GTX 970 Memory Allocation Issues

[Nordic]

I havn't seen anyone make a discussion thread about it here, and I am curious about tpu's thoughts.

NVidia’s GTX 970 is the current price-to-performance darling, offering incredible visual for incredible value. It seems, however, that it’s harbouring a dark secret. It’s a 4GB card, but it looks like a significant chunk of that VRAM doesn’t work.


According to a number of rather angry people on Reddit, Overlock and the Guru3D forums who’ve noticed their shiny, powerful GTX 970’s come to a screeching halt when maxing out their cards. Clever people, using VRAM benchmarking software, have discovered that when the last 500`700MB of VRAM gets accessed, memory performance drops significantly. Some users have even found that their cards go belly up when hitting 3GB.



The issue doesn’t seem to affect the more expensive, more powerful 980 – so it’s not a Maxwell fault, but rather one specific to the 970. DRAM bandwidth drops from a peak of over 150GB/s, right down to 19.88 GB/s

The problems seems to be widespread – and Nvidia’s admitted that problem affects every single 970 (to varying degrees). They’re looking in to the issue – but unless it’s something that can be resolved via driver or firmware update, a recall may be on the cards.

 

[cheesy999]

I havn't seen anyone make a discussion thread about it here, and I am curious about tpu's thoughts.

It's likely an issue with their new compression tech imo, should be able to patch it whether driver or firmware

 

[Nordic]

It's likely an issue with their new compression tech imo, should be able to patch it whether driver or firmware

Most likely, since the problem doesn't exist on the 980 or 750ti.

 

[AsRock]

but unless it’s something that can be resolved via driver or firmware update, a recall may be on the cards.

A recall, HA! never will happen. It would just out right cost them to much to do so i hope for their sake they solve it though firmware \ software.

And if the problems that bad should've not of heard much more about this as i cannot really say i have heard people really complain about the 970 performance.

 

[ChevyOwner]

Guess I won't be ordering that 970 next week like I was planning.

PS
I wonder if the 960s will also have this problem.

 

[mouacyk]

Most likely, since the problem doesn't exist on the 980 or 750ti.

I did NOT know that the 980 and 750ti do NOT use the new color compression technology.

 

[Xzibit]

It's likely an issue with their new compression tech imo, should be able to patch it whether driver or firmware

Unlikely. Both 980 and 970 have the same compression technics.

The 970 didn't initially launch with a reference design and maybe have given way for an issue to prop up with AiB firmware/bioses.

 

[newtekie1]

I wonder if this might have something to do with the current generation of drivers. I remember when I installed the latest beta on my 970 they had the word "sandbag" attached to them. Maybe nVidia plans to "fix" this problem once they need a little more performance out of the card...

 

[TRWOV]

Next up: nVidia uptades 970 firmware to just address 3.5GB of VRAM.


I kid, I kid.


Seriously though, I haven't seen mention of that just until now. Some people on the Overclock.net thread speculate it being a hardware issue

EDIT: someone posted a link: http://techreport.com/blog/27143/here-another-reason-the-geforce-gtx-970-is-slower-than-the-gtx-980

They conjecture that maybe the problem is related to the way nVidia disabled the SMMs.

 

[Nordic]

I did NOT know that the 980 and 750ti do NOT use the new color compression technology.

I was saying it would most likely be patched with a driver, not that the 980 didn't use compression. I honestly don't know if the 750ti does. I think the compression is a 900 series feature.

 

[Xzibit]

Time to check eBay for deals.

 

[SK-1]

"Some users have even found that their cards go belly up when hitting 3GB." Belly up? Like...dead?

 

[64K]

If Nvidia screwed the pooch on the GTX 970 then I don't see how they could avoid a recall if they sold a defective product. I suppose they could try but then all of those nasty legal fees will be added onto the cost of finally having to do a recall anyway (I'm looking at you Toyota) so I'm not worried. At most I will be inconvenienced.

 

[HammerON]

http://www.techpowerup.com/209205/g...caps-video-memory-usage-to-3-3-gb-report.html
Officially front page news

 

[rtwjunkie]

It's likely an issue with their new compression tech imo, should be able to patch it whether driver or firmware

But, doesn't the 980 use compression too? Since the problem doean't exist on the 980, the problem can't be compression.

 

[erocker]

Please continue the discussion here: http://www.techpowerup.com/209205/g...caps-video-memory-usage-to-3-3-gb-report.html

Thanks much!