Official Nvidia GTX 970 Discussion Thread

[SkilledRebuilds]

If they just release the driver that allocates the slower VRAM to the aforementioned processes then it should be a non-issue.

 

Do you think thats possible? <--Genuinely curious...

 

Forcing DWM.exe/whatever it is,.. to the 2nd Vram partition, using a GPU driver....

 

Wouldn't Windows have to be patched accordingly to do so as well....?

[Chiobe]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2875740/nvidia-explains-geforce-gtx-970s-memory-performance-issues-admits-error-in-specs.html

 

It only mathers on 4k, multi screen setups and beyond ultra settings.

So ether liv with it or get the 980 instead.

[Bhav]

GTX 970 is still only 55% the cost of a GTX 980. Even though it was falsely advertised, its still amazing bang for buck. However I will no longer be buying a third, I knew from the start that GM204 wouldn't be great for high res / multiple monitor setups, and I wanted tri SLI and triple Asus Swifts. I'll save up more towards my big Skylake upgrade next year and get a surround setup with tri SLI done then. New years resolution for 2015 is no PC upgrades, save for a whole new tri SLI Skylake beast in 2016 with next gen GPUs. GTX 970s are powerful enough for 1440p.

[JAKEBAB]

GTX 970 is still only 55% the cost of a GTX 980. Even though it was falsely advertised, its still amazing bang for buck. However I will no longer be buying a third, I knew from the start that GM204 wouldn't be great for high res / multiple monitor setups, and I wanted tri SLI and triple Asus Swifts. I'll save up more towards my big Skylake upgrade next year and get a surround setup with tri SLI done then. New years resolution for 2015 is no PC upgrades, save for a whole new tri SLI Skylake beast in 2016 with next gen GPUs. GTX 970s are powerful enough for 1440p.

You know skylake is coming out this year right?

[Chiobe]

Even though it was falsely advertised, its still amazing bang for buck.

The only false info they gave, was that it has 3,5gb of ram for games, instead of 4gb.

 

The problem lies in the fact that people want the 970 to be a 980, for lower cost.

[DildorTheDecent]

You know skylake is coming out this year right?

K series or the locked rubbish?

[Sauron]

Then they'd be hard pressed to justify the price of a 980... we'd have 3 card tiers in the span of 10fps...

[Fate]

K series or the locked rubbish?

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/301040-14nm-broadwell-and-skylake-s-coexist-for-second-half-of-2015/

[TheRetiredSlave]

AFAIK, the VRAM issue comes from the fact that the 970 has some of its SMs disabled (like all non top-tier cards do). If they released a 970 TI, it would also have to have SMs disabled (because that's how you make something a lower-tier card), and it would also have the same issues as the 970..

[Sauron]

Yea but there's already a significant amount of vram being used sitting at desktop, I think he's trying to say if the slow vram partition was dedicated to those processes instead of the fast vram it wouldn't matter (that's what I interpreted anyways).

 

That looks an awful lot like something that would need at least a firmware update... I'm no engineer (yet, working on it ^^) but suddenly changing the way the vram is allocated seems like something that can't be done from a driver. But hey, any improvement at all is welcome.

 

GTX 970 is still only 55% the cost of a GTX 980. Even though it was falsely advertised, its still amazing bang for buck. However I will no longer be buying a third, I knew from the start that GM204 wouldn't be great for high res / multiple monitor setups, and I wanted tri SLI and triple Asus Swifts. I'll save up more towards my big Skylake upgrade next year and get a surround setup with tri SLI done then. New years resolution for 2015 is no PC upgrades, save for a whole new tri SLI Skylake beast in 2016 with next gen GPUs. GTX 970s are powerful enough for 1440p.

 

Dude, don't throw 2 expensive graphics cards in the bin after less than one year... and 2 970s can power 4k pretty well, ain't that right @othertomperson ?

[JAKEBAB]

K series or the locked rubbish?

unlocked http://vr-zone.com/articles/unlocked-intel-skylake-desktop-cpus-arriving-by-q3-this-year/86221.html 

also

 

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/301040-14nm-broadwell-and-skylake-s-coexist-for-second-half-of-2015/

[Briggsy]

Seriously, why just they make another card, give a discount for people that returned their "old" gtx 970s and be done? The vram issue sounds easy to fix. It's probably not that simple, but they really need to get their shit together because AMD is getting tons of profits right now.

 

would never happen. The 970 in its current form has an effective (stock) memory bandwidth of 192GB/s on the 3.5GB Ram partition that is utilizing 224bit of memory bus. that's just a cold hard fact. if they were to add the missing 8th chunk of L2 cache to a 970, it would be a 980 with 3 SMMs disabled. hard to say if there would be any performance change outside of bench-marking or high resolution gaming.

[DildorTheDecent]

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/301040-14nm-broadwell-and-skylake-s-coexist-for-second-half-of-2015/

unlocked http://vr-zone.com/articles/unlocked-intel-skylake-desktop-cpus-arriving-by-q3-this-year/86221.html

also

 

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/301040-14nm-broadwell-and-skylake-s-coexist-for-second-half-of-2015/

Nice. Might pick that up with it overclocks well. And Gigabyte learn how make a better BIOS. 

[GlassBomb]

You are probably more likely getting low frame rates even before hitting the 3.5GB mark.

[watts300]

Well, it's hard to quantify how much of a problem this has been for Nvidia, and how much of a benefit it is for AMD. This is a tech forum, so the shitstorm here probably isn't representative of the average consumer base. It's possible that this has been a drop in the bucket for both parties.

 

Indeed.  It's like going to the hospital, seeing a lot of sick people, and thinking there's an epidemic.  

[applesuxD]

Seriously, why just they make another card, give a discount for people that returned their "old" gtx 970s and be done? The vram issue sounds easy to fix. It's probably not that simple, but they really need to get their shit together because AMD is getting tons of profits right now.

Cos amd will make r9 390x alrdy

[GoodBytes]

The 970 is the 980 with some broken ROPs (they are disabled) and a small clock drop. For this, the card is dirt cheap, compared to the 980.

The reason why you can't get the full 4GB at max performance is because of the disabled ROPs. If the ROPs were all working, then believe me the card will only be 20$ less at most, as everyone can do a small overclock and voila! 980, which I think many people assumed they could do with the 970 despite the benchmark showing something wrong.

As you can see, the 970 is near identical to the 980. Assuming that the problem was not there, then Nvidia would be called upon the fact on how the 970 can't have the same performance of the 980 despite boosted clock, and how Nvidia artificially slowing down the card performance via drivers. In fact, I am surprised no said this before, no one noticed how come you are not getting the 980 performance despite (before the correction) identical specs after overclock.

[Briggsy]

The 970 is the 980 with some broken ROPs (they are disabled) and a small clock drop. For this, the card is dirt cheap, compared to the 980.

The reason why you can't get the full 4GB at max performance is because of the disabled ROPs. If the ROPs were all working, then believe me the card will only be 20$ less at most, as everyone can do a small overclock and voila! 980, which I think many people assumed they could do with the 970 despite the benchmark showing something wrong.

As you can see, the 970 is near identical to the 980. Assuming that the problem was not there, then Nvidia would be called upon the fact on how the 970 can't have the same performance of the 980 despite boosted clock, and how Nvidia artificially slowing down the card performance via drivers. In fact, I am surprised no said this before, no one noticed how come you are not getting the 980 performance despite (before the correction) identical specs after overclock.

 

the 192GB/s memory bandwidth of the 970 is at least one factor. (224bit / 8 * 7000)

 

*edit* to explain myself, the 3.5GB of Ram is 224bit, and the other 0.5GB of Ram is 32 Bit. both partitions cannot be accessed at the same time. therefore, the 970 can never actually achieve 256bit @ 224GB/s memory bus performance (stock memory clocks).

[tobben]

As you can see, the 970 is near identical to the 980. Assuming that the problem was not there, then Nvidia would be called upon the fact on how the 970 can't have the same performance of the 980 despite boosted clock, and how Nvidia artificially slowing down the card performance via drivers. In fact, I am surprised no said this before, no one noticed how come you are not getting the 980 performance despite (before the correction) identical specs after overclock.

23% more cuda cores anyone?

[GoodBytes]

Yea ok, it's not the texture units difference that would make such a big impact, by itself.

[othertomperson]

That looks an awful lot like something that would need at least a firmware update... I'm no engineer (yet, working on it ^^) but suddenly changing the way the vram is allocated seems like something that can't be done from a driver. But hey, any improvement at all is welcome.

 

 

Dude, don't throw 2 expensive graphics cards in the bin after less than one year... and 2 970s can power 4k pretty well, ain't that right @othertomperson ?

 

Two 970s is a good solution, yeah. As long as you don't bother with Antialiasing (which I don't think is any great loss at this res) you can have a really good experience.

 

DON'T GET THREE OF ANY GPU THOUGH. Literally cannot emphasise that enough. Three 970s costs the same as 980 SLI so on paper looks quite interesting but that third card adds bugger all to the experience and is not worth it at all.

 

Which is a damned shame. I'd love to live in a world where games were written for two, three, or even four GPUs so that if people wanted to they could spend a tonne of money and actually get something for it, but that isn't the case and is probably too niche to ever become something devs will care about.

[Bhav]

Ebaying isnt throwing them in the bin lol.

 

And darn, I thought Skylake wasnt due until next year, I'll just wait until 2016 anyway, I wont be needing anything more until then. I might even stick to my I7 980 for longer, but I'm still missing Sata III.

 

For surround 1440p, Tri SLI would be needed, 2 cards would be too slow.

[Bhav]

The 970 is the 980 with some broken ROPs (they are disabled) and a small clock drop. For this, the card is dirt cheap, compared to the 980.

The reason why you can't get the full 4GB at max performance is because of the disabled ROPs. If the ROPs were all working, then believe me the card will only be 20$ less at most, as everyone can do a small overclock and voila! 980, which I think many people assumed they could do with the 970 despite the benchmark showing something wrong.

As you can see, the 970 is near identical to the 980. Assuming that the problem was not there, then Nvidia would be called upon the fact on how the 970 can't have the same performance of the 980 despite boosted clock, and how Nvidia artificially slowing down the card performance via drivers. In fact, I am surprised no said this before, no one noticed how come you are not getting the 980 performance despite (before the correction) identical specs after overclock.

 

Memory bandwidth is also less, 224 bit (not 192 bit).

 

All things considered, I would have still bought the GTX 970s if they had been 3.5 Gb and advertised as 226 bit & 56 rops due to their price. Though its silly having to pay for the extra 500 Mb ram if its so slow, it would have been better if they didnt have that and charged £10-20 less, bringing the price down to 50% of the 980.

[Majestic]

Binning the cards to have a perfect chip except for 3 missing SMM's makes the price go up. Likely to 400ish Euro, like with the previous 670 and 770.

 

Then you have an additional problem;

- When you bring out a "970 TI" now, people will flock Nvidia going "OH SO THIS WAS YOUR IDEA ALL ALONG" "SELL THE LAST 512MB FOR A PREMIUM HUH". The reality is ofcourse that that's horseshit, but people on techforums often don't shy away from talking utter shit. As demonstrated by a few here lately aswell.

 

And to anyone who's going "glad i went with the 290x, i have 'full' 4GB" you don't. I'm sitting at 621MB idle with steam and some browsertabs open. 

 

 

Memory bandwidth is also less, 224 bit (not 192 bit).

 

All things considered, I would have still bought the GTX 970s if they had been 3.5 Gb and advertised as 226 bit & 56 rops due to their price. Though its silly having to pay for the extra 500 Mb ram if its so slow, it would have been better if they didnt have that and charged £10-20 less, bringing the price down to 50% of the 980.

 

 

Technically, 256bit is correct. It's 3.5 @ 224, and 0.5 @ 32. If you communicate with all chips that's still over 256bit.

[IlDuceSaint]

cuz nvidia is the new ubisoft