False Specs on GTX 970?

Interesting thread. Uber glad i went the 290 route.

@ ED, But you are guarding Nvidia the same way as your wallet.

I put a pm out to peter with no response. may just need time. but I am not looking to get a refund from microcenter nor msi, I would take a refund from nvidia though as they are the ones that should be responsible.
For me its all about principle. I am still sore over them misrepresenting the 6800GT that they did nothing when found to be broken at the chip level. They wanted me to spend another $40 for a half baked software workaround.
it may well be that it was a mere mistake between 2 sides of the company, but I have a feeling the way it has all played out that it was intentional.

why would it take them as long as it did to duplicate the issues when they knew how the memory setup worked? I they obviously do know how it works. I see too much underhanded things they do to feel that they are a truly reputable company

And Joe- know that I am in no way pointing this at you. I know you are a good guy

EarthDog said:

LOL, johnny, you know me... the only fanboy in my world is my wallet.

Also, why do you think they are fibbing? Why are you holding that as the truth so close to your heart with absolutely no concrete evidence? Is it a leap to think so, naa, but I don't have a reason to think otherwise. Frankly, I think their story is believable. I say that because I have first hand experience at how there is a disconnect between technical and PR being a reviewer and dealing with PR people mostly...they run out of steam QUICK even when I am asking them questions (I'm no Ryan Shroud, LOL!)!

Just something else to think about...

+1

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Since I work for a service company and I have to answer for when my company makes a screw up I will tell you what my clients would tell me.

I can care less about your internal politics or communications, you cost us money and now we will be compensated. This is my view to nvidia - I can give two ****s about their internal communications because at the end of the day the end user is the one is hurt and not them. What they advertised and what I purchased are not the same thing. I am not talking £300 cards here, I am talking tens of thousands of pounds a hour for a mistake.

But they didn't cost you money. You bought the card on the premise of its performance and having 4gb of vram. It's still has 4gb, however, 512mb of it is slow. I can see this being a problem for 4k and 5760x1080 or people that mod games with high res texture packs. In the end, not a lot of people. Does that make it ok? Heck no it doesn't regardless of how many it affects.

That said, this mistake, to me, certainly doesn't waarant, 'Tens of thousands of pounds per hour' like they were BP pumping oil into the gulf of Mexico...

@ Ivy - I'm playing devil's advocate here. I see people flying off the handle about this and I can't see why. Im not one to hold a grudge so whatever past indiscretion happened 9 years ago with a 6800gt wouldn't bother me(but he isn't me!!). That isn't to say he doesn't have a point, but we all know correlation is not causation. If they lied about whatever happened with the 6800gt, doesn't mean this isn't a simple marketing mistake.

Anyway, I can't say I want my money back if I bought a 970.. it works fine even at 1440 res. Would I be more upset if I bought two for 4k? Or used mods for games taking me over 3.5gb? Probably so if it affected my gaming experience. Perhaps I am just too soft on companies?

One more thing, the mismatched ram thing also happened with the 660/660ti and some midrange 5 series too... I don't recall people flipping out about that. I suppose the difference here is this is a high end card? Not sure.

I didnt own those cards so i am not directly affected but Nvidia is rarely without guilt. Regarding companies, as smaller they are as softer i am, and as bigger simply the opposite, for good reasons because the bigger a company the less ethics and the more cheating. The big stuff got way to much power and can dictate many matters and get away with cruel acts without suffering... i wont be soft if someone is abusing power.

Mismatched sizes/densities- but were they setup where only 1 could technically be accessed at one time, or with some software trying to swap/force causing drops/MS even though FPS doesn't always show it?

Not sure it's the same thing(they said this was the 1st time they were able to do this type of layout, due to Maxwells architecture), but maybe I misunderstood.

IMHO, FCAT would have been completed and submitted for scrutiny by now if this were AMD on the hot seat, what are they doing, scrambling the driver team to hide this better(read that they said they expected a driver to"help" with the swapping soon), and/or adjusting THEIR FCAT software to help hide the issue?
They sent out the program to reviewers to explicity show that AMD had worse Micro stutter when XF was ahead of SLI in reviews, which was actually a good thing in the end, as XDMA and software has made XF much better since the beating they took in the publics eye...

Making AMD XF a better experience wasn't the intent of that software at all, and the green team benefitted from that software quite a bit.

for those that know me, I dont game at all. what I buy is for benching and that does leave me at a disadvantage having less than the stated mem bus

I would like to encourage those people pissed off at Nvidia to return their 970 cards quickly for a refund. This might help bring the price down for me, and/or I can pick up some cheaper refurbs soon as they start showing up on the market

KetoSoi said:

I would like to encourage those people pissed off at Nvidia to return their 970 cards quickly for a refund. This might help bring the price down for me, and/or I can pick up some cheaper refurbs soon as they start showing up on the market

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LOL
A few guys have said that.

EarthDog said:

But they didn't cost you money. You bought the card on the premise of its performance and having 4gb of vram. It's still has 4gb, however, 512mb of it is slow. I can see this being a problem for 4k and 5760x1080 or people that mod games with high res texture packs. In the end, not a lot of people. Does that make it ok? Heck no it doesn't regardless of how many it affects.

That said, this mistake, to me, certainly doesn't waarant, 'Tens of thousands of pounds per hour' like they were BP pumping oil into the gulf of Mexico...

@ Ivy - I'm playing devil's advocate here. I see people flying off the handle about this and I can't see why. Im not one to hold a grudge so whatever past indiscretion happened 9 years ago with a 6800gt wouldn't bother me(but he isn't me!!). That isn't to say he doesn't have a point, but we all know correlation is not causation. If they lied about whatever happened with the 6800gt, doesn't mean this isn't a simple marketing mistake.

Anyway, I can't say I want my money back if I bought a 970.. it works fine even at 1440 res. Would I be more upset if I bought two for 4k? Or used mods for games taking me over 3.5gb? Probably so if it affected my gaming experience. Perhaps I am just too soft on companies?

One more thing, the mismatched ram thing also happened with the 660/660ti and some midrange 5 series too... I don't recall people flipping out about that. I suppose the difference here is this is a high end card? Not sure.

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Sorry, tens of thousand of pounds a hour is what my company can cost a client. I bought a card on the premise that all the 4GB of vram worked the same, not having 0.5GB of it being much slower. This is the key point - while you can say it is still a 4GB card it is not the card that nvidia advertised - I cannot figure out why this is so hard to understand.

No idea the exact environment of mismatching in the past.

FCAT and frametime has little to do with this really. It's pretty obvious what happens when your cross that threshold/run out of vram.

This is the key point - while you can say it is still a 4GB card it is not the card that nvidia advertised - I cannot figure out why this is so hard to understand

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I hear that, I do. But then I look at the performance numbers and I see it is what was advertised.

I suppose I would be upset if I was sold a 12 second civic that was supposed to be all motor and found out it had a 150 shot of NOS.. lol!

EarthDog said:

No idea the exact environment of mismatching in the past.

FCAT and frametime has little to do with this really. It's pretty obvious what happens when your cross that threshold/run out of vram.

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LOL, you shouldn't be running out of ram at 3500, that is 500MB of not available ram without stuttering jerking around, 3500 is not 4K, and like I said -Fraps isn't the best to show this kinda stuff....and the VERY reason that the Green team sent FCAT to reviewers to show MS on XF setups....to make $!

The card is a good card for 90% of folks running them, less so for SLI guys, but false advertising stole $ from it's competitor, noone is gonna convince me otherwise, as I've seen more " Do I have enough VRam with such and such a card for yadda yadda yadda, I need this to last me 2+ years" more times over the last year or two then ever, and that's always been a concern because games are using more and more....and will continue to use more and more as time goes on.

Pay the man and s*** it up, you still made more $ with the "Mistake" than it will cost you, as Joe Blow has no idea about this, he bought the card that said 4GB and probably uses it for Tetris/Doom/Quake3 and Emails...

KetoSoi said:

I would like to encourage those people pissed off at Nvidia to return their 970 cards quickly for a refund. This might help bring the price down for me, and/or I can pick up some cheaper refurbs soon as they start showing up on the market

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Price is even going up... because i guess vendors tired with pricy and time consuming RMA. Vendors surely are the ones to suffer and consumers but rarely the guilty spot. Although GPU manufacturer are generally gentle with RMA, it can be different, especially SSD stuff is usually worst case.

Been wondering when something would be said...

That's cute! AMD is all about that marketing...

Valid... most powerful marketing is nothing but the truth, i know it may be hard to understand because nowadays marketing is far from truth.

EarthDog said:

No idea the exact environment of mismatching in the past.

FCAT and frametime has little to do with this really. It's pretty obvious what happens when your cross that threshold/run out of vram.

I hear that, I do. But then I look at the performance numbers and I see it is what was advertised.

I suppose I would be upset if I was sold a 12 second civic that was supposed to be all motor and found out it had a 150 shot of NOS.. lol!

Click to expand...

The issue is not the performance below 3.5GB as we know the card is amazing, it is above 3.5GB where the issues arise. Showing an average fps does not tell the whole story as when there is a 0 (stutter) it gets averaged out. There is more than enough evidence even before this whole mess came to light that there are issues above 3.5GB. If a driver can sort this out then all is forgiven but if not....then legally nvidia cannot sell this as a true 4GB card but a 3.5 + 0.5Gb card.

I heard storys that Nvidia was telling "the way how a 970 works is perfectly fine, a real 4 GB card and they wont change it at all". Some other said "that they gonna fix it"... i guess i have to take everything with a grain of salt and Nvidia is probably quiet on the matter. RMA is always a worst case solution, at least a solution, and there is always someone suffering on the pocket, its not free to move a card around the globe... no matter the stuff some users are telling. On top of that it is basically a working product with possible flaws that some users may be experiencing at some point and just because of this reason it may need a RMA... so... the "green spec" is probably already worse than any of the AMD competition products.

Whats out of question, in 1-2 years the full 4GB will be used by games much more frequently, it may not be a issue to enthusiasts because they gonna switch to another card but to those that are keeping a 2-3 year life cycle they surely will be experiencing many games hitting the 0.5 spot, if it truly stays without lag or spikes is unknown but quite possible that Nvidia isnt going to change a single thing. Doesnt help it that the consoles of current gen are equipped with high RAM amount and it is gonna reflect on PC too, even for those that dont use mods at all. A 4 GB card isnt something a true gamer dont need... the opposite is the case. Nvidia simply used "tricks" and may have "lied" on that matter, thats why many customers upset and i can perfectly understand because honestly... it is difficult to advertise this card as a "full scaled and fully mature 4 GB card".

Nvidia (and Intel) rarely if ever reference AMD by means of comparison. As market leaders they don't acknowledge a smaller player in their respective markets - standard market position strategy.

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Well yeah, and customers are another "smaller player" that simply are on the mercy of "the rulers", arrogance is certainly a difficult thing to tackle.

I am not necessarily mad because of the memory issue, it may still work for me, but because of the fact how they handle customers and that they see it valid to hide or even lie about matters, its a somewhat offending mentality. And the "minor players", AMD with still less market share, is just a obstacle that can be getting ridden by simply telling some inproper marketing matters for even more customer count. AMD had to drop the prices of 290 and other products like mad, still offering a real 4 GB interface and are not even praised for that spec at all... and avoided in large scale because Nvidia apparently got better products in almost any spot except price/performance which is usually the AMD spec #1. In term AMD is destroying a Nvidia card on a advertisement just for the sake of entertainment/marketing, every single Nvidia customer at least and even past that line is becoming upset, but honestly do they think Nvidia is just a little bit more gentle at all, whats the reason for becoming upset? Moral or ethical values? Dont be kidding me...

I may still use my 970 that has been ordered just a few days before i got that horror story... so i can either RMA it or keep it, dunno yet. It surely may perform well, even with a fully modded Skyrim, but it will be leaving a grain of salt and surely i cant feel happy on the way how the entire matter has been done. Although i am not going to hold a grudge year after year, totally useless and will just damage myself and against the truth of new products, but at least the 970 will leave some bad aftertaste.

Well EVGA has now stated they will accept all 970s back for a refund or the option to pay for the upgrade to a 980 (at least in the UK). This is a master stroke on their part as it will definitely win over customers in the future (myself included) if the other brands do not step up.

Edit:

Here is a good post explaining why nvidia will take some time to come out with an official response. I still think they are handling this very poorly but I do know they just cannot change specs without all this:

I don’t work for Nvidia but I work for an international law firm advising big IT companies similar to Nvidia so here’s what I think is going on.
1. Nvidia is investigating the issue technically.
2. They know their reputation (i.e. money when you're a public company) is at stake on something like this.
3. Their lawyers undoubtedly advise them to not make any official statement until they know exactly what they will do.
4. Their product is sold worldwide. They are studying their options, legal risks, refund/replacement logistics options and costs. It is extremely complex and just cannot be done in a few hours.
5. Nvidia’s management will eventually make a decision.