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False Specs on GTX 970?

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ninjacore

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Aug 13, 2006
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OH
Anyone see this story yet? Kind of a bummer...

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/nvidia-admits-to-error-in-gtx-970-specs-and-memory/1100-6424915/

Better writeup on Anandtech:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8935/geforce-gtx-970-correcting-the-specs-exploring-memory-allocation

Basically, only 3.5GB of the vram is able to run at the advertised speeds. The remaining 0.5GB just acts as a cache and for those of us with 1440P or greater resolutions, if we break the 3.5 mark, "stuttering" in game can be the result as the "slower" portion of the on-card memory is in use.
 
Slight average FPS drop. I'm much more concerned about the drops in minimum FPS when vram usage exceeds 3.5.

I'll have to test this out later. I know I've exceeded 3.5 @ 1440P in the past (albeit, on a different card - 290 - which doesn't have the new compression mechanics of the 970).

Edit: Here, Woomack, I know how you love reading long threads ;) :

http://www.overclock.net/t/1535502/gtx-970s-can-only-use-3-5gb-of-4gb-vram-issue

Looks like people are reporting single digit FPS drops when vram usage gets up to 3.5-3.8...
 
A slight FPS drop is not what people are complaining about - it is the large amount of stuttering encountered when going over 3.5GB. I am personally pissed off with nvidia as if this was advertised before I bought my card I would have probably just sucked it up for a 980. Live and learn but this is my first nvidia product and it has not left me very happy.
 
my issue isnt with the card so much. its the fact that nvidia is worthless as a company. they will lie-hide-steal all they can. and they also wont do anything to make it "right" with those who bought a "4gb card"
 
See what the week brings in terms of statements from nvidia but I doubt they can stay quiet for too long. There is enough cards out there that they will have to make another statement - there is also enough people out there to actually give lawsuits traction. More testing needs to be done but the deeper people dig into the situation the worse it looks for nvidia.
 
I would take that as well. but my guess is that we have what we will end up with. been screwed hard by nvidia in the past
 
It's still a 4gb card... the last 500gb is a lot slower though. As I said before, the results at 4k are what they are... So... If you bought two of these for 4k, well, then I'd be upset. For 1440p on down... Not so much.

Read Anand s conclusion to talk you down off a ledge. :)
 
I actually have read the conclusions from Anand and several other tech sites (many which have been updating their testing since yesterday) and I do not believe what people have purchased was what they were sold. Also, is it truly a 4GB card when it can only access 1 partition of memory at any given time?
 
anandtech has proven to be in nvidia's pocket before. so take what they say with a grain of salt- they do reviews according to nvidia's wants and put info up as nvidia wants as well.
I think the card is a very good card. the problem is that nvidia is underhanded, and the card is misrepresented, and would wager that it was decided by nvidia to go ahead and still be underhanded about it.
I havent ran out of memory on anything that I do (yet). but that doesnt mean I wont in the future. And yes there is 4gb there, but not what I would call usable .
 
Yeah, I took it with a grain of salt since every other reviewer is detailing there is a memory issue. Can you push your 970 over 3.5GB? At overclockers.net they are reporting that going over 3.5GB is causing all sorts of issues.

I will push my card tomorrow but I still believe that nvidia will be forced into action soon.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1535502/gtx-970s-can-only-use-3-5gb-of-4gb-vram-issue/860

Edit:

Could it be a driver issue while accessing the 0.5GB?
 
my card will go over 3.5gb only if Ihave the pagefile enabled. using msi kombuster when disabled it takes a while trying to load then just fails at trying and gives me 2.5gb.
 
It's still a 4gb card... the last 500gb is a lot slower though.

Looking at it like that, however, you could also say that if I have a 2GB GTX 760, I actually have a 10GB GTX 760, since there's 2GB of fast vram and 8GB of "slow" DDR3 available as well (system RAM).

I don't really think it was a purposeful mislead on Nvidia's part. I just think there was a disconnect between engineering and marketing. Doesn't make them any less at fault, though.
 
This is a hard cookie to gnaw on, need more tea with a splash of tears. Now i ordered a 970 GTX for the sake of 4 GB RAM only and now i hear about dirty RAM management tricks probably in order to cut down cost, i wonder if AMD is different... so far nothing heard. Although i am a 1080P gamer so it may not hit me hard but my modded games surely may use 3 GB RAM or more... so i do need RAM performance.

And people remember, RAW FPS says nothing, more important how stable the FPS will behave... any spike is big annoyance, thats why multi GPU was not always a first bet. But nowadays the issue is low because so much improvements from both sides, especially AMD.

The thing is, its truly inproper marketing, because for example we could say the PS4 got 8.25 GB RAM but just 8 GB is in fact fast gaming RAM and only 4.5 GB actually usable for games. On a console not much of a deal because the software will be customized. On PC much bigger issue when specs cant be trusted because wrong specs or insufficient specs can be lot of troubles, transparency is critical.
 
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Well the problem really is that Nvidia usually uses dirty tricks in order to make secondary products able to beat AMD but still very cost effective. AMD so far is not known for using such tricks, cutting down memory interface or critical SMM of "second tier" products... this is simply typical for Nvidia. Sure the card performs great for most of us... but always with some grain of salt that there is some critical cuts somewhere. Nvidia is known to completly disable DP performance of most consumer cards while AMD is not that restrictive. So i guess Nvidia currently can hold the performance award but from a ethical point of view clearly behind AMD, just always some dirty secrets... seriously.

Regarding GTX 960, dunno what Nvidia had in mind, guess the slow "next gen progress" of AMD was going to Nvidias head and now they may think customers may even buy a 4. grade praised as a 3. grade... and the fun thing is, they actually are succeeding. Boost clocks is another Nvidia trick able to remove many transparency because only experts may be able to see trough the wall of boost illusion.
 
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970 is still a beastly card and a huge step in the right direction for PC hardware. HALF the power consumption of the 290X and the same performance?! It's unfortunate that it comes with an asterisk, but it's a great card nonetheless.

I feel like a year ago you were singing Nvidia's tune, Ivy? Regardless, blanket statements like that serve no purpose. Both companies have their sites squarely fixed on stock price. They don't care about anyone's fealty.

Can definitely agree with you on one thing : 960 is a FLOP :D
 
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AMD in the beginnig of the GCN era had massive driver issues (the transition to the new architecture was simply to huge), maybe i had some bad tune regarding this matter. But in overall give it and take it the past few years AMD was on a strong spot rarely seen before, so it was rather hard praising Nvidia. AMD sometimes is creating issues with older games so both sides got pros and cons. Nvidia in general got lesser ethical value but generally the head in performance. Nobody is perfect but AMD surely made higher progress the past few years but currently is slow on catching up with next gen, they simply was waiting to long and to much rebrands (but Nvidia is barely better on rebrands).

Ultimately i just want the best product for my needs and in term someone want to play the game of betrayal with me i like to argue, it doesnt matter whoever is the guilty spot. But surely Nvidia is more likely to appear on my list of weird things... just nature of stuff and not a blade fence.

Nothing changes, i will smash the 970 into my case (already ordered, cant change it), probably with hard force and then use games modded to the edge and as long as it doesnt use more than 3.5 GB i may have a great performer and may be happy... the almighty "if" is of high value because those modded games may leech RAM like mad and it was the reason for upgrading, not the sheer GPU performance which is a nice bonus but not the reason for upgrading. We will see if it can handle it, especially my alltime chield of sorrow known as "modded to the very edge Skyrim". Almost no limit on how much VRAM it may use... because the VRAM is the only ressource able to go past the 32 bit limit on non server environments. Even when i clearly set the max VRAM to 2 GB the game is overstepping the value and is killing itself, its just to hungry and cant be limited anymore because primary instances is at the very edge already, there is no work around other than huge VRAM, game is plagued by RAM management issues.

Fact is, Radeon stuff is supreme on RAM management for long time already and it seems Nvidia cares less and is just boasting with the efficiency of the new architecture while AMD was not releasing a new architecture for several years already. Choice is hard because i need efficiency and RAM management at once.
 
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