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

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S2KIP said:
I'm yet to see any evidence of this effecting a game.

Unless someone can show otherwise?
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If someone wants to run the benchmark I posted above on a 970 and compare it to my 980 we will know fast enough as it is quite clear from the GPUZ screenshot I have posted that the full 4gb is being used. If there is a problem with the 970 and the VRAM, the score will tank and not get near what I have predicted for it.
 
S2KIP said:
I'm yet to see any evidence of this effecting a game.

Unless someone can show otherwise?
Click to expand...

For the vast majority they wont be running a game with the resolution and texture demands to cause the issue so from that point of view it's a minor issue. On the other hand the card is sold as '4gb' not '3.5gb + 0.5gb we nicked out the back of a mid 90's Sun PC'.
 
Is the benchmark any better than at release? Seemed pretty useless then with massive fluctuation at the start causing very low mins and/or very high max fps essentially messing up the end score.
 
kitch9 said:
Wow, after 2 weeks of investigation Nvidia have admitted "It's by design," and it doesn't matter apparently.
http://www.pcper.com/news/Graphics-Cards/NVIDIA-Responds-GTX-970-35GB-Memory-Issue

The next few days is going to be interesting as this gets pulled apart. Note Nvidias figures only show average fps which doesn't account for stuttery fps.

Looks like Nvidia of old is back.
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Sounds like lip-service from Nvidia. Personally wouldn't accept that "statement", although there is no source on pcper as to where that statement was from.

If that statement is directly from Nvidia then that personally isn't good enough. If i owned an Nvidia GPU, i wouldn't accept it.
 
S2KIP said:
I'm yet to see any evidence of this affecting a game.

Unless someone can show otherwise?
Click to expand...

Of course it will affect a game. The card sees 3.5gb which Nvidia claim is optimal. After that it has to access a secondary chunk of memory which runs like turd. So if a game uses more than the 3.5gb of optimal memory and has to dip into the .5gb pool you will see performance degradation.

thebennyboy said:
Sounds like lip-service from Nvidia. Personally wouldn't accept that "statement", although there is no source on pcper as to where that statement was from.

If that statement is directly from Nvidia then that personally isn't good enough. If i owned an Nvidia GPU, i wouldn't accept it.
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Yeah it's a lame cop out trying to duck the issue. God I'm so happy I bought Titans now.... 3.5gb of vram is lame nowadays.
 
stooeh said:
Is the benchmark any better than at release? Seemed pretty useless then with massive fluctuation at the start causing very low mins and/or very high max fps essentially messing up the end score.
Click to expand...

It is a lot better than it used to be for a single card but multi GPU support is not good.

For want we want to know it is fine as you can see from my run it used the entire 4gb of VRAM and the min and maximums were not too extreme.
 
Kaapstad said:
If someone wants to run the benchmark I posted above on a 970 and compare it to my 980 we will know fast enough as it is quite clear from the GPUZ screenshot I have posted that the full 4gb is being used. If there is a problem with the 970 and the VRAM, the score will tank and not get near what I have predicted for it.
Click to expand...

It would be good to see something.

dalin80 said:
On the other hand the card is sold as '4gb' not '3.5gb + 0.5gb we nicked out the back of a mid 90's Sun PC'.
Click to expand...

The card has 4GB no matter which way you look at it. PCs are sold as having 8GB of RAM, what does it matter if it has two 4GB DIMMs? GPUs have several memory ICs on them, the memory isn't one large chunk.

ALXAndy said:
Of course it will affect a game. The card sees 3.5gb which Nvidia claim is optimal. After that it has to access a secondary chunk of memory which runs like turd. So if a game uses more than the 3.5gb of optimal memory and has to dip into the .5gb pool you will see performance degradation.
Click to expand...

Of course? Show me the evidence.
 
thebennyboy said:
Sounds like lip-service from Nvidia. Personally wouldn't accept that "statement", although there is no source on pcper as to where that statement was from.

If that statement is directly from Nvidia then that personally isn't good enough. If i owned an Nvidia GPU, i wouldn't accept it.
Click to expand...

It took them 2 weeks of "investigation," and that is the best they can come up with. They are in full damage control mode.
 
S2KIP said:
It would be good to see something.



The card has 4GB no matter which way you look at it. PCs are sold as having 8GB of RAM, what does it matter if it has two 4GB DIMMs? GPUs have several memory ICs on them, the memory isn't one large chunk.



Of course? Show me the evidence.
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There's no point of denial now fella, the issue exists as per the horses mouth and there's nothing they can do about it.

The next few days as this thing gets pulled apart is going to be good.
 
ALXAndy said:
Of course it will affect a game. The card sees 3.5gb which Nvidia claim is optimal. After that it has to access a secondary chunk of memory which runs like turd. So if a game uses more than the 3.5gb of optimal memory and has to dip into the .5gb pool you will see performance degradation.
Click to expand...

You're essentially saying Nvidia isnt capable or can afford to ship the card as advertised (4gb) and not 3.5GB of fast actual GDDR5 and 500mb of some cheapo RAM just in case you run out of the first 3.5.

This just looks like a really bad attempt at justifying this horrible design flaw if you ask me.

Edit: Inb4 it was made like this to keep costs down. Well then Nvidia is straight up lying to their customers and basically scamming them.

1. Design flaw
2. Malicious behavior

Pick one sir.
 
fs123 said:
This is no drama. It is potentially a serious bug in the hardware which needs to be investigated. Unless you have a better method of testing please let us know but I for one won't simply leave it to Nvidia to come clean if there is a problem. It is up to the community to highlight this and forward any findings to the company.
Furmark is one way of testing and we need to find many others to make Nvidia take serious notice.


May I ask what graphics card you have please and what you experience was with the memory test I posted earlier? Should add to the thread.
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Lol, he's got them all. 4 of them all.
 
Mei said:
legally they cant admit blame
if they admit blame they could be forced to recall
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They won't have to recall, because legally the card does have 4gb of VRAM. So it's not like they're mis-selling the card like that.

The GPU itself accesses that 4gb in a odd way, and yeah it's like, totally crap, but the bottom line is there is 4gb there and the card can use it all (just not very well).

Basically? they've pulled a fast one. This is why the only thing I like about Nvidia are their drivers, and it ends there. This is a mid range GPU being sold as a high end one for a top end price.

BS? totally, but that's Nvidia for you.
 
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