I looked at NVIDIA's specs on VRAM bandwidth for the GTX970 and the GTX980 earlier.

Both are quoted as being 224GB/sec.

Both have 4GB VRAM. This would suggest that both products have the same VRAM performance.

There's a rumour going around that they don't.

Dervious said:

I looked at NVIDIA's specs on VRAM bandwidth for the GTX970 and the GTX980 earlier.

Both are quoted as being 224GB/sec.

Both have 4GB VRAM. This would suggest that both products have the same VRAM performance.

There's a rumour going around that they don't.

Click to expand...

That isn't answering the question.

Dervious said:

Isn't that effectively a crossfire setup on a single card ?

My understanding is that in a dual card setup, the combined memory doesn't perform like it would if it were on a single card.

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It doesn't. The bandwidth adds up though.

I think it's fair to say that the percentage of people that understand how the VRAM works on a dual-GPU card is a lot higher than those that understood how the memory was arranged on a 970 prior to a fortnight ago.

Admittedly this may be unfair, as the number would only have to be greater than zero to be the case.

And its beside the point, thats the maximum bandwidth, which kinda points to the fact there is a minimum and somewhere in-between.

Bonjour said:

I think it's fair to say that the percentage of people that understand how the VRAM works on a dual-GPU card is a lot higher than those that understood how the memory was arranged on a 970 prior to a fortnight ago.

Admittedly this may be unfair, as the number would only have to be greater than zero to be the case.

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Hurrah, we have a winner folks

OK. Let's say I'm interested in buying an R295x2.

I've found a review.

http://www.overclockers.com/AMD-r9295x2-video-card-review/

And I`ve just read this..........

"But remember folks, its still 4096 MB each. Like the back end above, the memory is not a shared pool either. 4 GB is plenty of memory for the most demanding applications at ‘reasonable’ resolutions (4K and down)."

Dervious said:

OK. Let's say I'm interested in buying an R295x2.

I've found a review.

http://www.overclockers.com/AMD-r9295x2-video-card-review/

And I`ve just read this..........

"But remember folks, its still 4096 MB each. Like the back end above, the memory is not a shared pool either. 4 GB is plenty of memory for the most demanding applications at ‘reasonable’ resolutions (4K and down)."

Click to expand...

Yea, you got the information you need.. And its correct information too lol

So where was the info about how a single GTX970's 4GB VRAM compares to a R290X's 4GB VRAM ?

Dervious said:

So where was the info about how a single GTX970's 4GB VRAM compares to a R290X's 4GB VRAM ?

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I think you're missing the point

I would assume that a GTX970 would cope with a game using 3.9GB VRAM as well as it would if it were handling a game that used 3.1GB VRAM.

That is unless I were told that 0.5GB of VRAM did not perform anywhere near as well as the other 3.5GB VRAM.

Are 980s going to drop lower than the current lowest of £399 before the end of Feb?

Silent_Scone said:

No but I game without sweating now. lol Light bulbs are fine where they are, on the ceiling.

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You realise that having a second person in the same room as you produces more watts of energy than a light bulb, do you like seeing them on the ceiling as well.

I would also assume that the R290X would also not suffer any loss of performance if a game used close to it's stated 4GB VRAM.

I would then make my choice based on what I know, and I would likely go for the GTX970.

If I then played a game that used close to the full 4GB of VRAM on my GTX970, and had stuttering or loss of performance, I might wonder why.

Dervious said:

I would also assume that the R290X would also not suffer any loss of performance if a game used close to it's stated 4GB VRAM.

I would then make my choice based on what I know, and I would likely go for the GTX970.

If I then played a game that used close to the full 4GB of VRAM on my GTX970, and had stuttering or loss of performance, I might wonder why.

Click to expand...

Confirm that, this is actually the 290 (None X)

CoD AW maxed out @ 1440P

From another thread. Just wanna share my take on this dilemma in persona.

"I had the very same discussion with myself and I was actually able to do something about it.
Having one PC with 970 SLi and another 970 3 way SLi, I was thinking of going 1x GTX 980 in one PC and 2x GTX 980 in the other PC. I knew very well that selling 5 GTX 970 would not cover the costs of 3 new GTX 980's...but I was kinda accepting it albeit unwillingly.

Luckily my buddy came to the rescue ! We talked about it and he said, "hey why don't I come by with my 2x GTX 980 and my 4K screen and we can check if it really is an issue".
So last evening we ended up swapping testing 1x GTX 980 vs 2x GTX 970 and 2x GTX 980's vs 3x GTX 970 and 2x GTX 980 vs 2x GTX 970 all in 4K.
Aaaaand halleluja I was happy with did that.... it saved me hundreds of quids.

Fact was that we played every new AAA title in 4K at max details and minimum 8xAA in all titles. We were excited to see if the Vram "issue" on the 970 would cripple it.
We did all the first testing with 1-2-3 GTX 970. With 1x 970 card FPS were low and at these quality settings games weren't really playable.

2x GTX 970 improved things a lot - we loaded the games with 8xAA and we experienced stutter every now and then and the VRam usage was 3.5GB+ and texture popping was random. We backed down to 4xAA and things lightened up. Still not stutter free and occasional hickups but we didn't see texture popping. Then we backed down to 2xAA (still looking sweet in 4K) and now things rang smooth as silk and we didn't experience stuttering at all.

Now to 3x GTX 970 - fired up the same games and Dying Light the "problem child" for the 970 Vram problem we tried first. Set it to 8xAA and we still had massive stutter all over and texture popping like with 2x 970. We downed AA to 4x and now things got weird. Absolutely smooth gameplay eventhough the Vram was hitting 3.8GB !!!. Maybe that extra GPU really made a difference now backing up the Vram ! We didn't see that coming.
The same story we repeated in the other games BF4, BioShock Infinite, COD Ghost/Advanced Warfare etc. Gaming in 4K with 3x 970 was a breeze with max 4xAA.
All in all we were sure we had seen the "3.5GB+ 0.5GB" problem in the games.

Now we moved to the GTX 980. 4K same setting Vram usage 3.9~4.1GB with 8xAA. But heavy stutter stutter and low FPS. One card just can handle it. Backed down all the way to 2xAA before with got FPS though would touch the likes of 30FPS and Vram usage between 3.4~3.5GBVram

Moving to 2x GTX 980 we expected the 980's to show their REAL 4GB Vram available. Fired up Dying Light set to max and 8xAA. First minute was smooth and we were so confident that this was how real 4GB vram would run the game... but them BAAAAM... suddenly the memory usage showing 3.8 went to 4.1GB and we were back to texture popping and choppy gameplay just like the 2/3x GTX 970's.
We could not believe it so we restarted the PC and game - with that that 3 times in a row, but every time the choppiness and texturepopping returned. Even 4Gigs wasn't going to cut it to run 4K at 8xAA. We backed down to 4xAA and here we started get get smooth gameplay again, only once in a while when a lot on the screen happened the FPS would back down in the low 30FPS - not surprisingly the 3x 970 delivered much better gameplay experience and FPS smoothness at these same settings.
After that we continued to tests in all the other games. We were surprised to see that all the games behaved in the same manner 8xAA at 4K was too much for even two 2x GTX 980's to handle. Vram usage was oversaturated causing stuttering etc. Backing down to 4xAA things got a lot better and games played smoothly albeit with a lower average FPS than 3x 970's.

So all in all. We played through all the games and I must admit that the 3.5GB+ 0.5GB vram issue was only "evident" when the 980 REAL 4GB card had the same problems !.
I'm really not that sure that the 970 is a crippled card at all, because when the 970 had problems so had the 980's.

Right now I am actually very happy I didn't sell my 5x 970's but decided to keep them. I'm thankfull for the fact that I for myself could test things out before throwing hundres of £ out of the window for nothing - so a hughe thank you to my buddy Jess I've seen it with my own eyes that "upgrading" from 970 "3.5GB+0.5GB" to 980 4GB is useless.
When 8GB versions of 970's get here I'll purchase those also eventhoug they may be "7GB+ 1GB" or so.

I hope you can use my answer to something. "

Gripen90 said:

From another thread. Just wanna share my take on this dilemma in persona...

Click to expand...

Good to see people doing there own tests. Makes me more confident to go 970 SLi instead of returning now, as I didn't really want anything else!

Jarrastafari said:

Good to see people doing there own tests. Makes me more confident to go 970 SLi instead of returning now, as I didn't really want anything else!

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I think OcUK's refund offer is up to end of Feb? So it would be good try in on a 4K monitor (if you have one), or just 2560 monitor yourself.

While there might be people lucky enough to not have problem, it's not guarantee that would be the case for everyone, as there's been people with 970 SLI reporting stuttering issues for a while even before this whole scandal blow up. Even if the chance of having and not having problem was 50/50, it still quite big a risk.

Yeah still uncertain on whether to return mine or not tbh.. if i knew its value isn't going to bomb in 4-5 months then i'd keep it until then and sell it.

Marine-RX179 said:

While there might be people lucky enough to not have problem, it's not guarantee that would be the case for everyone, as there's been people with 970 SLI reporting stuttering issues for a while even before this whole scandal blow up. Even if the chance of having and not having problem was 50/50, it still quite big a risk.

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I had the "problem" too from the get-go, but thought it was driver related. Now this info came out and I tought it was Vram related and only specific to the 970.
Then I got the chance to test it out on 980's also - and that showed that the 980 was giving me the same quirks. I simply demanded more of 970 and 980 than they could deliver whether or not they have 4GB vram.
So I'm holding out for 8GB 970 versions before parting with my 970 4GBs.