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

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Legend said:
Nvidia have already said they are aware of the issue. Now, unless they turn around and say the same as what you're saying (i.e "stop complaining and enjoy your perfectly functional cards")... you're all going to look a bit silly and have egg all over your faces, because it is quite obvious to MOST people that there is a problem here.
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Who in this thread has said there is no problem ? Seriously, show me one post.
 
People bought 32-bit windows machines, rendering 0.5GB+ unusable.

This does remind me of the Nvidia FX release, where they completely messed up the pixel shader 2 implementation (though admittedly they sold far less of those). There was no recall, no returns and people still bought the 6000 series in their droves.
 
james.miller said:
Who in this thread has said there is no problem ? Seriously, show me one post.
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Come on, it's heavily implied by numerous people saying the card DOES have 4GB usable ram therefore Nvidia haven't done anything wrong and it's simply how that memory is utilised, therefore no one has a case or any recourse of action against them. Which I don't agree with. If any of that is true, Nvidia will soon be echoing the same and basically telling us to be quiet.
 
it does have 4gb! it just has a bug right now
the good news is if its fixed you should see more stable performance

im interested in the cause
 
Mei said:
it does have 4gb! it just has a bug right now
the good news is if its fixed you should see more stable performance

im interested in the cause
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Of course it has the RAM, I know that, but if you can't use it all and there's a big performance drop once you hit 3.5 (or less) in many instances, then that's a problem and effectively renders 0.5GB of your cards memory useless. Why do some people seem to be OK with this? The mind boggles. It needs a fix, simple as that. Hopefully that can be done via firmware.
 
ok fair enough 500mb of that is worthless right now
glass half full
if it gets fixed your benchmark scores go up
so it could be good news instead of bad

i duno im trying not to be all negative about it, ill leave that to the red v's green fights :o
 
Ok Legend.

* Nobody told you there isn't an issue here and nobody told you or even implied that you need to enjoy your 'perfectly functional card'. You just made that up. stop it.
* Nobody is *ok* with the idea of being to limited to 3.5gb i don't think. But, we don't know know enough about the issue. Clearly it's not just a case of fill ram = performance destroyed, because as i've shown i can run around in AC:u with 3.65gb used at 55-60fps. It's obviously more sporadic and difficult to pinpoint than that. I do believe Shiari is right when he said the issue would seem to be not when the ram is full, but when actively using that last few hundred mb of ram. This is an issue that we all want a fix for, ideally. I can only speak for myself here but personally I haven't run in to a show stopping issue because of this yet. However i dont run at 4k so i'm less likely to run out of ram before i run out of gpu power before people who do game at 4k - people like Kaap who have said all along that 4k performance is 'off'. Perhaps his problem is constantly hitting the active memory limit, not sure - he's better to answer that.

It's crazy to think the thread has managed to get this far and still people claim the memory isn't usable - even the benchmark shows otherwise! how can it test the memory if its not usable?! But anyway, we need to know more. Right now we dont and going wrong in circles is pretty dull tbh, so let's wait till we know more and/or try to find games/settings that clearly show the drop in performance in a way that removes other variables like having to increase resolution to push the memory over the limit etc.
 
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If that benchmark/test turns out to be accurate/reliable, one thing that bothers me just as much as not being able to use that last XXX amount of memory, is that the bandwidth for the 970 is that much lower.

That's not something I would have expected. I would have though the 970 and 980 at same memory speed should provide the same bandwidth - they are both supposed to have the same 256 bit bus.
 
Just a thought and don't know if it has been covered yet but Aero does use a chunk of VRAM and maybe that isn't being read by AB? So basically, you are seeing 3.9GB being used in AB but because Aero uses around 250MB (iirc), it isn't seeing that and your actual usage is 4.15?

Just a thought.
 
james.miller said:
It's crazy to think the thread has managed to get this far and still people claim the memory isn't usable - even the benchmark shows otherwise! how can it test the memory if its not usable?!
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Are you being deliberately obtuse or what?

IF the test is accurate, yes the memory is there, yes the memory is addressable, but the performance when accessing it drops off to such an extent that it's not usable for any real-world application.
 
Gregster said:
Just a thought and don't know if it has been covered yet but Aero does use a chunk of VRAM and maybe that isn't being read by AB? So basically, you are seeing 3.9GB being used in AB but because Aero uses around 250MB (iirc), it isn't seeing that and your actual usage is 4.15?

Just a thought.
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Which is why the benchmark should be run when using the igpu for the display.

Guru3d has picked up on it and are verifying the results. This issue only affects the 970,not the 980 they reckon.
 
james.miller said:
It's crazy to think the thread has managed to get this far and still people claim the memory isn't usable - even the benchmark shows otherwise! how can it test the memory if its not usable?! But anyway, we need to know more. Right now we dont and going wrong in circles is pretty dull tbh, so let's wait till we know more and/or try to find games/settings that clearly show the drop in performance in a way that removes other variables like having to increase resolution to push the memory over the limit etc.
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I think you're imagining things have got more carried away than they actually have. I have always said we know nothing until we hear something concrete from Nvidia... we're in the dark until then. I am also not a tech expert, but when you see numerous (apparently legit GPU isolated) benchmarks showing massive memoery performance drop off at 3.5GB on these cards, that clearly points to an issue. OK, maybe 4GB is "usable" (in the loosest definition of the word), but if there's big performance drops before you reach that in many cases, some games will obviously suffer, and this is a bad thing of course. You seem to be suggesting I'm overreacting and calling everyone to arms and baying for Nvidia's blood... I am not... but I do see every reason to keep the flames of this issue well stoked so as to, if nothing else, ensure a prompt and satisfactory response from Nvidia. We all want that at least!
 
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BF4 @4k 4xAA 3.6GB VRAM....no issues.

The lowest frame rate i saw was in the low 40's when multiple explosions were on screen, but mem usage was still around the 3.6GB, so it was just normal performance loss you'd expect at 4K.

Qxmb.png
 
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eyetrip said:
If that benchmark/test turns out to be accurate/reliable, one thing that bothers me just as much as not being able to use that last XXX amount of memory, is that the bandwidth for the 970 is that much lower.

That's not something I would have expected. I would have though the 970 and 980 at same memory speed should provide the same bandwidth - they are both supposed to have the same 256 bit bus.
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down to the disabled SMMs i guess, must just be the way the hardware is designed. My card runs at 1440/2000 yet its still some way short of the (im assuming!) stock 980 in the original benchmark screenshot.

eyetrip said:
Are you being deliberately obtuse or what?

IF the test is accurate, yes the memory is there, yes the memory is addressable, but the performance when accessing it drops off to such an extent that it's not usable for any real-world application.
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No, i'm not:o there's a big difference between being able to use the memory and the performance hit you get from constantly accessing that area of memory. As i've shown, i can load past 3.6gb usage and have no issues so that memory CAN be used, but if my gpu was constantly accessing that region of memory then performance would most likely tank. So no, i'm not being obtuse - there's a clear difference.


regarding iGPUs; I tried it, benchmarked my 970 headless but made no difference to my results. Still tanks in the benchmark after 3.2gb (yes, 3.2gb) for me. No such issue found in gaming yet.
 
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