970's having performance issues using 4GB Vram - Nvidia investigating

[Tonester0011]

Oh, Has someone said that they have cod aw and it slows down using a 970?

A video on YT where an overclock 980 beats a 970, because it was under 60 frames something wasn't right, lol. So the AMD crew went to investigate.

Pesky kids.

 

[ALXAndy]

Yeah nothing UBI have launched can be taken seriously in any way at all.

That's the issue right now, finding ways to eat into this extra VRAM....

Rest assured if I do go 4k I'll give my Titans a good seeing to and will let you know how I get on. Just hoping that they are true 6gb cards and don't pull the same crap as the 970 does lol.

I'm sure if they are it'll be worked out pretty quickly any way

 

[Kaapstad]

Everything does, dude. I ran the MSI VRAM test on a Titan and went from 260+ FPS at 1gb VRAM to 90 FPS when using it all.

Memory bandwidth is a serious issue that people have taken for granted because they don't think they need it. As soon as the new consoles came out and we garnered the layout (8gb, 2gb for the system the rest for graphics) it was pretty much written on the wall that you were going to need more VRAM.

If a console has 6gb on tap then the devs are going to work their hardest to make sure they utilise it, and the "prettiest game" war is well and truly on.

If there's ever been any gaming device in history that gets serious work and shed loads of optimisation it's the consoles. Mostly because they're a set architecture and don't change, so it gives devs time to work out how hard they can push it.

When I say the 980s take a dip at 2160p what I mean is they take a far bigger dip at the resolution than the Titans or 290Xs do.

 

[humbug]

Oh, Has someone said that they have cod aw and it slows down using a 970?

Stooeh is asking what Games the stutter can be tested for, CoD AW uses 4GB.

 

[JustCallMeVlad]

I would love to keep the 970's but if they're killing performance at 4k because of this memory thing then I don't want them.

If they were choking due to lack of horse power then fair enough, no complaints from me, but I didn't drop over £600 on a pair of 970's with water blocks just to be robbed of performance at 4k because of a hardware limitation that Nvidia neglected to tell anyone about.

Its all going to depend on the game. When i had the 970's installed they played BF4 @ 4K flawlessly.

 

[thesmokingman]

I wonder if there is a correlation between crap game development and Gameworks. It certainly has some merit or relationship when you consider Ubifail has totally bought into Gameworks and how many of their big AAA releases have issues?

 

[bru]

The memory clock isn't as dynamic as the core clock and base bandwidth rates while not 100% achievable in the real world should be the same speed regardless of what partition is being read and written too.

So your post is wrong.

Well your allowed your opinion, send your cards back on the ground that Nvidia lied in their specifications, just don't come back on the forum moaning when you have to pay an admin fee when you get your cards back.

This is the deciding factor but even with the up to 224Gb/s that point is still moot because it cannot perform this at the full 4GB. It's similar to saying that the core clock is 1200Mh/z but it can only achieve that speed if the core usage is under 80% and once it goes over that it clocks down to 700Mh/z. I'm sure that people would be just as upset if not more.

Look at the specs again, where does it say that the 224GB/s if constant, or over the entire range of the memory. It doesn't just as it doesn't say that the core clock is constant.

Should we send our cards back because they boost more than the specs say. No of course not, because the spec list is not absolute.


None of this is relevant to the real issue, all the moaning about being miss sold a card, or misled on the spec sheet. People are feeling that they have got less than they thought they were buying, Myself included. But unlike some others I am willing to wait and see what happens in the next few weeks, to see if there is a genuine issue, because before this memory division came to light everyone was oblivious to it thinking that any performance issues were down to the 256bit bus or just not enough grunt. and if it is a genuine issue then what can be done about it.

Shouting, screaming and jumping up and down isn't going to help in any way shape or form. (even if it may be quite good fun at times)

 

[humbug]

I wonder if there is a correlation between crap game development and Gameworks. It certainly has some merit or relationship when you consider Ubifail has totally bought into Gameworks and how many of their big AAA releases have issues?

FC3 also had issues, no Gameworks.

 

[thesmokingman]

FC3 also had issues, no Gameworks.

And? FC4 does.

 

[humbug]

Well your allowed your opinion, send your cards back on the ground that Nvidia lied in their specifications, just don't come back on the forum moaning when you have to pay an admin fee when you get your cards back.




Look at the specs again, where does it say that the 224GB/s if constant, or over the entire range of the memory. It doesn't just as it doesn't say that the core clock is constant.

Should we send our cards back because they boost more than the specs say. No of course not, because the spec list is not absolute.


None of this is relevant to the real issue, all the moaning about being miss sold a card, or misled on the spec sheet. People are feeling that they have got less than they thought they were buying, Myself included. But unlike some others I am willing to wait and see what happens in the next few weeks, to see if there is a genuine issue, because before this memory division came to light everyone was oblivious to it thinking that any performance issues were down to the 256bit bus or just not enough grunt. and if it is a genuine issue then what can be done about it.

Shouting, screaming and jumping up and down isn't going to help in any way shape or form. (even if it may be quite good fun at times)

No use trying to stop people from debating the issue, its not gona happen.

 

[ALXAndy]

When I say the 980s take a dip at 2160p what I mean is they take a far bigger dip at the resolution than the Titans or 290Xs do.

Well they would do they have a hobbled memory bus dude.

I recall saying at launch that the 970 and 980 were an odd release. Mostly because people were expecting them to replace the 780 and 780ti (which they did) but underneath they were no better. I mean yeah, benchmarks and in a straight line they're faster, but the memory bus on the 780 etc was far higher..

So they're not true 4k cards so what are they? 1440p and 1600p are actually very unusual resolutions and in the grand scheme of things hardly ever used, so that means they're a 1080p card?!?!

Very odd IMO. Obviously they're far cheaper to produce than the real Kepler high end cards so they've sort of done a side step performance wise.

I bought my Titans about three days before they both launched and tbh? I'm bloody glad I did. Yeah I lose out on actual brute force core speed but at least they won't fall on their face should I decide to go 4k (and I'll be honest, I'm really starting to lean that way...)

 

[bru]

I already said my 290 (None X) does not slow down when (And will) use all of its 4GB buffer.

Cool I didn't expect the AMD cards to have similar problems, but I suppose it wasn't beyond the realm of possibilities, as all of these cut down cores regardless of what card they are from, are obviously cut down from the full fat core variants.

 

[Mei]

I wonder if there is a correlation between crap game development and Gameworks. It certainly has some merit or relationship when you consider Ubifail has totally bought into Gameworks and how many of their big AAA releases have issues?

i think its just a coincidence, ubisoft make terrible decisions, i doubt gameworks makes people less stupid
why nvidia put them games with their cards tho thats equally bad, i think if they had abandoned ubisoft that would have been hilarious and good PR move

 

[LambChop]

Ooops sorry, thought this was the 970 Vram issues thread..

** No hotlinking **

 

[Bonjour]

I might get hold of a copy of SoM to play guinea pig with my 290s.

They're flashed to 290X and I can switch them between the two with the little bios switch.

 

[humbug]

And? FC4 does.

Ubi Game problems go back a long way, log before Gameworks, its most likely an Ubi problem rather than a Gameworks problem

 

[bru]

No use trying to stop people from debating the issue, its not gona happen.

+1

Unfortunately this thread needs more debate and less ************

 

[Kaapstad]

Everything does, dude. I ran the MSI VRAM test on a Titan and went from 260+ FPS at 1gb VRAM to 90 FPS when using it all.

Memory bandwidth is a serious issue that people have taken for granted because they don't think they need it. As soon as the new consoles came out and we garnered the layout (8gb, 2gb for the system the rest for graphics) it was pretty much written on the wall that you were going to need more VRAM.

If a console has 6gb on tap then the devs are going to work their hardest to make sure they utilise it, and the "prettiest game" war is well and truly on.

If there's ever been any gaming device in history that gets serious work and shed loads of optimisation it's the consoles. Mostly because they're a set architecture and don't change, so it gives devs time to work out how hard they can push it.

Here is an example of what I mean from the Heaven 4 bench thread.


4 cards

1080p

1. Score 5949, GPU 980 @1482/2002, CPU 5960X @4.6, Kaapstad
2. Score 5509, GPU 290X @1240/1500, CPU 4930k @4.8, Kaapstad
3. Score 5237, GPU nvTitan @994/1788, CPU 3930k @5.1, Kaapstad

2160p

1. Score 1759, GPU nvTitan @981/1788, CPU 3930k @4.8, Kaapstad Link
2. Score 1702, GPU 980 @1472/1962, CPU 5960X @4.0, Kaapstad Link
3. Score 1682, GPU 290X @1230/1500, CPU 4930k @4.8, Kaapstad Link

This is an extreme example using a synthetic bench.

As you can see the Titan has gone from last to first @4K.

The 290Xs have also closed the gap quite a bit on the 980s @4K as well.



The 9 series cards lose performance at higher resolutions compared to other cards. It does not happen in every game and bench but it happens quite regularly.

 

[Kipz]

Look at the specs again, where does it say that the 224GB/s if constant, or over the entire range of the memory. It doesn't just as it doesn't say that the core clock is constant.

Should we send our cards back because they boost more than the specs say. No of course not, because the spec list is not absolute.

I think it is much less likely to have fluctuations in memory bus bandwidth rather than core clock speed. Especially one that causes so much fluctuation. If it only dropped 10-20Mb/s I'm sure it would blow over but the fact still remains that it drops much lower than that which is, with a little common sense, far too much to be within the variables set out on the spec sheet.

 

[eyetrip]

Hoping for update by tomorrow evening. Still debating swapping to couple of 8gb 290x...