Official Nvidia GTX 970 Discussion Thread

[deathjester]

Honestly i kinda just hope nvidia releases a driver to lock the vram to 3.5 so that doesnt happen..

 

Good comment and I hope that is what happens. I do not feel like having to head over to my sisters house, every time a game decided to use higher texture packs or she uses Nvidia DSR.

 

Lock it to wherever it loses performance, change the boxes/listing from 4 gigs. Offer a free Game Works game to people who bought it as a 4 gig card.

 

 

To be fair, as long as it's not sticking around in that space for too long, it's probably not a big deal, but if the card/game needs to address more than 3.5GB of vram... yeah, the user needs to just tone down the specs, or better yet have the geforce experience auto reduce the settings to make sure that is not an issue...

 

Expect to see more games using higher textures. When they don't the PS4 is already nearing 3, and resolution up's that if you are at 1440 or 1440 Nvidia DSR. 

[Snickerzz]

To be fair, as long as it's not sticking around in that space for too long, it's probably not a big deal, but if the card/game needs to address more than 3.5GB of vram... yeah, the user needs to just tone down the specs, or better yet have the geforce experience auto reduce the settings to make sure that is not an issue...

but it shouldn't be an issue.. i bought a 4gb card.... im just thinking ahead to the future when gtav comes out or whatever that needs more than 3.5gb vram to run beautifully but i wont be able to do that because of this shit. myself and many other consumers can't/won't buy new gpus every year so eventually im going to need that 4gb i paid for then im SOL 

[TroubleKlef]

Sad that people are still defending the idea that 970 owners shouldn't be bothered by this. 

 

"Well your car still gets to 60 mph! Who cares if your engine is actually a v6 than a v8!"

[Dabombinable]

Sad that people are still defending the idea that 970 owners shouldn't be bothered by this. 

 

"Well your car still gets to 60 mph! Who cares if your engine is actually a v6 than a v8!"

I'm one of those that thinks Nvidia should have been upfront, but don't care too much as its like comparing a rocket to a pinto when looking at what I've had before the GTX 970.

[Victorious Secret]

Sad that people are still defending the idea that 970 owners shouldn't be bothered by this. 

 

"Well your car still gets to 60 mph! Who cares if your engine is actually a v6 than a v8!"

 

In this case the 980 is the V8 and the 970 is the V6 with a bad timing on one bank of cylinders. 

Stick to technology, don't mix up fields where you have no idea what you're talking about. 

[TroubleKlef]

In this case the 980 is the V8 and the 970 is the V6 with a bad timing on one bank of cylinders. 

Stick to technology, don't mix up fields where you have no idea what you're talking about. 

 

Since when does removing physical units count as bad timing?

 

If you're going to correct someone at least do it correctly. 

[Victorious Secret]

Its hard to correct people who are hellbent on blowing the issue out of proportion and acting like Nvidia basically stomped on your unborn children while laughing in your faces. 

 

[TroubleKlef]

One could hope that some sort of action will be taken but as others have joked already, probably not.

 

False advertisement is a big thing in my opinion. It's manipulation of the consumer which I'm not a big fan of. Judging by the posts of a few people, is seems as though they don't mind it. 

[han_han08]

120W, anything you got to say sir?

hey didn't get to see anything..

 

did you mean 120W on 980?

[MEC-777]

yeah, but false advertisement is false advertisement

 

Yes, it is.

 

And the card still performs the same as the day it was released.

 

That's a new low, blaming the 970 users for Nvidia's false advertising. Shameful.

 

If you read the post I commented on, you'd see that the user had intentions to upgrade to 4k later on. This would insinuate that the user should choose a card that delivers the best 4K performance at the given price point. Shortly after the release of the 970/980, benchmarks and reviews revealed the AMD hawaii cards still performed better at 4k (overall) than the 970. Yet this user still chose the 970.

 

I don't know when they bought their 970 - if it was at launch or a while after, but regardless and all specs/numbers aside, it's always better to wait and see how the product actually performs before making a final decision. Whether Nvidia lied or not is somewhat irrelevant because the specs and numbers don't always tell the whole story and this is not the first time we've seen this. A product is released with certain specs which would indicate a certain level of performance should be expected - but when the part is actually tested, and more details are revealed about the actual architecture - we actally find it doesn't necessarily live up to what the "specs" might suggest.

 

IMO, there is a certain onis on the consumer to make the right decision for them selves. What they choose to base that decision on is up to them. Personally, I do a heck of a lot of homework and research - mainly because I don't have a ton of money to throw around and if I'm going to drop a good chunk of cash down on something, I want to know what I'm getting beforehand. I don't choose a product based on specs alone, but how it actually performs. With the 970, regardless of what the "specs" actually are, we already know the full potential of it's performance because it's been extensively tested.

[BiG StroOnZ]

If everyone is getting so hellbent on "false advertisement," because NVIDIA is not advertising correctly. Why aren't we getting out the pitchforks and torches for AMD:

 

 

 

The 295x2 doesn't have 8GB of VRAM usable, it only has 4GB usable. So why isn't anyone getting ready to sue over this blatant advertising fraud? Everyone knows it doesn't have 8GB. There isn't 8GB usable. If people fill up their VRAM to the maximum 4GB and performance issues ensue. Why isn't anyone going crazy over the fact that they said it came with 8GB but there's really only 4GB usable? 

 

Makes no sense, seems like we are making exceptions here. "It's okay for one company to false advertise but not the other." Or their false advertising is less severe than the other. That just makes you a hypocrite. 

[Texhnlyze]

If everyone is getting so hellbent on "false advertisement," because NVIDIA is not advertising correctly. Why aren't we getting out the pitchforks and torches for AMD:

 

-snip-

 

-snip-

 

 

The 295x2 doesn't have 8GB of VRAM usable, it only has 4GB usable. So why isn't anyone getting ready to sue over this blatant advertising fraud? Everyone knows it doesn't have 8GB. There isn't 8GB usable. If people fill up their VRAM to maximum 4GB and performance issues ensue. Why isn't anyone going crazy over the fact that they said it came with 8GB but there's really only 4GB usable? 

 

Makes no sense, seems like we are making exceptions here. "It's okay for one company to false advertise but not the other." Or their false advertising is less severe than the other. That just makes you a hypocrite. 

 

Here we go. 

[legend8887]

good thing I plan on getting a 980

[Dabombinable]

good thing I plan on getting a 980

I should have done that as well, with the exchange rate from USD to AUD and the cost of postage off Amazon, I would have spent the same on a 980 as my 970. I'm a bit wary though of buying expensive electronics online though so I went local.

[Sammael]

If everyone is getting so hellbent on "false advertisement," because NVIDIA is not advertising correctly. Why aren't we getting out the pitchforks and torches for AMD:

 

 

 

The 295x2 doesn't have 8GB of VRAM usable, it only has 4GB usable. So why isn't anyone getting ready to sue over this blatant advertising fraud? Everyone knows it doesn't have 8GB. There isn't 8GB usable. If people fill up their VRAM to the maximum 4GB and performance issues ensue. Why isn't anyone going crazy over the fact that they said it came with 8GB but there's really only 4GB usable? 

 

Makes no sense, seems like we are making exceptions here. "It's okay for one company to false advertise but not the other." Or their false advertising is less severe than the other. That just makes you a hypocrite. 

 

 

Actually, out of curiosity, is that still true of AMD gpus in crossfire using mantle?  I thought that part of the reason that crossfire/sli setups in the past could only use what each gpu had in memory alone was because the technique they used was alternate frame rendering, where each gpu would render the scenes one after the other.  With mantle, and presumably dx12, asychronous rendering is possible where one gpu could perform rendering tasks using its memory while another gpu, even of differing power and ram amounts could work on some other arena or visual effect.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_6CAneoW-0#t=23m28s

[mr moose]

Sad that people are still defending the idea that 970 owners shouldn't be bothered by this. 

 

"Well your car still gets to 60 mph! Who cares if your engine is actually a v6 than a v8!"

 

poor analogy;

 

it would be more apt to say it's like people buying a car that was shown to get 60MPG and top out at 200 HP, then when discovering it's revs are limited to 3000RPM complaining because it can't get the same 60MPG while producing 300HP more.

 

False advertising is one issue and no one is excusing it, However the other issue here is that the card was never shown to perform well at 4K, yet for some stupid reason everyone thinks it should have.  Not only is this a completely irrational position to take, but it isn't limited to this card, the same logic can be applied to many cards from both AMD and Nvidia. 

[Faa]

Oh and you also want to tell people as consumers what they can and can't be mad over, and then attack them like Faa did, to the point where they prob just said screw this forum.

GPUXpert, Teraflop, Milkywhite, katness thing, who else of that gang are always upvoting each other and fabricating opinions for a news thread. Katness everdeen making a thread here about perf/watt;

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/218016-nvidias-attempt-to-manipulate-the-gtx-980-figures-to-deceive-the-press-worked/

Where the gang got completely proven wrong we see it being posted again, prove them wrong as many times they keep coming back as "LALALALAL IM AMD FANBOY".

The 2x perf/watt is a lie because a random source decided to test it with different AD/DC efficiency for each card, lets have some pure DC results;

780 during folding pulling 17Amps through the pcie cables so a total of 200W; http://i.imgur.com/FZtJNjQ.jpg

970 during folding pulling 9Amps through the pcie cables so a total of 100W; http://i.imgur.com/BxkPNg2.jpg

Clearly half the power consumption and we all know the 970 is faster, that 2x perf/watt isn't a lie.

Here's one of the AMD salesteam claiming their 290x only consumes 30W more than the 970; http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/290994-amd-says-gpus-and-cpus-are-its-top-priority-wants-apus-to-talk-to-gpus/#entry3951736

Again, same people upvoting.

If I'm attacking them, I'm sorry but honestly its rather the reality attacking them - don't you think? 

 

So Nvidia lies. 

We're down to two now. The Tegra X1 has two FP modes, 2x FP16 to boost FP16 (1TFlop peak) or a single FP32 (0.5TFLOP Peak). Has a clock speed of 1GHz, 2x FP16, 2x FMA, 256 cuda cores. So 1GHz * 2 FP 16 * 2 FMA * 256 = 1 TFLOP. Now we're down to 1.

Before you blame reviewers, Nvidia or AMD usually hands a reviewer guide out to them that contains a lot of information regarding the architecture etc, nothing of how the memory works was included and Nvidia's excuse is that their marketing team wasn't aware of the design. 

Besides don't pretend AMD hasn't lied yet, Mantle gave like 50 advantages over DirectX but in reality compared to a proper working DirectX it's pretty much zero. So 50 lies there already.

 

yeah, but false advertisement is false advertisement

There's 4GB on the PCB. Since when does Nvidia or AMD advertise like "you got 4GB of framebuffer to tease your GPU with"? You assumed that when they provided 4GB on the PCB. It's not false advertising, just a design flaw which wouldn't have been a design flaw if they decided to not screw it up by informing reviewers properly. They just didn't have the balls to say "Ok we fucked something up, it's a 3.5GB card because blabla" after the release.

[Razzaa]

I dont see why Nvidia would give any compensation. Nvidia didnt sell any 970's. Gigabyte, Asus, EVGA and Zotac sold 970's. Not one of those retailers lists the ROP's, cache or bandwidth from what i have seen. They warranty the card and manufactured them. Maybe this is why Nvidia didnt release a reference 970? Lmao

[X1XNobleX1X]

To be honest, who cares if they lied. It's not going to change the performance of the card. Every reviewer has already reviewed it and the performance will not change. 

[Snickerzz]

To be honest, who cares if they lied. It's not going to change the performance of the card. Every reviewer has already reviewed it and the performance will not change. 

it changes when you go past 3.5gb vram

[Dabombinable]

it changes when you go past 3.5gb vram

Not if your playing games at 1080P.

[Sidiox]

poor analogy;

 

it would be more apt to say it's like people buying a car that was shown to get 60MPG and top out at 200 HP, then when discovering it's revs are limited to 3000RPM complaining because it can't get the same 60MPG while producing 300HP more.

 

False advertising is one issue and no one is excusing it, However the other issue here is that the card was never shown to perform well at 4K, yet for some stupid reason everyone thinks it should have.  Not only is this a completely irrational position to take, but it isn't limited to this card, the same logic can be applied to many cards from both AMD and Nvidia. 

It is not just about this stupid gaming 4k bullshit, if you have bought this card for any sort of 3D work or video editing (some kinds do use quite a bit of vram with cuda acceleration) then this is really annoying. I have looked at benchmarks for 4k gaming, but I don't just look at those when I decide to buy a card, I look at the specs of said card. When I looked I saw it had 4GB of video ram and those specified L2 Cache with that nummer of cores. Now it turns out I don't get that. It is completely unimportant for me whether I would actually use all that power (L2 cache will be used completely though). I wanted to buy a card with these specs, regardless what those benchmarks said and for a reason that is unimportant. Now it turns out I got a card that just doesn't have these specs and Nvidia lied about it. That is my issue. I don't care that the benchmarks are still relevant, the card I bought isn't the card I wanted to buy, simple as that. 

 

I am a little bit of an Nvidia fan boy and will never buy AMD, but I am genuily considering to return this GTX970 and buy a GTX980 instead. 

[Dabombinable]

It is not just about this stupid gaming 4k bullshit, if you have bought this card for any sort of 3D work or video editing (some kinds do use quite a bit of vram with cuda acceleration) then this is really annoying. I have looked at benchmarks for 4k gaming, but I don't just look at those when I decide to buy a card, I look at the specs of said card. When I looked I saw it had 4GB of video ram and those specified L2 Cache with that nummer of cores. Now it turns out I don't get that. It is completely unimportant for me whether I would actually use all that power (L2 cache will be used completely though). I wanted to buy a card with these specs, regardless what those benchmarks said and for a reason that is unimportant. Now it turns out I got a card that just doesn't have these specs and Nvidia lied about it. That is my issue. I don't care that the benchmarks are still relevant, the card I bought isn't the card I wanted to buy, simple as that. 

 

I am a little bit of an Nvidia fan boy and will never buy AMD, but I am genuily considering to return this GTX970 and buy a GTX980 instead. 

Even with the vRAM issue, a GTX 970 with a 150MHz overclock is as fast as a reference GTX 980. After this debacle with Nvidia's marketing, its still a great card.

[Sidiox]

Even with the vRAM issue, a GTX 970 with a 150MHz overclock is as fast as a reference GTX 980. After this debacle with Nvidia's marketing, its still a great card.

It perhaps is in gaming. It is indeed still an amazing card, very good value, it just isn't the card I wanted to buy and that is my issue. 

[Snickerzz]

Not if your playing games at 1080P.

says who? many people including myself dont upgrade each year... what happens when a year from now when BF5 comes out and i cant max it out because it goes over 3.5gb vram? hmmm?