Do you think that Nvidia should recall 970's? (and Nvidia's response)

[MadManMarsBar]

As someone who was planning on purchasing a 970, ill be holding onto my money until this gets sorted

You might be waiting a while ........

[leoprozczinski]

I bought my GTX 970 STRIX today. Today!

Should I cry?

[Nathan]

You might be waiting a while ........

waited this long with a 660, i cant wait awhile longer 

[Razzaa]

Uh no there were cards pushed to the max and 4 GB of vram was not used. I saw this posted on other sites.

Not done by anyone who new what they were doing. I can get max vram every single time, minus 1-200mb being used by the OS. I have not seen any reputable reviewers claiming they can not use more than 3.5gb. I could be wrong but i cant replicate it.

[Slick]

test test boop beep

[andrewskaterrr]

As someone who owns a 970, I don't really care.

I'm pretty sure everyone who bought a 970 looked at benchmarks first, then MABYE looked at ROPs. But who cares how many ROPs or L2 cache it's using? Performance is the end result we care about and ROPs and L2 cache affect it. So if you saw the performance of the card and were satisfied enough to buy one then obviously you're ok with less ROPs and cache. 

 

I don't care if the 970 has 1 ROP and 1kb of L2 cache or if it runs off fairy dust as long as it performs as it should/does. Did I see special Nvidia videos with the 970 running BF4 4K Ultra 120fps then get mine and see that it can't do that? NO.

That's take a step back and look at something. The Price/Performance follows the normal upgrade trend, that's good. Now look at the 970 vs 980 which cost almost $200 more for about 15% more performance...That's not much more for a whole lot more money as is usual for x70 to x80 jump. So what I'm seeing is a bunch of babies who want a 980 specs for the price of a 970. The 980 is barely better than a 970 and costs so much more yet you're whining about the 970 WHEN YOU WOULDN'T EVEN KNOW IT WAS AN "ISSUE" UNLESS SOMEONE POSTED IT.

People are freaking out for basically no reason.

The ONLY issue I have is I would like the full 4GB or VRAM, I'm not super salty though as it's only 512MB out of 4096MB and 99% of people with this card won't hit the 3.5GB mark so it's not a huge issue.

 

[Briggsy]

When I look at how Nvidia have handled this, it's obvious that they have chosen to absorb the full brunt of the backlash by discrediting the management of their company. They claim this was a lack of communication between their technical PR people, and the engineers. In a sense, they are admitting fault in a lesser area, in order to absolve the company from any legal action for something much worse. It's like someone pleading insanity after committing a crime. It may deflect the full weight of consequence, but there is still consequence, and the fallout will last much longer.

[MadManMarsBar]

waited this long with a 660, i cant wait awhile longer 

i know your pain , if you cant wait get another second hand 660 for sli ...

[MadManMarsBar]

test test boop beep

sup slick

[Slick]

testing 1234

 

please ignore this post

[d3sl91]

I'm just putting this out there, seems to be a good explanation on how that last .5 works and a little more info on the whole ordeal - maybe should be added to OP @Doughnutnator?

 

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/NVIDIA-Discloses-Full-Memory-Structure-and-Limitations-GTX-970

[jerryeight]

Yes Nvidia should be liable to provide a payout of a flat $50 and also offer a code for game remdeption.

The card does not perform as accurately as their spec sheets state. This is inaccurate marketing that was reviewed after a significant number of units have been sold to consumers.

This is the same as the pentium debacle causing inaccurate calculations that affected all users depending on the hardware.

[Raudi_]

I'm just putting this out there, seems to be a good explanation on how that last .5 works and a little more info on the whole ordeal - maybe should be added to OP @Doughnutnator?

 

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/NVIDIA-Discloses-Full-Memory-Structure-and-Limitations-GTX-970

I think everyone at this point knows how it works its the fact that an increasing number of users are having performance losses when that last .5GB is needed.

[Enderman]

I want the 100Km/h V6 that I paid for, that's it. Not other stuff, Nvidia offered a specific product with specific stuff with specific performance. Not a "GM204 chip with random specifications that performs kinda well in certain conditions"

It's my opinion, it's your opinion. If you're fine with companies like Nvidia lying you on expensive products, fine, your opinion.

As far as I know the extra ROPS, cache and other stuff that it's disabled on the 970 is what it makes the 980 more powerful, because it's the same GPU (GM204, and the same architecture).

Read this from @chopdok

1) The disabled ROPs do matter. While they are right about pixel fillrate bottlenecked by SM. In the case of stuff that requires ROP only, such as Anti-Aliasing its a big deal. If anyone (like myself) bought this card expecting it to take a minimal performance hit in future titles with AA on due to having more ROP, then its not the case anymore.

2) The 3.5 and 0.5 memory do not only differ in bandwith. When the GPU works with 0.5, it cannot acess 3.5 during the same cycle. Its either or. Or XOR, as the folk at annandtech pointed out in their acticle. Thus, not only acessing 0.5 is helluva slower, it also means that when 0.5 is in use, your effective bandwith for the main memory partition takes a hit too.

3) The lack of additional L2 cache can affect GPGPU performance.

4) The current benchmarks tell only one half of story. GTX 970's performance is great, and its as good as it was month ago. BUT the card's longevity is now in question. I bought this card to get the great performance now, and to be able to play with AA on for at least 2 years. But what happens when the games will need all 4 GB, and they will need them all on a high bandwith? GTX 970 is only 15% slower than GTX 980. In a year, that will be 30%. In 2 years, 45%. The more memory intensive the games become - the higher the performance difference will be. The higher the scene complexity, the more load will be put on ROP by AA. That is the sad truth about unconventional asymetric GPU desings - they are good for when they designed, but their performance falls of a cliff after a certain time. While conventional symmetrical designs scale down smoothly in performance.

5) It is clear now that in order to card work well, high degrees of driver/API/OS optimisation is needed. What will happen when the next generation of cards comes along, and nVidia will no longer want to spend money on optimisations for the new games for GTX 970? What happens when a game comes out that will not work correctly with additional RAM, and driver improvements will need to be made for it to work properly with GTX 970. Will nVidia spend their resources optimising for that game, given the fact that the optimisation is only need for GTX 970. Do you think they will spend as much effort for GTX 970 drivers, at the expensive of their other products, seeing as that kind of optimisation is only needed for GTX 970?

Main problem is not the design of GTX 970. It is what it is. Main problem is despite the card's performance, I would not have bought it because I am unwilling to be a lab rat for nVidia's experiments with unconventional GPU design. If I knew about this, I would not have both GTX 970 - not because of its performance, its the same GPU either way. But because of the concerns stated above.

1) no it does not matter, because as you can see the 780ti had only 48 and it still performed just as well.

 

2) so you got a GPU that has 3.5GB "usable" instead of 4GB ok well unless youre running ultra HD textures at 1440p or 4k it doesnt matter, and if you are they you probably own a titan black or 780ti or 980, not a 970

 

3) is your fps in games good? yes it is. ok then its fine as it is.

 

4) That's not how the world works. If the 970 is 15% slower than a 980, the next year it will STILL be 15% slower than a 980. Its not like the 970 magically loses performance while the 980 doesnt lol

 

5) youre complaining about 3.5GB when nvidia optimises drivers to work on GPUs down to 1GB of vram. And guess what? You can still play games with 1GB of vram so its not like suddenly you wont be able to play any games because you only have 3.5GB instead of 4

 

6) then why did you buy it? You could have easily checked the ROPs and VRAM and whatever and returned the card when you saw it didnt meet your specifications.

[Real_PhillBert]

Im gonna have to side with @Enderman on this one. Everyone took a look at the performance benchmarks and decided that for the amount of money they were spending this card made sense, and bought one.

 

Now a few months have past and a very few people have noticed some rather odd behavior of these cards and found that there are two partition of memory on the card and the second .5GB partition is much slower than the first 3.5GB. Sad face. The performance of your cards is no different from when you bought them and now all of the sudden people have convinced themselves based on this new information that their cards are no longer worth the money. I don't get people some days.

 

Now the second half of this story is where I do believe Nvidia does owe the consumers a bit. The 56 ROPS and 1792 KB L2 Cache vs the marketing claim of 64 ROPs and 2048 KB of L2 Cache. Although I do not believe that Nvidia was deliberately trying to deceive customers, as I have first hand experience with the occasional inept capabilities of marketing departments, however this mistake did somehow make it out to the public. This is where I do think Nvidia should offer a small refund ($15-$20 maybe) for their mistake or a choice of a couple of games on Steam. This error is in my opinion the only true error that Nvidia made with this product, the marketing information.

[CaptainWASD]

My 970's work fine for me. The error is huge but I don't think it's worthy of a massive recall. Recalls are absolute nightmares for manufacturers.

[tacmiud]

testing 1234

 

please ignore this post

well I *could* ignore it orrrrrr I could reply

[TriBeard]

They owe users something. It's a bait and switch or false advertising at least. Try and sell someone a car with "250HP and 45MPG" that really has 200HP and only 30MPG and see how well that works for you. This doesn't fly in any other industry, and it shouldn't here either. Sure, people bought the card because of how it performs. But they also did buy it for the specifications too. Put 3.5GB on the card, and suddenly the R9 series is more attractive, as is the 980. Is it the end of the world? No. But if we allow them to get away with it, there's no telling how far it will go, or what it will be next time.

[Briggsy]

Yes Nvidia should be liable to provide a payout of a flat $50 and also offer a code for game remdeption.

The card does not perform as accurately as their spec sheets state. This is inaccurate marketing that was reviewed after a significant number of units have been sold to consumers.

This is the same as the pentium debacle causing inaccurate calculations that affected all users depending on the hardware.

 

they never refunded/compensated 660/660ti 2GB owners, I doubt there will be any actions taken on Nvidia's part here either for the 970, as angering as that may be.

[jmotyka]

Listen, I don't care how well all these reviewers said the 970's performed. I don't care of the card would perform better or worse if nvidia were to fix the issues with rops, cache and vram. If the consumer bought a product with an advertised spec sheet then the consumer deserves what he or she paid for period! This is blatant false advertising no matter how you look at it, no matter how you feel about the consumers who are asking for a response and/or compensation. I don't own a gtx970 but if this were me I'd be expecting something. I can't stand some people in here who think they feel the need to impose/force their partisan opinions down consumers throats. They feel like they got hustled and there is nothing wrong with that. What's wrong is you people trying to convince them otherwise.

[Lumarico]

I really hope that they don't do a recall, as my 970 is now in my water loop, but a free game of our choice would be fine

[Enderman]

Consumer protection laws doe not function in this manner in most US states. If you purchased a product that said it contained "x" and in reality it contained "y" then you are entitled to a full refund and should get one. 

I dont care if nvidia gives refunds or not.

The problem is the sheep-like behaviour of humans that follow herds because of their idiocy.

 

The product works and it performs well, which is what matters. A few numbers in the specifications do not matter because you dont game with specifications, you game with GPU performance.

[Nacho588425]

Kinda like the "heat issues" with Fermi and then they were resolved with the 500 series of fermi.

Yup... freaking huge heat issues with Fermi... my GTS 450 ussualy ran at 84c... it died.

[EYCEthebest003]

As a gigabyte G1 gtx 970 owner, Im already fed up with the coil whine issue.  I've gone through three different cards and they all had coil whine.  I decided to just give up and live with it.  I bought this gpu so that when i upgrade my monitor to 4k when windows 10 drops, i'd have a big enough frame buffer to deal with it. I also needed a card that would support game stream to my nvidia shield because my old gtx 570 didn't.  Now 3.5 gigs is still a lot of memory BUT I PAID for 4 gigs.  If they offer recalls, I'm gonna get my money back and wait for gtx 1070.

[Doughnutnator]

1) no it does not matter, because as you can see the 780ti had only 48 and it still performed just as well.

2) so you got a GPU that has 3.5GB "usable" instead of 4GB ok well unless youre running ultra HD textures at 1440p or 4k it doesnt matter, and if you are they you probably own a titan black or 780ti or 980, not a 970

3) is your fps in games good? yes it is. ok then its fine as it is.

4) That's not how the world works. If the 970 is 15% slower than a 980, the next year it will STILL be 15% slower than a 980. Its not like the 970 magically loses performance while the 980 doesnt lol

5) youre complaining about 3.5GB when nvidia optimises drivers to work on GPUs down to 1GB of vram. And guess what? You can still play games with 1GB of vram so its not like suddenly you wont be able to play any games because you only have 3.5GB instead of 4

6) then why did you buy it? You could have easily checked the ROPs and VRAM and whatever and returned the card when you saw it didnt meet your specifications.

Kepler and Maxwell are totally different stuff. You can compare stuff like CUDA cores, ROPS and cache in chips that has the same architecture (the case of the 970 and 980)

I never said anything about the 3.5GB issue

I bought the card in October, and yes, I took a look at the specifications, because Linus said them in his video, as well as JayZ (i think). Back in that days nobody knew about that, Nvidia was selling a 4GB 64ROPS GPU.

Again, performance doesn't matter in this case. They sold me "x" product, and it ended up beign "y" product.