Gtx 970 sli + 3.5GB issue

[azerkoid]

Hey! I knew about the gtx 970 memory issue. I bought 1 gtx 970 three weeks ago and i have in mind to add another 970 but, would it still have the 3.5GB limitation even with two cards? I like everything maxed out at 1080p and DSR.

Thank you!

My specs:

Intel core i7 4790k

8GB 1600Mhz kingston hyper X RAM

2Tb seagate SSHD

Asus Z97-A mobo

Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 Gigabyte G1 Gaming

Corsair AX 860W PSU

Corsair H105 CPU cooler

3DMark firestrike score: 10188

[connorpiper]

Still very much worth it. And technically it has 4GB. 

And Nvidia is working on issues with the software and how the RAM is scheduled. So, this could be fixed soon. 

[TheKDub]

It is perfectly fine, if you end up going over that 3.5GB of faster VRAM, just turn down the settings a little bit until you get below the 3.5GB mark.

[slavano]

As linus says a lot. The two cards will only have the effective vram of one card and thus should still have the exact same 3.5GB vram issue.

[Megahurt]

SLI only makes problems that are there worse. Cranking up the details is what would lead to more issues. If you have no problems now and use the other card only to get more fps at the same detail level, then you won't run into the issue.

[Texhnlyze]

As linus says a lot. The two cards will only have the effective vram of one card and thus should still have the exact same 3.5GB vram issue.

 

Not anymore with the upcoming APIs (Mantle and Dx12)

[SkilledRebuilds]

If you end up going over that 3.5GB of faster VRAM, just turn down the settings a little bit until you get below the 3.5GB mark.

I don't see that as acceptable... You buy a powerhouse 4GB card to MAX things out.. not lower settings...

[TheFalseHuman]

Still very much worth it. And technically it has 4GB. 

And Nvidia is working on issues with the software and how the RAM is scheduled. So, this could be fixed soon. 

Uhh, didn't Nvidia come out and corrected one of their employees's statement of that there wouldn't be a software fix, since it's an hardware issue? Also, according to pcper, I think, the GPU's ram usage is determined by the OS, not through other software.

[FunkyFeatures]

Still very much worth it. And technically it has 4GB.

And Nvidia is working on issues with the software and how the RAM is scheduled. So, this could be fixed soon.

They are not working on fixing it.

[1Scotty1]

-snip-

I have a system very similar to yours and will be getting a second 970 also, it is still a good bang for buck compared to a single 980 970s in SLI will outperform a single 980 by 70-80%

[xtroria]

I don't see that as acceptable... You buy a powerhouse 4GB card to MAX things out.. not lower settings...

 

Would you like to pay extra $50-100 for it? Because for $300ish 970 is one hell of a card, 3.5 gigs or 4 gigs

[Syraz]

I just ordered 2 970s and a 1440p monitor...the games I play most often are not demanding enough to go over that 3.5gb so very much worth it

[SkilledRebuilds]

Would you like to pay extra $50-100 for it? Because for $300ish 970 is one hell of a card, 3.5 gigs or 4 gigs

If it came out as a 3.5GB card, then fine, once a game uses all 100% it wouldn't slow down because all of it is fullspeed... but thats not the case with the 4GB card we have...

 

I don't disagree it's a great price for what it is... but you never know if future games will have issues with swapping textures between both vram partitions...

Some games are more bandwidth dependent than others.

Time will tell.

[TheKDub]

I don't see that as acceptable... You buy a powerhouse 4GB card to MAX things out.. not lower settings...

 

At 1080p, even if running eyefinity you shouldn't have trouble with it, there are just some games that use a significantly higher amount of vram than they really should that you may need to turn the settings down in.

[zappian]

 I like everything maxed out at 1080p and DSR.

 

If you like downsampling i would recommend a 290x tbh.

[thelude]

Planning to do the same and get another GTX 970 for my *future* 4k monitor.

Does anyone know why the prices are going up like crazy? I bought my MSI Gtx 970 Gaming for $410 (CAD) and now NCIX showing for $499 (CAD) minus $50 dollar discount. WTF? Most cards seems to be $50 dollar more than when it launched. You think this 3.5GB scandal was gonna drop prices, not raise them.

[Trik'Stari]

Still very much worth it. And technically it has 4GB. 

And Nvidia is working on issues with the software and how the RAM is scheduled. So, this could be fixed soon. 

They retracted that. There's nothing they can do.

[Prestonification]

Oh snap, peoples are beefin!!!

[Rubenis]

Well GTX 970 is still card to buy, because if you can find game-screen-settings that fills up 3,5Gb of vRAM, you will be filling up 4Gb very very fast after 3,5Gb. So in theory GTX 980 has just a 512Mb higher vRAM and it would be filling up the same rate as GTX 970 3,5Gb, just with bigger fps. vRAM still is bottleneck of both of these cards.

 

And comparing prices - you gain 15-20% fps and little bit more vRAM for ~40% of the price. Great, isnt it??!!

[BuckGup]

You do realize even if you were to go above 3.5 you are getting pretty close to 4 and once you hit four the game freezes. So it is a nice threshold like a runaway ramp for tricks telling you to slow down. But in all realness AAA games look amazing even at low settings and who cares what a game looks like. If you can play it at 60 FPS then I don't care if it is Pong or BF4 they still are fun. Image all the kids with GT9600 that can barely get 20 FPS on low settings while you play Ultra at 4K. I think we can all stop complaining and be happy that nobody perfect and it is gameplay not graphics that matter. 

[chopdok]

The thing about VRAM - it does not affect performance in "more is always better way" - I think linus made a video about VRAM, you should watch it. In a short sentence - GPU can process only so much data. If you can store more data, it doesnt mean your GPU can process more data. If you gonna go and say - 4 GB is enough for GTX 980, the GTX 970, which is 7/8 of 980's performance, should do just fine with 7/8 of GTX 980's memory, with 3.5 GB. That said, I still believe nVidia did wrong, and especially the ROP count is painfull to me.

 

Also, one other thing - games are not the only thing using your VRAM - Windows GUI also takes ~200-300 MB, and if nVidia know what they are doing (and they seem to know) - they will push that data into the slow 512 MB if a game need 3.5 GB.

[Whorax]

Still very much worth it. And technically it has 4GB. 

And Nvidia is working on issues with the software and how the RAM is scheduled. So, this could be fixed soon. 

I thought it was a hardware issue? Or nonetheless an issue that a software update won't solve? :blink:

 

You do realize even if you were to go above 3.5 you are getting pretty close to 4 and once you hit four the game freezes. So it is a nice threshold like a runaway ramp for tricks telling you to slow down. But in all realness AAA games look amazing even at low settings and who cares what a game looks like. If you can play it at 60 FPS then I don't care if it is Pong or BF4 they still are fun. Image all the kids with GT9600 that can barely get 20 FPS on low settings while you play Ultra at 4K. I think we can all stop complaining and be happy that nobody perfect and it is gameplay not graphics that matter. 

OP certainly won't be running 4K with SLI 970s. And stop it with that stupid "oh you're more fortunate than others" crap. For all we know OP is someone with an actual job that has earned his money to buy his components, not some ten year old kid whose parents buy stuff for.

 

 

To the OP, I honestly wouldn't even move to SLI if I were you. Technology is moving way too fast to justify a purchase of another one, especially since you never know when the 3.5GB problem will turn into an actual issue (as if it hasn't already) and if you plan on gaming above 1080p.

[Suika]

They retracted that. There's nothing they can do.

I thought it was a hardware issue? Or nonetheless an issue that a software update won't solve? :blink:

As I've heard, and I'm not going to speak with certainty on it, NVIDIA may still release a patch of sorts, to help games better determine whether or not the segmented memory should be utilized or not. The primary reason the comment may have been retracted is due to the many users who might believe that a driver update will significantly increase performance, remove all issues, and make the 0.5GB usable again. It won't do any of that. In reality, it may just improve on the stuttering, if they release a driver update at all.

 

Only time will tell. 

[connorpiper]

I thought it was a hardware issue? Or nonetheless an issue that a software update won't solve? :blink:

 

OP certainly won't be running 4K with SLI 970s. And stop it with that stupid "oh you're more fortunate than others" crap. For all we know OP is someone with an actual job that has earned his money to buy his components, not some ten year old kid whose parents buy stuff for.

 

 

To the OP, I honestly wouldn't even move to SLI if I were you. Technology is moving way too fast to justify a purchase of another one, especially since you never know when the 3.5GB problem will turn into an actual issue (as if it hasn't already) and if you plan on gaming above 1080p.

 

It was hardware. But software can solve it.

[Trik'Stari]

As I've heard, and I'm not going to speak with certainty on it, NVIDIA may still release a patch of sorts, to help games better determine whether or not the segmented memory should be utilized or not. The primary reason the comment may have been retracted is due to the many users who might believe that a driver update will significantly increase performance, remove all issues, and make the 0.5GB usable again. It won't do any of that. In reality, it may just improve on the stuttering, if they release a driver update at all.

 

Only time will tell. 

Far as I understand, the best they can do is optimize the drivers to make non priority stuff occupy the .5gb of slower Vram. The issue appears when higher priority data occupies the slower memory and causes the stuttering