Official Nvidia GTX 970 Discussion Thread

[Majestic]

It wouldn't matter at all if it wasn't advertised. But it was, henceforth it is false advertisement. There's a reason why false advertisement is illegal and it should be denounced and this very product gives you a reason why: If you lie in an area that doesn't matter, what stops you from lying on an area that does matter, like total available, high performing vram which does affect people who bought the card for the very purpose of using SLI for 4k gaming with it, something at the time this card came out was the best performance/price option for 4k gaming?

If you say one is ok you're saying the other it's ok as well, that's why it's not a matter of how relevant of a lie it was but just that it was a lie and people are entitled to compensation for it.

 

I wasn't talking about that. I was mainly talking technical stuff. The engineering decision is solid. It gave us a better card for less money. The PR/advertisement is completely wrong ofcourse.

[Zulkkis]

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. 

 

This is absolutely irrelevant to the issue at hand. Firstly, there should be no "one company and the other"; we're the consumers, and we should keep an eye for both of them - not side with one of them and pledge loyalty, while trying to dig a grave for the other one. When both companies were actually interested in competing with each other and had a somewhat equal footing (Radeon 5870 launched at 400$ for example), we had rather good prices for the amount of performance offered. Right now, the equal GPUs have bloated in prices in a way that supercedes inflation.

 

And yes, it is bullshit. And yes, nVidia does that too.Just check their boxes. GTX 590 is a 3GB card and a 690 is 4GB, but you also know it is not true just like how the 295x2 8GB is not true. You also knew that the 2GB 4970x2 wasn't true. But it's the same kind of bullshit that you have with mobile GPUs; anyone with a little bit of information or a quick google search will figure out that the Xfire / SLI / multiGPU card VRAM is for each card only, and anyone with a little bit of searching about how to buy a good laptop will figure out that 980M is not a GTX 980.

 

This thing, however, had professional reviewers fooled. You couldn't be more informed about it unless you really started digging up some stuff or were using some test programs which somehow started struggling before the full 4GB of VRAM was in use.

 

GTX 970 was supposed to have PRETTY MUCH the same performance @ higher resolutions as what 980 would. BOTH cards have rather anemic VRAM for high-end in 2015, but they're at least directly comparable in how much they suck. If you were buying a single GTX 970 for a 1080p monitor, this changes nothing. If you were buying a GTX 970 SLI setup with prior information, you could have treated it as a superior alternative to a single GTX 980, depending on the games you play.

 

 

I wasn't talking about that. I was mainly talking technical stuff. The engineering decision is solid. It gave us a better card for less money. The PR/advertisement is completely wrong ofcourse.

 

I can understand how the lack of RoPs may not cause any performance impact. I can understand how they managed to make a more affordable card by making the engineering decisions they did, though I also believe that it wouldn't be impossible to manufacture the card with it's original specs at the price they launched it at.

 

My main gripe with the issue is not that nVidia made those engineering decisions, it is that they chose to remain silent about it until someone found out.

 

Regardless, the performance is crippled at higher resolutions. Obvious example is the VRAM.

[Opcode]

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. 

Why not throw a napalm in Nvidia's courtyard again with the TITAN Z.

Manufactures like to capitalize on how much VRAM is actually available. Even if each GPU can only address half of it.

[LukaP]

I'm surprised of you, you can join your peers by the way

 

*updates ignore list*

Watch me care ^^

 

Are you seriously advocating "caveat emptor" right now? NO tech site, not even pcper.com, knew that an L2 portion was disabled and it had 56 ROP's. You could've done weeks of research and not know about it. The only revised those stats AFTER nvidia "came clean".

 

So no, don't you even dare say caveat emptor, it's unfair.

You could not know if you never looked at am SMM. As soon as you do, and check the amount of them enabled, and use some logic, you see that you just cant have the same amount of ROPs and TMUs as a full chip. ive said that it looks weird to me many times. plus the fact that benchmarks show the performance that it gets, its only the people who blindly follow marketing material that were fooled.

 

Im not defending NV on the fact that they took this long to address the disrepancies in specs, in just challenging the self entitled morons to stop thinking they are entitled to being butthurt for buying a card based on marketing numbers and not benchmarks

[Khvarrioiren]

*updates ignore list*

 

Epic.

 

I like it.

 

Well done.

[Guest Strangerbob]

the flame wars are NIGH

 

redeem yourselves you fools, all them amd fanbois were starving for shit like this now the forum will be on fire for a week

 

 

Youre not an nvidia fanboy by any chance are you? ... just curious

[kacper]

Were there similiar situations in industry in recent years?

It's a question , not a statement about NV - I'm genuinely curious.

[Guest Generallee]

Youre not an nvidia fanboy by any chance are you? ... just curious

 

Not Nvidia nor AMD, my fanboyism is stuck in the 90's

 

3dfx master race

[SilkySkills]

Just got off the phone with a Scan.co.uk employee who knew of the issue with the 970 and told me that they aren't doing anything unless you bought within 14 days which is their standard practice and nothing to do with this issue.

 

I spoke to them about the false advertized specs that Nvidia had put out and said surely they'd have to allow people to return the card to which they guy told me it no.

I then asked if they had spoke to Nvidia and the guy told me they had and assured me they had spoke to Nvidia who weren't doing any recalls and until something changes i wouldn't be able to return or upgrade.

[Menta]

i would like to know Linus and is co workers opinion on this subject, he did a pretty good coverage of the event launch day.

 

what should NV do?

[Majestic]

You could not know if you never looked at an SMM. As soon as you do, and check the amount of them enabled, and use some logic, you see that you just cant have the same amount of ROPs and TMUs as a full chip.

 

[plnk]

And to all the people bitching about false advertising its not, It has 4GB of vRAM and has the amount of SMMs enabled as it had in the begining. If you wanted to properly inform yourself about the card, you shoulve checked how the architecture works (several sites explained it, as have i a while ago) and would realise that its more than just an underclock on a 980. So again, you didnt do your research and are bitching now. Same about the performance, check benchmarks for what res you want, decide on that, dont bitch when you dont.

 

If this was so obvious back then why are we even having this discussion? Oh, right, it wasn't.

[aeterna789]

Well in my situation, I would have still bought my 970 regardless of its advertised specs mostly because its the only High end card I could afford.

[SteveGrabowski]

Perfectly calm here, i just really hate morons and retards thinking they are entitled to something

 

Fuck that shit, I'm entitled to a return and a refund for not getting the card they advertised.

[SSOB]

Then you wake up to reality and you realize that there's a Product Manager, that works hand-to-hand with the engineers, and that presents everything to the board of direction and, probably, administration. Yeah everyone from CEO, CFO, CTO, you name it.

When it's about millions of dollars of investment everything is checked and rechecked.

If you want to think that a product comes to market in the backdoor, without the knowledge of people with high responsibility that make executive decisions... then you are ridiculously mistaken.

Even the CEO who was on a stage presenting the cards knew about this, and everyone, from engineers to marketing, kept their mouths shut - for 4 months, and would have kept it shut if no one else noticed.

So no, it's not marketing fault, it's everyone from NVIDIA. They thought their customers are ignorant enough to the point they can sell them something while claiming it's another thing.

I think NVIDIA is going to have some problems at least in UE.

Sarcasm, irony and just the odd joke. Please learn it people.

I'm currently studying International Business Administration on university (bachelor) and I know that of course, this is not how it works at all (well maybe a little of the humour aspect). why does everything has to be taken seriously when this was clearly a joke. When I was an intern at the compass group I was surprised how relaxed the ambiance was and that people in the management actually made decisions on the fly-that is within reason of course-. Of course I am not linking this to the nvidia issue but you have to understand that even the big companies, actually especially the big ventures more often than not have an unique business model that does not match the theoretical "optimal" company structure. Of course they have a lot in common but some differ substantially.

Second, this isn't some made up story just out of the blue. Pcper had a conference call with nvidia where they stated marketing and engineering had a "miscommunication". I liked how pcper put it in other words marketing didnt ""understand"" what it meant.

Without going too off topic (well on topic but not on your question) It's just a joke.

[HippY]

I think we have 2 issues here that needs to be looked individually

 

First, false information to reviewers, thus false advertising and late response.

 

There are some highly trained people here who know how processor architecture works, but many people do not, as it takes years of learning to understand it.

So in a way yes, they should research it, but many consumers are not Computer Engineers, and we should not expect them to be.

That is the reason why true advertising is important, and it is against the law for false advertising in many countries.

There are benchmarks, that is correct, but still, the card is marketed at 4 GB and 226 Gb/s (or something like that), that cannot achieve at 3.5GB of usage or above. Today it is rare, but in a year or two time it might be everyday, as games tend to use more and more VRAM

 

Secondly, the rest

 

Forget AMD, they are not connected in any way

Yes this card is still a good card, did not lost its performance magically. In the future, when games needs more VRAM, it might change ( not everyone upgrade their card every year or two)

 

But the problem here is false information got to the customer, that nVidia made happen and let it happen.

[jecho]

The majority of people are really happy with the 970 purchases form what I can read form comments, despite this story.It seams to affects most doing 4K gaming, which isn't a lot of people. And teh 970, even if it didn't have this problem, is really not a good purchase for 4K, new big games will probably struggle on the 970 at 4K and high settings.

Currently yes you are right. But that means I still bought $365 video card that was falsely advertiseted to me. Now I do not have and issues with my games these days but what is gonna happen in the future when games like witcher 3 comes out or other high demand games that could force my GPU to struggle from this problem. In a year or 2 from now my 970 @ 1440p could really struggle on some games. At this point too the only way to solve this is to put out drivers that won't even let games even try to access the last half gig. Also not sure if it is possible but they are NOT going to release a bios to unlock the remainder of the chip. So either way 970 owners are screwed. Although the performance of my 970 is still very good.

[SteveGrabowski]

Currently yes you are right. But that means I still bought $365 video card that was falsely advertiseted to me. Now I do not have and issues with my games these days but what is gonna happen in the future when games like witcher 3 comes out or other high demand games that could force my GPU to struggle from this problem. In a year or 2 from now my 970 @ 1440p could really struggle on some games. At this point too the only way to solve this is to put out drivers that won't even let games even try to access the last half gig. Also not sure if it is possible but they are NOT going to release a bios to unlock the remainder of the chip. So either way 970 owners are screwed. Although the performance of my 970 is still very good.

 

Yes, my 970 kills right now. But I also didn't buy this card for right now. I bought this card to last a few years; I felt I was getting 4GB of VRAM early on, and that it would offer some future proofing. 

[Victorious Secret]

@LukaP, watch out man you got placed on a ignore list because you expressed your opinion (isn't that allowed anymore, or are we only supposed to be sheep and think with one track minds?)

LOL. He is literally 12 years old. Ignore lists. Amazing. Cause that's how you resolve dissenting opinions, by plugging your ears and pretending the other side doesn't exist.

I'm loving how people are using this as some excuse on how bad their cards will perform down the line. No, you think? Cards perform less as time goes on. Either due to lack of VRAM or lack of cores. Nothing has changed.

The only difference is now we all know EXACTLY why the 970 is weaker than a 980, and everyone is getting awfully butthurt about it. Nvidia lied, yes. But you all fawned like sheep when the benchmarks came out, didn't you? You willingly gave money for a card that still performs like those benchmarks suggest. What's changed?

The 970 still abuses 1080/1440 gameplay and it sucks at 4K. That was true 2 months ago, it's true now.

[GoodBytes]

Currently yes you are right. But that means I still bought $365 video card that was falsely advertiseted to me. Now I do not have and issues with my games these days but what is gonna happen in the future when games like witcher 3 comes out or other high demand games that could force my GPU to struggle from this problem. In a year or 2 from now my 970 @ 1440p could really struggle on some games. At this point too the only way to solve this is to put out drivers that won't even let games even try to access the last half gig. Also not sure if it is possible but they are NOT going to release a bios to unlock the remainder of the chip. So either way 970 owners are screwed. Although the performance of my 970 is still very good.

Well you saw the benchmarks before making your purchase. If you can only runs games now at 60fps, then maybe it won't last long, and better purchase the 980 instead.

If it can run games at 500fps at max settings (we can only dream), then that card would probably last very long.

970 didn't get screwed. Assuming this would have not been known, all it would mean is that you would have set your game setting from Ultra on textures, to High on those future big games.

However, as stated on my other post. False advertisement is false advertisement, whether it maters or not, you didn't get what was promised, and that you should return the product in store if you can, or join in a law suit against Nvidia if necessary.

All I am saying is that everyone was happy with the 970. It's not like Nvidia released a driver update that crippled the card, and says "no, that is the speed now, too bad".

[SteveGrabowski]

@LukaP, watch out man you got placed on a ignore list because you expressed your opinion (isn't that allowed anymore, or are we only supposed to be sheep and think with one track minds?)

LOL. He is literally 12 years old. Ignore lists. Amazing. Cause that's how you resolve dissenting opinions, by plugging your ears and pretending the other side doesn't exist.

I'm loving how people are using this as some excuse on how bad their cards will perform down the line. No, you think? Cards perform less as time goes on. Either due to lack of VRAM or lack of cores. Nothing has changed.

The only difference is now we all know EXACTLY why the 970 is weaker than a 980, and everyone is getting awfully butthurt about it. Nvidia lied, yes. But you all fawned like sheep when the benchmarks came out, didn't you? You willingly gave money for a card that still performs like those benchmarks suggest. What's changed?

The 970 still abuses 1080/1440 gameplay and it sucks at 4K. That was true 2 months ago, it's true now.

 

So you're loving that those of us who bought this card for the future are getting fucked over? Thanks.

[plnk]

The only difference is now we all know EXACTLY why the 970 is weaker than a 980, and everyone is getting awfully butthurt about it. Nvidia lied, yes. But you all fawned like sheep when the benchmarks came out, didn't you? You willingly gave money for a card that still performs like those benchmarks suggest. What's changed?

The 970 still abuses 1080/1440 gameplay and it sucks at 4K. That was true 2 months ago, it's true now.

 

What will change are the games. They will demand more and more VRAM. Check out this screenshot of Dying Light on 1080p. Anandtech (or some other site, the link is in the other topic about this issue) covered GTX970 behaviour with more than 3,5GB VRAM taken pretty well and it's far from being normal (strange GPU utilization).

 

[LukaP]

So you're loving that those of us who bought this card for the future are getting fucked over? Thanks.

If you bought a card for the future (which is highres, 4k or 21:9 1440p) you have benchmarks of games now that dont perform well on those resolutions, because the card is made to eat 1440p, not 4K. and if youre butthurt that you now know a reason behind the difference between a 970 and a 980 you are a complete and utter moron and should go back to kindergarden and be butthurt over someone taking your lego

[LukaP]

What will change are the games. They will demand more and more VRAM. Check out this screenshot of Dying Light on 1080p. Anandtech (or some other site, the link is in the other topic about this issue) covered GTX970 behaviour with more than 3,5GB VRAM taken pretty well and it's far from being normal (strange GPU utilization).

 

 

As a game developer: BULLSHIT. on 1080p/1440p, unless you are ubisoft, there is literally 0 need for more than 3GB of vRAM, because of optimisation. you dont load a full on 4K texture for an object that is 5px on screen. (which most objects will be) You load big textures only for things that need them, the FP character, the gun, etc... check the second link in my signature, its kinda on topic of that.

 

and stop talking about things you dont understand

[SteveGrabowski]

If you bought a card for the future (which is highres, 4k or 21:9 1440p) you have benchmarks of games now that dont perform well on those resolutions, because the card is made to eat 1440p, not 4K. and if youre butthurt that you now know a reason behind the difference between a 970 and a 980 you are a complete and utter moron and should go back to kindergarden and be butthurt over someone taking your lego

 

A little cunty this morning I see