Official Nvidia GTX 970 Discussion Thread

[CarlosRex]

Despite initial reviews and information from NVIDIA, the GTX 970 actually has fewer ROPs and less L2 cache than the GTX 980. NVIDIA says this was an error in the reviewer’s guide and a misunderstanding between the engineering team and the technical PR team on how the architecture itself functioned. That means the GTX 970 has 56 ROPs and 1792 KB of L2 cache compared to 64 ROPs and 2048 KB of L2 cache for the GTX 980.

Source via PCPer

 

The worst case scenario on the other hand would be to have the NVIDIA heuristics fail, or alternatively ending up with a workload where no great solution exists, and over 3.5GB of resources must be repeatedly and heavily accessed. In this case there is certainly the potential for performance to crumple, especially if accessing resources in the slow segment is a blocking action.

In any case, the one bit of good news here is that for gaming running out of VRAM is generally rather obvious. Running out of VRAM, be it under normal circumstances or going over the GTX 970’s 3.5GB segment, results in some very obvious stuttering and very poor minimum framerates.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8935/geforce-gtx-970-correcting-the-specs-exploring-memory-allocation/4

It appears this is a classic case of false advertising. Nvidia's marketing team has been known to stretch the truth with their marketing in the past. For instance claiming a 165W TDP for the GTX 980 (which is false) to claim a 2X perf/watt boost over Kepler.

 

Another example is advertising the Tegra X1 chip as a 1TFLOP "supercomputer" when in fact they're using half precision peak FP16 performance figures. A performance metric which was abandoned from Shader model 3.0 onwards and utterly unsuitable for a "supercomputer" which not only requires FP32 but even more so double precision FP64 compute. In which the Tegra X1 can only deliver less than 2% of the advertised compute performance.

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Yeah it's been posted a couple of times. I personally think they should provide a free game to users and give some money back or a gift card like a rebate.

[Faa]

120W, anything you got to say sir?

[Guest Kloaked]

I'm glad we continue to talk about how Nvidia lied about the 970, yet everyone was being blown away by it's benchmarks on release for it's price point.

[DeViLzzz]

Well I am glad to see the truth coming out.  As for what consumers should get well if they want a refund on the card they should be able to get it.  What about consumer watch dogs out there?  Better Business Bureau and so on what would they think?

[Faa]

You know the 970 has 3 SM's disabled and the reason for disabling 1 L2 cache;



 

The bottom SM's are made out of 4 blocks, which each have 2x 32bit memory controllers forming all together the 256 bit controller. The new feature is disabling one L2 Cache, to keep the last 32bit bus busy they used a "buddy interface" which allows Nvidia to activate the 256 bit bus completely because not every L2 cache is functional.

There's usually a reviewers-guide handed over to reviewers like pcper etc having information about the architecture/bs, the marketing team clearly fucked that up and they were ashamed of revealing the truth. 

[PopReference]

Seems more like Nvidia's is trying to throw the marketing department under the bus for this, but is that really enough?

[CreativeTHC]

" was an error

in the reviewer’s guide and a

misunderstanding between the

engineering team and the technical PR

team "

a company such as nvidia can make such huge "errors"?! really?! they rlly have ballz to say that. i mean from all the employee no1 has niticed this "error"?! they must be sued for this and is not the first time nvidia is lying ţi the consumers, but better said having small "errors" either way n970 is overpriced.

[GoodBytes]

AnandTech has a full article on it.

It goes in details:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8935/geforce-gtx-970-correcting-the-specs-exploring-memory-allocation

[GoodBytes]

" was an error

in the reviewer’s guide and a

misunderstanding between the

engineering team and the technical PR

team "

a company such as nvidia can make such huge "errors"?! really?! they rlly have ballz to say that. i mean from all the employee no1 has niticed this "error"?! they must be sued for this and is not the first time nvidia is lying ţi the consumers, but better said having small "errors" either way n970 is overpriced.

The majority of people are really happy with the 970 purchases form what I can read form comments, despite this story.

It seams to affects most doing 4K gaming, which isn't a lot of people. And teh 970, even if it didn't have this problem, is really not a good purchase for 4K, new big games will probably struggle on the 970 at 4K and high settings.

[zappian]

I already posted this on the GPU sub forum.

 

It sucks but its true , nvidia lied.

[Guest Generallee]

the flame wars are NIGH

 

redeem yourselves you fools, all them amd fanbois were starving for shit like this now the forum will be on fire for a week

 

[MilkyWhite]

The majority of people are really happy with the 970 purchases form what I can read form comments, despite this story.

It seams to affects most doing 4K gaming, which isn't a lot of people. And teh 970, even if it didn't have this problem, is really not a good purchase for 4K, new big games will probably struggle on the 970 at 4K and high settings.

What an utterly humiliating prospect for people to defend the ones who deceived them. I'm certainly considering a GTX 970 refund, thankfully this came just in time for me to pick up an R9 380X from the red team.

[Victorious Secret]

What an utterly humiliating prospect for people to defend the ones who deceived them. I'm certainly considering a GTX 970 refund, thankfully this came just in time for me to pick up an R9 380X from the red team.

 

Yup, this "revelation" suddenly made your GPU worthless, eh? Your GPU was already second tier trash to Nvidia, never to be a flagship card. Now we know precisely how Nvidia made it a 2nd tier card and everyone is getting their jimmies rustled. 

amazing. 

[GoodBytes]

While I see the perspective of Victorious Secret, and the ones that say that they are still happy with their 970.

MilkyWhite is right. The error in the marketing material was not corrected immediately, just until now. This is false advertisement. Issue or not, it is false advertisement by definition.

If MilkyWhite you can return your card, I would. It is important to vote with our wallets.

[MetroP]

What an utterly humiliating prospect for people to defend the ones who deceived them. I'm certainly considering a GTX 970 refund, thankfully this came just in time for me to pick up an R9 380X from the red team.

I don't think many will opt for refunds but I certainly believe that Nvidia's reputation has been irreversibly damaged by this scandal.

Either way you slice it, it looks awful for Nvidia. Because it either means they deliberately lied bout the specifications of the GTX 970 or that their marketing team is so hopelessly incompetent as to make such an "error". And frankly I don't know which is worse.

[RazeG3SG1]

I'm glad we continue to talk about how Nvidia lied about the 970, yet everyone was being blown away by it's benchmarks on release for it's price point.

It was, people thought it was a perfect 1440p and 4K card for its price point.

 

EDIT: I used to think that too. Until AMD drop their prices again.

[CreativeTHC]

Yup, this "revelation" suddenly made your GPU worthless, eh? Your GPU was already second tier trash to Nvidia, never to be a flagship card. Now we know precisely how Nvidia made it a 2nd tier card and everyone is getting their jimmies rustled. 

amazing.

is more about trust now. will i wait for some1 to really show me what is nvidia going to sell me or just going to listen to reviewers that sell out. its a matter of trust idk if u get that. they shuldnt have lied, they knew about but they dnt give a shit about the people that are supporting them... its just a shame what they are doing...

[Victorious Secret]

While I see the perspective of Victorious Secret, and the ones that say that they are still happy with their 970.

MilkyWhite is right. The error in the marketing material was not corrected immediately, just until now. This is false advertisement. Issue or not, it is false advertisement by definition.

If MilkyWhite you can return your card, I would. It is important to vote with our wallets.

 

I didn't even upgrade but does this turn me off from getting a 970? Not really. I've tried to follow this as best as possible and for my 1080/60 gaming needs, I'll never care about this issue at all. I get why some people feel cheated, but at the same time I'm not as angry over it.

I think someone (some people in fact) will be without a job tomorrow morning at Nvidias marketing department. 

[Faa]

Yup, this "revelation" suddenly made your GPU worthless, eh? Your GPU was already second tier trash to Nvidia, never to be a flagship card. Now we know precisely how Nvidia made it a 2nd tier card and everyone is getting their jimmies rustled. 

amazing. 

Do you really think he has a 970? Look at his posts, he hasn't done anything else than bummin AMD. Funny they can't respond to my video I posted that trutly showed how much power my 970 was pulling instead of from some random source that doesn't know how to get their AC/DC efficiency steady for max accuracy. I get 200W when folding with a 780, 100W on my 970. Can prove it.

 

[MilkyWhite]

Yup, this "revelation" suddenly made your GPU worthless, eh? Your GPU was already second tier trash to Nvidia, never to be a flagship card. Now we know precisely how Nvidia made it a 2nd tier card and everyone is getting their jimmies rustled. 

amazing. 

It's not even about that. Let me put it this way. You give me the choice of buying two oranges, one is slightly larger than the other. I opt to buy the smaller one because it fits my needs only to realize that it's not even an orange, it's a bitter grapefruit.

Of course my GTX 970 isn't worthless, I never implied it is. Not for 1080p or 1440p at least. But for 4K it is utterly worthless now. I had bought the card in anticipation of a 4K G-Sync monitor upgrade this year along with another 970 to power it. But now Nvidia slaps me in the face and tells me my card is worthless for the purpose I had originally bought it for. I'm sorry but if this isn't infuriating enough, the mere aspect of deception is enough for me to call it quits with this rotten arrangement.

UPDATE : And despite what Faa my lead you to believe I do in fact HAVE an MSI Gaming GTX 970, not that I care what an inconsiderate flame-baiter thinks.

[Faa]

UPDATE : And despite what Faa my lead you to believe I do in fact HAVE an MSI Gaming GTX 970, not that I care what an inconsiderate flame-baiter thinks.

Can you prove it with a screenshot of your CPU as well? Else you're lying

[MilkyWhite]

Can you prove it with a screenshot of your CPU as well? Else you're lying

You're delusional if you think I'd indulge you in your fantasy or that I even care what you think.

[mr moose]

It was, people thought it was a perfect 1440p and 4K card for its price point.

 

EDIT: I used to think that too. Until AMD drop their prices again.

 

It's not even about that. Let me put it this way. You give me the choice of buying two oranges, one is slightly larger than the other. I opt to buy the smaller one because it fits my needs only to realize that it's not even an orange, it's a bitter grapefruit.

Of course my GTX 970 isn't worthless, I never implied it is. Not for 1080p or 1440p at least. But for 4K it is utterly worthless now. I had bought the card in anticipation of a 4K G-Sync monitor upgrade this year along with another 970 to power it. But now Nvidia slaps me in the face and tells me my card is worthless for the purpose I had originally bought it for. I'm sorry but if this isn't infuriating enough, the mere aspect of deception is enough for me to call it quits with this rotten arrangement.

UPDATE : And despite what Faa my lead you to believe I do in fact HAVE an MSI Gaming GTX 970, not that I care what an inconsiderate flame-baiter thinks.

 

C'mon,  for 4k the card is just as worthy/worthless today as it was when you bought it on the back of all the benchmarks that were out there.  I can't believe people actually think the card performs worse now than it did before they discovered all this.

 

Yes, Nvidia misrepresented their product,  Don't buy from them again if you wish, take your card back if you wish, but don't try to insinuate the card can't do what it already can and go on as if AMD have never misrepresented any of their products.

[spartaman64]

the 970 is still a great card but im still angry at nvidia for lying. "its a miss communication between the development team and marketing team" yea sure you expect us to believe that you've been miss communicating for months now.