NVIDIA Responds to GTX 970 3.5GB Memory Issue

[Victorious Secret]

Yeah, it should perform something like this:

 

http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/geforce-gtx-970-sli-review,22.html

 

 

My god people,   No hardware is suddenly going to be worse just because something new has come to your attention.  Knowing about the ram issue is not going to change the performance of your card.

 

So true. 

 

Its not like my SLI 660s are suddenly gutless pieces of crap that no longer function because we now have a 960...

In fact, my SLI 660s have enough grunt (and VRAM) to keep on going at 1080p settings for a long time. I have no desire to go to 4K at these prices, so I have no need to jump to a x70 or x80 class of SLI GPUs because I have no desire to game or work at those resolutions. 

Some people are a little insecure over what benchmarks and reports say.

[PopReference]

Exactly, I would be willing to bet if you ran the same benchmark with a 4GB 670, 680, 760 or a 3GB 660 Ti you would find a similar scenario. Even a 6GB 780 or Titan will run into this issue. People must not realize how high of settings you need to be running (very high levels of AA, Ultra Textures, Maxed out settings, and 4K, 1440p resolutions or DSR, etc) to fill up to 4GB or more of VRAM. As a single card, I don't know how you can not expect a performance drop at this level. These type of settings are so intensive. This should be common sense. When you start filling up your memory buffer it begins to swap to the system's RAM. We see this on any card that gets close to maxing out its video memory; performance issues ensue. And again, why is it only in this one benchmark that it seems so apparent? Why are other people testing outside of the benchmark and are having results that are fine? Who made this benchmark? Why did he make this benchmark? Where did it come from? What was its original purpose? These are the real questions people should be asking.

You can find out yourself, I don't know German so I can't really help: http://www.computerbase.de/forum/showthread.php?t=1435408

 

PS: User on Guru3D(English) has a reworked version with source code: http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=4998341&postcount=115

[TroubleKlef]

If more information leaks out that only a maximum 3.5gb of VRAM can be utilized then I hope Nvidia will do something about it. 

 

I'd be outraged if I bought a car with an advertised 300hp but limited to 250hp. Sure, the car will run the same at 60 mph regardless of the horsepower difference but when I need the extra 50 horses I don't have access to it? Not cool. 

[mr moose]

If more information leaks out that only a maximum 3.5gb of VRAM can be utilized then I hope Nvidia will do something about it. 

 

I'd be outraged if I bought a car with an advertised 300hp but limited to 250hp. Sure, the car will run the same at 60 mph regardless of the horsepower difference but when I need the extra 50 horses I don't have access to it? Not cool. 

 

I think a more apt analogy would be buying a 300Hp car and then finding out that the engine leans out in the higher rev range.  The car still performs exactly the same way it did when you bought it, it still produces the advertised power, and goes as fast as the performance reviews said it would.  The only difference is you discovered a peculiarity in the fuel mix that you think should be different.

[TroubleKlef]

I think a more apt analogy would be buying a 300Hp car and then finding out that the engine leans out in the higher rev range.  The car still performs exactly the same way it did when you bought it, it still produces the advertised power, and goes as fast as the performance reviews said it would.  The only difference is you discovered a peculiarity in the fuel mix that you think should be different.

 

If more information leaks out that only a maximum of 3.5gb of VRAM can be utilized then no, it does not produce the advertised power.

[mr moose]

If more information leaks out that only a maximum of 3.5gb of VRAM can be utilized then no, it does not produce the advertised power.

 

 

 

The card performs exactly the same today as it did when it first came out, it has not lost power because we have discovered the ram issue. 

[MageTank]

If more information leaks out that only a maximum of 3.5gb of VRAM can be utilized then no, it does not produce the advertised power.

But no information is saying that 4gb cannot be used. It CAN use more than 3.5gb, but its speeds become so slow that the framerate tanks. This is where people are getting their facts mixed up. This is not false advertisement on grounds that "They are advertising 4gb when its only 3.5gb". This is a defect, in that the 4GB that is advertised, is not reaching the speed that is expected of the card's bus width and effective memory clock. 

 

The information is already all over the net, anyone that pays any attention to any tech forum, already knows of this issue by now. The official Nvidia forum is plagued with reposts of this same topic. Reviews on amazon and newegg are also including this information too, and Nvidia is already aware as far as i am concerned. We just do not have cited proof that Nvidia themselves have given a legitimate answer regarding WHY the memory is performing slower when using the last bit of memory on the card.

[TroubleKlef]

The card performs exactly the same today as it did when it first came out, it has not lost power because we have discovered the ram issue. 

 

Sure, the car will run the same at 60 mph regardless of the horsepower difference but when I need the extra 50 horses I don't have access to it? Not cool. 

[BiG StroOnZ]

You can find out yourself, I don't know German so I can't really help: http://www.computerbase.de/forum/showthread.php?t=1435408

 

PS: User on Guru3D(English) has a reworked version with source code: http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=4998341&postcount=115

 

The guy on the German forum that you linked just links you to another website. I'm looking for the original creator of the program itself. I cannot seem to find that through the links you provided. 

 

Could you also link the page itself from Guru3D not just the single post. 

 

 

If more information leaks out that only a maximum of 3.5gb of VRAM can be utilized then no, it does not produce the advertised power.

 

I'd like to see you find a scenario where as 970 has enough power to fill up a 4GB VRAM buffer. It doesn't. Do you know what settings you need to be running to utilize over 3.5GB of VRAM? You do realize a 970 isn't powerful enough to do that as a single card?

[TroubleKlef]

But no information is saying that 4gb cannot be used. It CAN use more than 3.5gb, but its speeds become so slow that the framerate tanks. This is where people are getting their facts mixed up. This is not false advertisement on grounds that "They are advertising 4gb when its only 3.5gb". This is a defect, in that the 4GB that is advertised, is not reaching the speed that is expected of the card's bus width and effective memory clock. 

 

The information is already all over the net, anyone that pays any attention to any tech forum, already knows of this issue by now. The official Nvidia forum is plagued with reposts of this same topic. Reviews on amazon and newegg are also including this information too, and Nvidia is already aware as far as i am concerned. We just do not have cited proof that Nvidia themselves have given a legitimate answer regarding WHY the memory is performing slower when using the last bit of memory on the card.

 

If more information leaks out that only a maximum of 3.5gb of VRAM can be utilized then no, it does not produce the advertised power.

[Splashzed]

It's like on a mobile phone, they advertise it as a 16gb model and you only have 13/14 because that's occupied by system files, in this case they are saying 4GB but really the memory available to the user is 3.5GB

[MageTank]

If more information leaks out that only a maximum of 3.5gb of VRAM can be utilized then no, it does not produce the advertised power.

Sorry, did not pay attention to the word "utilized". I stand corrected.

 

I still consider this a defect, rather than intentional deceit. This is why i am willing to give Nvidia time to offer their conclusion on this subject. If it is unsatisfactory, then we can proceed with the pitchforks and torches.

[mr moose]

Sure, the car will run the same at 60 mph regardless of the horsepower difference but when I need the extra 50 horses I don't have access to it? Not cool. 

 

Where do you get this idea that it has less power than advertised?  The card still produces the same results all the performance reviews stated, it is not doing less than advertised. Sure it may not be utilizing the full spectrum of memory to our ideals. but that hasn't suddenly made all the performance reviews wrong.

[Lays]

If more information leaks out that only a maximum of 3.5gb of VRAM can be utilized then no, it does not produce the advertised power.

 

 

If they advertise it getting 60 FPS in said game, and it still gets 60 FPS in said game, it is getting the advertised power.

If anything, fixing this will give us MORE than the advertised power.

 

Unless the reviewers got cards that weren't effected by this bug, then no matter what we're getting the advertised power, because the card would of been shown at the same FPS we're getting.

 

 

@mr moose is right.

[PopReference]

 

The guy on the German forum that you linked just links you to another website. I'm looking for the original creator of the program itself. I cannot seem to find that through the links you provided. 

 

Could you also link the page itself from Guru3D not just the single post. 

 

 

 

I'd like to see you find a scenario where as 970 has enough power to fill up a 4GB VRAM buffer. It doesn't. Do you know what settings you need to be running to utilize over 3.5GB of VRAM? You do realize a 970 isn't powerful enough to do that as a single card?

 

Nai is a poster in that thread just scroll down to post #4 & 7.

The link to the Guru3D forum thread is in the top left right corner. (also here: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?p=4998341#post4998341 )

[MageTank]

Where do you get this idea that it has less power than advertised?  The card still produces the same results all the performance reviews stated, it is not doing less than advertised. Sure it may not be utilizing the full spectrum of memory to our ideals. but that hasn't suddenly made all the performance reviews wrong.

The claim comes from the fact that with an advertised bus width, and memory clock, the math should dictate that the full spectrum of the memory perform within a certain speed window. The fact that the last .5gb of it falls well outside of that window, to the point in which it cannot be utilized for any practical use, makes it less than what is expected of it.

 

@TroubleKlef is correct in that sense. However, i am certain this is not intentional, which is why i refuse to label this false advertisement. They would not pay to put 4GB of Vram on a card, just to intentionally cripple it. Time for us to all adopt the "wait and see" attitude for now. If you still feel unsatisfied with your purchase, feel free to return it, but i still advise against doing so until we know what is wrong in the first place.

[zappian]

Damn 500 mb is quite a lot of VRAM.

 

That used to be the whole memory for a card.

 

What a PR nightmare.

[mr moose]

The claim comes from the fact that with an advertised bus width, and memory clock, the math should dictate that the full spectrum of the memory perform within a certain speed window. The fact that the last .5gb of it falls well outside of that window, to the point in which it cannot be utilized for any practical use, makes it less than what is expected of it.

 

@TroubleKlef is correct in that sense. However, i am certain this is not intentional, which is why i refuse to label this false advertisement. They would not pay to put 4GB of Vram on a card, just to intentionally cripple it. Time for us to all adopt the "wait and see" attitude for now. If you still feel unsatisfied with your purchase, feel free to return it, but i still advise against doing so until we know what is wrong in the first place.

 

Except that we don't know if the last .5G of ram will make any difference to the overall performance.  Let's just say for the sake of argument that the last .5G doesn't exist at all.   Until this all came to light, most users where unaware of their cards memory being limited. Why?  because they were all performing within margin of the advertised performance.   No one is getting less FPS now than they were before.  Nvidia said it had 4g of ram and it does, nvidia said the ram bandwidth is 256b and it is,  theoretical maximums never occur in reality. The important thing here is performance not theories on paper.    

[bogus]

I think your sense of logic is the only thing completely messed up here. Nvidia spent the money themselves, paying for 4gb of Vram to place on a board. How can making it not work to its intended effectiveness "cut costs"? Do you believe me to be as dense to not consider both sides of this argument before planning out my take on it? I did, which is why i clearly expressed my opinion regarding the fact that if this was intention deceit, Nvidia would not have even bothered to include the 4gb of Vram in the first place. I also already mentioned their quality assurance, so you are not telling me anything i do not know.

 

The simple fact is, this is not false advertisement. This is not an intentional defect. The Pcper article offers no source of their response, so i do not take it as fact. So far, everyone is losing in this situation. Nvidia is losing the trust of their customers and their public image, the clients are losing performance, and the market as a whole suffers when multiple companies lose money over this defect.

 

Perhaps you should understand my "priorities" before questioning them.

From what I can read you don't understand what's the matter here: the 970 has 3.5GB + 512mb, the way the card seems to be accessing the it, is what it's at stake here. I really, but really doubt this is something that comes out of the production line unnoticed. Not only that, they also have different bandwith between eachother - none of wich seems to be 256bit - wich points out again for false advertisement.

 

You can't limit "cutting costs" to "how then why they would place 4GB total" - if in the end it would cut on costs to feature all the ram, and then to trimm down the card (to differ it from a 980) then they would easily do it.

What's weird is the silence. This whole silence that seems to be muffled by their lawyers.

 

[Majestic]

How people can play devil's advocate right now is beyond me. It's not getting the advertised bandwidth nor is it able to use the advertised memory (effectively). And it's by design, you are totally ok to rip on them and defending them on this is pretty irredeemable. This is not buyer's remorse talking, I still have 14 days to return it without costs. 

[exyia]

I really question the reading comprehension of this forum.............

 

They are saying third party programs are reporting vram incorrectly because of the design compared to the 980

 

The GeForce GTX 970 is equipped with 4GB of dedicated graphics memory.  However the 970 has a different configuration of SMs than the 980, and fewer crossbar resources to the memory system. To optimally manage memory traffic in this configuration, we segment graphics memory into a 3.5GB section and a 0.5GB section.  The GPU has higher priority access to the 3.5GB section.  When a game needs less than 3.5GB of video memory per draw command then it will only access the first partition, and 3rd party applications that measure memory usage will report 3.5GB of memory in use on GTX 970, but may report more for GTX 980 if there is more memory used by other commands.  When a game requires more than 3.5GB of memory then we use both segments.

 

They are never saying it does NOT use the full 4gb of vram.

 

so if MSi Afterburner (or whatever you use) is reporting it incorrectly, then they're saying that the FPS/performance problems are probably from ACTUALLY going OVER 4GB vram.

 

Their supporting evidence is to use a 980 in comparison.

 

Shadow of Mordor

3.5GB setting = 2688x1512 Very High 72 FPS 60 FPS

>3.5GB setting = 3456x1944 55 FPS (-24%) 45 FPS (-25%)

 

Battlefield 4

<3.5GB setting = 3840x2160 2xMSAA 36 FPS 30 FPS
>3.5GB setting = 3840x2160 135% res 19 FPS (-47%) 15 FPS (-50%)

 

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare   
<3.5GB setting = 3840x2160 FSMAA T2x, Supersampling off 82 FPS 71 FPS
>3.5GB setting = 3840x2160 FSMAA T2x, Supersampling on 48 FPS (-41%) 40 FPS (-44%)

 

notice the ACTUAL fps difference!

24% vs 25%

47% vs 50%

41% and 44%

 

So 3% difference. That sounds completely normal for a tier 1 vs tier 2 card (if anything, only 3% difference is impressive for a _70 vs _80)

 

If you jumped to the conclusion of the 970 was actually limited to 3.5gb vram.....then that would mean the 970 would hit a complete performance wall the minute it went over 3.5gb vram, where as the 980 would not. But 3% difference? ummmm....looks normal to me

[TroubleKlef]

How people can play devil's advocate right now is beyond me. It's not getting the advertised bandwidth nor is it able to use the advertised memory (effectively). And it's by design, you are totally ok to rip on them and defending them on this is pretty irredeemable. This is not buyer's remorse talking, I still have 14 days to return it without costs. 

 

It's people who have not bought the card laughing in the face of others in hindsight. 

[BcrdRqs]

 

The guy on the German forum that you linked just links you to another website. I'm looking for the original creator of the program itself. I cannot seem to find that through the links you provided. 

 

Could you also link the page itself from Guru3D not just the single post. 

 

 

 

I'd like to see you find a scenario where as 970 has enough power to fill up a 4GB VRAM buffer. It doesn't. Do you know what settings you need to be running to utilize over 3.5GB of VRAM? You do realize a 970 isn't powerful enough to do that as a single card?

 

 

Here is my summary as far as i have read the german posts (i am german )

 

Someone posted the appearance of the VRAM issue on the german "computerbase"-forum (Thread: http://www.computerbase.de/forum/showthread.php?t=1435408 )

Until then nobody had any "usefull" (the benchmark isn't the most usefull either) way to take a look at this problem so everybody was demanding for further investigation.

Nai, a user of this forum, offered his help by writing a benchmark in CUDA . In the beginning only GTX Titan (his own graphicscard) and upwards were able to produce reasonable results because of the code he used. 

 

 

The code he used can be checked here: http://www.computerbase.de/forum/showthread.php?t=1435408&p=16868213#post16868213

Apparently some people helped him fixing minor issues and allowing other Nvidia graphicscards, but until last time i checked nobody found any big mistakes he could have made which would explain the bad performance of the 970, so it seems to be the truth.

 

Sry for bad english

[MageTank]

From what I can read you don't understand what's the matter here: the 970 has 3.5GB + 512mb, the way the card seems to be accessing the it, is what it's at stake here. I really, but really doubt this is something that comes out of the production line unnoticed. Not only that, they also have different bandwith between eachother - none of wich seems to be 256bit - wich points out again for false advertisement.

 

You can't limit "cutting costs" to "how then why they would place 4GB total" - if in the end it would cut on costs to feature all the ram, and then to trimm down the card (to differ it from a 980) then they would easily do it.

What's weird is the silence. This whole silence that seems to be muffled by their lawyers.

 

I understand the matter perfectly. You are assuming that the Pcper article is in fact, correct on that non-cited "Nvidia Response". Why would Nvidia respond only to Pcper, and no other site? It is fishy at best.

 

I am simply stating that the card does in fact have 4gb of Vram. This is known to everyone right now, the card HAS the memory. The problem at hand is that the memory bandwidth is tanking to the point in which performance is lost. So far, all we have is theoretical claims based on paper, as suggested by @mr-moose, and video's that may or may not prove the performance issues, as no correlation has been made between the two issues so far.

 

All that is being made so far, is assumptions based on an uncited source. Do you not understand the problem this causes when trying to make factual statements? If you would read my other posts, you would also see i am not feigning ignorance to this situation, i am completely aware of the memory and bandwidth issues of the 970. But I, just like everyone else here, have no concrete evidence as to why this is happening. The only way for us to fully understand, is to either do extensive tests to isolate the issues ourselves, or wait for Nvidia to do the heavy lifting for us. Either way, fighting over this article that provides no source will not get this situation resolved.

[Majestic]

It just baffles the mind how the fuck they thought noone would notice. I just can't even right now.

I'm not even mad at myself, noone could've known this.