Are the new GTX970 Ok ? or they still have the 3.5G ram problem?

[Master]

Hello All, Recently I was looking at ASUS Strix GeForce GTX 970 (STRIX-GTX970-DC2OC-4GD5), and was wondering if its problem is fixed!
Is its fixed or this whole model is still in 2015/2016 ! problematic?



Edit :
Aactually I dont want to play with this card, I need its bandwidth and its memory to run some applications (a deep learning Framework called caffe ).
Currently I have a GTX750 2G GDDR5, I need 4Gig at least . at the very same time, I also need a higher bandwidth card.
I cant buy the GTX980, its too expensive for me, I was skeptical to go for the GTX960 4G or the GTX970 4G (3.5G).
basically, GTX960 is 128 bit and it gives me 112 G of bandwidth, while the GTX970 is 256 and gives me 192+G bandwidth.
My current cards bandwidth is only 80!
So I just need to know, Do I have access to the whole 4 gigabyte of vram? playing games aside?
Does it crash if it exceeds the 3.5G limit or it just gets slower?


Thanks in advance

 

[uuuaaaaaa]

That 3.5GB vram issue is not fixable... If it bothers you that much, get an R9 390.

 

[P4-630]

It is not "fixed", nvidia designed it that way.

 

[Frick]

It's not a problem either.

 

[jboydgolfer]

Afaik,its still an issue. I havent run into it making a differdnce for me personally,but it might for others.ive had gta5 using 4plus gbs of vram,and there was no difference from sub 3.5gbs.i only just bought a 970,but the way I personally looked @ the whole issue is this....the 970 would be more expensive likely if it didnt have this issue,and since i have run sub 2gb and 3gb cards for 20plus years ,i saw no reason not to take advantage of the lower price...but afaik,you cannot return them anylonger because of the 3.5 issue,since its been a known issue. So hopefully that helps you make your decision

 

[GreiverBlade]

not really an issue, indeed ... altho it's a 970 : a "Do Not Buy" case for me ... i rather go AMD if i have to be in the 970 perf range at a lower price most of the time, than get a lie with a premium price to make it worse...

on vRAM well my 2nd rig has a GT860m (technically a GTX750Ti once overclocked) 2gb card and for now no games break it ... (except a heavy moded skyrim with a heavy ENB ... but that's another story ) so ... between 2gb and 4gb the only difference for me, is the amount of eye-candy i can permit to a game

if i was in a GPU upgrade need, well i would, either go AMD for a R9 2/390 and overclock it (like i did with the previous i had) or eventually 2/390X, or wait a bit more put more money aside and get a Fury/Fury X/980/980Ti or even push further for Arctic Island or Pascal.

 

[Master]

Thanks alot everyone,
Aactually I dont want to play with this card, I need its bandwidth and its memory to run some applications (a deep learning Framework called caffe ).
Currently I have a GTX750 2G GDDR5, I need 4Gig at least . at the very same time, I also need a higher bandwidth card.
I cant buy the GTX980, its too expensive for me, I was skeptical to go for the GTX960 4G or the GTX970 4G (3.5G).
basically, GTX960 is 128 bit and it gives me 112 G of bandwidth, while the GTX970 is 256 and gives me 192+G bandwidth.
My current cards bandwidth is only 80!
So I just need to know, Do I have access to the whole 4 gigabyte of vram? playing games aside?
Does it crash if it exceeds the 3.5G limit or it just gets slower?

 

[INSTG8R]

Well the liine used was that the last .5 was "slow RAM" So if you are after high bandwidth, memory heavy applications I don't think the 970 is going to do it for you. By sounds of what you want to use it for YOU could be the one to "hit that wall"

 

[jboydgolfer]

no, my guess is that the 3.5Gb issue was discovered in a synthetic enviroment, i could be wrong, but ive exceeded it FAR beyond, gaming and no noticable anything happend..(i know u said its not for gaming) but thats My personal experience. I have been AMD for SO long, but Im glad when i got this card, it looks way better than the 7970 i was running. id go for it if i was you. unles MEM is of the utmost importance..but the fact that your knowingly considering it makes me think it isnt THAT much an issue.

 

[Vayra86]

There are some edge cases where you will run into the 3.5GB limitations, but those are very hard to find, and most notably pop up in SLI with two cards.

With one card, it is a well balanced GPU in terms of Core versus VRAM, which means the GPU will be out of grunt long before you can push 4GB VRAM in terms of detail settings. Because of this, many people draw the wrong conclusions. They want their 970 to perform like a 980 and it never will.

Bottom line: single card 970 is just fine. However AMD has more solid offerings at this price point right now. 970 has become a bit hard to recommend now.

 

[qubit]

There's no crash if the 3.5GB is exceeded, just a slowdown. However you may not even notice that going by jboyd's post.

 

[RejZoR]

I wouldn't and I haven't bought one. Either GTX 980 or something from AMD. Unless you get a GTX 970 for a really dirty low price. Which is unlikely.

 

[Shou Miko]

Nvidia did smth they through was clever but didn't test it out properly before the commercial team got their hands on it.

This is how the GTX 970 is cut down from a GTX 980:

look at the buttom right the disabled L2 do so it has to find another way to access the last 0,5GB segment of memory, that's why in tests it's slower when u reaches beyond 3,5GB memory and some game engine's and benchmarks acted weird but it should be fixed in the newer drivers or that's what Nvidia claims they have.

 

[GreiverBlade]

actually I dont want to play with this card, I need its bandwidth and its memory to run some applications (a deep learning Framework called caffe ).

based on that line
if it's about memory bandwidth, well i would go R9 2/390/X (or Fury ... but pricing is a bit... meh )

 

[rtwjunkie]

Having a 970 in the house I can say that it's not an issue, unless you actually need all 4GB. The usage of the slower .5GB has been improved with driver support. In any case, it is still faster than system RAM.

For most users, they have not seen it affect much in single card use, other than a few rare examples. However, the newer cards from both camps should at least have a few models within 6 months.

If you can't wait, and need it now, there are periodically good sales on one brand or another.

 

[droopyRO]

I don`t notice it either, and i have the card since oct. 2014. But if were to choose today, i would get a R9 290x if your PSU is not an issue.

 

[Jborg]

Having a 970 in the house I can say that it's not an issue, unless you actually need all 4GB. The usage of the slower .5GB has been improved with driver support. In any case, it is still faster than system RAM.

For most users, they have not seen it affect much in single card use, other than a few rare examples. However, the newer cards from both camps should at least have a few models within 6 months.

If you can't wait, and need it now, there are periodically good sales on one brand or another.

Agreed..... I have not noticed any issues with mine, been playing all the new AAA titles on near max detail, usually settling for a combination of Very High and High detail. The only game that even comes close to using up 3.5G of VRAM is GTA 5 when I have an absurd amount of modded cars loaded or something like that. I tried for a while to exceed 3.5G in GTA V to see what would happen, but it usually won't go beyond 3.5G, and when it does its for very short amounts of time. For me the GTX 970 has worked well, however it is struggling a little bit playing GTA V on 3 screens @ 5760 x 1080, for that reason, I could use a 980ti.

... altho it's a 970 : a "Do Not Buy" case for me ... .

I agree with this, regardless of how much games are affected, which most of them are not, I still would have gone with a 980 or an alternative.... Regardless though, a great card that will get the job done in most single card environment situations.