Guru3D 970 SLI review

[iiiankiii]

You guess those were equipment failures to?
Why? What logic presented itself to you in this way?

Reasonable doubt has been introduced by the very entity that did the test in the first place.
What's next? I'm glad you asked. We contact other sites with FCAT testing capability (I've already asked TR) to run the same tests and get even more extensive with it.

I think that is more reasonable than people here begging for this to be true and accurate, which makes even less sense in light of Guru's conclusions.

Awesome. I'm glad you're taking the initiative to get other sites to do more extensive testing. Having said that, based on the current data we have right at this very moment, the GTX 9xx series are currently having issues with frame pacing. Until proven otherwise, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume so. I'm sure this will get resolved, eventually.

Who's "we", by the way; when you're referring to contacting other sites regarding FCAT testing.

 

[iiiankiii]

They'd rather argue haha. If they said the experience was great, then who cares about a test?

exactly. When AMD was having "problems" with frame pacing, but people were having a fine gaming experience, apparently, enough people cared about it, then. Maybe no so much, now?

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Not exactly. Scott Wasson never suggested that his testing equipment might have a problem. Huge difference.

It's not his equipment that is "experiencing issues." It's Nvidia's. They made it, they gave it to him so that he could sling mud at their competition. Now that AMD fixed their problems so well that SLI looks worse the equipment is malfunctioning. Oh irony.

Funny I don't think the excuse would have worked if AMD suggested that FCAT was experiencing issues during the entire FUD campaign about Crossfire last year.

 

[SirPauly]

I though so. It was quite obvious that PCPer=nvidia ninja marketing ^^ Thanks for clearing that up.

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/fcat


Remember asking a question to nVidia in PCper's GTX 690 live review chat:


Can you expand on your hardware based frame metering?


Nvidia's response basically was this, " Good to see you here SirPauly, we're sorry, this is not the right time to discuss hardware based frame metering but we will in the near future."

Of course pr would use a competitive advantage but needed FCAT to showcase this for the right timing.

 

[Abwx]

It's not his equipment that is "experiencing issues." It's Nvidia's. They made it, they gave it to him so that he could sling mud at their competition. Now that AMD fixed their problems so well that SLI looks worse the equipment is malfunctioning. Oh irony.

Funny I don't think the excuse would have worked if AMD suggested that FCAT was experiencing issues during the entire FUD campaign about Crossfire last year.

At the time pcper didnt wait to draw conclusions and give advices despite saying that they would do further testings.

Until then, buyers that consider a multi-GPU solution a goal or a requirement will want to seriously debate dropping Radeon cards from consideration. We have quite a bit more test results to share with you as the week continues as well as more testing to do to get a better and clearer picture of what is going on in each and every scenario we can.

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphi...ils-Capture-based-Graphics-Performance-Tes-12

You know the troll sites when two same instances yield two vastly different conclusions.

 

[Keysplayr]

Awesome. I'm glad you're taking the initiative to get other sites to do more extensive testing. Having said that, based on the current data we have right at this very moment, the GTX 9xx series are currently having issues with frame pacing. Until proven otherwise, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume so. I'm sure this will get resolved, eventually.

Who's "we", by the way; when you're referring to contacting other sites regarding FCAT testing.

According to whom? The site that said they might have issues with their FCAT hardware? Until proven otherwise? I think you have it backwards my man. Other sites need to CONFIRM or refute Guru3D's findings using that same driver and comparing with newer drivers.

And "we" means all of us here.

 

[iiiankiii]

According to whom? The site that said they might have issues with their FCAT hardware? Until proven otherwise? I think you have it backwards my man. Other sites need to CONFIRM or refute Guru3D's findings using that same driver and comparing with newer drivers.

And "we" means all of us here.

Yes, the site that, based on their own data, show that there is a problem. I'm going to believe in the data; not the SUBJECTIVE reviewer who THINKS there is a problem with the equipment without any proof whatsoever.

Of course I'm going wait until proven otherwise. This isn't a court of law. When dealing with PRODUCTS, as a consumer, I think this is the correct way to approach it. You wait and see before you spend your hard earned money. It would suck if you bought a product knowing it might have issues; only to find out it does have issues.

Like I said, I'm glad you're contacting other websites to explore the issue more. But, as of right now, I wouldn't buy the gtx 9xx series cards for SLI 4k gaming. I'll take the wait and see approach. Of course, if you're not planning on using more than 1 card, things are fine. The GTX 970 is one of the best cards ever released by Nvidia if you won't want to deal with multi-gpu setups.

 

[Skurge]

Sure, I'm feigning outrage. Cause I didn't drop my 7950s cause I was not enjoying them and got a 680 instead. I just want a better experience, weather from AMD or nVidia.

Just to keep something in mind. GURU3D never found any issues with crossfire until AFTER all other sites were posting it. So the reviewer may not be sensitive to dropped frames.

So As said above, I will trust the data until proven otherwise.

 

[Keysplayr]

Well there had to be a first, second, third etc.
It would be funny if the reviewer was ultra sensitive to dropped frames but just never put it together that frames were being dropped or runt frames were being displayed. Do we even have Guru3Ds review when they tested 7970? Did he also not see any dropped frames? If the answer is yes then you might have a point.

 

[3DVagabond]

There are newer drivers. Do you think they should be tested? And by more than one review site? Especially TR?

Actually wasn't it PCPer who first used FCAT. They didn't tell anyone it was an nVidia developed device that AMD wasn't even aware of what they were using to crucify AMD with, though. You might ask what difference that makes? They should have at least given AMD a chance to have a response, even if it was just verbally, before launching their nVidia backed campaign.

AMD didn't even have access to the equipment to run the tests themselves. They were just hung out during the retail 4th quarter with no opportunity to reply.

It was TR that changed their entire game test suite (every single game, bar one. And that one game they changed the game location they did their benches) and reran tests on the 7950 to announce that it stuttered likely due to their new performance drivers. When in reality it was more likely the thing that changed in the testing. The actual control of the test. The one thing that should not be changed like they did.

Guru3D is a perfectly legit site using nVidia's own test equipment. Nothing to shoot the messenger about.

 

[3DVagabond]

I would quite like to see some benchmarks for these cards with newer games. Is Hitman relevant these days ? I don't think so. Having said that at least they did not bench skyrim and starcraft 2

I would like to see how these cards do in Watchdogs , Dead Rising 3 and Wolfenstein all at 4K instead of some of the older games

It wouldn't likely be any better. Companies know what games are popular with the reviewers and usually optimize for them first, for obvious reasons.

 

[Abwx]

Curious Guru2D comsumption graphs.

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/geforce_gtx_970_sli_review,4.html

Should be compared with Hardawre.info numbers.

http://uk.hardware.info/reviews/562...way-sli-review-test-results-power-consumption

 

[Keysplayr]

Actually wasn't it PCPer who first used FCAT. They didn't tell anyone it was an nVidia developed device that AMD wasn't even aware of what they were using to crucify AMD with, though. You might ask what difference that makes? They should have at least given AMD a chance to have a response, even if it was just verbally, before launching their nVidia backed campaign.

AMD didn't even have access to the equipment to run the tests themselves. They were just hung out during the retail 4th quarter with no opportunity to reply.

It was TR that changed their entire game test suite (every single game, bar one. And that one game they changed the game location they did their benches) and reran tests on the 7950 to announce that it stuttered likely due to their new performance drivers. When in reality it was more likely the thing that changed in the testing. The actual control of the test. The one thing that should not be changed like they did.

Guru3D is a perfectly legit site using nVidia's own test equipment. Nothing to shoot the messenger about.

I wanted to see Guru3Ds 7970 frame pacing testing. Not pcper or anyone elses. At least for now. To see if he said that he did or did not notice frame dropping or runt frames.

 

[3DVagabond]

I wanted to see Guru3Ds 7970 frame pacing testing. Not pcper or anyone elses. At least for now. To see if he said that he did or did not notice frame dropping or runt frames.

I don't think you are going to notice it at +100 fps.

Thief avg. ~75fps. In Thief they said they didn't notice anything after about 15sec. Well the whole bench is only 28sec. That seems pretty significant to me. In defense, they also mention that all cards stutter with Thief. I'd be curious to know if all cards show dropped frames though?

Another 100fps bench. No surprise they didn't notice anything.

If you remember all it took was high FPS for Crossfire to be smooth as well.

 

[Keysplayr]

We're still not even sure the 970s did either.

 

[felang]

I was thinking of swapping cards as the 970s are much cheaper than my 290s and save on heat and power, but the 4K performance is not what I was hoping.

How much are used 290´s going for these days? For arguments sake lets say you would only have to spend $100 dollars more after selling the 290´s to get the 970´s.

It would probably take years to recoup that investment on power savings alone, not worth it IMO.

 

[x3sphere]

How much are used 290´s going for these days? For arguments sake lets say you would only have to spend $100 dollars more after selling the 290´s to get the 970´s.

It would probably take years to recoup that investment on power savings alone, not worth it IMO.

I would say that depends if he can OC the 290s or not. Due to the heat output and high ambient temps here, I could not overclock my pair of 290s (Tri-X edition) at all, they were already running too hot at stock settings with fan at like 85%

The move from those cards to a pair of 980s in SLI (overclocked to 1450 MHz), gave me around a 40% perf boot depending on the game. On top of that, they still run quieter with much lower temps than the 290s.

Haven't had any issues with stuttering at 4K either for what it's worth... microstutter did bother me back in the early 7970s days before AMD implemented frame pacing so I do know what it feels like.

 

[3DVagabond]

We're still not even sure the 970s did either.

Covering your eyes doesn't make it go away. It's right there in black and white.

We weren't allowed to doubt FCAT results for AMD cards. Even though it was hardware developed by their competitor that they weren't even aware of and had no knowledge of the testing. It was put to us as infallible. Since then we've never had any reason to doubt it. Now that it's nVidia cards that are caught out we shouldn't believe it?

 

[Keysplayr]

Covering your eyes doesn't make it go away. It's right there in black and white.

We weren't allowed to doubt FCAT results for AMD cards. Even though it was hardware developed by their competitor that they weren't even aware of and had no knowledge of the testing. It was put to us as infallible. Since then we've never had any reason to doubt it. Now that it's nVidia cards that are caught out we shouldn't believe it?

Oh I see.
I wasn't aware one of us went off the deep end. :biggrin:

 

[Pandora's Box]

I would say that depends if he can OC the 290s or not. Due to the heat output and high ambient temps here, I could not overclock my pair of 290s (Tri-X edition) at all, they were already running too hot at stock settings with fan at like 85%

The move from those cards to a pair of 980s in SLI (overclocked to 1450 MHz), gave me around a 40% perf boot depending on the game. On top of that, they still run quieter with much lower temps than the 290s.

Haven't had any issues with stuttering at 4K either for what it's worth... microstutter did bother me back in the early 7970s days before AMD implemented frame pacing so I do know what it feels like.

God, cant wait to switch these 290's out for the three MSI Gaming 4G GTX 970's on Wednesday. My room will no longer be a furnace :biggrin:

And yeah I can't overclock these 290's at all either.

 

[Abwx]

Oh I see.
I wasn't aware one of us went off the deep end. :biggrin:

It s not exagerating to say that there is some kind of double standard, in this respect 3DVagabond is quite right.

AMD had to abide to measurements made with Nvidia software and gear, so the latter is not even in the same situation, it s their own testing gear that was used for measurements and the same issues that were measured with AMD cards are now branded as irrelevant, actualy it s even the measurement gear that is questioned, it looks like said set up is relevant only if it show its conceptor in good light and the competitor as lacking.

 

[davie jambo]

It wouldn't likely be any better. Companies know what games are popular with the reviewers and usually optimize for them first, for obvious reasons.

I just want to see how the cards perform in newer games

Fair enough doing the old games like bloody tomb raider so you can see how better or worse the card is than older/newer ones

But I would like to see how Watchdogs does with this , as that is a demanding game. Also Dead Rising 3 (although I suspect that is a bit CPU bound)

 

[Skurge]

I would say that depends if he can OC the 290s or not. Due to the heat output and high ambient temps here, I could not overclock my pair of 290s (Tri-X edition) at all, they were already running too hot at stock settings with fan at like 85%

The move from those cards to a pair of 980s in SLI (overclocked to 1450 MHz), gave me around a 40% perf boot depending on the game. On top of that, they still run quieter with much lower temps than the 290s.

Haven't had any issues with stuttering at 4K either for what it's worth... microstutter did bother me back in the early 7970s days before AMD implemented frame pacing so I do know what it feels like.

I can't overclock my cards at all either. It's pretty damn hot here in Namibia.

 

[Subyman]

Played Shadows of Mordor last night with SLI. Runs great ultra at 1440p. I got 105fps average in the benchmark. A single 970 couldn't keep 60fps vsync smoothly.

 

[iiiankiii]

Did you guys check out the GURU3D review on the GTX 980 SLI. It has the same frame pacing problem as the 970 sli. However, as previously mention, the reviewer said it might be their FCAT hardware.