3. When mobile I'll be running at 1920x1080 as I am not planning on the UHD screen. I do plan on picking up a consumer Rift next year as well but again I don't plan on using that when mobile.

Basically I'm looking to get the best processor offered, have decent mobile gaming when I travel a few times a year, but mainly the laptop will be sitting on my rig at home.

Thoughts and advice are greatly appreciated.

 

I would highly recommend the 980M. It will produce less heat and has more performance. The 395X is around 970M level.

 

The r9 m395x is a rebrand of the m295x, but after some driver optimizations, it's performance is, as ssj92 said, around that of the GTX 970m.
If you get the GTX 980m, the advantages are

• HDMI 2.0 (AMD only does HDMI 1.4)
• More performance (obviously)
• Probably better battery life, but it may not be so different since both GPUs are power-hungry compared to the GTX 970m.
• Less driver issues

Both should run about the same, thermal wise (maybe power wise, but can't say with confidence), and the R9 m395x doesn't really throttle (Alienware's r9 m395x and thermal solutions differs from Apple's AMD GPUs and thermal solutions). If you want more information about the r9 m395x, I suggest looking at notebookcheck's review of the Alienware 15 with r9 m295x (disregarding its game performance as older drivers were used in that review).

 

There will be a new driver called Radeon Software Crimson as well for AMD, which is turning out to be really nice. You can't go wrong with either card, but if you want that extra performance on the go, the 980M will be the choice.

 

980M

Almost no one at the forums uses AMD cards nowadays.

 

Thanks for the feedback everyone, looks like I will go with the 980.

 

In addition to all of the above, AMD has not enjoyed a good reputation for reliability and have seen a higher failure rate than NVIDIA. So, there is that to consider as well. Since the GPU is permanently attached to the motherboard and cannot be serviced, one needs to think about that element also. A dead or bad GPU means new motherboard, totally dismantling the machine instead of installing a smaller service part, and then hoping that the replacement motherboard, CPU and GPU all perform well as the original did.

 

Another good thing about the AMD videocard, is their heatsinks work for the 900 series. So, if your upgrading FROM a AMD videocard to a 980M or 970M, the heatsink is good to go.Just remove the black plastic that would otherwise make contact with the GPU die.

On the other hand, if you need either heatsink or the GPU's themselves, I have some for sale if you do not find them else where.

 

De current AMD offerings are unfortunately terrible. Drivers are up to this day still not ideal and have a lot of issues. Also the performance is just around that of a Geforce 970 and in some small cases a bit faster. I would go for the 980M most definitely.

 

That's true, except he is taking about a BGA system so it does not apply to that machine. He has one chance to make the right choice unless he wants to buy a motherboard to correct his mistake later... not good.

Great to know you have some heat sinks. Will keep that in mind.

 

Yeah we carry Alienware/Clevo heatsinks but no MSI or ASUS. But those can be modified like any others with a Dremel in most cases, or made to work by soldering some copper extra