Nvidia GTX 970 problems: This isn't acceptable.

[R-T-B]

The reason for upgrade shouldn't be a flawed product that you paid full price you know...

*sighs*

I was speaking to the concept of 6 month newer games running slower. I am not excusing NVIDIAs behavior, I wish they'd just come clean about it, but I can not and will not attribute any so called "stuttering issue" to it when it just plain doesn't make technical sense.

The most amusing crime here is the fact I have one, thousands of people (some who don't even own one) are complaining about this very clear and factually represented defect, returning their cards for some obscure purpose, and yet for some reason I don't care in the slightest.

I know that my card is crippled, I know that if I spontaneously decide to use DSR to go from 1440p up to ultra mega super HD and then scale it down again that my card will literally soil itself and make a smutty stuttery gooey mess inside its poor little gimped memory units.

And yet, still, for some unknown reason, I don't care.

My processor looks down from its lofty 1150 socket on high, stares down at the 970 below and teases it for all it's disabled parts, fully functioning but worthless parts. Sometimes I try to calm him down, but then some random internet person who's probably not evening running a dedicated GPU of any kind signs up to some forum and starts laughing at how all these 970's are incapable of running at ultra mega big-baller HD through the use of DSR, doesn't bother looking at graphs and tests done to make comparative performance figures and actual performance, but carries on making multiple threads about something which has news articles with comments sections and already existing 100 page threads on countless forums.

Then I realise, I don't use DSR, I'm not buying 4K any time soon, have yet to pass a 4GB requirement, and my card was as cheap as dirt. If it was sold with a puzzling 3.5GB of VRAM, I'd still buy it. Maybe I'm just a terrible idea of a customer, maybe I should be more self entitled, and perhaps I should take up arms with the militia. But frankly, I can't be bothered.

I'm with you man.

I'm against this behavior from a marketing and eithcs standpoint. But I wouldn't get so hurt as to return a card over it. Maybe it's just me. Can't speak because I don't own one lol.

I was more offended when the benchmark cheating NVIDIA pulled went on, honestly.

 

[mroofie]

lol the butthurt

 

[R-T-B]

Heh yeah it's everywhere.

 

[Xzibit]

No, it's still quite a good card. You'd be right to be slightly irritated they say "4GBs of ram" when it's really more of 3.5GBs, but that's all. It's still an excellent card.

You'll get fanboys from both sides of course, but fact is it's still an excellent card and not worth a reorder.

You also get the supporters turning on those who bought the card. The inner fighting is more interesting. The 970 is the runner up top tier and all of a sudden you have supporters saying don't push the card to the enthusiast who bought the 970. They also expect those who bought the card and are displeased to suffer from Nvidia Stockholm syndrome.

Nvidia already pulled the plug on a driver fix

Those who were holding on in hopes of a fix will be disappointed TWICE.

 

[the54thvoid]

In the OP, one of the VRAM graphs hits a 4GB ceiling. That would cause issues regardless. What would be better for us all is if one of the reviewing sites did a 970/980 comparative review using pre-determined and carefully controlled settings over a few games (not just SoM). What would help is 3-3.5Gb usage, 3.5-4 and 4+. Over half dozen or so games. Then we'd see a nice clean picture about performance.

Nvidia have obviously mislead their AIC partners but I imagine they're reasoning was dubiously business minded (hey it's not really 4Gb -though technically we can sell it like it is - but it still works really well).

Hopefully this fall out will ensure a cheaper than expected price on any consumer GM200, thus helping keep 380X costs down as well.

 

[RCoon]

Nvidia already pulled the plug on a driver fix

Only delusional simpletons could have possibly believed a driver would fix this.

 

[RejZoR]

Rcoon, DSR is the mean to cripple card now. In 6 months time, games will do that on its own without any DSR. I don't think you won't care anymore then...

 

[R-T-B]

I just don't get how this slow VRAM partition (running DDR5 surely) could ever be slower than the (likely) DDR3 it will eventually dump to? Am I missing something? How could this be linked to the stuttering issue?

And yeah, if by "driver-fix" they mean "unlock the rest of the ram to it's full potential," no, no amount of software is going to do that. But I don't see the stuttering issue and the ram issue as linked. I think we are seeing a placebo effect of sorts by being told there's an issue, and suddenly seeing it for the first time.

Granted I don't own this hardware, and I don't really plan to as I can't afford an upgrade now. But that's my viewpoint.

Rcoon, DSR is the mean to cripple card now. In 6 months time, games will do that on its own without any DSR. I don't think you won't care anymore then...

Heck, I can cripple my R9 290X right now with virtual super resolution and 4k. It cries. It screams. It gets <20FPS and revs it's fans. That's really... not a worry for me and more of a law of limitations of the hardware.

Unless you are talking way way less than 4k of course. I again, don't own the hardware and could be misunderstanding this completely.

 

[RCoon]

In the OP, one of the VRAM graphs hits a 4GB ceiling. That would cause issues regardless. What would be better for us all is if one of the reviewing sites did a 970/980 comparative review using pre-determined and carefully controlled settings over a few games (not just SoM). What would help is 3-3.5Gb usage, 3.5-4 and 4+. Over half dozen or so games. Then we'd see a nice clean picture about performance.

Nvidia have obviously mislead their AIC partners but I imagine they're reasoning was dubiously business minded (hey it's not really 4Gb -though technically we can sell it like it is - but it still works really well).

Hopefully this fall out will ensure a cheaper than expected price on any consumer GM200, thus helping keep 380X costs down as well.

I found this marginally useful
www.pcgameshardware.de/Geforce-GTX-970-Grafikkarte-259503/Specials/zu-wenig-VRAM-1149056/galerie/2322863/

Rcoon, DSR is the mean to cripple card now. In 6 months time, games will do that on its own without any DSR. I don't think you won't care anymore then...

Honestly, if it becomes a problem, I'll either turn the settings down or buy a new GPU.

What would help is 3-3.5Gb usage, 3.5-4 and 4+. Over half dozen or so games. Then we'd see a nice clean picture about performance.

I can probably fudge that together somehow this weekend. Not used DSR before, so I'm unsure how accurately I can force 3.4GB usage and 3.8GB usage. Starpoint Gemini II uses 3.4GB at maximum settings on 1440p, so that will be a useful example.

 

[xfia]

I just don't get how this slow VRAM partition (running DDR5 surely) could ever be slower than DDR3? Am I missing something? How could this be linked to the stuttering issue?

And yeah, if by "driver-fix" they mean "unlock the rest of the ram to it's full potential," no, no amount of software is going to do that. But I don't see the stuttering issue and the ram issue as linked. I think we are seeing a placebo effect of sorts by being told there's an issue, and suddenly seeing it for the first time.

Granted I don't own this hardware, and I don't really plan to as I can't afford an upgrade now. But that's my viewpoint.



Heck, I can cripple my R9 290X right now with virtual super resolution and 4k. That's really... not a worry for me and more of a law of limitations of the hardware.

Unless you are talking way way less than 4k of course. I again, don't own the hardware and could be misunderstanding this completely.

haha I already told you.. I respect peoples opinions even if I need to laugh about it as I walk away. anyway.. this has turned from interesting into slightly frustrating so Im just gonna watch from the stands on this one.

 

[RejZoR]

You can have insanely fast GDDR5 VRAM, but if the connection between GPU and VRAM is very narrow, all that massive bandwidth memory can make, kinda becomes irrelevant. And that's the exact issue with GTX 970.

People still don't get it that in computer world, whole system is as fast as the weakest component. In this case, the slowest memory segment dictates the overall performance of the card when you pass the 3,5GB memory limit.

 

[the54thvoid]

I also wonder how many people think a single 970 is good enough for 60+fps at 1440+ res? There are plenty of titles out there that require more gpu grunt. For me, DA:I runs at about 30-40fps on a single 780ti classified (i disable 2nd because thats enough in a RPG). It takes 2 to ensure 60+fps on max eye candy on BF4 at 1440p. I'm quite sure there will be a few people returning cards due to gpu grunt being mistaken for lack of Vram.

All said, I wouldn't even trust 4GB for 4k gaming.

 

[Xzibit]

In the OP, one of the VRAM graphs hits a 4GB ceiling. That would cause issues regardless. What would be better for us all is if one of the reviewing sites did a 970/980 comparative review using pre-determined and carefully controlled settings over a few games (not just SoM). What would help is 3-3.5Gb usage, 3.5-4 and 4+. Over half dozen or so games. Then we'd see a nice clean picture about performance.

Nvidia have obviously mislead their AIC partners but I imagine they're reasoning was dubiously business minded (hey it's not really 4Gb -though technically we can sell it like it is - but it still works really well).

Hopefully this fall out will ensure a cheaper than expected price on any consumer GM200, thus helping keep 380X costs down as well.

This is The TechReport take on it

The last 12min is interesting especially the one question Scott said he ask Jonah Allen which set him back and doesnt answer. Which sounds like what a few have been thinking but out of sheer luck I posted it.

 

[D007]

Frankly the whole 9 series has been nothing but trouble for me so far.
I have had problems since day 1 with them.
blackscreens, freezes, Display detection timeouts, device driver hanging.
They have made more drivers for the 9 series than I have seen in a long time.
They cannot seem to get it right.
All of them have problems.

So tired of upgrading for problems.
Seems to be that now a days they don't give a shit about quality.

 

[HumanSmoke]

I also wonder how many people think a single 970 is good enough for 60+fps at 1440+ res? There are plenty of titles out there that require more gpu grunt. For me, DA:I runs at about 30-40fps on a single 780ti classified (i disable 2nd because thats enough in a RPG). It takes 2 to ensure 60+fps on max eye candy on BF4 at 1440p. I'm quite sure there will be a few people returning cards due to gpu grunt being mistaken for lack of Vram.

Fair observation. The 970 (or the 980 for that matter) isn't instant magic in the battle for high res gaming. Unless you're the kind of person that gets off on single digit framerate increases, it's barely an improvement - if that- over what has already existed (780/780Ti/Titan/290/290X) for a year or more. The only difference was that the performance was made available to the $300-budget crowd, where the step up was significant (less so now with price cutting from AMD), and maybe the expectation runs a little too high amongst some - no doubt helped by the effusive praise heaped on the card, and vendors willingness to bandy around terms such as "4K ready".

All said, I wouldn't even trust 4GB for 4k gaming.

Well coming from the GK 110, you - like me I suspect, will be eyeing a large die 6GB (or larger) card as minimum requirement for an upgrade cycle. One thing seems certain, if the next round of high-end cards come fitted with more than 4GB, the gaming dev programs will damn well make sure that at least the highest game IQ settings will use it. What better way to differentiate a 6-12GB card from the pack than to ensure that max detail stalls out a card with anything less.

 

[JMO]

I mean they are still really fast cards for the price. They HAVE 4GB of ram onboard, so that's not really false advertising saying they have 4gb, but maybe they should have in parentheses (3.5Gb effective).

ROPs (original) – 64
ROPs (actual) – 56

L2 cache (original) – 2MB
L2 cache (actual) – 1.75MB

Memory Bandwidth (original) – 224 GB/s for 4GB VRAM
Memory Bandwidth (actual) – 196 GB/s for 7 memory chips totalling 3.5 GB, and 28 GB/s for the remaining 512 MB 8th memory chip.

False advertising.

Proof lies in reviews endorsed/approved by Nvidia: http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-970/reviews

Sure, for most users, at this current point in time, the vram issue is a non-event.

Still, companies shouldn't get to make up specifications and sell products based on that (mis)information.

 

[...PACMAN...]

Has anyone checked if this can also be applied to older cards. Anything over 1.5Gb vram usage on my 2Gb GTX 650 TI stutters and at high framerates. It also appears to cap at 1.5gb

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

nvidia isn't gonna refund anything or offer vouchers for 980's you are dreaming
crying false adverting isn't gonna get you or anybody else anyware
can we stop making threads about this now ....

I don't think that nvidia have responded adequately and I didn't even buy one so I say crack on more threads please.

And im not assed if nv owners get twitchy because there beloved company is getting called out.

NVIDIA EARNED EVERY LETTER OF ABUSE THEY GET ON THIS

False advertising is Exactly what this was. ........... .. ...

 

[Frizz]

This has made work stressful for me the past two days, the amount of people requesting to RMA their cards is in abundance. And without an official solution from NVIDIA we've been refunding cards for store credit and people have been either jumping ship to AMD or taking the opportunity to pay the extra for a GTX 980. So a tip, you may be able to pass this problem back to your re-seller to deal with.

Personally I also have this card and it still performs very very close to the 780ti for almost less than half the price, so AFAIK there's really nothing to complain about so far as I've been gaming with max eye candy on a 1080p monitor and do not feel mislead, betrayed or bothered at all by this, because this is still a kick ass card. You can argue it will perform worse in higher resolutions etc. etc. although to be quite honest I would opt for a GTX 980 or 290x 8GB before I were to even consider 1440p and above.

 

[64K]

I can probably fudge that together somehow this weekend. Not used DSR before, so I'm unsure how accurately I can force 3.4GB usage and 3.8GB usage. Starpoint Gemini II uses 3.4GB at maximum settings on 1440p, so that will be a useful example.

Thanks RCoon. I hope you find the time this weekend. I'm looking forward to what you find.

 

[rtwjunkie]

ok but is the 980 with the same settings & maybe reduced clockspeed showing the same signs when nearing 4gb?

i also recently got a 660... it's 2gb 192bit, so it has a similar uneven memory arrangement that i guess i should investigate

Correct, only the 3GB version is symetrical. However, when it was released, 2GB was alot of VRAM requirement. Who noticed, really? Now a single 660, even a 3Gig version, is not going to play the newest games at more than medium settings, the GPU chip itself can't do it, and a couple years old or older games, on medium-high, it's likely still to not be an issue.

Besides, IIRC, those that did discover this didn't show it as a problem, just that performance was better on the 3GB versions because it performed faster.

 

[R-T-B]

So it sounds like this has been an industry practice of NVIDIA's for a bit?

 

[qubit]

I don't think that nvidia have responded adequately and I didn't even buy one so I say crack on more threads please.

And im not assed if nv owners get twitchy because there beloved company is getting called out.

NVIDIA EARNED EVERY LETTER OF ABUSE THEY GET ON THIS

False advertising is Exactly what this was. ........... .. ...

+1 buddy.

I'm an nvidia owner and I'm pissed that they resort to tactics like this, especially as we now know that it does cause performance problems. You won't find me apologizing for them.

 

[64K]

Don't forget about the petition if you haven't already signed. It just takes a minute or two. It's got 4,700 signatures but it's only been up a few days.

https://www.change.org/p/nvidia-refund-for-gtx-970

 

[Vayra86]

So it sounds like this has been an industry practice of NVIDIA's for a bit?

Yup, ever since Fermi.

But there are some key differences to the way Fermi handled it, Kepler handled it, and Maxwell does today.

Back in the day the Fermi card (550ti) launched with a larger amount of VRAM than was generally the norm (1.5GB where 1GB was the norm for that price bracket). This also meant that games would hardly, if ever utilize the additional VRAM on that card. Basically the problem was there, but it was hidden due to 'more hardware'.

Then Kepler's 192bit bus came around. Kepler was a different beast, but STILL handled VRAM better than Maxwell's 970 does today. On Kepler's 660 and 660ti the 192 bus was divided asymmetrical which meant a 44 Gbps bandwidth dip with the last 0.5GB. This also explains how 660ti was a crippled card on 1080p when you used high levels of AA - similarly priced Radeons would beat the 660ti any day of the week on higher AA settings. The problem was again present, but hidden, because the same happened with the 680 and 256bit versus the 7970 with 384bit - but the origin of the problem is different. Where 680 was just choking because of overall bandwidth because it had a better GK104 behind it, 660ti was choking because of that lacking bandwidth on the last 0.5gb.

Now, compare Kepler and Maxwell and their bandwidth drop on the last 0.5GB. Very much apples & apples. The (much weaker) Kepler card has a 44Gbps bandwidth on the last 0.5Gb. The (over 40% faster) GPU in GM204 has that last 0.5Gb on a measly 28Gbps. Compare this to your DDR3 RAM which generally runs at 16Gbps - that is awfully close. This explains why people run into issues today, while they did not run into issues as much with Kepler or Fermi. The GAP between bandwidth variance is larger than ever before, while at the same time the memory requirements have vastly increased over time *and* the GPU itself is much more powerful.

ENBSeries' comparison of actually having only 3.5GB VRAM effective is bang on the money. Whatever part of the memory Windows resides in does not even come into play: the last 0.5GB effectively handles precisely like system RAM.

Now tell us again this is business as usual... It most certainly is not. To everyone marginalizing this issue, please go home, you haven't been paying attention. Maxwell is the iteration of GPU from Nvidia where cost cutting and memory subsystem tricks have gone too far and result in bad gaming - something which just so happens to be Nvidia's core business for this market. It is absolutely vital that we as (potential) customers draw the line here. If not for your currently owned 970, then at least do it for future generations of GPU.