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

[james.miller]

lol, no i mean do you see the same sort of stuttering when you pass 3.5gb of usage?

 

[stooeh]

Nvidia drivers have been very poor since 970 release imho especially with regards to SLI. I had two 580s previusly and seemed very good and timely then

 

[ubersonic]

Extremetech have done some testing on this issue using the 970/980 at various memory loads with various games:

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...nvidias-penultimate-gpu-have-a-memory-problem

 

[africanos23]

One of the problems here, is the fact that there are several steps to the chain, from Nvidia to us for these cards.
For example: I read this blurb of text

It's very hard to go through that whole process IF it ever happens that is. Especially for people like me that didn't order from their home country.

I personally got my cards with a 4K monitor, I know people will say why get 970s for 4K. I only need them for whatever amount of time they will become absolute @ 4K because I will be updating to the next best anyway when newer cards come out.

I think its a non issue for most people NOW that are at 1080p or 1440p. They will feel kind of iffy whey they are going to need to upgrade faster (not due to GPU grunt but VRAM).

 

[OryxBeisa]

Extremetech have done some testing on this issue using the 970/980 at various memory loads with various games:

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...nvidias-penultimate-gpu-have-a-memory-problem

Seems like a lot of hot air over a small issue really. Tried a few games at 4x DSR and everything turned on, but framerates plummet to sub-30 by the time I've crawled past 3000MB of VRAM usage.

Maybe if I was running SLI I'd be bothered by this.

 

[LambChop]

geez james who made u the try police!
maybe if we were allowed more than 1 thread on this subject it wouldnt be such a mess
lol ><

Dont see why were not allowed more than 1 thread, after all wasnt there about 3.8 billion Mantle threads on the go.... or is that cause it was AMD ?

 

[almighty15]

Regardless of who has to foot the bill I bought the cards from OCUK so they cards goes back to them for an exchange or refund.

They can then claim there money back from whoever they need too.

EU Law

MISLEADING PRACTICES

Misleading actions

A practice is misleading if it contains false or untrue information or is likely to deceive the average consumer, even though the information given may be correct, and is likely to cause him to take a transactional decision he would not have taken otherwise. Examples of such actions include false or deceiving information on:
•the existence or nature of the product;
•the main characteristics of the product (its availability, benefits, risks, composition, geographical origin, results to be expected from its use, etc.);
•the extent of the trader's commitments;
•the price or the existence of a specific price advantage;
•the need for a service, or repair.

Misleading omissions

These arise when material information that the average consumer needs, according to the context, to take an informed transactional decision is omitted or provided in an unclear, unintelligible, ambiguous or untimely manner and thereby causes (or might cause) that consumer to take a purchase decision that he or she would not have otherwise taken.

If the specs were listed as 58 ROP's and a borked memory bus at the time these cards were released I would not of bought them.

 

[Buckster]

It's very hard to go through that whole process IF it ever happens that is. Especially for people like me that didn't order from their home country.

I personally got my cards with a 4K monitor, I know people will say why get 970s for 4K. I only need them for whatever amount of time they will become absolute @ 4K because I will updating to the next best anyway when newer cards come out.

I think its a non issue for most people NOW that are at 1080p or 1440p. They will feel kind of iffy whey they are going to need to upgrade faster (not due to GPU grunt but VRAM).

process is irrelevant

the only thing you ever have to worry about is your relationship with the place you bought the item from

everything else is really non relevant

 

[africanos23]

Seems like a lot of hot air over a small issue really. Tried a few games at 4x DSR and everything turned on, but framerates plummet to sub-30 by the time I've crawled past 3000MB of VRAM usage.

Maybe if I was running SLI I'd be bothered by this.

I am

lol, no i mean do you see the same sort of stuttering when you pass 3.5gb of usage?

Only with supersampling @ 4K you are going over 3575MB (that's my case anyway)

 

[Gregster]

• Turn down their video settings
• Upgrade
• Stop moaning over a 4% performance drop
• Don't run 4K

Thankfully only a small handful act like this, take not of their names and remember the next time the claim "they are neutral".

Good advice right there. Put my name to that

 

[james.miller]

Only with supersampling @ 4K you are going over 3575MB (that's my case anyway)

and does that stutter with one card, or is it just a no go altogether?

I guess I'm trying to working out if this is a memory or sli issue or a combination of both

 

[RanxZy]

Thanks for improving the resale value of my 970 NVIDIA

 

[james.miller]

Extremetech have done some testing on this issue using the 970/980 at various memory loads with various games:

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...nvidias-penultimate-gpu-have-a-memory-problem

The 3.5GB and 4GB dilemma

So, what to make of the users who report seeing cratering performance or significant issues in specific titles? I’m not dismissing them, as it’s certainly possible that there are corner cases where Nvidia’s memory management creates a problem in specific game or in SLI, but thus far, we’ve seen limited evidence of a real-world problem. What people really seem to be unhappy about is seeing a 3.5GB limitation on a 4GB memory buffer. Some people are going to be intrinsically unhappy about that, because they’re going to feel like they aren’t getting what they paid for with the GTX 970.

Sums up this thread.

 

[Gregster]

Nvidia drivers have been very poor since 970 release imho especially with regards to SLI. I had two 580s previusly and seemed very good and timely then

I can't argue with that. For 3 Titans, and 1440P, I can't get them all to 99% usage and with G-Sync running, they don't play smooth at all.

Hopefully this will at least get nVidia to chuck some more devs at the drivers and bring back the good days again.

 

[Kmodo]

This is all pretty interesting and makes me glad I never upgraded for the sake of it (don't game at home that often these days).

Hopefully the next AMD cards coupled with a new freesync monitor will have been worth the wait.

 

[africanos23]

Good advice right there. Put my name to that

I think you guys are being unfair.

This would have made a big difference to my buying decision.

I don't want a refund, it's too much hassle, I will be buying something better anyway.

Resale value also drops.

Just to get some action on the thread look at image below

 

[Mei]

i dont understand what extremetech's benchmarks are meant to demonstrate, are they just comparing 3.5gb to 4gb? and disregarding the potential problems of having 512mb run a lot slower and how that impacts your "gaming experience"

its like they have missed the whole point of the issue and put a conclusion on benchmarks that no one cares about

zzz

 

[RanxZy]

Think the 500mb cache revelation was dodgy enough but actually having less than advertised rops is hard to defend.

 

[londonbairn]

Benchmarks aside etc, surely if Nvidia are now saying there are less ROPs, then technically (be it accidentally or whatever) you would have grounds for some sort of compensation? Surely if this was in any other industry (a car advertised with more valves than reality, a washing machine with more RPM etc) you would?

 

[james.miller]

Just to get some action on the thread look at image below

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8935/geforce-gtx-970-correcting-the-specs-exploring-memory-allocation

To get straight to the point then, NVIDIA’s original publication of the ROP/memory controller subsystem was wrong; GTX 970 has a 256-bit memory bus, but 1 of the 4 ROP/memory controller partitions was partially disabled, not fully enabled like we were originally told. As a result GTX 970 only has 56 of 64 ROPs and 1.75MB of 2MB of L2 cache enabled. The memory controllers themselves remain unchanged, with all four controllers active and driving 4GB of VRAM over a combined 256-bit memory bus.