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

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I'm a busy boy and dont have time for patience or being miss sold



Well if that's the case its not miss sold and lesson learned always read the small print on anything I buy but I would be surprised if that's true as I am majorly anal about choosing pc parts and usually read up on everything for hours on end

The memory isn't being taken up by the os, it's being actively avoided by the drivers until there is nowhere else it can go.
 
Gibboo, I bought 2 Inno3D 970's (mini ones) from OCUK, I melted the original heatsinks with liquid metal TP and am now running them with Accelero Mono coolers (Sooo much better). The original coolers are in the bin.

Would the cards have to be stock?

Yes we can't take modified stuff back unless you can return to stock before returning, sorry.
 
Gibbo, I bought 2 Inno3D 970's (mini ones) from OCUK, I melted the original heatsinks with liquid metal TP and am now running them with Accelero Mono coolers (Sooo much better). The original coolers are in the bin.

Would the cards have to be stock?

PS. I dont want to return them, just wondered what the stance will be :)

yes. in boxed also im guessing

edit: too late :)
 
I can answer that :p you couldn't return those cards since they have been modified from the original product.

Just edited my comment as I quoted the wrong person, oops. And also added I dont actually want to return them anyway, they are great and I run 1440p!

Although I am looking out for some stock inno3D coolers for warranty reasons but OCUK and Inno3D have been less than helpful :)
 
Thanks to Gibbo and OCUK for their exemplary customer service regarding this issue.

I still love my 970, and I hope that driver fixes end up smoothing this over.
 
Gibbo, I bought 2 Inno3D 970's (mini ones) from OCUK, I melted the original heatsinks with liquid metal TP and am now running them with Accelero Mono coolers (Sooo much better). The original coolers are in the bin.

Would the cards have to be stock?

PS. I dont want to return them, just wondered what the stance will be :)
Sorry but thats a definite no if a return was your question. Mind if i ask, were the original coolers aluminium? Ive heard that liquid metal can be pretty severe on it. Ive only ever used it on cpu's.
 
Any chance there can be an announcement made on this forum to sum up 213 pages of comments from this thread?

Essentially what the issue is, what the performance cost is, what cards you are currently allowing to be refunded, etc? I've seen mention of a possible driver 'fix' from Nvidia?

I'll be keeping my MSI because for the price, it's still a stonking card and I have no plans for 4K gaming. Infact I may be looking at a 2nd card if there is going to be B-Grade stuff appearing.

Took me a while to get up to speed so I'm sure others would benefit from that suggestion.

Essentially the memory is being divided into two 'chunks' - 3.5GB and 0.5GB. The 0.5GB is "reserved" until the 3.5 is filled. At which point the 0.5 is also used. The 0.5 chunk has a slower bandwidth (by quite a margin).

Real-world results shows frame timing to be off, but hard FPS results show only 1-3% drop. YMMV.

Unfortunately the design of this was not disclosed to reviewers or retailers and therefore was never mentioned when people made their purchases.
 
Anyone care to do a recap - left this thread yesterday at 112 pages and haven't the time or inclination to read another 30+ pages of FUD interspersed with some actual facts.
 
Just edited my comment as I quoted the wrong person, oops. And also added I dont actually want to return them anyway, they are great and I run 1440p!

Although I am looking out for some stock inno3D coolers for warranty reasons but OCUK and Inno3D have been less than helpful :)

I'm not sure what Inno3D's warranty terms are, you could have voided it already by changing the stock cooler.
 
First and foremost, thanks Gibbo for keeping the masses informed on what is going on, I have a gigabyte G1 and would like to know what options I have. It is disappointing that this card was about the most expensive and the brand one of the biggest, and yet they are slow to respond. A new thread would be good to lay out what the options are for the different brands without all the FUD. lets see how this plays out but I think it will be GALAX or EGVA for me next time.
 
First and foremost, thanks Gibbo for keeping the masses informed on what is going on, I have a gigabyte G1 and would like to know what options I have. It is disappointing that this card was about the most expensive and the brand one of the biggest, and yet they are slow to respond. A new thread would be good to lay out what the options are for the different brands. lets see how this plays out but I think it will be GALAX or EGVA for me next time.

Yes a new locked thread or sticky that is only facts regarding OCUKs stance on the 970 issues ie returns, upgrades would be good.
 
Hi, I've only just came across this issue and since I recommended a Titan Machete with a GTX 970 and 450W PSU for a friend, I want to figure out what the options are for him. From what I am hearing, the issues seem to arise when utilising more than 3.5 GB VRAM. So I guess you need to be running at very high graphical settings, e.g. 1440p or 4k, before you see stuttering.

My current line of thinking is that the issue is not that intrusive because he games at 1080p. However future games might cause problems and that's the big worry. I am sort of leaning towards waiting for a driver from NVIDIA. But who knows how long that could take nor would they even be successful. Has there been any word on what NVIDIA are planning to do driver-wise? Like, for example, excluding the last 0.5 GB of VRAM?

He already paid about £1000 for the PC so I doubt he would want to fork out an extra £150 for a GTX 980. I was thinking of the AMD option, an R9 290X, but he would need a new PSU and possibly a new case wouldn't he?

My friend won't be back from a business trip for another week and a half, so I won't suggest his options until he is back. So if Gibbo or any of the CS team are reading this, I hope you are also formulating a contingency plan for the people who bought a prebuilt PC with a GTX 970.
 
We are still waiting unfortunately.

But we can announce already, that we will take back the OcUK branded 970, the one with genuine 970 cooler should customers wish to return, because for us customer is king. We are working on solutions for card owners of other brands. We won't leave you alone, our customers are king. :)

Awesome customer service from OcUK, Gibbo.

I changed my pre-order for an OcUK 970 to a 980 earlier this week. The 980 arrived yesterday, and I'm very pleased with it.
 
Hi, I've only just came across this issue and since I recommended a Titan Machete with a GTX 970 and 450W PSU for a friend, I want to figure out what the options are for him. From what I am hearing, the issues seem to arise when utilising more than 3.5 GB VRAM. So I guess you need to be running at very high graphical settings, e.g. 1440p or 4k, before you see stuttering.

My current line of thinking is that the issue is not that intrusive because he games at 1080p. However future games might cause problems and that's the big worry. I am sort of leaning towards waiting for a driver from NVIDIA. But who knows how long that could take nor would they even be successful. Has there been any word on what NVIDIA are planning to do driver-wise? Like, for example, excluding the last 0.5 GB of VRAM?

He already paid about £1000 for the PC so I doubt he would want to fork out an extra £150 for a GTX 980. I was thinking of the AMD option, an R9 290X, but he would need a new PSU and possibly a new case wouldn't he?

My friend won't be back from a business trip for another week and a half, so I won't suggest his options until he is back. So if Gibbo or any of the CS team are reading this, I hope you are also formulating a contingency plan for the people who bought a prebuilt PC with a GTX 970.

It's 99% that he will never experience an issue m8, personally I'd let sleeping dogs lie :)
 
Is there any news on NVidia response to the problem?

Nope, like I said before I believe they'll just bury their heads in the sand now and let their reputation take a battering...

OcUK/Caseking and their partners seem to be the only ones taking the initiative atm. I think Gibbo is the only one who realises that most of us floating around in this thread/forum are the very grass-roots when it comes to tech, and what we tend to say/recommend to others spreads around :)

Most astute :cool:
 
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Sorry but thats a definite no if a return was your question. Mind if i ask, were the original coolers aluminium? Ive heard that liquid metal can be pretty severe on it. Ive only ever used it on cpu's.

Of course I dont mind, yes aluminium coated it seems, and I am not joking the damage to one was unbelievable to the point the screws that went into the HS/FAN to hold it on to the GPU no longer had a thread, I looked and each mounting point had just dissolved, the LM had turned it into a sandy substance, the lower card was a bit better and I managed to Dremel it off and it was OK. I was still getting 70c+ under load from that card, I bought an Accelero Mono(No longer manufactured) from Germany to fit to the card as the inno3D mini is non ref, this one had the the totally bust HS/F and wow, using Arctic MX-4, the temps are incredible, and it was at the top, idle at 23c and load never above 60c, which means no throttling. Bought another for the lower and have never looked back, My cards never go above 60c, and never throttle, performance is stellar!!

Don't EVER do this!! I have been modding and over clocking since 166Mhz days and this is the first real screw up I've ever had!! (I'm 41 BTW)
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Back and better than ever!!
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They are weighty so I'm supporting the lower card with...some old green luminance dye I used to use when I had water cooling lol, it fit the job!!
 
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I am in meetings and also trying to grab something to eat. We're doing more on this than anyone else for something were not to blame for, so patience.

I totally appreciate that Gibbo and I'm sorry if I have come across a bit rude, its a combination of sifting through all the crap in this thread to get to the important information and typing a reply on my phone whilst on my lunch break

I'm also trying to monitor the thread for an update on the gigabyte cards whilst working but I'm really busy and because there is so much useless rubbish being spewed in here its difficult

Again I appreciate what you're doing and look forward to an update from Gigabyte
 
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