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

[tobehfaic]

See now I'm in the predicament where I have one of the reference 970's on pre-order and awaiting stock, but not sure whether to call and cancel and order a 290x or splash a bit more dollar on a 980.

Reason it's a predicament is I'm not sure if I'm gonna head to 1440p in the near future, probably not but I'd like that security that I know it won't choke in the near future too. I also would need a reference design 980/290x as my chassis is a Corsair Air 240 and my current GTX 770 is starved for air as a non-ref card and climbs to 81 degrees superquick.

So theres the rub, do I pay more and hit up a 980 Ref, or sidestep to 290x Ref, or just stick with a Ref 970?

So much fearmongering about it's hard to make a sound decision without doubt :|

 

[fordypaul]

This thread needs locking, its now trashed, a OCUK sticky on their stance should do it fine now.

 

[easyrider]

So you sent the card back before you even had problems? I understand you need to justify your sidegrade, blimey...jump the gun much?

The funny thing with your whole premise, the card you bought is the same from all the reviews that were posted before release, the ones you probably used to base your purchase decisions on. That being, you got what you paid for

I bought the 970 to buy another for sli when I will be upgrading my monitor to to the new 1440p IPS 144hz acer monitor coming in March.

Now I find the 970 is no good for 1440 p...so my upgrade path was compromised....

What don't you get?

 

[Tonester0011]

You could have just said yes, nothing to BE embarrassed about.
So what, you returned the card before you even had problems. Jump on that band wagon, tell everyone else who doesn't send cards back mugs, because...clearly...they are.

 

[P0tenc]

Currently I only play at 1200p, I've thought long and hard about this, but in the last couple of days I've decided to return mine.

I was going to upgrade to a 1440p G-Sync monitor in the coming months and go the SLI route, to me it makes common sense now to just return the card. I'll be going FreeSync, and purchase AMD cards instead.

Nvidia GPU's usually hold their value when it comes to second hand, I think the GTX 970 will not, time will see, returning the card for a full refund is hard to refuse in light of the situation.

We sir are in exactly the same boat. If this news broke out a little later I would now be sitting with a G-Sync monitor and most likely another GTX 970...I would have been so mad!

Just dodged a bullet there.

 

[easyrider]

You could have just said yes, nothing to BE embarrassed about.
So what, you returned the card before you even had problems. Jump on that band wagon, tell everyone else who doesn't send cards back mugs, because...clearly...they are.

Now you're Trolling

Currently I only play at 1200p, I've thought long and hard about this, but in the last couple of days I've decided to return mine.

I was going to upgrade to a 1440p G-Sync monitor in the coming months and go the SLI route, to me it makes common sense now to just return the card. I'll be going FreeSync, and purchase AMD cards instead.

Nvidia GPU's usually hold their value when it comes to second hand, I think the GTX 970 will not, time will see, returning the card for a full refund is hard to refuse in light of the situation.

That was exactly my situation aswell mate...now going freesync so hoping some juicy new monitors arrive in March

 

[Coolasmoo]

That was exactly my situation aswell mate...now going freesync so hoping some juicy new monitors arrive in March

Me too, I am looking forward to the new Acer in March

Hope to keep the 3d vision side of things also if its compatible.

 

[Nelly]

We sir are in exactly the same boat. If this news broke out a little later I would now be sitting with a G-Sync monitor and most likely another GTX 970...I would have been so mad!

Just dodged a bullet there.

That was exactly my situation aswell mate...now going freesync so hoping some juicy new monitors arrive in March

Chances are, AMD will launch a new 'Never Settle' gaming rewards in the months to come, just have to be patient, I'm in no rush to buy cards just yet.

If going Crossfire, that will shave off a good few quid with the games being new releases. I can play a number of platform games with onboard graphics to tide me over.

Hopefully an IPS/VA 144Hz with FreeSync 27" is what I want. I'm not sure when I'll buy another Nvidia card, if I ever will.

 

[CraigGB]

I've seen so much talk about VRAM lately and is 3.5GB or 4GB enough

one thing I've noticed is a lot of people saying oh what about in the future when VRAM requirements increase as new games come out, however something I haven't seen mentioned is usually for the card you own VRAM usage drops as time goes on and new games come out and this is the explanation!

one of the biggest uses of VRAM is AA, it will fill it up a lot, in my experience it is the biggest use by far and when you first get a new card you turn it right up to maximum, however new games come out with better graphics and visual effects so it uses more raw power, however to keep those high framerates but to use the high/max settings as I think most people do you normally drop AA as it also one of the biggest framerate killers so less of that VRAM is used and more raw power is used for the pretties.

in my experience anyway you end up using less VRAM as time goes on as you are turning down the VRAM intensive settings to keep the game looking nice

and then at some point you will eventually upgrade

 

[Wrinkly]

Developers don't need to, the drivers sort it out, important stuff like games goes in the 3.5 and unimportant stuff like Windows UI, Chrome, Battle.net, etc goes in the 0.5 section.

I have both 970 and 290 rigs, the real world difference is only a few hundred MB as the 290 has to put all that stuff in its good RAM.

Before this issue was reported I liked my 970 rig more, today I don'the like it as much but I still like it more.

Last I read supposedly from Nvidia was that the 970 will be receiving no specific driver updates for this issue.

All video cards should be keeping "all that stuff" in Vram until that Vram is needed for the foreground task. It's just how Windows works, it's more efficient to do so. There is no real world difference. My 290 also appears to disable Aero / page out unnecessary data when under high Vram usage only without the slow downs. There is a post on here regarding CUDA rendering stating poor performance until the developer released a patch for the 970s. That patch had to treat the 970 as a 3.5GB card to restore performance. DX12 with direct access to hardware may also need the developers consider the 970s memory architecture to prevent the same problems that we have now under DX10/11.

If the 970's issue was down to just a bad driver then Nvidia would have fixed it by now.

I like the fact that the 970 runs 5C less with more FPS than my 290 but that does not out weigh the 970's stutter and slow downs.

 

[uroboros]

Was about to get a 970 just as this all kicked off but luckily my new motherboard was faulty delaying the gpu purchase. Must admit that how nvidia has handled this is appalling so will wait and see what the AMD 3 series cards are like. Looks like I'll be using the laptop a while longer for PC gaming now.

 

[Wrinkly]

Why single me out?

Was not my intent to single you out hence fan boys.

 

[Gregster]

Was not my intent to single you out hence fan boys.

But you said "Why are you posting in here when you don't appear to have a 970" but there is many people doing that in many different threads. Should people only be allowed to post in threads that they own that particular piece of equipment?

I also have no issue with fanboys and if they prefer a brand over another, that is their choice.

 

[Aurhinius]

To be honest unless someone directly asks for advice I see no reason to judge anyone for whether they did or did not RMA their card.

If you are unhappy with your card then take the opportunity to RMA it and upgrade or refund if you like.

If you are happy with your card then stick with it.

They'll be new cards shortly from AMD (fact) Q2. March-June.

Will NVidia likely counter with a Ti or titan (probably but no concrete information).

Is their anything else left to say in this thread considering people now have the choice to RMA if they are unhappy with the situation?

 

[Gregster]

To be honest unless someone directly asks for advice I see no reason to judge anyone for whether they did or did not RMA their card.

If you are unhappy with your card then take the opportunity to RMA it and upgrade or refund if you like.

If you are happy with your card then stick with it.

They'll be new cards shortly from AMD (fact) Q2. March-June.

Will NVidia likely counter with a Ti or titan (probably but no concrete information).

Is their anything else left to say in this thread considering people now have the choice to RMA if they are unhappy with the situation?

Spot on. OcUK are accepting RMA's on the 970 and anyone wishing to return it can do so. Anyone wishing to keep it can do so (that doesn't make them mugs), so this thread has pretty much run its course now.

 

[richardmr2354]

Spot on. OcUK are accepting RMA's on the 970 and anyone wishing to return it can do so. Anyone wishing to keep it can do so (that doesn't make them mugs), so this thread has pretty much run its course now.

This thread wont have run its course until Nvidia man up and do something about it. It shouldn't be up to the retailer to take the hit for their mistake.

 

[Gregster]

This thread wont have run its course until Nvidia man up and do something about it. It shouldn't be up to the retailer to take the hit for their mistake.

Have you posted on the nVidia forums? That would probably be the best place to vent your anger, as this is a forum setup by OcUK who are e/retailers and not affiliated with nVidia.

 

[richardmr2354]

Have you posted on the nVidia forums? That would probably be the best place to vent your anger, as this is a forum setup by OcUK who are e/retailers and not affiliated with nVidia.

last time i checked, ocuk are taking the hit on their gtx970 sales because nvidia have got there head in the sand. So it should be discussed here or anywhere else. Its a forum thats what people do.....you know discuss things. I'm not venting anger just stating facts. i think we can both agree that if nvidia had made an official response by now, this thread would not be as big as it is.

 

[Gregster]

last time i checked, ocuk are taking the hit on their gtx970 sales because nvidia have got there head in the sand. So it should be discussed here or anywhere else. Its a forum thats what people do.....you know discuss things. I'm not venting anger just stating facts. i think we can both agree that if nvidia had made an official response by now, this thread would not be as big as it is.

Absolutely it should be discussed but I feel it has been discussed to death now. nVidia have chosen to do what they have and that's that. OcUK are not nVidia though and you would be better off posting on the Geforce forums to get your point across, as that is where nVidia are most likely to see that you are unhappy with them and the way you have been treated by not getting all the ROPs and a slower 500MB of VRAM.

https://forums.geforce.com/default/...gathering-low-gpu-load-and-other-issues-/156/

 

[old gamer]

got to agree with gregster this thread is just going over the same thing again and again, everyone must surely know whats what, keep em or send em back simples