Does the GTX 970 3.5GB memory problem actually affect gaming?

[byalexandr]

Once again you're an isolated case of problems, from what I've seen tons of people have had zero issues with NV drivers as well as MSX. Maybe it's just the combination of hardware you have?

Maybe. I do like Nvidia, don't get me wrong, but I switched to AMD and I gotta say I don't see why people complain about the heat and stuff, these cards kick ass and the drivers (at least for me) have been excellent. Plus we get the AMD Crimson pretty soon.

[PlayStation 2]

Sorry?

oh whatever

 

on-topic: this really depends on WHAT use case the 970 will be in. either way, go for an r9 390. it's faster in most cases and that extra vram will come in handy if you ever choose to crossfire

[Guest Kloaked]

BRB, I'm gonna download Watch_Dogs and run it at DSR 4k to see what the performance is like and how much VRAM it uses.

It'll go up to 3.7. Least that's what it did when I tested the G1 I had.

[Jacktastic-Mofo]

Maybe. I do like Nvidia, don't get me wrong, but I switched to AMD and I gotta say I don't see why people complain about the heat and stuff, these cards kick ass and the drivers (at least for me) have been excellent. Plus we get the AMD Crimson pretty soon.

I'm interested in seeing how good Crimson is, I hope it's great. But the R9 290 & 290X do spit fire and draw a lot of power, especially the reference cards.

[Jacktastic-Mofo]

It'll go up to 3.7. Least that's what it did when I tested the G1 I had.

Well this is just to see how it goes on 2 2GB GTX 960's. I'm gonna put my money where my mouth is.

[i_build_nanosuits]

Maybe. I do like Nvidia, don't get me wrong, but I switched to AMD and I gotta say I don't see why people complain about the heat and stuff, these cards kick ass and the drivers (at least for me) have been excellent. Plus we get the AMD Crimson pretty soon.

could it possibly be that BOTH are good ATM...maybe that's why we have people arguing for both sides ALL THE TIME on this forum lately?

i'm on nvidia and having AN AMAZING experience ATM and for the past year and a half i had ABSOLUTELY ZERO ISSUES WHAT SO EVER (I SWEAR) not a crash not a freeze not a hick-up no nothing...and i have had many reports of AMD users having SIMILAR RESULTS on their side of the fence as well!

[Guest Kloaked]

oh whatever

 

on-topic: this really depends on WHAT use case the 970 will be in. either way, go for an r9 390. it's faster in most cases and that extra vram will come in handy if you ever choose to crossfire

Can you explain why you said "ripe?" and "oh whatever"? Is it because I said Shadowplay is superior to OBS for streaming to Twitch?

I literally swapped between them today to test it out because I've been using OBS for the last few weeks since I hate GeForce Badexperience. Today I decided to just suck it up and get Shadowplay working, and viola, I get better framerates and bandwidth efficiency with it over OBS.

Also, OP isn't asking for video card advice. I still don't get why you guys feel the need to advocate for Radeon cards at every chance you get.

[byalexandr]

I'm interested in seeing how good Crimson is, I hope it's great. But the R9 290 & 290X do spit fire and draw a lot of power, especially the reference cards.

Yes they do. And I absolutely love it.

[Guest Kloaked]

Well this is just to see how it goes on 2 2GB GTX 960's. I'm gonna put my money where my mouth is.

Oh, you have 960's. I was thinking you had a 970 for some reason.

[Jacktastic-Mofo]

Oh, you have 960's. I was thinking you had a 970 for some reason.

Nope, GTX 960's.

The purpose of this will be to show if GPU power wasn't a problem (cause 2 GTX 960's are pretty powerful) how big of a hindrance would 2GB's of VRAM be, or 3 / 3.5

[byalexandr]

could it possibly be that BOTH are good ATM...maybe that's why we have people arguing for both sides ALL THE TIME on this forum lately?

i'm on nvidia and having AN AMAZING experience ATM and for the past year and a half i had ABSOLUTELY ZERO ISSUES WHAT SO EVER (I SWEAR) not a crash not a freeze not a hick-up no nothing...and i have had many reports of AMD users having SIMILAR RESULTS on their side of the fence as well!

I think I had such a bad experience with Nvidia this last year because of that whole Windows 10 beta drivers fiasco. I kept talking to Nvidia reps and helping them out with reporting and stuff, but every driver revision kept getting worse and worse. I'm not sure how it is now, as I don't have an Nvidia card anymore (in my main rig at least) but my AMD card has been a buttery smooth experience, even though the butter might warm up sometimes.

[PlayStation 2]

Can you explain why you said "ripe?" and "oh whatever"? Is it because I said Shadowplay is superior to OBS for streaming to Twitch?

I literally swapped between them today to test it out because I've been using OBS for the last few weeks since I hate GeForce Badexperience. Today I decided to just suck it up and get Shadowplay working, and viola, I get better framerates and bandwidth efficiency with it over OBS.

Also, OP isn't asking for video card advice. I still don't get why you guys feel the need to advocate for Radeon cards at every chance you get.

I don't advocate for AMD every chance I get?

While personally I'd go Fury X, I'd still recommend a 980 Ti over Fury X any day, and there's cases where Nvidia > AMD

 

but in many budgets, AMD's offerings are simply better.

 

As for Shadowplay, what games and any specific settings for it?

[i_build_nanosuits]

I think I had such a bad experience with Nvidia this last year because of that whole Windows 10 beta drivers fiasco. I kept talking to Nvidia reps and helping them out with reporting and stuff, but every driver revision kept getting worse and worse. I'm not sure how it is now, as I don't have an Nvidia card anymore (in my main rig at least) but my AMD card has been a buttery smooth experience, even though the butter might warm up sometimes.

 

The only issue i had was the witcher 3 gameready driver that lowered performance in some games by about 10%...it was fixed the next week.

other than that it's going smooth...i'm on windows 8.1 64 bits and always run the latest drivers provided by GFE...it's sad they did that to the 970 i'd rather like it to be a 3,5gb card with no second partition...but other than that nvidia has been doing well for me and i can't wait to get my hands on my 980ti (should have it already )

[afyeung]

Well this is just to see how it goes on 2 2GB GTX 960's. I'm gonna put my money where my mouth is.

 

I'm interested in seeing how good Crimson is, I hope it's great. But the R9 290 & 290X do spit fire and draw a lot of power, especially the reference cards.

I have had a great experience with my r9 290 gaming which I got for $143 at microcenter. I play at 1440p and I can definitely use almost 4gb of VRAM in games like GTA 5 and still have playable frame rates in the 40s. You are very confused if you think that modern games can't use more than 2gb of vram, even at 1080p. It's not Nvidia vs. AMD, it's illogical to get 2 lower end cards with only 2gb of VRAM and run them together unless you found a great deal.

[Guest Kloaked]

I don't advocate for AMD every chance I get?

While personally I'd go Fury X, I'd still recommend a 980 Ti over Fury X any day, and there's cases where Nvidia > AMD

 

but in many budgets, AMD's offerings are simply better.

 

As for Shadowplay, what games and any specific settings for it?

 

I called you (I believe it was you) out on it one time when someone was asking about Nvidia cards specifically, and you decided to roll in and recommend the 390 instead, ignoring the OP's request. That resulted in a different member jumping in and arguing with me.

 

If I remember correctly anyways. It probably didn't go down like that.

 

The game I used today that's fairly demanding is Toxikk. I do remember in the past playing Watch Dogs and whatnot using Shadowplay and having a smoother experience.

[PlayStation 2]

I called you (I believe it was you) out on it one time when someone was asking about Nvidia cards specifically, and you decided to roll in and recommend the 390 instead, ignoring the OP's request. That resulted in a different member jumping in and arguing with me.

 

If I remember correctly anyways. It probably didn't go down like that.

 

The game I used today that's fairly demanding is Toxikk. I do remember in the past playing Watch Dogs and whatnot using Shadowplay and having a smoother experience.

I've been trying to change, and IMO I think I've changed for the better. As in yes, I'm implying that a 2.5 month old forumer restructured himself.

 

Anyways, that's pretty kewl. Wish Raptr could install on my laptop so I could see if there's any difference between OBS and Raptr

[Dabombinable]

It depends on what game your playing and how quickly the game adds and removes its cached textures. I personally have had no problems with modded Skyrim at 4K DSR.

[Jacktastic-Mofo]

I have had a great experience with my r9 290 gaming which I got for $143 at microcenter. I play at 1440p and I can definitely use almost 4gb of VRAM in games like GTA 5 and still have playable frame rates in the 40s. You are very confused if you think that modern games can't use more than 2gb of vram, even at 1080p. It's not Nvidia vs. AMD, it's illogical to get 2 lower end cards with only 2gb of VRAM and run them together unless you found a great deal.

I'm not confused, I know games can and do use more than 2GB's of VRAM, in the beginning I was just trying to say that unless a card is powerful enough having more VRAM does literally nothing and now it's developed into an experiment.

Also I got my first GTX 960 at launch and the second one last month so it's not like I went out and spent 400$ on 2 GTX 960's. If I was gonna do that I would've saved up another 100$ and just picked up a GTX 980.

[afyeung]

I have 2GB Cards in SLI and at 1080p in GTA 5 on Max Settings (high textures, everything else high / ultra) I see a solid 75-80 FPS.

Max settings means max settings. Unless you are maxing out everything other than anti aliasing, it is NOT max settings. Ultra grass can drop even a 980ti to the 50s at 1080p. 2 960s sure as heck can't max out GTA 5 and get a solid 75-80fps. Not that it matters, but it's really pointless to exaggerate performance numbers for the 960s when everybody knows that they fall within 970 range. 

[i_build_nanosuits]

I called you (I believe it was you) out on it one time when someone was asking about Nvidia cards specifically, and you decided to roll in and recommend the 390 instead, ignoring the OP's request. That resulted in a different member jumping in and arguing with me.

 

If I remember correctly anyways. It probably didn't go down like that.

 

The game I used today that's fairly demanding is Toxikk. I do remember in the past playing Watch Dogs and whatnot using Shadowplay and having a smoother experience.

not rooting for nvidia, but shadowplay is an AMAZING piece of software...anyone saying otherwise is clueless...you can see some of the videos i recorded with shadowplay on my youtube page...it works really really well:

https://www.youtube.com/user/YansaG/videos

[Jacktastic-Mofo]

Max settings means max settings. Unless you are maxing out everything other than anti aliasing, it is NOT max settings. Ultra grass can drop even a 980ti to the 50s at 1080p. 2 960s sure as heck can't max out GTA 5 and get a solid 75-80fps. Not that it matters, but it's really pointless to exaggerate performance numbers for the 960s when everybody knows that they fall within 970 range. 

Two GTX 960's get similar performance to a GTX 980... I don't know where you're getting that from, and everything is maxed out, including MSAA just using high textures because ultra textures at 1080p will drop me down to the 50's from the 70's.

[Guest Kloaked]

in the beginning I was just trying to say that unless a card is powerful enough having more VRAM does literally nothing

 

This is correct. I remember when the 970 fiasco was just starting and people were saying that they were worried about the card being "future proof", they bought it to be "future proof" and to "eventually play at 4k" and whatever the fuck else.

 

That card is not a 4k card and will never be a 4k card for demanding games. Not even the 980 Ti will run demanding games at 4k with a stable framerate.

[afyeung]

I'm not confused, I know games can and do use more than 2GB's of VRAM, in the beginning I was just trying to say that unless a card is powerful enough having more VRAM does literally nothing and now it's developed into an experiment.

Also I got my first GTX 960 at launch and the second one last month so it's not like I went out and spent 400$ on 2 GTX 960's. If I was gonna do that I would've saved up another 100$ and just picked up a GTX 980.

Lots of vram is useful for tasks other than just gaming. And even though 4+ gb is a little overkill for gaming. 2gb is really unacceptable considering how cheap vram is.

[kosmic]

Remember the GTX 970 Does have 4gb of ram just 512mb is slower type, i have a GTX 970 the only time i ever hit over 3.5gb was on shadow of mordor and watch dogs DSR 4k
Its not usually a problem, i prefer my 970 currently and that because i like shadow play and i because of the nvidia shield 

[Guest Kloaked]

Lots of vram is useful for tasks other than just gaming. And even though 4+ gb is a little overkill for gaming. 2gb is really unacceptable considering how cheap vram is.

 

Yeah. I don't understand why Maxwell just wasn't at least 4/6gb across the board.