GTX 970 Users need to see this ASAP.

[Deleted]

That response...... "we got your money gl&hf"

Stay below 3.5Gb Vram I guess ^^

I don't know what Nvidia is going to do with these cards now. I would have a hard time recommending this for a 'wow only' type builds cause its overkill and pricer than other cards what will do the job just fine. Can't recommend for those wanting full high/ultra on a wider array of games because of the stuttering issues when going over 3.5Gb of Vram and people wanting 4k gaming 970 is out for the same reason.

People wanting to SLI 970's are certainly better of buying a 980 now instead no ?

What kind of niche market is there for the 970 now ?

Doesn't the 980 cost like $200 more?

I'd buy a 970. Why not? I game on 1080p, so the 3.5GB isn't going to be limiting me anytime soon.

Also, how's this guy making skyrim use 3.5GB+ vram? I'm fairly sure I downloaded most of the 4k textures and a bunch of shader mods, and my 680's 2GB isn't even full. Could be 4k, but I can't tell because the video is pretty potato, and there's no info anywhere.

[Deleted]

Doesn't the 980 cost like $200 more?
Also, how's this guy making skyrim use 3.5GB+ vram? I'm fairly sure I downloaded most of the 4k textures and a bunch of shader mods, and my 680's 2GB isn't even full.

A lot of mods

[Shuji V2]

Any single card is a bad idea for 4k right now... unless of course you enjoy playing at 30FPS.

It does not make a difference though. First off, a general rule of thumb is to use a GPU which has 2GB of VRAM to support the majority of games in FHD without framebuffer limitations. Secondly, what a lot of people do not realize is that dual-GPU cards may have double the VRAM of their single GPU counterparts, but that memory is configured in replication. Ultimately this means that using dual-GPU cards sporting 3GB VRAM each will still net you with 3GB VRAM in the end, thus not overcoming any framebuffer limitations caused by UHD.

[Deleted]

GTX970 was advertised as having 64 ROPS with 2MB of L2 cache. Nvidia now changed their specifications page to: 56 ROPS with 1.75MB L2 cache. So you can trade them in on those grounds

Where?

I tried looking for that at shop sites, but they never show it. I just looked at the Nvidia site, it is also not there. Only the review sites showed it, and they did not sell them. I think getting your money back won't work.

Then again, some shops might allow it.

[Cyanotical]

is anyone really suffering from performance problems though? the 970 performs fine, and the marketing is done by sales people (who are never trustworthy), if the card has 4gb of memory on it, they will advertise 4gb, even if only 3 is useable, btw, this is nothing new, my 690s were advertised as having 4GB of vram, even though only 2GB is useable, amazingly nobody cared then, maybe because people buying $1k cards are a little more informed, not that 970 owners are not informed, but you are more likely to research more when spending 4 times as much, the fact is the 970 was praised before this was announced, im sure a marketer at nvidia will be losing their job, but the fact is there is nothing wrong with the 970

[nbm02ss]

is anyone really suffering from performance problems though? the 970 performs fine, and the marketing is done by sales people (who are never trustworthy), if the card has 4gb of memory on it, they will advertise 4gb, even if only 3 is useable, btw, this is nothing new, my 690s were advertised as having 4GB of vram, even though only 2GB is useable, amazingly nobody cared then, maybe because people buying $1k cards are a little more informed, not that 970 owners are not informed, but you are more likely to research more when spending 4 times as much, the fact is the 970 was praised before this was announced, im sure a marketer at nvidia will be losing their job, but the fact is there is nothing wrong with the 970

Agreed. Cars have been advertised with flywheel horsepower ratings for decades, instead of at the wheels where it matters. It really is marketing, plain and simple.

[Deleted]

is anyone really suffering from performance problems though? the 970 performs fine, and the marketing is done by sales people (who are never trustworthy), if the card has 4gb of memory on it, they will advertise 4gb, even if only 3 is useable, btw, this is nothing new, my 690s were advertised as having 4GB of vram, even though only 2GB is useable, amazingly nobody cared then, maybe because people buying $1k cards are a little more informed, not that 970 owners are not informed, but you are more likely to research more when spending 4 times as much, the fact is the 970 was praised before this was announced, im sure a marketer at nvidia will be losing their job, but the fact is there is nothing wrong with the 970

You cant really compare the dual-chip-one-card Vram stories with the 970.

Everyone buying a dual chip card (should) know that you only get half the Vram (effectively). The Vram story about the 970 was unknown to the public.
This doesnt make the 970 a bad card per se, but for a group of people this just sucks. And with group I mean the people who use 970 SLI and are on 1440+ resolution.

[Cyanotical]

You cant really compare the dual-chip-one-card Vram stories with the 970.

Everyone buying a dual chip card (should) know that you only get half the Vram (effectively). The Vram story about the 970 was unknown to the public.
This doesnt make the 970 a bad card per se, but for a group of people this just sucks. And with group I mean the people who use 970 SLI and are on 1440+ resolution.

yes you can, the 690 is advertised as have 4gb (i still have the box) it does not say 2gb per gpu and that its mirrored meaning you only get 2gb usable

1440 does not need that much vram, i've been on 1440 for several years now and 2gb was plenty(slower vram too), so i dont really believe anyone claiming that the slower 512MB in the 970 is holding them back on a 1440 screen, if you are running the kind of workload where that will make a difference, you should have bought a 980 or a titan

this is nothing more than complaining to complain, its not like the 970 is suddenly a bad card, although, im hoping the bad press will pressure nvidia into releasing the titan-x at a much lower price than intended

[lockblock]

How is the 8GB version of the GTX 980 going to perform with only 64ROPS and 2MB L2 cache? Wont it be in the same boat as the 970 but potentially even worse if you use more then 4GB VRAM? I suppose I could be way off base by assuming they wont double the cache and ROPS but I wouldn't be surprised if they pulled that.

[apepi]

Edit:
So here's the deal.. Nvidia actually gave the GTX 970 more than it really should have had. If they had removed the last SMM, they'd had to have removed the last memory controller and the GTX 970 would be a 192-bit card by default. It would also have much lower cores, ROPs and L2 Cache than it currently does. Which means overall the GTX 970 would perform slower than it currently does. The sooner people realize that, the sooner we can get passed this stupidity.

False, remove the last row but then reactivate the number of SMMS that was in the last column you would have even a faster 3.5 performance(and no extra .5Gb memory).

[Deleted]

yes you can, the 690 is advertised as have 4gb (i still have the box) it does not say 2gb per gpu and that its mirrored meaning you only get 2gb usable

this is nothing more than complaining to complain, its not like the 970 is suddenly a bad card, although, im hoping the bad press will pressure nvidia into releasing the titan-x at a much lower price than intended

I disagree, the 690 still had a total of 4 GB and anyone could research that it only had 2GB effectively. With the 970 it still has 4 GB, but they lied about the ROPS/Cache. And you couldnt research that, because only Nvidia knew that. Two different things, although a bit related.

That said, I do not think the 970 is a bad card. It is still a good card for 1080p/1440p. I dislike the fact that it took Nvidia this long to correct their mistake..... And I think people can complain about that.

[Deleted]

Idk if this was posted yet but....

[Wries]

Idk if this was posted yet but....


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spZJrsssPA0

LOL!

Though it suggests that the Titan suffered from this as well. Afaik it did not have any similar memory segmenting. I was able to fill my 6GB without the card working against me :P I don't know the technical nitty gritty but seems the 970 was cut down in another kind of way than they did when cutting Kepler cards, where they didn't touch ROPs or the memory controller while doing so.

[electthedead]

So would this still happen with say a GTX 680 which is 4gb or is it a 970 thing only?

[Frozenbeef]

Don't know what all the fuss is about my 970 out performs my old 670 by a very large amount, i've been very happy with my 970 on 1440p :P

[Shyxlol]

False, remove the last row but then reactivate the number of SMMS that was in the last column you would have even a faster 3.5 performance(and no extra .5Gb memory).

That's not how manufacturing of chips works.
They "try" to make a 980 chip but some parts are not perfect -> they tailor it to be a 970. They don't deactivate/not make those certain parts by choice.
Same for cpus regarding more cores/hyperthreading. They "try" to make a very good one and the imperfect ones become i3/i5/etc.

[Afrospinach]

LOL!

Though it suggests that the Titan suffered from this as well. Afaik it did not have any similar memory segmenting

I thought that was more a dig at the titan being rather expensive then kind of out done by the significantly cheaper 780ti, I would not have felt great dropping 1k or whatever it was on a titan after that.

[apepi]

That's not how manufacturing of chips works.
They "try" to make a 980 chip but some parts are not perfect -> they tailor it to be a 970. They don't deactivate/not make those certain parts by choice.
Same for cpus regarding more cores/hyperthreading. They "try" to make a very good one and the imperfect ones become i3/i5/etc.

Yes, but in total my suggestion would have more easier to achieve then having all columns all working. Hell one of the memory controllers would be broken/not working and they could still sell it. You would technically have more broken/nonworking parts in my suggestion, I don't get it.

[Maerad]

Doesn't the 980 cost like $200 more?

I'd buy a 970. Why not? I game on 1080p, so the 3.5GB isn't going to be limiting me anytime soon.

Also, how's this guy making skyrim use 3.5GB+ vram? I'm fairly sure I downloaded most of the 4k textures and a bunch of shader mods, and my 680's 2GB isn't even full. Could be 4k, but I can't tell because the video is pretty potato, and there's no info anywhere.

From a technical view there are some things that actually limit you - even without hitting the 3.5GB mark.

First of all, they made the 970 driver quite agressive in terms of texture unloading. Usually the driver is supposed to unload the textures if they are not needed anymore, but usually it keeps them in the RAM if it needs it again. That's mostly the case, so the driver dosn't need to reload and sink cycles etc. for it. That does limit your framerate, even more when your card is under high load. Not to mention that the current, synthetic benchmarks are simply too short ... If you play a game for over an hour, the vram gets more and more stuffed - so a game with a usage of 3 GB at start could easily bring you over the 3.5GB mark - but it needs some time for it.

Then like 1-2 years before 2 GB RAM was something you could never fill. Now it's not enough, even without 4k gaming. I don't think you wanna change the card next year, but keep it for around 2 years, so it could be that new games (witcher 3?) want all vram they can get. Also, if you run 2 or more displays, you can calc in around 200-500 mb additional vram per display - even if you only play the game on one of it.

But the worst problem is, if you really reach the 3.5GB barrier. I've seen vids on youtube (980 clocked down to 970 regions vs. real 970) with asassins creed and far cry where the real 970 simply broke down. Not only the framerate, but the frametimes made the game not only stutter, it hang like 1-2 seconds from time to time.

I don't wanna talk bad about the card - it's awesome in terms of energy usage and performance. 160W for that much horsepower without heating up like a rocket is awesome. But I really wouldn't call those technical limitations something you can simply ignore. Espacially because NVIDIA cheated you.

- - - Updated - - -

is anyone really suffering from performance problems though? the 970 performs fine, and the marketing is done by sales people (who are never trustworthy), if the card has 4gb of memory on it, they will advertise 4gb, even if only 3 is useable, btw, this is nothing new, my 690s were advertised as having 4GB of vram, even though only 2GB is useable, amazingly nobody cared then, maybe because people buying $1k cards are a little more informed, not that 970 owners are not informed, but you are more likely to research more when spending 4 times as much, the fact is the 970 was praised before this was announced, im sure a marketer at nvidia will be losing their job, but the fact is there is nothing wrong with the 970

The thing with the marketing ppl issue was nothing more than a bad excuse. The card was announced with 4 GB of RAM and you can use those 4 GB of RAM. The problem is, that it was advertised with 64 ROPS instead of 56, a 2 MB L2 Cache instead of ~1.7MB and as a result with a 0.5GB range that can be used, but with some heavy impacts on game performance and frame times.

And this was NO mistake or whatever BS they tell us. They KNEW it from the start and optimized the driver to unload anything in the ram asap AND only load the 3.5GB with full speed and only the last 0.5GB if there's no other way. And the card is in the market for months - do you really think such an important mistake wouldn't be noticed if they played with open cards?

They made a bad design choice with the 970 and tried to cover it up. In the cards before the high end cards had every ROPS etc. enabled and the lower cards had some disabled, so even with the same mhz the high end cards were faster. In this case maybe there wasn't any way to disable the ROPS without crippling the data transfer to the ram.

I wanted to buy the card, but this kind of behavior just pisses me of. Not to mention that I don't know what goes in 2 years. Maybe the games then will fill the 4 GB VRAM with ease. The card is awesome and I might have buyed it, even if I knew the limitations beforehand, but now ... ill wait 2-3 more months. Maybe ATI will deliver something better.

Oh - and don't get blinded by their "driver optimations" - the driver is already quite good but even if they change the algoritm and make it even better, the problem itself won't go away. The only ways I see would be - disable the 0.5GB and let the card have only 3.5 GB in total OR a way to enable the missing ROSP, making the cards like they should be. Guess the second option won't work, but would be nice :P

[Wries]

So would this still happen with say a GTX 680 which is 4gb or is it a 970 thing only?

To clarify, this only applies to 970 and no other card at all. It is not about 4gb cards in general or even cut-down chips in general. It's just something that came as a result from how they cut the GM204 chip in the 970.

I thought that was more a dig at the titan being rather expensive then kind of out done by the significantly cheaper 780ti, I would not have felt great dropping 1k or whatever it was on a titan after that.

Ah perhaps. AMD launched the 290x so the 780Ti was the natural response. But the Ti came much later, I'd rather say the 780 non-Ti stung more since it was released earlier and had a happier Turbo clock than the Titan, which played it safe with clocks due to it's not so clear aim for the compute market. Though with the 3GB VRAM I didn't weep much. In fact I refused the 780Ti as warranty replacement when my Titan broke. (Though they still couldn't fix me another Titan and I agreed to go with the 980.)