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

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First post here (despite being a happy OCers for many years now)

im just about to put together a new gaming rig, been spending the last month or so reading reviews and forums gathering every bit of info I could for the build... the gtx 970 was the card I selected (g1)...

Now ive spent weeks following every review site and forum getting the lowdown on all the components im getting or have the choice of getting, the 970 was a stand out.... everyones raving on how brutal this card is for 300 smacks.... ... im sick of reading reviews or comments on the 970 like "this card destroys everytning I throw at it max settings.. even high res" then all of a sudden this ram issue pops up and BOOOOOOoooooom.. everyone is saying this card can hardly handle doom3d without crapping out and a stutter fest.... Untill this hit the web ive not seen a string of bad comments against this card... none!

Ive read countless comments on dyinglight with 99.99999% of users happy (blown away) with its performance even taking into consideration its a badly optimised port atm.... but since this RAM issue has broke everyone has gone into meltdown...

Well im sorry im just not buying it.....

Ok...

Has nvidia screwed up? Yes.. they got caught... now im not saying this is right but jeeez guys... this happens day in day out... they just got caught.... the biggest screw up imo is the way they have dealt with it... the usual mega corporation cr@p.... either way im not getting into that....

Back to the card its self...

BIG review sites have pulled this card to bits in reviews and benches... in 1080p all the way up to 4k in the most demanding games and its performed stella for its price..... I don't care what specs nvidia wrongly given reviewers, because im asking questions of the reviewers on why this wasnt found or spotted within a week of launch, after all we all buy our stuff on the back of these big reviewers benchmarks and reviews ... personly if I was one of these review sites I would be a bit red faced in knowing im making good money calling myself a professional and couldn't find thiss issue.....

BUT.... without fear of sounding hypocritical here..... millions of these cards have been sold, thousands of benches and reviews have been done and nothing spiked the radar..... all reviews come out glowing..... all users are getting sticky in their pants over the performance of their new 970... and we know how hardcore some builders are.. they put there components through unbelievable stress tests and benches fighting for a few score points or a couple of fps..... nothing....

Its only when one program eventually found the issue that this starts and all of a suden the 970 is steaming turd... doest make sense to me tbh....

Nvidia got caught with there pants down.. no question... bad play Nv.... but im not buying that the 970 turned from an incredible card to steaming pile of rubbish overnight...

Its not like we have seen a explosion of posts on forums of 970 users complaining their cards are crapping out in DL when it was released.... no issues of any real merit untill this....

And for the people complaining about now the card wont hold up in 2yrs time at 4k....... well you brought the wrong card from day one.. the 970 was never going to do that... its arguable there is not a card available now that will be able to do that.....

I just feel im seeing a lot of people shooting their ak47s in the air just over the principal that Nvidia wast exactly...... shall we say clear on the card..... and as a consumer you have that right.... something Nvidia needs to learn and FAST....... But as a gamers.... I think the gun is being jumped here tbh..

Ive watched this unfold like a leach... and while I fully understand people getting very upset over this I do believe this is being blown waaaaaaaay out of proportion from a "gamers" perspective....

Either way im into flight sims and race sims, I don't really jump on the latest games tbh... everything I will be playing the 970 is killing on ultra... if anytning im hoping this RAM issue will allow me to pick one of these up a bit cheaper, weather that be price drops or b grades....

either way im stil, getting a 970... nothing on the market atm can touch it... and that is a FACT!
 
Lol^^^

@Craticus just check the geforce forums and people including myself was complaining about low fps/usage stuttering way before the vram issue. In benchmarks its great but in real time gaming it can have issues. Try google 970 low fps. Even there power saving ain't as good as they would make you believe.

You go for it mate if you want one but its not worth ranting on your first post telling everyone there is nothing wrong with them and there the best things since sliced bread when we've had first hand experience of them.
 
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sprite1275 said:
Lol^^^

@craticus just check the geforce forums and people including myself was complaining about low fps/usage stuttering way before the vram issue. In benchmarks its great but in real time gaming it can have issues. Try google 970 low fps. Even there power saving ain't as good as they would make you believe.

You go for it mate if you want one but its not worth ranting on your first post telling everyone there is nothing wrong with them and there the best things since sliced bread when we've had first hand experience of them.
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How about you try googling 290 black screen , or 980 low fps , or in fact ANY recent or past graphics card and an issue of your choice...................
 
darket said:
How about you try googling 290 black screen , or 980 low fps , or in fact ANY recent or past graphics card and an issue of your choice...................
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290 black screen is a fault where as the 970 stutter is the way it was designed in regards to the memory which was also not revealed by Nvidia until it was discovered by others months after launch.
 
im sure the 290 black screens was down to some motherboards needing a bios update, could be wrong though, ive had 5 290 series cards and the only blackscreen i got was overclocking the memory to far, infact my 970's did also
 
JamesM said:
Indeed.

He may in for a surprise when he buys the 970 and attempts to run games at max settings etc

As posted earlier, if you don't mind dabbling with AMD then the 290x is actually on par with the 970 and they both win some and loose some. (ignoring the heat and power consumption)

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1059?vs=1355

It can actually be had for a cheaper price too.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-281-MS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1752
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Really gotta stop using anandtech as they don't benchmark the cards in reviews they are just a news site and just show pointless graphs there are links to proper reviews in the thread to fall back on if people are that bothered to check.
 
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old gamer said:
im sure the 290 black screens was down to some motherboards needing a bios update, could be wrong though, ive had 5 290 series cards and the only blackscreen i got was overclocking the memory to far, infact my 970's did also
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I had a reference 290X that black screened from the off at stock. Some of them just had issues.
 
varkanoid said:
Keep the cards is the third viable option. The 980 would always keep its value more than a 970 anyway regardless of what has happened because it is always seen as the premier card.

Video cards lose their value quickly anyway. There is always people who are happy to buy fully working cards on a certain auction site I dont think I would have much trouble getting what I wanted for them.

You are right there is no alternative at the moment and I dont think there will be for some time. AMD and Nvidia have had plenty of chances to release mainstream mid range 6-8gb cards but they are still churning out 4gb. This was because the video cards coming out quicker than the games that could stretch them. Now its starting to be reversed and both companies have been caught with their pants down. Its fortunate for AMD that somebody made the decision to launch previously an 8gb card probably by pure chance.

Q4 2015 and beyond we might see greater advances now other than rehashes and small improvements. Next year should be a good year for video cards but this year can probably be put down as a bad year for them as AMD/Nvidia wont be able to react to the furore as quickly. Its a sign when in the last couple of years probably the most notable advancement has not been in speed but in power requirements/heat reduction with the Maxwell GPU.
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The problem with the 8GB AMD cards is that the 290x core isn't that fast as a single card solution, so essentially you have loads of VRAM room but the horsepower to run high frames is lacking.

The 980 pretty much dominates the 980 vs 290x war so ideally you would want two 290x's but then that opens you up to the issues of crossfire compatibility etc which, if reading the 290x owners thread is anything to go by, isn't perfect at all.

I'm not even sure if they have fixed the BF4 Mantle memory leak yet? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Qss0nCf8QQ

As i've said before, the whole GPU market is swings and roundabouts. Currently at this precise time there isn't the perfect choice to be made, it's all about compromise.

On the keeping the 970 note, lets not forget that games will only begin to use more and more VRAM in the future so 970 owners may only notice the issues on one or two games currently but in the future, X amount of months down the line, that 3.5GB of VRAM will show it's weakness time and time again.
 
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varkanoid said:
AMD and Nvidia have had plenty of chances to release mainstream mid range 6-8gb cards but they are still churning out 4gb. This was because the video cards coming out quicker than the games that could stretch them. Now its starting to be reversed and both companies have been caught with their pants down.
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To be fair, nothing is actually starting to stretch cards, it's simply a case of lazy/useless developers churning out badly made games that require much more memory than they should. I'm not saying this absolves AMD/Nvidia of blame or that it should, they should have seen the way the industry was going and adapted. But trying to lay the blame solely at their feet is a bit wrong.
 
darket said:
How about you try googling 290 black screen , or 980 low fps , or in fact ANY recent or past graphics card and an issue of your choice...................
Click to expand...

How about I don't. I'm just making a point saying the 970 is not an almighty GPU made by the gods the way he was spurting on and it does have issues other than the gimped ½gb vram.
 
ubersonic said:
To be fair, nothing is actually starting to stretch cards, it's simply a case of lazy/useless developers churning out badly made games that require much more memory than they should. I'm not saying this absolves AMD/Nvidia of blame or that it should, they should have seen the way the industry was going and adapted. But trying to lay the blame solely at their feet is a bit wrong.
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Well said...

Although Nvidia really **** up, there is no excuse for games such as Dying Light to use 6GB - 8GB of Ram or 4GB of Vram and higher, that's just shoddy optimizing. There is also the issue with Ass Creed Unity, again shoddy optimizing.
 
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