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

[james.miller]

Here's something to try for people using gpu-z.....try turning it off.

the hitching it causes in ac:u is horrific! something odd going on there, i'll see if i can capture it

 

[Locky]

Without reading a massive thread, is there a hardware issue with the 970's or?

 

[mattyc1977]

Bottom line for me is that I paid for Fast Usable vram of 4GB(all of it). Not two separate pools of 3.5GB and 0.5GB of fast and slow accessible.

If this was made clear to me at purchasing time I WOULD NOT BUY THE 970. I would instead have stretched for a 980 or waited for AMDs new offerings.

I am waiting on the detailed low level explanation from Nvidia, as at the moment there is not enough detailed information from them. However I know enough about hardware to make a pretty accurate guess. I don't expect this to be "fixable".

If it turns out that I am stuck with 2 pools of segregated vram, I will be seeking a refund from the retailer or MSI. How they get their money back from Nvidia is not my concern.

My thoughts exactly, I would have stretched to buy a 980 as well and will be seeking a refund or pay the extra for a 980 also.

 

[Mal X]

Was taking the **** out of ALX.
Ergh, even the thought of agreeing with something you've said....i can feel the rope tighten


.

yea i know, because we like a good row dont we

 

[Kaapstad]

How close you sit to your screens would also play a part, i sit fairly close. Also, meh eyesight. a lot younger than you mind

You have just reminded me it is my birthday next month.

I am not looking forward to it.

This was No.1 in the singles chart the day I was born.

 

[CEUOTC]

You have just reminded me it is my birthday next month.

I am not looking forward to it.

This was No.1 in the singles chart the day I was born.

1958!

Sorry not adding to the thread.

 

[pgi947]

Ubi Game problems go back a long way, log before Gameworks, its most likely an Ubi problem rather than a Gameworks problem

Yep, if anything fc4 is marginally less fudged then fc3 was at the same time of its life cycle.

Also worth pointing out the console releases of recent ubi titles have been complete horse plop, again something which is nothing to do with game works.

We just have to face facts, Ubisoft and their products, are generally, **** poor and have been for a number of years.

I would avoid using their titles as any form of benchmark.

 

[old gamer]

kapp your even older than me

my birthday next month also

 

[ICEx21]

Without reading a massive thread, is there a hardware issue with the 970's or?

I'm certainly having one so in my opinion yes there is.

 

[Mal X]

My thoughts exactly, I would have stretched to buy a 980 as well and will be seeking a refund or pay the extra for a 980 also.

they've sold thousands of these cards ....you and i aint getting no refund we're screwed, because we wont be able to sell them for much either

you'll need to think about this before buying another Nvidia

if this 380X is any good then Nvidia are buried alive, isn't it strange how life is, i bet AMD are laughing their heads off right now

 

[james.miller]

pcper article is up

 

[Mal X]

.

I would avoid using their titles as any form of benchmark.

try Metro Last Light

 

[eddyr]

full refund for any Nvidia owner is what Nvidia needs to do, none will buy from someone selling one product and get something else.

Why? Cards still have 4x 64bit memory controllers = 256bit bus from mem controller to RAM. It's the interface (the crossbar - like a switch infrastructure) between the '4' SMM GPC block you see in the Maxwell diagrams and the mem controller that seems to be affected.

 

[Mal X]

kapp your even older than me

my birthday next month also

you're both older than me, but only just

 

[silverfoxxxx]

they've sold thousands of these cards ....you and i aint getting no refund we're screwed, because we wont be able to sell them for much either

you'll need to think about this before buying another Nvidia

if this 380X is any good Nvidia are buried alive, isn't it strange how life is, i bet AMD are laughing their heads off right now

I did wonder if it's good and they price drop it a bit more than they may have originally had planned then quite a few will move across. Whether it turns out to be an issue or not it's a bit of a mess.

 

[Rangerjr1]

pcper article is up

yep, and it turns out that that 0.5GB RAM is just slower.

Make what you want of that 970 owners, but id be even more careful recommending a 970 now than ever. Especially for relatively high res gaming.

 

[Harlequin]

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

so nv have said its a design issue - that 500mb will only be accessed at 1/7th of the speed of the rest .

so if you using all 4GB and some resident texures (for example) are stored in that portion of the ram , you`ll get stuttering

 

[JediFragger]

Wow, they lied/misled about the amount of ROPs too!!??? That's fairly serious imo...

And a seventh of the speed? No wonder their is stuttering!

 

[Harlequin]

56 ROP (actual 52 with SMM limitation) vs 64 advertised, 1792KB L2 vs 2048KB advertised


WOW

 

[mmj_uk]

Without reading a massive thread, is there a hardware issue with the 970's or?

Nope, it's just something we haven't really seen done before - it's a capability new to Maxwell architecture.

Nvidia could have quite easily just left out 512MB, disabled the accompanying memory controller and released GTX970 with 3.5GB but that would have resulted in a worse performing card at the end of the day because the 0.5GB storage partition is still faster than travelling over the PCI-E bus to main memory.

I suppose my question would be why they didn't release GTX970 with all L2 cache fully functional and leave the GPU's with faulty L2 cache to the lower end cards which have less memory anyway. I would guess their argument would be that they didn't want GTX970 to be too competitive with GTX980 considering it's significantly cheaper price tag.