970 still 3.5 + .5 GB?

[Coolicebear]

Hi guys,

 

I was thinking about buying a gtx 970 when I ran into a topic about the ram being divided. Im sure you guys know what I'm talking about but I was wondering whether this is still an issue or if this has been solved. If it still is could you recommend a different card in the same price range with equal performance.

 

Thanks so much,

Coolicebear

 

 

[Prysin]

4 minutes ago, Coolicebear said:

Hi guys,

 

I was thinking about buying a gtx 970 when I ran into a topic about the ram being divided. Im sure you guys know what I'm talking about but I was wondering whether this is still an issue or if this has been solved. If it still is could you recommend a different card in the same price range with equal performance.

 

Thanks so much,

Coolicebear

 

 

Yes.

It is a PHYSICAL ASPECT OF THE GM204 GPU INSIDE THE GTX 970. It will ALWAYS be like that.

 

You could try a AMD R9 390. It performs the same or better. Costs the same.

DO NOT buy ASUS or GIGABYTE RADEON CARDS. These are full of issues (poor cooling, broken bios, broken fans)

[Sousuke]

Yes, the 970's Hardware Design means that the RAM issue isn't going to be resolved.

[Lays]

It's a hardware defect, there is no "fixing" it. 

 

People seem to like recommending the r9 390 instead now. 

[ReturnOfCzex]

1 minute ago, Lays said:

It's a hardware defect, there is no "fixing" it. 

 

People seem to like recommending the r9 390 instead now. 

Well, it is better in most titles.

[HKZeroFive]

No. It's still 3.5GB with a slower 0.5GB attached - it's a hardware issue and it can't be 'fixed'. It won't be an issue for 1080p gaming at all. It may be once you start doing 1440p and above.

 

Alternative choices include AMD's offering, the R9 390, which many tend to recommend over the GTX 970.

[Glenwing]

It's designed to be that way, it's not a defect that needs to be fixed. All 970s are like that and always will be like that.

[Coolicebear]

Thank you all so much,

I think I misunderstood something when I ran across that topic but this helps me out a lot.

[jjohnthedon1]

Jays 2 cents did a video on it

and when using the cards last 0.5 the performance scales the same as a 980 with out the issue so it really has no impact,

the 970 is still an amazing card

and due to the way textures are stored and used the last part of you vram usage is used more as a cache anyways 

get the 970 if that's what u want ! 

The 0.5 being slower makes no difference at all 

[don_svetlio]

It's a hardware defect that prevents caching in SYS RAM and causes issues once you start pushing it harder.

[David_K]

Its not a "defect", its by design, "its only a defect" because they marketed it like its a full memory pool. while its 3.5+.5, its not the first time nVidia does that.

[don_svetlio]

17 minutes ago, David_K said:

Its not a "defect", its by design, "its only a defect" because they marketed it like its a full memory pool. while its 3.5+.5, its not the first time nVidia does that.

It's a defect because according to Nvidia it was not intended to be like that.

[David_K]

"according to nvidia"

Quote

“We invented a new memory architecture in Maxwell. This new capability was created so that reduced-configurations of Maxwell can have a larger framebuffer – i.e., so that GTX 970 is not limited to 3GB, and can have an additional 1GB.

GTX 970 is a 4GB card. However, the upper 512MB of the additional 1GB is segmented and has reduced bandwidth. This is a good design because we were able to add an additional 1GB for GTX 970 and our software engineers can keep less frequently used data in the 512MB segment.

Unfortunately, we failed to communicate this internally to our marketing team, and externally to reviewers at launch…

Instead of being excited that we invented a way to increase memory of the GTX 970 from 3GB to 4GB, some were disappointed that we didn’t better describe the segmented nature of the architecture for that last 1GB of memory.

This is understandable. But, let me be clear: Our only intention was to create the best GPU for you. We wanted GTX 970 to have 4GB of memory, as games are using more memory than ever.”

 

In a nutshell "we did it exactly the way we wanted it to be"

[don_svetlio]

16 minutes ago, David_K said:

"according to nvidia"

In a nutshell "we did it exactly the way we wanted it to be"

And lied about it so we could act surprised. Bullshit. It's a flawed design

[David_K]

Doing something by design and lie about is not the same thing. we are talking about the fact it was like that by design, so the card wouldn't be a 3GB one. the fact they lied about it has nothing to do here. 

[MMKing]

Does the 970 have a 4GB Frame buffer? Yes

Does the 970 have a 4GB 256 bit frame buffer? no

 

The problem is not the amount of memory on the 970, it's the fact that the 8th memory chip is not properly connected to the other 7. Thus the advertised memory speed of 3500MHZ, 256 bit = 224GB/s is incorrect.

 

As only 7 of the chips are connected to one another, the correct buss width is 3.5GB 224bit + 512MB 32 bit. Buss widths only add up when the chips are properly connected, and to simplify, it works like HDD in raid.

Primary 3.5GB = 3500*2*224/8 = 196GB/s

Secondary 512MB = 3500*2*32/8 = 28GB/s, faster than regular system memory, though not by much. And for feeding a graphics card with information, it's painfully slow.

 

Not only is the last 512MB slowed down, but so are the first 3.5GB as well.

 

Where does Nvidia claim 256 bit buss width?

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-970/specifications

 

Claiming 7+1 = 8 in the context of memory is simply wrong.

[David_K]

Don't forget the GPU can't write or read the different pools at the same time. it can write one and read the other or the otherway. but not the same operation on both pools.