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

[Gibbo]

What would I say to trading standards about the card?

Not much really, your in a hard place if the reseller wants to refuse.

I'd advice you simply give them a phone call and express your concerns and if they still refuse to help you out, just say you will be stating your mind publically on every forum out there, might make them re-consider.

But do bear in mind a single 970 really has no issue, superb card!

 

[Loque]

Of course, if it goes of offer, just quote my post here saying we shall still honour the £499 price for you!

OcUK wants to give the best CS, hey it is why I am still here keeping customers bang upto date on our forum.

Excellent stuff mate, much appreciated. I'll be spending the full 600 quid still. TWO price means I'll be able to afford a new case also.

 

[Legend]

Gibbo... as I was seriously considering the 970 SLI route for 1440p and ultra wide later on, would you say the 295X2 was the better option of the two now? I don't think my case will like x2 290X cards (H440), so I'm left with the decision of;

1) Another 970 Reference (ignoring the issue and hoping I have no problems)
2) A 290X 8GB single card (but with the understanding I'll likely run out of GPU grunt before I utilise all that memory anyway)
3) Single 980
4) 295 X2

 

[Gibbo]

Yup that confirms what I said. I wonder how many people actually know this though, given that they insure their packages etc.

Just gotta use common sense, if you paid around £7-£10 for next day delivery from the place of purchase, why would you be spending 3x that to return it?

Try different companies out there, I've shipped 4 wheels with tyres, via a palit next day delivery insured and it was like £41.00, so how on earth people are managing to spend £30 to ship a graphics card I've no idea, cost less to drive it to the supplier there and back in petrol.

 

[Wizzfizz]

all shipping cost come out of OcUK's own pockets, we are not covered for that. But it might be a few thousand tops but the grand scheme of things it is a tiny amount and what is far more important is keeping the customer happy and making this whole process as easy for the customer as possible.

yup, you're seeing the bigger picture in all of this. You might lose a few thousand now, but in the grand scheme of things you'll gain many many thousands back, not to mention new customers To make money, you invest money.

 

[Gibbo]

Gibbo... as I was seriously considering the 970 SLI route for 1440p and ultra wide later on, would you say the 295X2 was the better option of the two now? I don't think my case will like x2 290X cards (H440), so I'm left with the decision of;

1) Another 970 (ignoring the issue and hoping I have no problems)
2) A 290X 8GB single card (but with the understanding I'll likely run out of GPU grunt before I utilise all that memory anyway)
3) Single 980
4) 295 X2

1440P or less 970 SLI is hard to beat, the issue which the internet has blown out of proportion is no real issue, one game Dying light runs pretty crappy on any GPU then there is a handful of titles using more than 4GB of VRAM at such resolutions, 99% of the games on the market will run fine.

However, a 295 X2 is less likely to have suttering issues, but if you want to futureproof yourself more than a pair of 290X 8GB is the best solution really especially if you plan on going ultra-wide or 4k in the future.

 

[StrongSad]

Good point. But I wonder how many people would've held onto the 970 for that purpose especially knowing that next gen cards were coming through within the year.

It's interesting as it seems some people were using it as a stop-gap purchase, while others were future proofing their systems, especially to SLI them or at least have the option to.

The reason why I RMA'ed was because I was "future proofing" or at least making sure my Rig was good for a number of years should I still be able to use it.

I will be upgrading my monitor at some point down the road and wanted to feel comfortable that my set up would not disappoint if I did. I will not be upgrading my GPU in the near future. This was a 1 off purchase.

So yeah, I have taken a hit, got a 980 and I am now very happy that I have a system that will see me through for a number of years.

 

[Wizzfizz]

Just gotta use common sense, if you paid around £7-£10 for next day delivery from the place of purchase, why would you be spending 3x that to return it?

Try different companies out there, I've shipped 4 wheels with tyres, via a palit next day delivery insured and it was like £41.00, so how on earth people are managing to spend £30 to ship a graphics card I've no idea, cost less to drive it to the supplier there and back in petrol.

I spend just under £12 to return whatever to OcUK. That said, I don't take out extra insurance, as it costs a bomb and would mean going over that £12 limit. I also like my expensive parcels delivered soon as, so they aren't hanging around in the chain. Many people don't know about the £12 limit though.

 

[Gibbo]

Excellent stuff mate, much appreciated. I'll be spending the full 600 quid still. TWO price means I'll be able to afford a new case also.

Well we do have the largest case range on the internets being owned by Caseking and all that. OcUK Kings of VGA and Caseking Kings of cases!

Though were pretty good at everything else too!

 

[TheRealDeal]

Just gotta use common sense, if you paid around £7-£10 for next day delivery from the place of purchase, why would you be spending 3x that to return it?

Try different companies out there, I've shipped 4 wheels with tyres, via a palit next day delivery insured and it was like £41.00, so how on earth people are managing to spend £30 to ship a graphics card I've no idea, cost less to drive it to the supplier there and back in petrol.

Yea i was £11 with the Royal Mail using there next day special delivery service when i sent back my faulty 290 for rma.

 

[Legend]

1440P or less 970 SLI is hard to beat, the issue which the internet has blown out of proportion is no real issue, one game Dying light runs pretty crappy on any GPU then there is a handful of titles using more than 4GB of VRAM at such resolutions, 99% of the games on the market will run fine.

However, a 295 X2 is less likely to have suttering issues, but if you want to futureproof yourself more than a pair of 290X 8GB is the best solution really especially if you plan on going ultra-wide or 4k in the future.

Yes, I'd always planned for 970 SLI, but what's happened has made me rethink (perhaps needlessly). Seems the 295 X2 is going to offer similar performance, albeit older tech and I know AMD is not without its own niggles. My H440 case is the big concern with x2 290X 8GB cards, and is why I bought the 970 Reference in the first place, but clearly the 8GB cards would offer the most future proofing. Until the 3xx series is released anyway, but we've no idea what that will bring yet.

 

[Terrier_Jimlad]

Gibbo - would the RMA dept take back 2 x Gigabyte 970 G1 if one was purchased from OCUK and one from another etailer if 2 x Gigabyte 980 were to be purchased?

 

[Gibbo]

Gibbo - would the RMA dept take back 2 x Gigabyte 970 G1 if one was purchased from OCUK and one from another etailer if 2 x Gigabyte 980 were to be purchased?

Right now were giving our competitors a chance to do the right thing, so contact the competitor and push them hard. If in a couple of weeks all else fails we will look into it for you but the refund on the second one would be at second hand market value as all we would simply do is then b-grade it and sell it for what we paid for it.

But right now we can't do this as we have no process for taking stock back which is not originally ours, something I have our RMA/IT department having meetings about should other competitors decide not to standby their customers, so that OcUK can indeed come to the rescue.

 

[timorous]

What would I say to trading standards about the card?

I would say that the memory configuration is of a non standard design, there is nothing within the description of the card to indicate that it uses a non standard design and that this design has degraded performance in certain scenarios that the same specification using a standard design would not encounter. As such it is not as described and the retailer are refusing to refund you when they are bound by the SOGA to give you a refund.

Just to add in this case, simply because the specification is technically correct regarding 4GB ram and a 256bit memory bus does not mean it is not in breach of the sale of goods act as that specification has a common interpretation which matches the configuration found on the 980. As the way this specification is presented on the 970 matches the way it is presented on the 980 the indication is that it is using the same configuration. The fact that it does not use the same configuration requires that retailers place this information on the product description page as failing to do this still constitutes a breach of the act based on the fact it is missing important and relevant information. In short deception through omission is against the act in the same way outright false information is.

 

[Terrier_Jimlad]

Right now were giving our competitors a chance to do the right thing, so contact the competitor and push them hard. If in a couple of weeks all else fails we will look into it for you but the refund on the second one would be at second hand market value as all we would simply do is then b-grade it and sell it for what we paid for it.

But right now we can't do this as we have no process for taking stock back which is not originally ours, something I have our RMA/IT department having meetings about should other competitors decide not to standby their customers, so that OcUK can indeed come to the rescue.

Fair comment, one was ordered from a competitor as you guys sold them all too quickly lol

 

[Loque]

I would say that the memory configuration is of a non standard design, there is nothing within the description of the card to indicate that it uses a non standard design and that this design has degraded performance in certain scenarios that the same specification using a standard design would not encounter. As such it is not as described and the retailer are refusing to refund you when they are bound by the SOGA to give you a refund.

Yeah, this is probably the most accurate description of whats happened.

 

[pgi947]

May be some help to those running a pair of these at 1440, just some observations from my 780's, similar grunt, less vram then a 970.

Desktop use:

The usual's open, chrome, thunderbird, steam, origin, GFE, logitech software running, vram usage was around 600mb at idle use.

Closed the majority and got vram idle usage to 220mb, chrome it appears likes to allocate 2-300mb.

Shadow Of Mordor:

Vram usage sat happily at 3000-3030mb constantly, no hitches in frame rate which sat at a constant 100fps using the follow settings, ultra for everything besides texture quality, lighting quality and ambient occlusion which were all set to high, motion blur set to FXAA+Camera. I have played this at 'full ultra' before, it looks no different what so ever.

What I will say is this game appears to cache as much to the memory as possible, I can see it raising in 300mb or so chunks as the game loads. This could be why 970 users are reporting stutter, as it may be trying to allocate over 3500mb. Should be fixable via drivers if needed.

Far Cry 4:

Ubisofts latest crap fest...I couldn't get the vram to peak above 3000mb without going nuts and using 8xmsaa. Things that appear to produce a strange stutter (similar to that on launch day FC3 with multi cards)...

AA levels, all levels of MSAA & TXAA make the game stutter without noticeable frame rate drops.

Ultra textures, the grunt is there, vram isn't hitting its limit, yet stutters, drop them down to 'very high' and the game becomes instantly smoother.

SSAO, I found the game smoother moving this over to HBAO+ (Surprisingly).

Conclusion so far: Check whats being used at desktop level, you'd be surprised. For SoM, tweak the texture and lighting settings especially, both are vram heavy, ultra textures carries a 6GB recommendation at 1080!! FC4, play with all of the settings, this game is seriously bugged in many areas, vram usage doesn't appear to be one of them. Some areas its seems to report only using a single maxed out CPU core too.

Would love to hear how some one with a pair of 970's fairs on those games with those settings and vram usage, I will try some other games as and when I get time.

Final thought for the evening, with background processes using 2-500mb, could nvidia configure the driver to move those process to use the slower 0.5gb bank?

 

[jimmyjimmyo]

Right now were giving our competitors a chance to do the right thing, so contact the competitor and push them hard. If in a couple of weeks all else fails we will look into it for you but the refund on the second one would be at second hand market value as all we would simply do is then b-grade it and sell it for what we paid for it.

But right now we can't do this as we have no process for taking stock back which is not originally ours, something I have our RMA/IT department having meetings about should other competitors decide not to standby their customers, so that OcUK can indeed come to the rescue.

Might need to take you up on that as I am getting nowhere,

would it be possible to stick the value on a credit note? I sli @1440 at the moment but I have a 4k screen on route so I need to research my options or maybe hold out for the new ATI cards (DX12 hype ) either way I would need a ton of ram and crossfire

 

[easyrider]

Considering that gtx 980 was hitting 3.9 gb I reckon 8 gb 980 and 970 are in the pipeline

 

[~>Dg<~]

i actually think some people swopping to 290s are going to be a bit red faced.

better drivers from nvdia will just make the 970s pull slightly more ahead 290s.

8gb on a 290 is just for going 4k and if we honest 4k isn't now anyway. unless you playing with 4.

watch some of the newer games coming soon. think some people will be surprised how the 970 does.

Battlefield Hardline tomorrow for a start !

only issue with vram is from crap games = mainly ubisoft