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

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Kaapstad said:
My guess is memory demands for the next few years will hit a bit of a plateau now that the next gen consoles are with us and probably won't spike again until the following generation of consoles.
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The 6 million $ question is will this generation of consoles have that plateau at >3.5 or >4GB?...and how long will it take to get to this plateau. This would make a significant difference to the value/longevity of these 3.5/4GB cards.

Is the smart money on a £319 8GB 290x...or a £200-300 3.5/4GB 970/290X...
if were at less than 3.5GB in a few years time then the 970 has got to win hands down in bang for buck, if we cross 3.5GB within a year then 4GB 290x would be better and if we cross 4GB within a couple of years then 8GB 290x looks like best bet.
Assuming you see value as "buy it and run in into the ground", rather than "trading up".

The only signpost i have seen is the technical press reporting that current gen consoles are capable of assigning more than 4GB of VRAM..but not that they would (likely or otherwise).
 
ginjaninja said:
The 6 million $ question is will this generation of consoles have that plateau at >3.5 or >4GB?...and how long will it take to get to this plateau. This would make a significant difference to the value/longevity of these 3.5/4GB cards.

Is the smart money on a £319 8GB 290x...or a £200-300 3.5/4GB 970/290X...
if were at less than 3.5GB in a few years time then the 970 has got to win hands down in bang for buck, if we cross 3.5GB within a year then 4GB 290x would be better and if we cross 4GB within a couple of years then 8GB 290x looks like best bet.
Assuming you see value as "buy it and run in into the ground", rather than "trading up".

The only signpost i have seen is the technical press reporting that current gen consoles are capable of assigning more than 4GB of VRAM..but not that they would (likely or otherwise).
Click to expand...


What you need to remember is that 4gb console port ends up needing more that 4gb on the pc lately with some devs. Personally i think any card with 4gb or less of Vram will have a short lifespan for the user who likes high resolutions/graphic detail. I'd agree if i wanted a long term rig atm 2+ 8gb 290x's would be my first choice
 
triss said:
What you need to remember is that 4gb console port ends up needing more that 4gb on the pc lately with some devs. Personally i think any card with 4gb or less of Vram will have a short lifespan for the user who likes high resolutions/graphic detail. I'd agree if i wanted a long term rig atm 2+ 8gb 290x's would be my first choice
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+1

Consoles are not much use at high resolutions.
 
I'm very impressed by what Gibbo has done for us and that OcUK is offering refunds for those who want them. I will be buying all my PC equipment from OcUK from now on, which I have not done in the past. However, I've just completed a major upgrade. The motherboard and CPU came from Amazon (another retailer who has dealt very fairly with me concerning returns in the past), the graphics card from OcUK.

I'm relieved that the news broke just in time for me to change my pre-order for an OcUK reference 970 to a 980. If I'd already received and installed the 970, I would have kept it as I think it would have been fine for playing at 1920x1200. However, I upgraded to a 980 because I didn't want to take the chance that I'd regret having purchased the 970 in 12 months' time. I think a lot of console ports will need 4GB of VRAM. I looked long and hard at the AMD 290X, but concluded that both the 970 and 980 would still suit my needs better. While the 290X is faster than a 970 at 4K, it's slower than a 970 at 1080p. It grated to spend more money with NVIDIA, but I felt I'd be cutting my nose off to spite my face if I bought a product that didn't fit my needs as well, just because it wasn't from NVIDIA.

I'm disgusted by the way that NVIDIA has behaved. I don't think they have a leg to stand on legally. It's clear to me that NVIDIA has engaged in false advertising. I suspect they may try arguing that they never advertised that the 970 had the same memory architecture as the 980, and that misinformation had been spread by third party reviews. For example, I just checked the review in Custom PC from when the 970 and 980 were launched. It reads, "Elsewhere, the full 4GB of GDDR5 memory again runs at 7GHz (effective) across the same 256-bit interface, and all 64 ROPs are intact too". We now know this statement to be false. However, Custom PC would have based their review on the reviewer's guide supplied by NVIDIA. Jonah Alben, NVIDIA's SVP of GPU Engineering has admitted that there was an error in the reviewer’s guide and a misunderstanding between the engineering team and the technical PR team on how the architecture itself functioned.
 
JamesEW said:
I really know little about gfx cards compared to most of you but i'm still unsure what to do. I'll most likely be gaming at 1080p but maybe higher at some point.

With this NVIDIA memory debacle, am I likely to encounter stutter and performances problems running at 1080p ultra settings for most new games? Is the 970 likely to hold its own for games coming out this year and next?

I, like most feel like i've made a bad purchase, but returning it isn't quite a viable option for my system
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I think the answer, if there is one, lies in your expected upgrade cycle. If you upgrade infrequently and will upgrade your monitor before your gpu, you might want to swap out for an 8gb 290x while the opportunity is there. If your PSU allows. Moving to AMD will potentially allow you to save a significant sum by getting a freesync monitor rather than a gsync one.

If you don't really know what or when you'll upgrade, it's probably best to stick with what you have. No one can predict the future but it seems likely that 8gb will be the way forward in the next year or two. At worst you'll have to turn a setting or two down and though I think this is a generally awful recommendation, your games are still not exactly going to look awful.

Either way, next time you come to upgrade, remember which company it was left you in this position and take it into account when making your next purchase.
 
Can't decide if it'll be worth upgrading to a 980 at 1080p... Though I may upgrade to 1400 later on this year..

The kfa2 980 just fits in my case, its 281mm and my case is 281mm. On sale too. Tempted!

Edit- is the kfa2 980 coming off sale any time soon? 399 is fairly cheap compared to the £500 ones
 
Andromeda1983 said:
With 4 x 290X's I could heat the entire village, i'll think ill pass and keep with my future 980 :D
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I leave my 4 x 290Xs on24/7 and they don't use a lot of electricity or produce a lot of heat, it is only when you put them under load with big volts that they throw out the heat. 4 x 980s can also produce a lot of heat and without looking it is hard to tell which system is running.
 
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