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

Amatsubu · 27 Jan 2015 at 00:37

Reaper 392 said:
Thanks

Thats the impression I got when reading the first pages of this thread

Realistically though it doesn't seem to be the end of the world imo, even though I bought the card with the intention of keeping it for several years. However, Nvidia have been quite deceitful about this so something like a second pick your path code would make for a nice apology gesture

It's definitely not the end of the world and I'll probably be keeping my card for a while as I still find its performance satisfactory (besides, I'm not getting my hopes up for a refund).

I just feel a bit cheated because I bought the 970 mainly on the premise that it is a fully functional 4gb gpu with some room to spare for future releases. Had it been advertised as 3.5gb + 0.5gb of glacially slow Game Boy memory I would have thought twice before jumping the gun.

I still don't know how the card will behave when accessing that 0.5gb segment more frequently but it might cause some stuttering in the most demanding upcoming games judging by what some people have observed. I won't be testing on Ubi titles again as they stutter by desing and pushing the vram beyond 3.5gb only exasperates the issue;p Shadow of Mordor was fine at 3544mb, couldn't push it above that as I wasn't able to run HD textures for some reason.

Legend · 27 Jan 2015 at 00:37

Seems fairly black and white to me that these cards have been mis-sold. I fail to see any other interpretation based on that latest Nvidia statement.

Anyone know what OCUK's stance is on this yet, have I missed them commenting?

tommybhoy · 27 Jan 2015 at 00:38

From my post in the other thread:

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980/970 Reviewers Guide

GEFORCE GTX 970 SPECIFICATIONS (BASED ON BASE CLOCK)

http://hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTQxMTk3NjU5NW5pdEZaMTFFZzFfMV8yX2wuZ2lm

GeForce GTX 970 (Corrected) Specifications

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphi...Full-Memory-Structure-and-Limitations-GTX-970

Kaapstad · 27 Jan 2015 at 00:39

Disco_P said:
Did you count them yourself?

Don't need to

If we are not counting the ROPs or SMs we can not count the transistors they are based on can we.

If NVidia are going to change the specs the least they can do is be consistent and get it right.

Sin_Chase · 27 Jan 2015 at 00:42

Legend said:
Seems fairly black and white to me that these cards have been mis-sold. I fail to see any other interpretation based on that latest Nvidia statement.

Anyone know what OCUK's stance is on this yet, have I missed them commenting?

Look, I'll give you a top tip now:

You will not get an RMA for a 970 based on this 'issue' alone.
You will not get a refund.

I doubt even the retail boxes list how many ROPs there are, so you wont argue a mis-sale over that 'issue' either.

dyonisis007 · 27 Jan 2015 at 00:42

Legend said:
Seems fairly black and white to me that these cards have been mis-sold. I fail to see any other interpretation based on that latest Nvidia statement.

Anyone know what OCUK's stance is on this yet, have I missed them commenting?

Devils advocate here, tell me how they have been mis-sold?

This will maybe help others with RMA justification.

ubersonic · 27 Jan 2015 at 00:42

Shiari said:
Sure: http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphi...Full-Memory-Structure-and-Limitations-GTX-970 (among others)

Thank you, I have been trying to find a decent explanation of this since day one.

So basically its a non-issue that only causes problems with a synthetic benchmark, I can sleep happy now lol

Shiari · 27 Jan 2015 at 00:43

Legend said:
Seems fairly black and white to me that these cards have been mis-sold. I fail to see any other interpretation based on that latest Nvidia statement.

Anyone know what OCUK's stance is on this yet, have I missed them commenting?

Nope, they haven't commented.

Princey · 27 Jan 2015 at 00:44

I want out of this crap, I wanted to SLI my 970 with the intention of having a future proofed system plus I needed the full 4GB Ram for CUDA work. This will be going back on Saturday.

-Mike- · 27 Jan 2015 at 00:47

Shiari said:
Nope, they haven't commented.

I reckon Gibbo is on his third bottle of Port tonight already

Kaapstad · 27 Jan 2015 at 00:53

Mike19 said:
I reckon Gibbo is on his third bottle of Port tonight already

I don't think he will be that worried as it gives him the chance to sell 970 owners higher value cards like 980s while NVidia picks up the tab for the RMAs.

Jamielicious · 27 Jan 2015 at 00:54

Perhaps this is why there hasn't yet been a cutdown GM204 (960Ti) with 3.0GB of ram etc

Legend · 27 Jan 2015 at 00:55

dyonisis007 said:
Devils advocate here, tell me how they have been mis-sold?

This will maybe help others with RMA justification.

Plain and simple, Nvidia sold a 4GB 970 at 224GBs speed (that's as listed on their website, clear for all to see), while it's ACTUALLY a 3.5GB card at 224GBs with an additional 0.5GB which is only 1/7th as fast.

Furthermore, as is mentioned in the reviewer's guide, the GTX970 supposedly contained 64ROPs and 2MB L2Cache, while it turns out that it's actually 52Rops and 1.5MB L2Cache.

Now, what does mis-selling mean... well, let's see if the Nvidia example above meets the legal criteria of a mis-sold product...

"If goods do not match the description you were given of them, that is a ‘breach of contract’ and you may have the right to a refund or return."

What do we think? This isn't cut and dry yet of course, I'm just trying to interpret the facts I have in front of me.

Sin_Chase · 27 Jan 2015 at 00:59

Legend said:
Plain and simple, Nvidia sold a 4GB 970 at 224GBs speed (that's as listed on their website, clear for all to see), while it's ACTUALLY a 3.5GB card at 224GBs with an additional 0.5GB which is only 1/8th as fast.

Furthermore, as is mentioned in the reviewer's guide, the GTX970 supposedly contained 64ROPs and 2MB L2Cache, while it turns out that it's actually 52Rops and 1.5MB L2Cache.

Now, what does mis-selling mean... well, let's see if the Nvidia example above meets the legal criteria of a mis-sold product...

"If goods do not match the description you were given of them, that is a ‘breach of contract’ and you may have the right to a refund or return."

What do we think? This isn't cut and dry yet of course, I'm just trying to interpret the facts I have in front of me.

NDAed reviewers guides, pre-launch material, what someone said in a YouTube video, what was published in a review....all meaningless.

What's actually on the retail box you bought?

Kaapstad · 27 Jan 2015 at 01:00

Legend said:
What do we think?

You have not got a chance.

Mal X · 27 Jan 2015 at 01:00

this card will still access the final 0.5 GB of RAM faster than your PC can access anything else............... i think, even so, there's quite a lot of mumbo jumbo stuff mentioned in that Video that tells me we wont get a refund.

because to me the card seems ok, but only just, so this isn't nearly faulty enough to justify a refund.....no way :eek:

humbug · 27 Jan 2015 at 01:00

Not as advertised by Nvidia's own marketing, you buy a car advertised with a V8 and it turns out to be a V6 you're within your legal rights to return it and get all your money back.

ubersonic · 27 Jan 2015 at 01:00

Legend said:
What do we think?

My opinion is that I bought the card based on it's gaming capability (as that is what it was marketed/intended for) not it's ability to run a synthetic VRAM benchmark.

The reality of the situation is that the card is 4-6% slower when gaming than it would have been with 4GB all operating the same, I am not going to lose sleep over that, hell I'm not going to notice it (unless of course I get the urge to run NAI benchmark again).

Doesn't hurt my enjoyment of my card, and when the time comes to upgrade it won't bias my decision either way (ATI/AMD have burned me worse and I don't hold it against them either).

Shiari · 27 Jan 2015 at 01:01

Legend said:
Plain and simple, Nvidia sold a 4GB 970 at 224GBs speed (that's as listed on their website, clear for all to see), while it's ACTUALLY a 3.5GB card at 224GBs with an additional 0.5GB which is only 1/8th as fast.

Furthermore, as is mentioned in the reviewer's guide the GTX970 supposedly contained 64ROPs and 2MB L2Cache, while it turns out that it's actually 52Rops and 1.5MB L2Cache.

Now, what does mis-selling mean... well, let's see if the Nvidia example above meets the legal criteria of a mis-sold product...

"If goods do not match the description you were given of them, that is a ‘breach of contract’ and you may have the right to a refund or return."

What do we think? This isn't cut and dry yet of course, I'm just trying to interpret the facts I have in front of me.

Technically, yeah perhaps that's fair enough. However, your card continues to work like it has, it doesn't suddenly start performing worse, and if anything, you now know what to look for (bring that memory use down a little) if you should run into sudden performance problems. Not a massive sacrifice by any stretch of the imagination.

So really, if you want a refund because of "wrong specs" you're really looking for a way out because you may have thought you got more than you did, but technically really only on paper. Performance hasn't changed.

Good chance it'll affect future purchases though.

dyonisis007 · 27 Jan 2015 at 01:02

Kaapstad said:
I don't think he will be that worried as it gives him the chance to sell 970 owners higher value cards like 980s while NVidia picks up the tab for the RMAs.

Is it only me that finds this kind of ridiculous?

I am positive the majority of people have never had any issue with the 970, which is an amazing performing card. I run overclocked SLI 970's@1440p and the performance is steller on everything I play, I have never gone lower than ULTRA settings.

Maybe I'm a rare case, but I am positive people are just getting mad for no reason. If I get a free game from nvidia then great. But I do not feel any injustice or god forbid, performance hit with all my games running at max. In fact my benchies in the various threads in this forum will show that, I beat SLI Titans all the time.

Maybe its because I'm 41 years old and more level headed, I just don't know. I've been in the PC overclocking business since I learned you could swap a jumper on a 166Mhz to make it 200Mhz.

Then the old celerons from 300 to 600.

This isn't an issue guys and gals.