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

[Mal X]

Were pushing NVIDIA for an official response, NVIDIA will come back to us and when they do we shall let everyone know.

Right now calling us, forums, email the response is we are awaiting a response from NVIDIA.

I understand the frustration, but the 970 performance is un-changed from when it launched and everyone raved how good it was, so what is a few hours/days to wait for an official response/update.

Its not the end of the world and I am sure NVIDIA will either fix it or offer up a solution, but anything they do needs to be worldwide, that takes days, not minutes.


Our CS slamming the phone, well if I find anyone doing this they will be absolutely beaten for it over the coals, not acceptable at all!

no, i said right from the start that this card felt detuned and rather boring............ yes it's 100% reliable, well of course, it's bound to be if it's only running at 85% max power

 

[Bailey]

Hello Guys

Gibbo has just alerted this to me, having looked at the call log's I can see that nobody has ended a call on anyone at all.

However as our entire phone system is VOIP and completely dependent on the internet any drop in connection can cause a call to end.

As I have been made aware over the past week or so we have been experiencing network drops which can result in the internet going down which in result will end calls. This has been reported already by the Director to our ISP and they are investigating as we speak.

I have checked with all my support guys and nobody has put the phone down on anyone. Rest assured if if I found out who did there would be a serious but kicking. Checking the phone logs however on my system there's not been a dropped call.

I can apologize if any issues have come from this however. In regards to RMAing the cards the stance on the 970 at the moment is:

The status at the moment is:

Any customer outside 14 day grace period, we will not accept returns on 970’s due to the internet rumours. Until NVIDIA tell us otherwise or it is proven NVIDIA has miss-sold the product under no circumstances must we take an RMA back due to this. Of course if within 14 days no issue that is the law.

OcUK has not advertised ROPS, SMU’s or L2 cache and neither has NVIDIA, if reviewers have done so that is upto them.

We are clear, NVIDIA are clear, until as such it is proven that NVIDIA are not clear we won’t be accepting returns, so we see no fault and until NVIDIA inform us otherwise we won’t be accepting RMA’s based on threads in forums on the internet.

I hope this clears things up for now

Bailey

 

[MasterOC]

I am sure NVIDIA will either fix it (driver) or sort something out with AIC/Etailors to take RMA's. I am sure they will not shaft anyone or will fix it.

But this is a worldwide issue, the cards performance is un-changed and people have raved how great it is, yet now they are rubbish? Come on the 970 is still the best sub £300 card, fact!

Just realise this is reality and for NVIDIA to make a statement, either direction takes time, once we have an official response we will let you guys know.

Were not gonna make a statement until we get something official.

Sorry gibbo not from you , replying to another member with a reply from Nvidia

 

[eyetrip]

I am sure NVIDIA will either fix it (driver) or sort something out with AIC/Etailors to take RMA's. I am sure they will not shaft anyone or will fix it.

But this is a worldwide issue, the cards performance is un-changed and people have raved how great it is, yet now they are rubbish? Come on the 970 is still the best sub £300 card, fact!

Just realise this is reality and for NVIDIA to make a statement, either direction takes time, once we have an official response we will let you guys know.

Were not gonna make a statement until we get something official.

I don't think anyone is saying they are now rubbish. Well, maybe some are.

Just that they are running into limitations sooner than they should, based on the specs people were led to believe they had, etc.

Have plumped for 290x 8gb trifire now anyway, so will wash my hands of it either by waiting to see if there are refunds, or by flogging 2nd hand.

Don't envy you guys right now. Nor any etailer for that matter.

Nvidia I feel nothing for however.

 

[Gibbo]

Thanks for the reply Gibbo...

I think everyone understands the difficult situation OCUK is in and i am sure you also appreciate the frustration we as customers are having.

Hopefully nvidia will do the right thing, but i suspect not from past performance!

Are you aware that even if nvidia do not issue the recall you are still going to have to refund people under the consumer act for misrepresentations?

The card has not being miss-sold, 4GB of RAM, yes, 256-bit, yes. NVIDIA never advertised ROPs and neither did OcUK. So the card is not misrepresented!

The issue is the odd game has stuttering issues, but as always games in the past have had many performance issues which have being resolved by patches/driver updates. This is nothing new and this is why games get patches/driver updates.

NVIDIA will do the right thing I am sure, by either fixing it or offering a solution.

 

[Gibbo]

This is true until you want to use the full advertised capability of the card with it's 4GB of memory..

Its still faster in 99% of games on the market than anything else for sub £300 though.

As you well know, all graphics card past and present have had bugs that cause poor performance in certain games, which both AMD/NVIDIA always tend to fix with a driver update/patch.

 

[Locky]

They have really. Nvidia advertised a 256bit 4GB card. Not a 224bit 3.5gb with an unusable 32bit 512mb mess added on.

 

[Locky]

Its still faster in 99% of games on the market than anything else for sub £300 though.

As you well know, all graphics card past and present have had bugs that cause poor performance in certain games, which both AMD/NVIDIA always tend to fix with a driver update/patch.

I'm happy with mine so far, but that might change as games demand more from my cards. But I will be forced to upgrade anyway.

 

[james.miller]

why limit it to 3.5.......because they're starting to kill off its performance as it gets close to 4.0

i think they did this on purpose, isn't it odd that the card runs so cool and never gets over 67 degrees, they dont want this MID RANGE card getting too powerful just in case it effects the sales of their Titan z......they want a large gap in performance so that they can charge 1200 quid for the bigger card.

you imagine how much more powerful it would be if they let its temps rise to 80 degrees or even 85 degrees, they've also limited its Voltage to prevent you from OCing too far.. and finally of course its RAM.

so they've reduced its lifespan on purpose, so if you want more grunt you're going to have to buy Titan Z ..............suspicious !

this explains why they wont give it 6GB OR 8GB RAM, because they dont want you keeping this card for too long. this is very heavily disguised but i wouldn't be surprised at all

Mal, you are waffling!

you do realise that they arent all thermally calibrated to run at 67c, right? and your strixs cards have probebly the best coolers out there. Stock cards run hotter!

as for oc'ing sure, the voltage is limited, but maxwell doesnt respond much to voltage. Stock boost clock on a 970 is 1178, my infinity is running at 1475 on stock voltage and it will sit there at those clocks all day long. a 25% oc isn't to be sniffed at by any means and mine is only an average overclock.

 

[Gibbo]

no, i said right from the start that this card felt detuned and rather boring............ yes it's 100% reliable, well of course, it's bound to be if it's only running at 85% max power

Detuned, well of course it is, the 980 is flagship, you don't get a 980 performing card for over £100 less, just like a 290 is a detuned 290X.

Fact is this detuned card that only runs at 85% max power still blows every other card out the water sub £300 and has the best power efficiency out there and is the best overclocking card pretty much in the whole of time.

I love AMD and NVIDIA equally, but I don't get blinded by blind faith to one of the other, I go with what is best for my money and can be overclocked like a demon, that is 970!

 

[AtreuS]

The card has not being miss-sold, 4GB of RAM, yes, 256-bit, yes. NVIDIA never advertised ROPs and neither did OcUK. So the card is not misrepresented!

The issue is the odd game has stuttering issues, but as always games in the past have had many performance issues which have being resolved by patches/driver updates. This is nothing new and this is why games get patches/driver updates.

NVIDIA will do the right thing I am sure, by either fixing it or offering a solution.

yes but its not 256bit over the 4gb is it? that is the issue... on the box it says 256bit .... it isnt.

Im not trying to be annoying but this is the crux of the matter at hand. Anyway i guess we wait and see what nvidia have to say

As for the dropped call... i phoned at about 10ish and spoke to someone who put me throught to returns... the phone beeped i heard some background noise and the call dropped. So with hindsight i will say its more likely a dropped call rather than someone putting it down on me, for which i aplogise for my earlier statement.

 

[Sencha]

Were pushing NVIDIA for an official response, NVIDIA will come back to us and when they do we shall let everyone know.

Right now calling us, forums, email the response is we are awaiting a response from NVIDIA.

I understand the frustration, but the 970 performance is un-changed from when it launched and everyone raved how good it was, so what is a few hours/days to wait for an official response/update.

Its not the end of the world and I am sure NVIDIA will either fix it or offer up a solution, but anything they do needs to be worldwide, that takes days, not minutes.


Our CS slamming the phone, well if I find anyone doing this they will be absolutely beaten for it over the coals, not acceptable at all!

I can only speak for the call I had to them this morning Gibbo about something unrelated to the 970. But when I mentioned 970 VRAM to the CS guy expecting a whine back he was empathetic and professional..........I wanted rage so I hung up on him...... (joke )

 

[darket]

Hello Guys

Gibbo has just alerted this to me, having looked at the call log's I can see that nobody has ended a call on anyone at all.

However as our entire phone system is VOIP and completely dependent on the internet any drop in connection can cause a call to end.

As I have been made aware over the past week or so we have been experiencing network drops which can result in the internet going down which in result will end calls. This has been reported already by the Director to our ISP and they are investigating as we speak.

I have checked with all my support guys and nobody has put the phone down on anyone. Rest assured if if I found out who did there would be a serious but kicking. Checking the phone logs however on my system there's not been a dropped call.

I can apologize if any issues have come from this however. In regards to RMAing the cards the stance on the 970 at the moment is:

The status at the moment is:

Any customer outside 14 day grace period, we will not accept returns on 970’s due to the internet rumours. Until NVIDIA tell us otherwise or it is proven NVIDIA has miss-sold the product under no circumstances must we take an RMA back due to this. Of course if within 14 days no issue that is the law.

OcUK has not advertised ROPS, SMU’s or L2 cache and neither has NVIDIA, if reviewers have done so that is upto them.

We are clear, NVIDIA are clear, until as such it is proven that NVIDIA are not clear we won’t be accepting returns, so we see no fault and until NVIDIA inform us otherwise we won’t be accepting RMA’s based on threads in forums on the internet.

I hope this clears things up for now

Bailey

Sense at last !

 

[Uncle Petey]

Dunno about 'blows every other card out of the water at sub £300' tbh. Let's not get too carried away here.

 

[james.miller]

yes but its not 256bit over the 4gb is it? that is the issue... on the box it says 256bit .... it isnt.

Not saying this is right or wrong but, that is a matter of technicality. the 970 has 8x 32bit memory controllers and 8x 512mb dram chips. each mc is connected to its own chip. 8x 32bit controllers = 256bit.

there is the fact that it can only use 7 or the other 1 at any one time however that doesnt change the width of the entire bus so it comes down to how you want to measure the bus in bits. nVidia will be measuring the entire bus width.

 

[Gibbo]

Dunno about 'blows every other card out of the water at sub £300' tbh. Let's not get too carried away here.

Majority of reviews show it as such and as the 970 outsells its competing cards in this price range 10 to 1 then I guess the end-user thinks it does.

If there were other cards just as good or better for a similar price, than why are 970 sales absolutely annihilating competing cards? Because its the best for the money!

 

[enigma27]

They have really. Nvidia advertised a 256bit 4GB card. Not a 224bit 3.5gb with an unusable 32bit 512mb mess added on.

Is that not just you assuming how the memory works? In any given component that has built in memory and controllers there is always some allotted for other tasks.. but the manufacturer will always advertise the total amount.

If this is such a big problem with how they decided how to use the memory why does every single person that buys RAM for they mob not cry like a girl because they can only use 7.5 of their 8 gig because dirty old windows nicks some of it for the OS?? or someone buys a 2tb hard drive but can only use 1.9 after formatting?? its no different.

You were sold an item with 4 gig of ram on the component.. they did not go into detail on how its used / allocated but why should they..

Just because you interpret the use of said ram and don't believe its being used in the right manor does not make the advertising wrong.

I think a lot of people are just making excuses in order to get something free... this comes from someone with 2 970's in his machine..

 

[Uncle Petey]

Majority of reviews show it as such and as the 970 outsells its competing cards in this price range 10 to 1 then I guess the end-user thinks it does.

If there were other cards just as good or better for a similar price, than why are 970 sales absolutely annihilating competing cards? Because its the best for the money!

I guess our definition of 'blowing away' differs I'm not talking about sales.

Then again, this is the industry where a small handful of fps = PWND!

 

[The Running Man]

Majority of reviews show it as such and as the 970 outsells its competing cards in this price range 10 to 1 then I guess the end-user thinks it does.

If there were other cards just as good or better for a similar price, than why are 970 sales absolutely annihilating competing cards? Because its the best for the money!

Perception is key, this announcement blows the perception out of the water though as now people know the card wont perform in future titles like they expected it would do.

 

[Gibbo]

Perception is key, this announcement blows the perception out of the water though as now people know the card wont perform in future titles like they expected it would do.

Well, I've reviewed our sales, we've sold more 970's this Monday and Tuesday compared to last Monday and Tuesday, so who knows, maybe we'd have sold even more or not, but 970 sales are still the strongest selling GPU, even today because its performance is un-changed.