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

[enigma27]

Performance of the product is irrelevant - the issue is with the false advertising and omitance of important information.

what false advertising? its got what it says on the tin..

People are assuming the total memory is used for one thing and then when explained how its used are saying well that's not how they thought..

Well that's up to you own presumptions.

 

[Gibbo]

The fact remains that when the card needs to use more than 3.5gb it suffers badly with stuttering and drops.

No amount of positive spin changes that, great card? best sub £300 card? All irrelevant if you can't use the advertised 4gb properly without running into issues.

Everyone knows Nvidia has pulled a fast one with their advertising which means every retailer has followed suit. 4gb? 256bit? Maybe but lets be honest it's not as simple as that and Nvida knew it.

They knew that people wouldn't upgrade from their 780's if it was advertised at 3.5gb.

Last post I promise!

Fact is NVIDIA could release a new driver and make all these performance issues go away.

Hence why I won't waste any more time posting here, people are getting wound up and upset over an issue which could be resolved by a software update or NVIDIA will make an official state/solution.

People just need to be patient, it is not life changing and the cards performance has not changed.

 

[Jinjur_v2]

i'd be careful what you post in, we're not interested in how good you're doing, more like how badly we've done..... you appear to be taking sides with Nvidia.

you gladly took our money and still are, ok you're entitled too, but i'd be a bit more tactful if i was you.

I know you are annoyed bud but hunting Gibbo isnt going to help us buddy.

 

[Gibbo]

Gibbo need any extra security at OcUK HQ? Give me a 980 per day and I'll come help out.

We've got 8 Pack!

 

[Stanners]

i'd be careful what you post in, we're not interested in how good you're doing, more like how badly we've done..... you appear to be taking sides with Nvidia.

you gladly took our money and still are, ok you're entitled too, but i'd be a bit more tactful if i was you.

O/T

Were you the guy in the varnish incident?

 

[Rangerjr1]

We are fully aware of this, NVIDIA need to either prove they have not miss-sold or admit they have.

When we have an update that is official we shall then inform our customers. This is our stance and final, we expect an official response today or by end of this week.

So to wait a couple of days is hardly the end of the world, the cards have not stopped performing over night and until this came to light 99.9% of customers had no issue and I am sure 99% are still happy. Those who are just on the band wagon or now all of a sudden not happy I am sure NVIDIA will have a solution to satisfy or will fix the issue.

It is not miss-advertised, the card has 4GB of usable RAM, this is fact, it is how the card works at addressing that RAM.


This is my last post until I have an official statement from NVIDIA, which will come by this Friday or sooner.

This is naive. I bet many people have noticed flaws in these cards before it the specs were exposed like this. Same fanboys who would fight tooth and nails to recommend these cards over 290s are now admitting that they have noticed stuff before this thread, i guess they were just too loyal to nvidia to admit these cards arent a god send by definition

 

[Sin_Chase]

Not at the given spec of the bandwidth , at over 3.5gb the bandwidth as a total is not there specd bandwidth . So there lieng about the bandwidth as well of that's the case

Has everyone glossed over ALL of the ground that has already been discussed to death?

Stop entering the thread 10s of pages late and posting the exact same incorrect information.

The peak memory bandwidth remains UNCHANGED. It is STILL 224GB/s when accessed as a full block. In fact, if you ignore the 0.5GB VRAM section and DO NOT ACCESS it peak bandwidth is actually lower, in the region of ~190GB/s.

So, the 0.5GB section of memory increases peak bandwidth, ignore it - you have less.

 

[PayneUK]

Stuff

Ok well thanks very much for the update and info, even if it's not what I want to hear right now

And regardless of what does happen I am confident that OCUK tried to do the best they could by their customers, and I will continue to use them in future.

 

[Gibbo]

i'd be careful what you post in, we're not interested in how good you're doing, more like how badly we've done..... you appear to be taking sides with Nvidia.

you gladly took our money and still are, ok you're entitled too, but i'd be a bit more tactful if i was you.

Were not taking sides, you have no idea what is going on behind the scenes, I've being on the phone to NVIDIA since 7am and I keep ringing and messaging them every 15 minutes.

We are doing far more than any other etailor or board partner to get a resolution or a fix.

So please don't tell me what to do.

 

[Lithium]

It seems clear cut to me, NVIDIA specs were incorrect. This has got nothing to do with reviews of 970's or the performance benchmarks.

This isn't OCUK's fault but it's clear they are towing the party line by claiming that the specs weren't incorrect in the first place.

I can understand why. If OCUK admit there was anything wrong with the spec they are then liable according to the sale of goods act and until NVIDIA take responsibility OCUK would be massively out of pocket and left trying to recoup costs from lots of different manufacturers of NVIDIA cards.

I suspect the only thing Nvidia will do is offer people a free voucher to download some B-grade game and hope it's enough to satisfy most people. It will take some sort of court action to get Nvidia to pony up any sort of cash and that will be up to the retailers, not the consumers, as consumer law in the UK puts the responsibility with the retailers.

All a bit of a fkcup honestly, not a good look for NVIDIA.

 

[Axil]

Could Gibbo or Bailey be able to help me with some info regarding RMAs

I have a MSI 970GTX purchased September from OcUK . Just before Xmas it developed an issue where the fans do not spin down after gaming. This appears to be erratic and driver dependent as some drivers only exhibit the behavior after heavy usage whereas other drivers it occurs after any spin up. I contacted MSI and after they attempted a fix via bios (didn't work) they've said I should contact the retailer.

With all the stuff going around about the 970GTX memory issues and RMA, Would the issue I'm having be considered RMA and if so How do I get a RMA number

Thanks in Advance

 

[james.miller]

Yeah, but they've omited important information that the maximum amount of ram is never available simultaneously.

Yes it is, you just have to read form either the firs chuck or the second, but it's all there.

Maxwell is the first architeture to enable this disabling and so they omited important information when advertising it as a gpu with 4gb of ram which is exactly the sort of thing the UK's consumer law's protects people from

No it isnt the 660ti and 550ti before that had a similar system in place.

 

[The Running Man]

It does have 4GB of addressable VRAM.



Where did you get this idea from? Yes, all 4GB can be accessed simultaneously. Nothing in the architecture prevents this.

did you read the revised reviews?

 

[RanxZy]

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..

AFAIK HDD manufacturers do state that not all of the storage space is usable.

 

[Sin_Chase]

Could Gibbo or Bailey be able to help me with some info regarding RMAs

I have a MSI 970GTX purchased September from OcUK . Just before Xmas it developed an issue where the fans do not spin down after gaming. This appears to be erratic and driver dependent as some drivers only exhibit the behavior after heavy usage whereas other drivers it occurs after any spin up. I contacted MSI and after they attempted a fix via bios (didn't work) they've said I should contact the retailer.

With all the stuff going around about the 970GTX memory issues and RMA, Would the issue I'm having be considered RMA and if so How do I get a RMA number

Thanks in Advance

Post in the Customer Services Section

 

[biuro74]

Fatal mistake that nVidia tries to cover now.
Explanations like 'this is still one of the fastest cards @ the market' is simply stupid, if not rude, because treating customers like unconscious mass of cashpayers.

Mistakes* should be paid for, but not by customers. Sorry & obviously. It appears they try to find some workaround in drivers, but one and only fair way is to announce a programme of cards exchange @ RTB basis. They should ammend this slow memory block at hardware level, but it will take months probably. Until this time, they should lower 970 price and sell it with no-return-because-of-3.5GB-memory-slowdown clause. New 970s should be sold under normal price later and should be differentiated somehow, like 970-2, 970 v2, 975 or something.
*Mistake is proven already as they confirmed all that stuff with SMDs, ROPs etc. Official statement is a matter of time, I think, because hardware "bug" cannot be covered with software based workaround, like new drivers in this particular case. Too much memory for buffering/allocating I think, if it were 128MB it would have a sense maybe.

Sometimes company has to accept losses and make one step back just to make another progress and take two steps forward. But not everyone knows that story...

 

[Sin_Chase]

did you read the revised reviews?

Yes, and all 4GB can be addressed. Just because it's not in a specific (read - ideal) way does not change the fact that it is a 4GB VRAM card.

Unless the card was advertised with 4GB of VRAM that COULD be used in a specific way.

The facts remain the same - The card is as advertised/described, at least on OcUK. Not seen other e-tailors product pages so wont comment.

 

[Aurhinius]

Were not taking sides, you have no idea what is going on behind the scenes, I've being on the phone to NVIDIA since 7am and I keep ringing and messaging them every 15 minutes.

We are doing far more than any other etailor or board partner to get a resolution or a fix.

So please don't tell me what to do.

Which is why most of us keep coming back

Plus lets not forget the great AMD deals Gibbo has put up

Best to just wait and see what nvidia say surely is an interesting time.

On another note they still haven't fixed the gsync flickering issue.....

Sorry that was off topic

 

[The Running Man]

Has everyone glossed over ALL of the ground that has already been discussed to death?

Stop entering the thread 10s of pages late and posting the exact same incorrect information.

The peak memory bandwidth remains UNCHANGED. It is STILL 224GB/s when accessed as a full block. In fact, if you ignore the 0.5GB VRAM section and DO NOT ACCESS it peak bandwidth is actually lower, in the region of ~190GB/s.

So, the 0.5GB section of memory increases peak bandwidth, ignore it - you have less.

why do you keep misrepresenting the truth?

"In the case of pure reads for example, GTX 970 can read the 3.5GB segment at 196GB/sec (7GHz * 7 ports * 32-bits), or it can read the 512MB segment at 28GB/sec, but it cannot read from both at once; it is a true XOR situation. The same is also true for writes, as only one segment can be written to at a time."

it cannot read at 224gb/s or write.

 

[ChrisD.]

We've got 8 Pack!

Yeah fair one, haha.