WCCftech: Memory allocation problem with GTX 970 [UPDATE] PCPer: NVidia response

[Whitestar127]

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=27542683&postcount=2526

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8Q6jmg_qik&feature=youtu.be

1080p with high textures on 970 (>3.5gb vram), stutters. On medium textures, ok. It certainly has the grunt to handle 1080p.. just lacks the vram.

I was considering upgrading to 970 SLI, but this got me spooked.

One thing is pushing the 970 to its limits by using settings that I would never use in-game anyway.
But 1080p @ High? That's just not right.

Has no review site acknowledged this? It makes me worry about how the card will perform in future games.

 

[BFG10K]

From AMD for those who may want "a full 4gb card"
https://forums.geforce.com/default/...tx-970-3-5gb-vram-issue/post/4440406/#4440406

At last, some competent marketing from AMD for a change. That's not something you see every day.

 

[Magic Carpet]

At last, some competent marketing from AMD for a change. That's not something you see every day.

Ya. Very appropriate, imo.

 

[KaRLiToS]

I hope you are being sarcastic.

Good ol' Roy.

 

[BFG10K]

I hope you are being sarcastic.

Not at all. Instead of some kind of rubbish press release, AMD are putting their money where their mouth is and offering something to entice nVidia users to jump ship.

From a marketing standpoint, Roy had perfect response, at the perfect time.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Then go for the GTX 970.

From what you've described, I really doubt this type of stuff is remotely relevant to you.

Yeah,also my usage which requires vga really is pushing me towards the 970 too.Got my rig hooked up to a 26" t.v that occasionally gets DSR usage.When hooked up via hdmi i'm stuck with 1280x720 which locks me out of DSR which refuses to even work.13.9 Cats do pretty much the same with my RS780 mobo and its HD4200.1280x720 over HDMI looks absolutely dreadful.Over VGA its default is 1366x768 with DSR going over 1080p+.

Still giving some thought to looking for some type of adapter like DP to VGA,but the Amd 200 series is quite picky it appears with them.DVI-I to VGA simply works without fail but with only DVI-D support on 200 series idk.

 

[Enigmoid]

Not sure why people are making a fuss about the rops/L2. The only thing that will cause an issue is the memory segmentation.

As far as it goes, the 970 has more relative ROP throughput than the 980.

56 ROPS but can only rasturize 52 pixels per clock due to the deactivated shaders. 4 extra ROPs solely for processing that may need them. In effect you only 'got' 52 ROP effective to begin with.

 

[realjetavenger]

This solution is also pretty sleazy. Rather than come out and offer refunds to customers they say, "If you can't get one let us know and we'll try and do something on the side." Blaming it on the marketing department is pretty sad too. Like Marketing made up the specs or something. They would have obviously used the specs they were given.

I have to echo this sentiment. I have been considering the options, one being going back to the retailer and asking for a return/refund/store credit. However, in this regard, retailers are just as much a victim here as the rest of us. Is it right that the retailer will take a monetary loss by taking back "used" cards? Of course not. Is NVidia going to compensate them somehow for taking returns? If the answer to that is "yes" well, then, I'm on board. But so far, all we have are two NVidia employees telling us to contact the retailer or board partner and if you don't have any luck to let them know and they will contact them on your behalf.

 

[CakeMonster]

Wow... AMD to milk this one for what it's worth.
They really need to hit a home run with the R9 300 series if they want to get something from this.

Well, I'm glad I got a 980 and not a 970. But I never even considered a 290. The 9x0 make a lot less noise regardless of how advanced cooling solution you get for the 290.

So yeah, AMD need to up their game with a new card.

 

[Pantalaimon]

Blaming it on the marketing department is pretty sad too. Like Marketing made up the specs or something

This is the part which I find a bit incredulous. NVIDIA must have known quite early what is the final architecture of the GTX970, I doubt they decided just a week or a month before launch to switch the architecture from the incorrect specs to the correct specs. So, how is it that nobody thought to inform the marketing team of the correct specs during that whole time.

 

[Unoid]

[Nope]


You will not be trolling and misquoting others here.

-Rvenger

 

[CakeMonster]

So, how is it that nobody thought to inform the marketing team of the correct specs during that whole time.

Having worked in IT I have no problems imagining that marketing is to blame.

The whole company still needs to take responsibility though.

 

[jackstar7]

Well, I'm glad I got a 980 and not a 970. But I never even considered a 290. The 9x0 make a lot less noise regardless of how advanced cooling solution you get for the 290.

So yeah, AMD need to up their game with a new card.

Upon which reviews are you basing that noise assessment?

 

[tential]

Yeah,also my usage which requires vga really is pushing me towards the 970 too.Got my rig hooked up to a 26" t.v that occasionally gets DSR usage.When hooked up via hdmi i'm stuck with 1280x720 which locks me out of DSR which refuses to even work.13.9 Cats do pretty much the same with my RS780 mobo and its HD4200.1280x720 over HDMI looks absolutely dreadful.Over VGA its default is 1366x768 with DSR going over 1080p+.

Still giving some thought to looking for some type of adapter like DP to VGA,but the Amd 200 series is quite picky it appears with them.DVI-I to VGA simply works without fail but with only DVI-D support on 200 series idk.

You got weird colors with HDMI because of an nvidia bug (I think I explained this earlier).

As for the resolution over HDMI...
I suggest upgrading your TV?
A 26" TV paired with a GTX 970 is really just silly. Especially a low end one that can't do resolutions correctly.
Not to be rude, but your 26" TV is probably worth 1/4 of what the GTX 970 is worth. I would NOT make a decision around that.

If you aren't even playing at 1080p resolution, but downsampling 1080p to 1366x768 then well.... I'm just at a loss of words. You really need a real HDTV/Monitor if you want to actually enjoy the GTX 970. Otherwise, I don't even know how much of a point there really is to upgrade if your HDTVs native resolution is so low.

 

[Cloudfire777]

At last, some competent marketing from AMD for a change. That's not something you see every day.

You mean that kid that is only able to beat someone when they are laying down?

Its low life pathetic marketing at best.

3.5+0.5 is still 4.0 AMD

That will be enough thread crapping.

-Rvenger

 

[SlowSpyder]

You mean that kid that is only able to beat someone when they are laying down?

Its low life pathetic marketing at best.

3.5+0.5 is still 4.0 AMD

Some would say misrepresenting the specifications of your product for months is less than admirable marketing. AMD is smart here, they know there are a good number of GTX970 owners who will be returning their cards, why not try and entice a few more as well as get as many of those suddenly looking for a highend video card to consider their products? Sounds like a good idea to me.

 

[Deders]

What about memory compression, which by my estimates would easily fit more than 4GB of data into 3.5GB, more than previous generations.

 

[cbrunny]

Its still 256bit and its still 4GB.

You wouldnt take AMD to court for selling the FX 8350 for example as an 8 core would you? Most likely not because it would just be plain silly and you would lose. Even tho we can debate the semantics.

Sounds to me that it has 256bit and 4GB but functions as 192bit+64bit and 3.5GB+0.5GB.

I dunno. To take this to a different context, if I were to buy a case of beer, I'd say I bought 24 bottles of beer, and not (24 x 355) 8.52L of beer. Just because both are true does not mean the consumer expectation is equal for both.

 

[exar333]

Some would say misrepresenting the specifications of your product for months is less than admirable marketing. AMD is smart here, they know there are a good number of GTX970 owners who will be returning their cards, why not try and entice a few more as well as get as many of those suddenly looking for a highend video card to consider their products? Sounds like a good idea to me.

Absolutely agree!

I know this may be a controversial statement, but I don't see any compelling NV buys right now for the $$$. The 980 is a great performer, but costs too much. The 290/290x are fast, but inefficient. The 970 was my top choice as it was a combination of these (prior to this fiasco) with efficiency, speed and affordability. If I had to choose a GPU on a new build, it would probably be 2x290s...

I want to return my 970, but with no clear choices/options to replace it with, I almost wonder what the point is. Keep using it until GM200 or 380x arrives, but I am also annoyed that the resale value of 970s will definitely take a hit. So in essence, I am probably losing $50 in used value on this card, most likely.

 

[Cloudfire777]

Sounds to me that it has 256bit and 4GB but functions as 192bit+64bit and 3.5GB+0.5GB.

I dunno. To take this to a different context, if I were to buy a case of beer, I'd say I bought 24 bottles of beer, and not (24 x 355) 8.52L of beer. Just because both are true does not mean the consumer expectation is equal for both.

It doesnt matter when they made the GPU to function more or less like a 256bit/4GB card. It drop down -5% in performance when accessing the 22/17GB 0.5GB partition

Marketing wise it wasnt the best decision. No doubt. But the performance is still there

 

[tential]

Absolutely agree!

I know this may be a controversial statement, but I don't see any compelling NV buys right now for the $$$. The 980 is a great performer, but costs too much. The 290/290x are fast, but inefficient. The 970 was my top choice as it was a combination of these (prior to this fiasco) with efficiency, speed and affordability. If I had to choose a GPU on a new build, it would probably be 2x290s...

I want to return my 970, but with no clear choices/options to replace it with, I almost wonder what the point is. Keep using it until GM200 or 380x arrives, but I am also annoyed that the resale value of 970s will definitely take a hit. So in essence, I am probably losing $50 in used value on this card, most likely.

This is probably one of the larger issues with the GTX 970 now. The resale will certainly take a hit as we progress through time and more people hear of this.

Rather than reselling a "top performer GTX 970" you now have to resell a "Gimped 3.5+.5 VRAM GTX 970".

Irregardless of whether the card performs today the same as yesterday, the market perception certainly won't be as good today as it it was yesterday.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Absolutely agree!

I know this may be a controversial statement, but I don't see any compelling NV buys right now for the $$$. The 980 is a great performer, but costs too much. The 290/290x are fast, but inefficient. The 970 was my top choice as it was a combination of these (prior to this fiasco) with efficiency, speed and affordability. If I had to choose a GPU on a new build, it would probably be 2x290s...

I want to return my 970, but with no clear choices/options to replace it with, I almost wonder what the point is. Keep using it until GM200 or 380x arrives, but I am also annoyed that the resale value of 970s will definitely take a hit. So in essence, I am probably losing $50 in used value on this card, most likely.

Yeah, the 970 was the one Nvidia card you could say was worth the money since it sells for roughly the same price as the 290x. But with these new revelations it's basically whether you value more VRAM or less power consumption at $330. The 960 is a joke at $200 offering slightly better than 760 performance with a lousy 2GB of VRAM. The 980 barely outperforms the 780Ti a year later, but ooh, a few watts less power consumption + an extra GB of VRAM and people are creaming their panties for the same power.

 

[Erenhardt]

It doesnt matter when they made the GPU to function more or less like a 256bit/4GB card. It drop down -5% in performance when accessing the 22/17GB 0.5GB partition

Marketing wise it wasnt the best decision. No doubt. But the performance is still there

What? How did you arrive at that number?!

GTX 970 can read the 3.5GB segment at 196GB/sec (7GHz * 7 ports * 32-bits), or it can read the 512MB segment at 28GB/sec, but it cannot read from both at once;

looks like 50% performance hit.
2 seconds read performance:
Advertised:
224GB/s x2seconds = 448GB
Actual:
196GB/s x1second = 196GB
28GB/s x1 second = 28GB
Total of 2 seconds = 224GB

 

[DownTheSky]

GTX 970 can read the 3.5GB segment at 196GB/sec (7GHz * 7 ports * 32-bits), or it can read the 512MB segment at 28GB/sec, but it cannot read from both at once;

IF that's the truth then they'll have to disable the last 512MB. There's no way to fix that.

 

[garagisti]

Well, I'm glad I got a 980 and not a 970. But I never even considered a 290. The 9x0 make a lot less noise regardless of how advanced cooling solution you get for the 290.

So yeah, AMD need to up their game with a new card.

Elsewhere in some other related thread, someone posted anandtech reads on noise where you can say that while playing crisis 3 290 tri-x was much quietrr than some 970s. Difference was around 10db in favor of 290.