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

[Squink]

They will apologies and that will be about it. Don't expect a decent fix or a refund of any sort you're simply not getting one. We will just have to deal with it.

I'm just an interested spectator who doesn't like to see the little guy trampled by multi-multi million pound corporations. I have no brand loyalty and don't own a 970.

 

[Rangerjr1]

Well if I get a refund I probably go for another 290 or X version with custom cooler, because other than the heat, the 290 fan noise drove me insane too.

Either that or remove my 2gb 770 from the 'shed' PC until next generation cards come out.

I heard the Powercolor PCS+ is a good for air cooling, so is the Lightning, but dont expect more from the lightning than a better cooler

 

[MasterOC]

Hi Guys,

I’m Rick, a Product Manager for NVIDIA based here in the UK. Although I read the Overclockers forums a lot and work with the guys here, this is my first post.

I want to just start by saying sorry, we messed up.
We posted the wrong GTX 970 spec and we did not fully explain the memory architecture, and I get why you guys are so annoyed.

However, I feel the GTX 970 is still an amazing card and one we are really proud of and I believe it is still the best card you can buy for the money.

If you’ve got any specific questions I’ll do my best to answer them.

Thanks
Rick

thanks for taking the time out to at least make this your first post.
All most of us are looking for is clarification , you sold us a product ultimately enticing us away from the competition , Whilst most agree the cards are still great, there just not what we purchased and in some cases have actually gave us a worse experience had we had gone with the competition . In light of this are we entitled to either A. Our money back , B. step up facilities , C. Sod all ?

 

[StrongSad]

If you’ve got any specific questions I’ll do my best to answer them.

Thanks
Rick

Hi Rick

Seeing that the performance on the card is in effect reduced.

1) How do Nvidia propose to resolve this to the satisfaction of the community as a whole.

2) Does Nvidia see this as RMA for those who wish to take that route, with a full refund or credit towards another Nvidia product?

3) Will the Nvidia enforce All product packaging is amended to meet the new specifications of the card by all OEM?

Cheers

 

[ubersonic]

I'm sure everyone appreciates the apology Rick, but you do realise that this is against Consumer Law in the UK/EU don't you??

Technically it isn't, they never supplied incorrect information to consumers or retailers, it was supplied to tech websites who included the info in their reviews. Some consumers may have based their purchase on reviews they had read containing this info but it doesn't actually break any law (in fact if it was a genuine error it doesn't even break any ethics).

 

[P0tenc]

Hi Guys,

I’m Rick, a Product Manager for NVIDIA based here in the UK. Although I read the Overclockers forums a lot and work with the guys here, this is my first post.

I want to just start by saying sorry, we messed up.
We posted the wrong GTX 970 spec and we did not fully explain the memory architecture, and I get why you guys are so annoyed.

However, I feel the GTX 970 is still an amazing card and one we are really proud of and I believe it is still the best card you can buy for the money.

If you’ve got any specific questions I’ll do my best to answer them.

Thanks
Rick

Hi Rick, thanks for taking note of the issue we are experiencing here and elsewhere.

Some of us feel misled because of the fiasco. Personally I am disappointed because I wanted to purchase another GTX 970 this week for SLI, along with a G-Sync monitor. This was my upgrade path all along.

Sadly this all now falls into question as the card essentially only has 3.5GB of good fast vram. The bottom line for me is that I wanted at least (as a minimum) 4GB of good vram for that setup to work properly for any length of time.

Ultimately my purchase decision would have been a GTX 980 if this information was known, as it should have been from the start.

My question is what will Nvidia do for people like me who now feel that a refund is the only way forward?

 

[LambChop]

thanks for taking the time out to at least make this your first post.
All most of us are looking for is clarification , you sold us a product ultimately enticing us away from the competition , Whilst most agree the cards are still great, there just not what we purchased and in some cases have actually gave us a worse experience had we had gone with the competition . In light of this are we entitled to either A. Our money back , B. step up facilities , C. Sod all ?

Everything you said is hearsay.

Imo, no-one is getting their money back, no-one is getting a step up but 970 owners will get a driver update to resolve issues with memory and performance.

 

[KillBoY_UK]

It's good that Nvidia think it's an amazing card.

Just a bit of a bummer then that those who bought them don't feel the same way.

That post is useless and offers those who stumped up three hundred sheets absolutely nothing apart from a confession it was falsely advertised.

Come on now, do the right thing. At least Intel did with the Sandy chipset.

The sandy issue was a little different, the issue was a nutshell was that the Sata ports could stop working, a fault/silicon bug.

The 970 at best was mishandling of the official specs at worse lying, neither of which changes the cards performance or how it works before or after this stuff came out.

That being said nVidia should offer something, free games a discounted upgrade to a 980 or allow people to do a refund. A full product recall and replacement like with the Cougar Point issue would be utter overkill.

This would have been less of an issue if the spec sheet was correct and they marketed (in terms of the dual vram pools) and made clear this was a feature to allow more ram than would normal be alowed with a card with buss it has. I’m thinking like how Nivida's turbocache or AMD's hypermemory was marketed back in the day on their low end cards.

 

[Jinjur_v2]

Everything you said is hearsay.

Imo, no-one is getting their money back, no-one is getting a step up but 970 owners will get a driver update to resolve issues with memory and performance.

Driver update wont resolve that

you know that

so why post this?

 

[humbug]

@ Rick, welcome to the forum

When your PR Team looked at the 970 specifications list for Reviewers and it said "ROP Count" what did the your engineers say should go there? was it 64 or 56?

I'm just interested in the trail of communication between your engineers and PR; how the number 56 could be mistaken for 64.

Also, since the card's release not one of your Ten Thousand Employees spotted the error? and who wrote the BIOS for System readouts? the PR team?

 

[eyetrip]

Everything you said is hearsay.

Imo, no-one is getting their money back, no-one is getting a step up but 970 owners will get a driver update to resolve issues with memory and performance.

But, end of day, nobody really cares about your opinion.

It's just pity we can't stop you sharing it.

 

[Wizzfizz]

Humbug swallowed a Yoda?

 

[The Running Man]

Technically it isn't, they never supplied incorrect information to consumers or retailers, it was supplied to tech websites who included the info in their reviews. Some consumers may have based their purchase on reviews they had read containing this info but it doesn't actually break any law (in fact if it was a genuine error it doesn't even break any ethics).

Given that the architecture and methods are newly employed here in Maxwell, don't you think that someone in technical would have said lets make sure technical marketing know the difference between the two cards (980 and 970) and ensure we check to get the spec right before we sign off the datasheet?

This isn't a company releasing hundreds of products that need sign off a day, this was the biggest launch since the titans or 780 ti.

Someone technical must have read a review and still kept quiet, so they had 2 chances to ensure correct info was supplied well before xmas.

 

[MasterOC]

Everything you said is hearsay.

Imo, no-one is getting their money back, no-one is getting a step up but 970 owners will get a driver update to resolve issues with memory and performance.

why is hearsay , im one of those who was debating a 290 crossfire vs 970 SLI at the time. specficly with higher res in mind. Powerconsumption pulled me over , but I didn't expect to have an abnormal 256bit bus and 4GB ram design

 

[ElliotHand]

Technically it isn't, they never supplied incorrect information to consumers or retailers, it was supplied to tech websites who included the info in their reviews. Some consumers may have based their purchase on reviews they had read containing this info but it doesn't actually break any law (in fact if it was a genuine error it doesn't even break any ethics).

Your point is wrong which is why Rick's apologised.

Either the listing of 4gb is considered false or deceptive messaging, which would be a breach of the trading regulations.

Or they left out important information, that the 4gb actually = 3.5+0.5gb at different speeds, and so they are in breach of the trading regulations that protect consumers in the uk.

https://www.gov.uk/marketing-advertising-law/regulations-that-affect-advertising

 

[pandem0nium]

Dual GPU solutions are marketed as double the amount of vram, when only half that amount is actually usable. It is misleading yeah, but as the cards do have that total vram I don't think you would have a leg to stand on if you tried to return it.

If the retailer listed the specification of the card as having the incorrect number of rops when you bought it, that is false advertisement. If they listed it as having 4gb of ram that operates at the full speed, then that could be argued as well.

 

[Andi-C]

Wow... What a load of rubbish is in this thread ! I feel sorry for retailers selling this card, they didn't know about it when they sold them, same as the end user ? Looks like your gonna have to wait & see what the out come is rather than speculation... I'm off to buy a 980...

 

[randal]

I think it would make more sense for Rick to have his own Q and A thread at this point, for ease and for relevance. Otherwise his responses are going to get lost.

 

[deuse]

@ Rick, welcome to the forum

When your PR Team looked at the 970 specifications list for Reviewers and it said "ROP Count" what did the your engineers say should go there? was it 64 or 56?

I'm just interested in the trail of communication between your engineers and PR; how the number 56 could be mistaken for 64.

Also, since the card's release not one of your Ten Thousand Employees spotted the error? and who wrote the BIOS for System readouts? the PR team?

This should be good...pop corn time.

 

[ED209]

Hi Guys,

I’m Rick, a Product Manager for NVIDIA based here in the UK. Although I read the Overclockers forums a lot and work with the guys here, this is my first post.

I want to just start by saying sorry, we messed up.
We posted the wrong GTX 970 spec and we did not fully explain the memory architecture, and I get why you guys are so annoyed.

However, I feel the GTX 970 is still an amazing card and one we are really proud of and I believe it is still the best card you can buy for the money.

If you’ve got any specific questions I’ll do my best to answer them.

Thanks
Rick

Hello Rick,

thanks for taking the time to come on to the forums and answer any questions anyone has. nice to see OCUK and Nvidia on here helping out