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

mrmyers1985 · 3 Feb 2015 at 12:57

Are they releasing a driver to sort the issue out or just leaving it now.

McGraw · 3 Feb 2015 at 12:58

melmac said:
I read this on a few forums and I went to ENB's facebook page too. Seems he has proved that their is only 3.5 GB of useable memory on the 970 and that once it reaches that 3.5GB it uses system ram. He says that all cards use a bit of system ram and that this use shoots up when they run out of VRAM. It happens after 3.5GB in the 970 and not 4GB like it should do if it did have 4GB.

What about the physical chip in this case? It's there, it exists on the card, is one of the memory chips a dud?

It's interesting reading anyway, not sure of how true/false any of it is though.

I would say the reason it isn't been discussed much is most people have decided what they are doing and the very helpful chaps at OCUK are making it easy to return if they want to.

Maybe I've missed something but have you read the official explanation from nVidia?

970's can only access the final .5gb at a much reduced speed.

Legend · 3 Feb 2015 at 13:00

Jarrastafari said:
Ah, excellent article and just what I wanted to know. Now I'm 100% on upgrading to 970 SLi. I thought it was people using settings that are higher than I'm fussed about which was causing this memory issue and the article warns of that. Thank you james

Bring on the second Infinity Black come April! Keep one in stock for me Gibbo

I'm unsure how you came away from reading that so certain the 970 SLI route is brilliant. I didn't think FPS was the issue anyway, rather people complaining of stuttering?

opethdisciple · 3 Feb 2015 at 13:02

mrmyers1985 said:
Are they releasing a driver to sort the issue out or just leaving it now.

I don't think there is much that can be done. It's a hardware limitation. There was a post by an Nvidia engineer saying something like they can put some parts of the driver overhead in to the 500mb partition leaving the 3.5gb for the graphics, but then this was retracted.

Wait and see, but I doubt there is anything magical they can do.

james.miller · 3 Feb 2015 at 13:08

McGraw said:
Maybe I've missed something but have you read the official explanation from nVidia?

970's can only access the final .5gb at a much reduced speed.

What ENB is saying is that the last 500mb is read from system ram, not the card. He says this can be proved by filling the the card's vram and dumping the last 500mb. apparently you can find that 500mb of data in the system memory.

Additionally, changing your system ram's speed has a direct effect on the rate that the last 500mb is read at which of course it really shouldn't.

DMF1986 · 3 Feb 2015 at 13:10

MrMD said:
Still havent responded to me either or approved my forum account so i can post asking what the situation is. A very poor show imo

Yeah over the phone mate

Orangey · 3 Feb 2015 at 13:20

Are you saying it's a pointer to system ram or what???

james.miller · 3 Feb 2015 at 13:22

Orangey said:
Are you saying it's a pointer to system ram or what???

I'm not sure what it is. It could be using system ram instead (bad) or the drivers could be shadowing the vram in system ram (not so bad...ish), I dont know but it's pretty bad if after all this it turns out nvidia lied again about the ram arrangement.

ED209 · 3 Feb 2015 at 13:28

pieman109 said:
Gonna be a bit difficult when shes staring at it checking her emails

twist it around and make it for her benefit and not yours, it just so happens to make your gaming experience better at the same time

"all the better to read your e mails with" lol

The Running Man · 3 Feb 2015 at 13:29

james.miller said:
What ENB is saying is that the last 500mb is read from system ram, not the card. He says this can be proved by filling the the card's vram and dumping the last 500mb. apparently you can find that 500mb of data in the system memory.

Additionally, changing your system ram's speed has a direct effect on the rate that the last 500mb is read at which of course it really shouldn't.

I read the links you posted. Perhaps he's right maybe that's just a driver big or issue?

Mei · 3 Feb 2015 at 13:30

melmac said:
I read this on a few forums and I went to ENB's facebook page too. Seems he has proved that their is only 3.5 GB of useable memory on the 970 and that once it reaches that 3.5GB it uses system ram. He says that all cards use a bit of system ram and that this use shoots up when they run out of VRAM. It happens after 3.5GB in the 970 and not 4GB like it should do if it did have 4GB.

What about the physical chip in this case? It's there, it exists on the card, is one of the memory chips a dud?

It's interesting reading anyway, not sure of how true/false any of it is though.

I would say the reason it isn't been discussed much is most people have decided what they are doing and the very helpful chaps at OCUK are making it easy to return if they want to.

proved using more than 1 benchmark i hope?
this stuff could so easily be explained by a bad benchmark
so aslong as thats ruled out, cool

if true sounds like a driver fault ><

Orangey · 3 Feb 2015 at 13:32

1 module is probably only a few bux.

Bailey · 3 Feb 2015 at 13:42

I would like to thank all the guys so far who have posted reviews on Trust Pilot.

I am glad that everyone is happy with the service we have been providing

If you need anything else you know where Gibbo and myself are.

Bailey

james.miller · 3 Feb 2015 at 13:44

Mei said:
proved using more than 1 benchmark i hope?
this stuff could so easily be explained by a bad benchmark
so aslong as thats ruled out, cool

if true sounds like a driver fault ><

Using Kai's benchmark, the one that started all this. Knock your system ram down and the last 500mb's transfer rate drops even further.

StrongSad · 3 Feb 2015 at 13:49

Bailey said:
I would like to thank all the guys so far who have posted reviews on Trust Pilot.

I am glad that everyone is happy with the service we have been providing

If you need anything else you know where Gibbo and myself are.

Bailey

How many packets of Haribo have been sent to you guy's n girls over the past few days?

Mei · 3 Feb 2015 at 13:50

james.miller said:
Using Kai's benchmark, the one that started all this. Knock your system ram down and the last 500mb's transfer rate drops even further.

well they need to show that it happens in other benchmarks and some games too or its just silly
so its not proven until then

Wartris · 3 Feb 2015 at 13:57

After everything that Overclockers have done as a whole (even more so because of Bailey and Gibbo), it's been a outright pleasure to do the review

Wartris

Bailey said:
Just an update for you guys

Out of all the ones we have sold in total I have just ran a report at this exact moment and we have had 149 Gtx 970's back for this issue.

So this is a tiny proportion to the amount we have sold, again it is a fantastic card at the end of the day.

I also hope that you guys are happy with us offering this service, and I want your RMA procedure to be as smooth as possible.

We hope that once the returns process is complete (or before) can leave your opinion on the service on Trustpilot please?

http://www.trustpilot.co.uk/evaluate/www.overclockers.co.uk

Thanks all

Bailey

ED209 · 3 Feb 2015 at 14:00

Bailey said:
I would like to thank all the guys so far who have posted reviews on Trust Pilot.

I am glad that everyone is happy with the service we have been providing

If you need anything else you know where Gibbo and myself are.

Bailey

no problem, after everything you and Gibbo have done filling them in is the least people could do.

james.miller · 3 Feb 2015 at 14:12

Mei said:
well they need to show that it happens in other benchmarks and some games too or its just silly
so its not proven until then

How would you reasonably prove that in game? I don't think you can - lowering the ram speed is naturally going to have a negative effect on ingame performance. Unless the increase in stuttering was measurably worse which I doubt it would be.

You would need to isolate the vram which is what kais benchmark was written for. Is there any other way?

africanos23 · 3 Feb 2015 at 14:18

Got banned for 2 days for that lame video, anyways I'm back.

Im trigger happy today and thinking of grabbing those custom GTX980s before I send my GTX970s back, but some rumours are brewing of the R9-380X releasing by the end of this month and being 40% faster.

Is there any ETA Gibbo or are we still looking at Q2-Q3 ?