Okay, I'm out of the loop. What's the shitstorm about GTX 970s?

[zappian]

[Tafel_Kafel]

There are two big complaints about the gtx 970:

 

1)---NVIDIA straight up lied.

 

Nvidia lied about the specs of the gtx 970. They said it had more ROPs than it actually has. They also "omitted" to say that 0.5 out of those 4gb were partitioned separately and you'd get stuttering when accessing them. That doesn't change benchmark results, but at high resolutions you may get noticeable stuttering even if it's not reflected in the framerate. Definitely not a huge issue, but people don't like to support lies with their money.

 

2)---The price.

 

Currently you can get an R9 290x for 100$ less than a 970. Theoretically thanks to the new architecture and cheap memory interface nvidia should be able to pay less for their gpus and therefore sell them at a very competitive price. However AMD sells their stuff for 100$ lower, which means that either AMD is selling at a loss, or nvidia is claiming exaggerate margins. It also means that the price/performance value of the 970 sank into the ground a few months after release. It was the obvious choice when it was priced like an R9 290, now the gap is too high for the higher efficiency to justify.

 

Will these two things affect your experience? Probably not. But you could get significantly better value out of amd for much less, if you care to spare some money to buy some other nice upgrade.

I agree about the 1.

But the 2. won't affect me. The R9 290x is the same price here anyway.

[I/O]

Yeah, and a single R9 380x will also be able to drive Eyefinity surround 8k @ utlra @ 288fps. 

What's that have to do with this issue we are discussing ?

[Clarkey]

There are two big complaints about the gtx 970:

 

1)---NVIDIA straight up lied.

 

Nvidia lied about the specs of the gtx 970. They said it had more ROPs than it actually has. They also "omitted" to say that 0.5 out of those 4gb were partitioned separately and you'd get stuttering when accessing them. That doesn't change benchmark results, but at high resolutions you may get noticeable stuttering even if it's not reflected in the framerate. Definitely not a huge issue, but people don't like to support lies with their money.

 

2)---The price.

 

Currently you can get an R9 290x for 100$ less than a 970. Theoretically thanks to the new architecture and cheap memory interface nvidia should be able to pay less for their gpus and therefore sell them at a very competitive price. However AMD sells their stuff for 100$ lower, which means that either AMD is selling at a loss, or nvidia is claiming exaggerate margins. It also means that the price/performance value of the 970 sank into the ground a few months after release. It was the obvious choice when it was priced like an R9 290, now the gap is too high for the higher efficiency to justify.

 

Will these two things affect your experience? Probably not. But you could get significantly better value out of amd for much less, if you care to spare some money to buy some other nice upgrade.

 

 

The price in GPUs and most computer components isnt the manufacturing. Its the development costs, Nvidia puts Billions into RnD for their products even if their product cost £10 to make theyve gotta recoup the cost of RnD somehow. AMD does the same thing.

[Sauron]

1) Just like I would expect the 4gb of VRAM to be fully functional, I would also expect the Reference R9 290 to be able to run at 100% -- which we both know it can't. So, expectations are not always a reality. And I'm not conviced Nvidia lied about the ROPs, I do believe there was just miscommunication between the engineers and public relations team. 

 

2) Efficiency is a big reason to consider 970s and has nothing to do with whats going on, and is something that's always been the case with Nvidia vs. AMD. So price is something else entirely different. 

 

1) Sure, the reference design is crap and everyone knows it. Nobody advises to get it either. So what's your point?  :huh:

I can believe nvidia lied. If they weren't lying, why didn't they issue a public statement correcting the reviewers at any point in the 6 months the card has been on the market?

 

2) Efficiency is nice, but the price premium is really huge. Bare in mind power savings amount to only a few bucks per year. The time necessary to fill the gap would be way longer than the time you'd take to upgrade. In general the 900 series' performance is underwhelming considering it competes with 2 year old architectures. therefore I usually advise to either spare your money with a more value card or to just wait and see what gets released in the next few months (not just from amd, nvidia is likely to pull a 780ti again). And it has not ALWAYS been the case my friend. It has in the last couple of years, barely, and even then nvidia released kepler AFTER gcn was released. Before kepler it was the reverse.

[DirkW]

nVidia is realizing new drivers soon. Anyone wanting a 970 should wait and see if that resolves the issue, otherwise go with something else.

 

It's nether a driver issue nor anything that a firmware update could fix. It's the hardware config - and it's not a bug, it's been designed that way. The "only" problem is that nvidia didn't tell anybody until they got caught.

 

The card however, even if it does not quite have the specs it was supposed to have, will still perform exactly like all the reviews and benchmarks showed.

[EarthboundHero]

It's nether a driver issue nor anything that a firmware update could fix. It's the hardware config - and it's not a bug, it's been designed that way. The "only" problem is that nvidia didn't tell anybody until they got caught.

 

The card however, even if it does not quite have the specs it was supposed to have, will still perform exactly like all the reviews and benchmarks showed.

They've said they are releasing a driver to help. I would think they'd know more.

[zappian]

Oh great another thread with AMD vs NVIDIA bickering.

 

We have already a big official thread for that.

 

Oh well..

[Sauron]

The price in GPUs and most computer components isnt the manufacturing. Its the development costs, Nvidia puts Billions into RnD for their products even if their product cost £10 to make theyve gotta recoup the cost of RnD somehow. AMD does the same thing.

 

And yet AMD has much lower selling prices, for what is more or less the same performance. You'd have been perfectly right if the 900 series' performance wasn't as underwhelming as it is. It competes with a 2.5 year old architecture and barely pulls a win performancewise. If the 970 was what is currently a 980, the price would have been perfectly justified and I'd recommend it any day, but it's not the case. And the 980 is incredibly overpriced even compared to its own smaller brother, the 970. The 960 also suffers from the same problem; competing with an R9 280 at the 200$ price point is just not enough of an improvement imo. I have recommended 970s when the R9 290 was 300$ just like everybody else, but things changed since then.

[Whorax]

I'm be playing at 1080p, 144hz probably.

As long as you're okay with buying a product that isn't particularly specced as advertised, then the GTX 970 will be perfectly fine on 1080p, since I don't believe any 1080p game really uses up that much VRAM.

[DirkW]

They've said they are releasing a driver to help. I would think they'd know more.

 

Well, it may help to make sure that the last 0.5GB will only be used by the least needed stuff, so the performance hit will be as low as they can manage, but they won't make it go away. You really have 1/8 of your VRAM being much slower than the rest and you will have less ROPs and less L2-Cache than nVidia promised you.

 

Anyway, it's still a very good card - just nVidia as a company has flushed a lot of consumer trust down the toilet.

[Clarkey]

And yet AMD has much lower selling prices, for what is more or less the same performance. You'd have been perfectly right if the 900 series' performance wasn't as underwhelming as it is. It competes with a 2.5 year old architecture and barely pulls a win performancewise. If the 970 was what is currently a 980, the price would have been perfectly justified and I'd recommend it any day, but it's not the case. And the 980 is incredibly overpriced even compared to its own smaller brother, the 970. The 960 also suffers from the same problem; competing with an R9 280 at the 200$ price point is just not enough of an improvement imo. I have recommended 970s when the R9 290 was 300$ just like everybody else, but things changed since then.

 

Amd has always offered better price to performance. I'd still say go with the 970 over the 290 unless you are going 4k. Although yeh the 960 is a bit of a joke. But really everyone should just wait for the AMD new series. They'll release and nvidia will have the lower the prices just like they had to do with the 780

[Sauron]

Amd has always offered better price to performance. I'd still say go with the 970 over the 290 unless you are going 4k. Although yeh the 960 is a bit of a joke. But really everyone should just wait for the AMD new series. They'll release and nvidia will have the lower the prices just like they had to do with the 780

 

you happen to be talking to the one guy who runs 4k off of one R9 290 ^^ and I agree on the waiting if at all possible

[79wjd]

1) Sure, the reference design is crap and everyone knows it. Nobody advises to get it either. So what's your point?  :huh:

I can believe nvidia lied. If they weren't lying, why didn't they issue a public statement correcting the reviewers at any point in the 6 months the card has been on the market?

 

2) Efficiency is nice, but the price premium is really huge. Bare in mind power savings amount to only a few bucks per year. The time necessary to fill the gap would be way longer than the time you'd take to upgrade. In general the 900 series' performance is underwhelming considering it competes with 2 year old architectures. therefore I usually advise to either spare your money with a more value card or to just wait and see what gets released in the next few months (not just from amd, nvidia is likely to pull a 780ti again). And it has not ALWAYS been the case my friend. It has in the last couple of years, barely, and even then nvidia released kepler AFTER gcn was released. Before kepler it was the reverse.

Because the engineers aren't going to be looking over the reviews as that has nothing to do with their department, and the PR team doesn't know the specs were wrong. 

 

The power savings is quite a bit more than "a few bucks a year" especially if you run the card for more than a couple hours a day -- which a lot of people do. 

[SeanBond]

Well to clarify on this a bit.... Anyone who's complaining about the cards performance is a moron. Anyone who's complaining about Nvidia isn't. 

Who the hell wants to read through a 60 page thread of shit. 

I guess that is the best way of saying it. Nvidia dropped the ball not really explaining this ordeal before launch but it's certainly no reason to return it in my book. I can't believe people are returning it over s small part of ram that really won't make a difference regardless of what card they buy, 3.5gb is super fast memory is overkill for most people right now.

[I/O]

I guess that is the best way of saying it. Nvidia dropped the ball not really explaining this ordeal before launch but it's certainly no reason to return it in my book. I can't believe people are returning it over s small part of ram that really won't make a difference regardless of what card they buy, 3.5gb is super fast memory is overkill for most people right now.

[Mentally Challenged Potato]

RIP budget. BTW, Nvidia has better drivers and cool features, so I'm going with a 970 I guess, I won't lose much.

Yeah don't bother going for a 980, 970 is plenty for a 1080p monitor, I've been looking at 970s for the past few days to put into my new gaming rig so I can confirm that even with the most demanding games at 1080 you're not gonna run into the problem

[I/O]

Yeah don't bother going for a 980, 970 is plenty for a 1080p monitor, I've been looking at 970s for the past few days to put into my new gaming rig so I can confirm that even with the most demanding games at 1080 you're not gonna run into the problem

Look at above posted video.