# GeForce GTX 970 Design Flaw Caps Video Memory Usage to 3.3 GB: Report



## btarunr (Jan 24, 2015)

It may be the most popular performance-segment graphics card of the season, and offer unreal levels of performance for its $329.99 price, but the GeForce GTX 970 suffers from a design flaw, according to an investigation by power-users. GPU memory benchmarks run on GeForce GTX 970 show that the GPU is not able to address the last 700 MB of its 4 GB of memory. 

The "GTX 970 memory bug," as it's now being called on tech forums, is being attributed to user-reports of micro-stutter noticed on GTX 970 setups, in VRAM-intensive gaming scenarios. The GeForce GTX 980, on the other hand, isn't showing signs of this bug, the card is able to address its entire 4 GB. When flooded with posts about the investigation on OCN, a forum moderator on the official NVIDIA forums responded: "we are still looking into this and will have an update as soon as possible."





*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


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## fullinfusion (Jan 24, 2015)

Nooooo, you dont say 

Great news for the owners, and gg nvidia


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## Zakin (Jan 24, 2015)

Just sheer curiosity, does this mean that Afterburner is technically lying to me then? My card has peaked 3.65-3.7GBs of VRAM in my handful of heaviest games at 1440p. Not really saying this bug isn't real cause the evidence is there, more so just curious.


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## fullinfusion (Jan 24, 2015)

Zakin said:


> Just sheer curiosity, does this mean that Afterburner is technically lying to me then? My card has peaked 3.65-3.7GBs of VRAM in my handful of heaviest games at 1440p. Not really saying this bug isn't real cause the evidence is there, more so just curious.


with AB, I wouldn't say yes or no, and that's from my experience using that software..

Really I think it goes deeper then AB for seeing the lack of memory usage but hey  tjmo


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## manofthem (Jan 24, 2015)

> When flooded with posts about the investigation on OCN, a forum moderator on the official NVIDIA forums responded: "we are still looking into this and will have an update as soon as possible."













fullinfusion said:


> He's weird, kinda a creepy dude lol





Spoiler: fullinfusion


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## fullinfusion (Jan 24, 2015)

manofthem said:


>


He's weird, kinda a creepy dude lol


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## Constantine Yevseyev (Jan 24, 2015)

NVIDIA (and basically all of their retail partners) cannot ship a device unless it passes specific tests, including writing memory with digits until it's full. If some addresses are never reached, the test utility will simply print nice red "FAILED" string on the display.

I won't believe that engineers are so stupid these days that they don't know how to manage device memory (or at least how to make sure that it's accessible at runtime).


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## Steevo (Jan 24, 2015)

Considering Nvidia has been able to replicate the issue..... and is researching it


It seems they may have cut too much with he laser when making the 970, as the 980 doesn't suffer this issue.


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## Xzibit (Jan 24, 2015)

Steevo said:


> Considering Nvidia has been able to replicate the issue..... and is researching it
> 
> 
> It seems they may have cut too much with he laser when making the 970, as the 980 doesn't suffer this issue.



I'm sure there is a Bris joke in there.

The memory is still being utilized just when you hit the 3000+ it seams to take a nose dive to 25% and below causing bottlenecks, leading to performance issues.

Que E.D. jokes. Blue pill solution.


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## GhostRyder (Jan 24, 2015)

But...but...isn't nvidia perfect?

Sarcasm intended.

Either way this is a pretty big issue (if it is 100% confirmed) and something that hopefully can be addressed with a patch in drivers/bios.

Though it is curious that the 980s do not suffer the same problem which does bring to mind the rumor or it having to do with the cut on the chip.

Not sure honestly what to make of this.  It's interesting to say the least...


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## yapchagi (Jan 24, 2015)

a recall or a simple update might fix the issue. A recall perhaps...with a nice free upgrade to GTX 980


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## Pickles Von Brine (Jan 24, 2015)

I can confirm this issue exists and have experienced it myself with my GTX 970 and have had it prop up during gaming. Not to mention the issue is very easy to replicate.


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## The Quim Reaper (Jan 24, 2015)

Ahhh...so that's why I can play Battlefield 4 @4K resolution on a 970 SLI setup, using 3.6GB of VRAM at a smooth 50-60fps for hours with no problems is it?

..oh wait a minute.


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## Sir Alex Ice (Jan 24, 2015)

And I was so looking forward to getting one of them GTX 970s 

What bothers me is the naivete of some commenter above stating that nVidia would not send a flawed product out and that their engineers test it fully. I'm sorry, but are you sure you're not brain dead?! Companies send out bloody cars fully knowing they have f* up the production on that model and there is a good chance it will blow up.

And you dare to think that they would not send a flawed GPU? When in Gods name has a GPU killed anybody? Cars kill people on a daily basis and companies making them have no problem cutting custs even if that risks lives. And you expect a company to give a shit about a GPU? Seriously?!


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## damric (Jan 24, 2015)

Remember the GTX 590s blowing up?


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## HumanSmoke (Jan 24, 2015)

damric said:


> Remember the GTX 590s blowing up?


Yeah...according to posts from "owners" I think about triple the number of 590's blew up that were actually built. I also remember the mass hysteria over the supposed "fact" that all GTX 670, 680, and 690's were supposed to be defective based upon a small batch of EVGA SC's requiring a recall. I seem to recall a few other outbreaks of tech hysteria over AMD cards in the past ( the GSoD issue in late 2009-early 2010 comes to mind).

Tech forums : Where hysteria, viral marketing and the echo chamber form a singularity so dense that even common sense can't escape.


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## Selicra (Jan 24, 2015)

I've read in other forums people with the same problem with GTX 660Ti, GTX 760, GTX 780, GTX 980 and GeForce Titan!!!


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## Rahmat Sofyan (Jan 24, 2015)

No wonder, why GTX970 40% more cheaper than GTX980 but only 15% slower...somehow, really odd for me, especially when we talk nvidia price, since gtx 260/280, 470/480 and so on.
But yeahh GTX 970 still the best till now...


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## haswrong (Jan 24, 2015)

GTX 670:

Allocated 31 Chunks
Allocated 3968 MiByte
(bandwidth for last 1-3 chunks varies from test to test)


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## puma99dk| (Jan 24, 2015)

If this is a pcb design flaw a bios update most likely won't fix this, but i doubt that soo many custom PCB's will have the same "design flaw" and should be able to take it with a bios update, hopefully or i would return my card and buy a GTX 980 instead.


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## bogami (Jan 24, 2015)

So if you're buying a failed processor cut out, do not expect miracles. 4GB RAM  to litl...
How it looks in use, when playing is a question .Or we see and what do we not see? These problems can be expected only in 4k resolution. Who will buy a GTX970 with 4 gb RAM for 4k playing will be disappointed .


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## hardcore_gamer (Jan 24, 2015)

Does it really need more than 3GB ?


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## Fluffmeister (Jan 24, 2015)

My VRAM does seem to peek @ 3.6GB, but I have to push it to unplayable levels to get there anyway.


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## Pumper (Jan 24, 2015)

hardcore_gamer said:


> Does it really need more than 3GB ?



Yes, if it says 4GB in specs.


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## D1RTYD1Z619 (Jan 24, 2015)

fullinfusion said:


> He's weird, kinda a creepy dude lol


*Gene Wilder* IS the shit!!!!!!!!!


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## the54thvoid (Jan 24, 2015)

Having read the full thread at OCN there are lots of amateurs posting results from an improperly run benchmark.  Quite funny.
Regardless, from all that debate I'm picking up conjecture, conspiracy and 'stabs in the dark'.
Issue needs addressed formerly, not by a few end users.  
Nvidia will have a case to answer though. Regardless of the badly run benchmarks, people are reporting tanking frame rates when memory usage crosses a threshold that is reasonably below the cards hardware limit.   Who knows, may be the texture compression algorithm uses Vram itself.


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## Recus (Jan 24, 2015)

Pumper said:


> Yes, if it says 4GB in specs.



Just like 2 TB HDD is 1.81 TB or 4.7 GB DVD is 4.3 GB?


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## qubit (Jan 24, 2015)

Hehe, I'm glad nvidia cards would never suffer such awkward problems and it's always AMD with their substandard products. Oh, wait...


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## Pumper (Jan 24, 2015)

Recus said:


> Just like 2 TB HDD is 1.81 TB or 4.7 GB DVD is 4.3 GB?



Nothing to do with missing memory, just different unit systems used. And as every single HDD, SSD, DVD, etc. used this, there is no issue. But when one GPU says 4GB and has only 3.3GB while every single other GPU says 4GB and has 4GB, we have a problem.


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## CounterZeus (Jan 24, 2015)

Recus said:


> Just like 2 TB HDD is 1.81 TB or 4.7 GB DVD is 4.3 GB?



No. That's actually fucking up the scientific names of the quantities. 

1TB = 931GiB (Gibibyte, using 2^10=1024 instead of 10^3=1000)
If that was the case, 4GB of memory would be 3.725 GiB (4*1000*1000*1000/1024/1024/1024)


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## 64K (Jan 24, 2015)

Someone mentioned that Nvidia wouldn't do a recall on the other thread which is now closed so I'm moving my post over here



64K said:


> If Nvidia screwed the pooch on the GTX 970 then I don't see how they could avoid a recall if they sold a defective product. I suppose they could try but then all of those nasty legal fees will be added onto the cost of finally having to do a recall anyway (I'm looking at you Toyota) so I'm not worried. At most I will be inconvenienced.]



I'm using the word "If" for now and that's only if it couldn't be fixed through a patch or firmware upgrade.


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## john_ (Jan 24, 2015)

puma99dk| said:


> If this is a pcb design flaw a bios update most likely won't fix this, but i doubt that soo many custom PCB's will have the same "design flaw" and should be able to take it with a bios update, hopefully or i would return my card and buy a GTX 980 instead.


So you are going to pay Nvidia extra, for selling you a faulty card? Interesting.


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## Recus (Jan 24, 2015)

john_ said:


> So you are going to pay Nvidia extra, for selling you a faulty card? Interesting.



In Youtube you can't find gameplay videos where 290X not using all vram.

Also this http://www.overclock.net/t/1535502/gtx-970s-can-only-use-3-5gb-of-4gb-vram-issue/350#post_23451063


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## john_ (Jan 24, 2015)

Recus said:


> In Youtube you can't find gameplay videos where 290X not using all vram.
> 
> Also this http://www.overclock.net/t/1535502/gtx-970s-can-only-use-3-5gb-of-4gb-vram-issue/350#post_23451063



Sorry. Didn't understood the comment about 290X.

As for the link, if he does replace his card that would mean that the problem was verified and it can't be fixed. Nvidia of course could replace all the cards, but I believe they will choose to give a coupon or something if it affects a big percentage of 970.


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## Fluffmeister (Jan 24, 2015)

Certainly interesting, this dude with a 8GB 980M (GM204 with an additional SMM disabled compared to the 970) had no issues:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=4998360&postcount=121


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## The N (Jan 24, 2015)

they seemed was in hurry, to BLAST the whole market with 970s. though it will resolve through any latest update. as they 're working on it.
But how come they flawed there TOP product, while it was selling in market right now.  the FLAW of memory is noitceable, 700mb isn't minor at all. 

will this effect on 970 sales in market????


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## qubit (Jan 24, 2015)

I'd be gobsmacked if this was a hardware fault somehow. It couldn't pass the various acceptance tests at the design stage if it was.

Most likely someone at NVIDIA forgot a comma or something silly like that when compiling the reference BIOS which an update will fix. It's still an embarrassing problem which shouldn't have happened, though.


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## RejZoR (Jan 24, 2015)

So much for the best GPU ever and then it fails at something as basic as memory addressing... NVIDIA, I'm disappoint.


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## AsRock (Jan 24, 2015)

puma99dk| said:


> If this is a pcb design flaw a bios update most likely won't fix this, but i doubt that soo many custom PCB's will have the same "design flaw" and should be able to take it with a bios update, hopefully or i would return my card and buy a GTX 980 instead.



Well done, so nVidia screw up you reward them,  well done you.

I believe you need to step away from PC''s for a moment.



The N said:


> they seemed was in hurry, to BLAST the whole market with 970s. though it will resolve through any latest update. as they 're working on it.
> But how come they flawed there TOP product, while it was selling in market right now.  the FLAW of memory is noitceable, 700mb isn't minor at all.
> 
> will this effect on 970 sales in market????



Not really, due to people like Puma99dk|.


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## GorbazTheDragon (Jan 24, 2015)

Sorry, don't have time to read through the whole thread, but my guess is that either the missing portion is already being used by the OS, I heard several people suggesting that the benchmark was only supposed to be run with the display on the iGPU. Otherwise I am guessing this is a problem with the benchmark, or NVidia's (and possibly AMDs) memory allocation, as several people were getting similar results on different cards including 670s, 560Tis, etc. as the last percentage appears to be behaving in a similar way that a HDD slows down once it gets to the last ~1/8th of the capacity.


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## BiggieShady (Jan 24, 2015)

It's not about addressing the whole 4 GB. You can use the whole 4 GB, but when moving data in the last 512 MB od VRAM memory bandwidth plummets from 150 GBps to 20 GBps


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## sergionography (Jan 24, 2015)

Now I'm no expert on this front but if I remember correctly nvidia in the past used to cut down on the memory width with cut down chips, for example a gtx580 had 384bit memory width, while the gtx570 had 320bit width along with its one disabled sm and by default having less overall vram chips on the board. So was this just to seperate it in performance from the higher end part or was it an actual engineering restriction in the Fermi design meaning that one sm being disabled results in losing 32bit of that memory interface width(meaning parts of the memory interface is addressable only by a specific sm). Because by this theory if we look at gtx980 it has 256bit width with 4096mb vram and 2048 cores spread between 16sm of 128 cores each, so if we do the math each sm gets Fed by 16bit of memory width and 256mb vram. So in comparison if we look at the gtx 970 u have a total of 13sm enabled on the chip for a total of 1664 cores, now if we do the math that each sm is addressed by 16bit memory width and 256mb vram then you end up with 13sm x 256mb = 3328mb which seems to be in line with the reports. Now I am almost certain Kepler for example had cut down sm units disabled without effecting memory so Maxwell shouldn't be different but since there is a problem as mentioned it looks like there is 1 more things users might wanna test to verify this theory and that is by checking if the bandwidth is also taking a hit, meaning along with getting only about 3.3gb vram is the memory width intact or is it cutting 48bit(16bit per disabled am) of bandwidth ?  


Edit: corrected sone of the math(16bit per sm)


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## GorbazTheDragon (Jan 24, 2015)

BiggieShady said:


> It's not about addressing the whole 4 GB. You can use the whole 4 GB, but when moving data in the last 512 MB od VRAM memory bandwidth plummets from 150 GBps to 20 GBps


The low bandwidth would be a symptom of the GPU swapping out the overflow onto the system RAM...


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## xfia (Jan 24, 2015)

The Quim Reaper said:


> Ahhh...so that's why I can play Battlefield 4 @4K resolution on a 970 SLI setup, using 3.6GB of VRAM at a smooth 50-60fps for hours with no problems is it?
> 
> ..oh wait a minute.




someone with 295 quadfire said bf4 pushes them over 3.8gb at ultra 4k


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## BiggieShady (Jan 24, 2015)

GorbazTheDragon said:


> The low bandwidth would be a symptom of the GPU swapping out the overflow onto the system RAM...


The way this benchmark is coded, there is no overflow ... it allocates only the available vram. It all happens in the memory controller in the gpu, the benchmark is almost cuda only.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Jan 24, 2015)

I think in situations like this it is possible to theorize a vast array of possible causes ,conspiracies and what not but at the end of the day it is what it is and will come to be what it was.

yet.


wow some argue crazey stand points that benefit no one yet delude a few, if NV fecked up fine ,they all do sometimes ,, 

,its what they do next that really matters imho ie to appease or fix the issue.


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## Fluffmeister (Jan 24, 2015)

Yeah I've been more than happy with my 970 and this apparent issue hasn't affected my enjoyment of the card at all since I've owned it.

With that said, I'm very interested to see if and or how they intend to address it.


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## ZoneDymo (Jan 24, 2015)

damn Nvidia, y u no quality check?


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## D007 (Jan 24, 2015)

Nice QC.. Ugh..


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## BiggieShady (Jan 24, 2015)

Fluffmeister said:


> Yeah I've been more than happy with my 970 and this apparent issue hasn't affected my enjoyment of the card at all since I've owned it.
> 
> With that said, I'm very interested to see if and or how they intend to address it.



What's also interesting is that no-one wonder's if this is CUDA issue. Someone should build the same memory bandwidth benchmark using DX11 and some huge textures.


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## AsRock (Jan 24, 2015)

D007 said:


> Nice QC.. Ugh..



And to think you pay for the QC too.


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## nickbaldwin86 (Jan 24, 2015)

I read this on OCN right when it was posted... I thought, I am sure glad I went with the GTX980


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## xfia (Jan 24, 2015)

there has been shit loads of complaints on the nvidia forums since the 970 was launched. the issue has either been publicly found out or it is multiple issues.
the thought that a team of engineers are scratching heads over a gpu is laughable. not a robot or a space shuttle. at this point they are getting pressure to do anything they can to stop a recall but if they cant nvidia will just do what they have to and apologize.


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## Fluffmeister (Jan 24, 2015)

http://www.pcper.com/news/Graphics-Cards/NVIDIA-Responds-GTX-970-35GB-Memory-Issue


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## BiggieShady (Jan 24, 2015)

Hmm they were pretty quick with the response http://www.pcper.com/news/Graphics-Cards/NVIDIA-Responds-GTX-970-35GB-Memory-Issue


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## Fluffmeister (Jan 24, 2015)

Beat you to it  If what they say as true, and you have to assume it is, it does make sense and doesn't sound like too much of a big deal to me frankly.


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## The N (Jan 24, 2015)

thats where QC matters, company like NVIDIA if can't pay for QC, then its shamef ul i guess. they already charging premium prices for there cards, from years now, especially kepler series. the 770/780/780Ti all were the most sell product past 1, 2 years.


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## R00kie (Jan 24, 2015)

BiggieShady said:


> Hmm they were pretty quick with the response http://www.pcper.com/news/Graphics-Cards/NVIDIA-Responds-GTX-970-35GB-Memory-Issue


So Nvidia is basically telling us to jank it up our arses then? GG Nvidia.


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## xfia (Jan 24, 2015)

o jeeze..  i can see where this is going   i was right they put pressure down the lines at least


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## DarkOCean (Jan 24, 2015)

there's another problem with nvidia architecture since fermi that no one seems to talk about. It's about the number of ROPS these gpus can acces. I've only seen the kind of tests that reveal this on sites like harware.fr.
For example a gtx 970 only uses ~40/64 rops, a gtx 580 only 32/48, gtx 780 32/48, etc.


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## Digital Dreams (Jan 24, 2015)

Fluffmeister said:


> doesn't sound like too much of a big deal to me frankly.



They are counting on people just like yourself to lie down and take it regardless of what was advertised to you or what you paid for.


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## Steevo (Jan 24, 2015)

Perhaps they should rewrite the driver so that the desktop, secondary monitor and other lower priority tasks use that memory space, while the main portion is used for gaming and high performance tasks. Who needs 150GBps of memory bandwidth for their desktop?


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## xfia (Jan 24, 2015)

what will be really bad is if the 960 does the same thing..  check out what happens to the 960 in sleeping dogs..  http://www.pcworld.com/article/2872...view-maxwell-meets-pc-gamings-sweet-spot.html seems that the shit hits the fan and the 270x pulls nearly twice the frames when you tax the vram to its limits


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## Fluffmeister (Jan 24, 2015)

Digital Dreams said:


> They are counting on people just like yourself to lie down and take it regardless of what was advertised to you or what you paid for.



Like I said, it hasn't affected me at all since I've owned the card so yeah it is kinda hard to be that upset about it.


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## Fluffmeister (Jan 24, 2015)

xfia said:


> what will be really bad is if the 960 does the same thing..  check out what happens to the 960 in sleeping dogs..  http://www.pcworld.com/article/2872...view-maxwell-meets-pc-gamings-sweet-spot.html seems that the shit hits the fan and the 270x pulls nearly twice the frames when you tax the vram to its limits



Extreme preset? That says GTX 760?


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## xfia (Jan 24, 2015)

haha my bad... it was tiny but still a little strange.


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## HumanSmoke (Jan 24, 2015)

xfia said:


> what will be really bad is if the 960 does the same thing..  check out what happens to the 960 in sleeping dogs..  http://www.pcworld.com/article/2872...view-maxwell-meets-pc-gamings-sweet-spot.html seems that the shit hits the fan and the *270x pulls nearly twice the frames* when you tax the vram to its limits


What u smokin' ?


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## xfia (Jan 24, 2015)

shhh it was tiny haha   i guess if it would suggest anything at all is that the 960 has better memory management than the 760.


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## GorbazTheDragon (Jan 24, 2015)

Here's the way I'd look at it. The architecture is designed to operate as the full chips, when you start cutting bits off the balance between the processors/schedulers/registers/controllers/etc. changes and as NV says, it does the same with the interconnects. The way the architecture is designed, assigns certain areas into blocks, each with their own components, buses, etc. and cutting one of the blocks away, or part of it, gimps the performance of that block. Now, the crossbars partially solve this, by allowing some intercommunication between the different parts of the chip, however, there is a tradeoff to be made, because more crossbars means more cost, and they are not utilized as much in a full chip configuration. A way to potentially alleviate this issue, is similar to what intel does with their extremely large server chips, using a ring bus configuration, however this has (AFAIK) not been implemented to a chip that has neither the size (talking GM200/GK110/GF110 here) or bandwidth requirements, so could result in being even worse than the current configuration due to extra die area necessitated for such a system. And I don't think the performance benefit will justify a ring bus architecture on the smaller chips.

What it comes down to is optimizations on the architecture level and tradeoffs they will most certainly have taken into account when designing the full and cut chips. They have spent way more R&D time on it than we have, and I'm sure they have a lot more resources to use too, so I don't feel we are in a position to question HOW they lay out their architecture. I am also quite sure that these kinds of issues exist with almost any architecture, especially with cut dies, both CPU and GPU (or any other processor for that matter).

*BUT*, and here is a big but (and it's underlined too, guess that makes it an important but...) I have to question NVidia's way of marketing this. OK, sure, there are 4GB of accessible to, and the memory bus operates at the stated speed, but I feel there should at least be a side note that not all of the memory is addressed at the stated speed. Then again, this complicates things for the less tech savvy, and results in more confusing numbers.


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## HumanSmoke (Jan 24, 2015)

GorbazTheDragon said:


> *BUT*, and here is a big but (and it's underlined too, guess that makes it an important but...) I have to question NVidia's way of marketing this. OK, sure, there are 4GB of accessible to, and the memory bus operates at the stated speed, but I feel there should at least be a side note that not all of the memory is addressed at the stated speed. Then again, this complicates things for the less tech savvy, and results in more confusing numbers.


Welcome to the wonderful world of marketing!
I think you'd run out of superscript/asterisk notations if you fully tried to explain* the finer points of IC architectures. Both vendors tout DX12 support - Nvidia is careful to append their support with "API", while AMD's fine print reads (paraphrased) "at this time- based on known specifications". AMD were very quick off the mark in publicizing the FX series as the world's first desktop 8-core CPU, but declined to mention the shared resources and compromises involved that separate it from truly being 8 independent cores.
What it comes down to in most instances is how much the user is affected within the space between truth and claims.

* I've always found it astounding the vast number of buyers that don't even read the spec sheet, let alone the fine print and reasons behind it. The number of people who buy based on a few marketing bullet points seems to far outweigh those who research their prospective purchases. Maybe it's the nature of an industry manipulated by built-in obsolescence (or its illusion).


xfia said:


> shhh it was tiny haha  i guess if it would suggest anything at all is that the 960 has better memory management than the 760.


Sleeping Dogs is an AMD Gaming Evolved title tailored to GCN and heavily coded for post-process compute - something Kepler wasn't particularly well suited for


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## BiggieShady (Jan 24, 2015)

Fluffmeister said:


> Beat you to it



Ah, fellow ninja master of the control V technique  I yet have to learn to use it alone and by itself only 



Fluffmeister said:


> If what they say as true, and you have to assume it is, it does make sense and doesn't sound like too much of a big deal to me frankly.



I think it's the best they could do with this kind of asymmetric memory configuration, they get to use the greatest part of vram with full bandwidth most of the time ... when it needs full 4 GB they get that with 1-3% overall performance penalty.


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## maximoor (Jan 24, 2015)

HumanSmoke said:


> What u smokin' ?



Said by HumanSmoke! It's fanny... but i agree with u


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## anubis44 (Jan 24, 2015)

yapchagi said:


> a recall or a simple update might fix the issue. A recall perhaps...with a nice free upgrade to GTX 980



A recall? LOL. Do you realize how expensive that would be? The profit margin on the card is less than the amount it would cost to pay for the shipping back to the manufacturer and send out a replacement. Then there's the cost to nVidia of replacing all those chips with new ones. If this issue can't be resolved with a software patch/driver update, nVidia is going to be spending hundreds of millions of dollars to fix this.


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## Lionheart (Jan 24, 2015)

Nvidia why you do dis 

But seriously I hope Nvidia look into this ASAP.


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## fusionblu (Jan 24, 2015)

Damn, I brought a Gigabyte GTX 970 4GB G1 Gaming Graphics Card as a part of a PC I will ship to my sister as a present. This is some what awkward...


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## sumludus (Jan 24, 2015)

If you're gaming on a single 60 hertz 1080p monitor, this issue probably won't affect you for the life of the card (of course, if that's your setup, why blow so much on a 970 to begin with).

So who are going to feel the pains of this card as it ages? 144 hertz 1080p? 60 hertz 1440p? People with multi-monitor setups are seeing the issues now, but going forward, which consumers will be at risk?


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## fusionblu (Jan 24, 2015)

sumludus said:


> If you're gaming on a single 60 hertz 1080p monitor, this issue probably won't affect you for the life of the card (of course, if that's your setup, why blow so much on a 970 to begin with).
> 
> So who are going to feel the pains of this card as it ages? 144 hertz 1080p? 60 hertz 1440p? People with multi-monitor setups are seeing the issues now, but going forward, which consumers will be at risk?



Could be those who play games with hi-res texture mods applied and it might be possible to trigger this fault with a modded game immediately rather than waiting for the card to age with reduced performance.
You just need a game which would actually use close to a full 4GB of GDDR5 with other processed included.

I could install a GTX 970 I brought for my sister to try it with my modded Skyrim, but I would have to edit some mod settings which could be inconvient for me.
Not sure if it would work though...


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## Rahmat Sofyan (Jan 24, 2015)

awwhhh fuxxx, horrible..

My big question, did W1zz or other reviewers find this problem on their review before?
Especially on 4K...?


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## GhostRyder (Jan 24, 2015)

Well this is a disappointment this is and the preliminary response.  To me this can harm the value of this card especially in the long run but its not the end of all problem to completely devastate this card.  Though I find it odd that this was not caught or labeled "ok" in this state.

If they can address it easily for users in some way, more power to them but by the way things are going I do not think its going to be easy.


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## GorbazTheDragon (Jan 24, 2015)

GhostRyder said:


> Well this is a disappointment this is and the preliminary response.  To me this can harm the value of this card especially in the long run but its not the end of all problem to completely devastate this card.  Though I find it odd that this was not caught or labeled "ok" in this state.
> 
> If they can address it easily for users in some way, more power to them but by the way things are going I do not think its going to be easy.


Judging by their official response it was not something that could be fixed without completely retaping the chip.


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## XL-R8R (Jan 24, 2015)

I might burn in hell for this... but.... 


Every game I've played so far has been maxed out with this 970 @ 1080.... that being said, I've frequently come close to 3.5GB of VRAM use and surpassed it a few times with games like Far Cry 4 and even that old dog, Skyrim.


I've never once seen or experienced any of the issues shown in the above video. 


This is an odd one....


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## Fluffmeister (Jan 24, 2015)

Rahmat Sofyan said:


> My big question, did W1zz or other reviewers find this problem on their review before?
> Especially on 4K...?



The reviews are there for all to read, if this was a real problem you'd think more would actually mention it or more importantly the reviews would show the impact.

As it stands afterburner simply can't tell me my VRAM usage beyond 3.5GB, I'll live.


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## Steevo (Jan 24, 2015)

If a game isn't written with huge textures to take full advantage of the 4K just increasing the resolution may not increase the memory load, just the output framebuffer size by the difference.


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## Xzibit (Jan 24, 2015)

XL-R8R said:


> I might burn in hell for this... but....
> Every game I've played so far has been maxed out with this 970 @ 1080.... that being said, I've frequently come close to 3.5GB of VRAM use and surpassed it a few times with games like Far Cry 4 and even that old dog, Skyrim.
> I've never once seen or experienced any of the issues shown in the above video.
> This is an odd one....



Reading "un sourced Nvidia response" at PCPer



			
				Nvidia response via PCPer said:
			
		

> _The GeForce GTX 970 is equipped with 4GB of dedicated graphics memory.  However the 970 has a different configuration of SMs than the 980, and fewer crossbar resources to the memory system. To optimally manage memory traffic in this configuration, *we segment graphics memory into a 3.5GB section and a 0.5GB section.  The GPU has higher priority access to the 3.5GB section*.  When a game needs less than 3.5GB of video memory per draw command then it will only access the first partition, and 3rd party applications that measure memory usage will report 3.5GB of memory in use on GTX 970, but may report more for GTX 980 if there is more memory used by other commands.  When a game requires more than 3.5GB of memory then we use both segments.
> 
> We understand there have been some questions about how the GTX 970 will perform when it accesses the 0.5GB memory segment.  The best way to test that is to look at game performance.  Compare a GTX 980 to a 970 on a game that uses less than 3.5GB.  Then turn up the settings so the game needs more than 3.5GB and compare 980 and 970 performance again.
> 
> Here’s an example of some performance data:_



The interesting thing is this was really brought to light via a CUDA benchmark.  Where the remaining 0.5GB is far slower then the rest of 3.5GB.

Scott Watson from The TechReport points out that it might be more of an issue with newer games that use a strict 64bit executable but more testing needs to be done during *ALT+TAB show*.

Nvidia could just market the 970 like some user pointed out over at OCN







Or a more clear explanation of the segmented memory on the box which differs from the 980 is marketed with functioning full speed 4gb .


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## ap4lifetn (Jan 24, 2015)

good news!

GTX 960Ti will be here sooner than expected!


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## GhostRyder (Jan 25, 2015)

GorbazTheDragon said:


> Judging by their official response it was not something that could be fixed without completely retaping the chip.


So it would seem though they may be able to "improve it" a bit.



Xzibit said:


> Reading "un sourced Nvidia response" at PCPer
> 
> 
> 
> ...


That should have been done to begin with to avoid this issue.


XL-R8R said:


> I might burn in hell for this... but....
> 
> 
> Every game I've played so far has been maxed out with this 970 @ 1080.... that being said, I've frequently come close to 3.5GB of VRAM use and surpassed it a few times with games like Far Cry 4 and even that old dog, Skyrim.
> ...


1080p even up to 144hz on recent games is probably not going to exceed 3gb at least by much at the moment.  However 1440p 60hz+ might start in recent AAA games and 2160p sure will/does which is where most of this is going to be a problem.

Something like this could easily be avoided if they just would have handled it differently.  Hopefully they can address this in some way to at least make it smoother.


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## GorbazTheDragon (Jan 25, 2015)

GhostRyder said:


> So it would seem though they may be able to "improve it" a bit.


Maybe, but don't count on it.  They might try to reduce the issue in chip updates, but it is unlikely to be completely solved. Doesn't this occur with several Kepler and Fermi cards too?


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## sergionography (Jan 25, 2015)

GorbazTheDragon said:


> Judging by their official response it was not something that could be fixed without completely retaping the chip.



Well I've had my theory and it somewhat makes more sense now that they explained it, it looks like Maxwells magic sauce was probably in the cache and when they disable an sm naturally the cache for it is disabled too, so it seems they vaguely explained that here saying "hey the 970 has some disabled sm's therefore it can't use all vram efficiently" So while 4gb is present the sms can only address 3.3gb properly with the benefit of the fancy Maxwell cache. Kepler and other architectures probably didn't have that problem because they were less dependant on cache for efficiency. This explains y gtx960 is a straight up cut in half 980, that's because it looks like each sm is designed to handle a certain amount of bandwidth/bus width(16bit) but it remains to be seen as more testing is needed. I am curious about bandwidth and wether the 970 is truly a 256bit card or wether it's actually only 208 bit that is truly efficiently addressable by the cache and the rest is just there, because that's what I get out of this.


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## Nullifier (Jan 25, 2015)

Rahmat Sofyan said:


> awwhhh fuxxx, horrible..
> 
> My big question, did W1zz or other reviewers find this problem on their review before?
> Especially on 4K...?




This doesn't happen, I've taken ACU up to the full 4096mb and i only lost a couple of FPS.

That guy did something to his system in the switch, look at his ram also.


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## sergionography (Jan 25, 2015)

Xorium said:


> This doesn't happen, I've taken ACU up to the full 4096mb and i only lost a couple of FPS.
> 
> That guy did something to his system in the switch, look at his ram also.


Well yeah it surely  is curious. does this tearing and purple stuff happen if you go over your vram limit? Because I've had older underpowered cards and usually if I run games over their limit I just get low fps and stuttering but I've never see. Artifacts like this lol


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## Nullifier (Jan 25, 2015)

sergionogr
aphy said:


> Well yeah it surely  is curious. does this tearing and purple stuff happen if you go over your vram limit? Because I've had older underpowered cards and usu if I run games over their limit I just get low fps and stuttering but I've never see. Artifacts like this lol



Yeah hes done something to that system. Game/driver/bios/bad overclock related.
I've gone over the limit daily @4k in ACU. My desktop is set to 4k as well so It's consuming more vRam.
I lost a couple FPS when it happens maybe some stuttering if it has to change a large portion quickly. But artifacts and weird purple shit going on nonono.....


whats going on in that video is more similar to a bad core overclock. ram issues tend to be blobby like this but more stretched out.





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## Sasqui (Jan 25, 2015)

One has to wonder if AMD announced the HMB feature, already knowing about this glitch.  Hmmm...


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## TRWOV (Jan 25, 2015)

Sasqui said:


> One has to wonder if AMD announced the HMB feature, already knowing about this glitch.  Hmmm...



HBM has been in development for about a year and the joint venture was announced on Dec 2013, waaayyy before the 970 was out.





Back on topic, this issue might not affect all 970s. It would be interesting to know if there are brands or chip batches that aren't affected.  I might snatch one for cheap for my HTPC if the issue becomes mainstream knowledge and people start to drop them on ebay. 



My biggest gripe (disclaimer, I don't own an nVidia card, only one is a 7950GT AGP I got for a retro rig) is the way they worded the response:



> _The GeForce GTX 970 is equipped with 4GB of dedicated graphics memory.  However the 970 has a different configuration of SMs than the 980, and fewer crossbar resources to the memory system.* To optimally manage memory traffic in this configuration, we segment graphics memory into a 3.5GB section and a 0.5GB section.*  The GPU has higher priority access to the 3.5GB section. _



They make it sound as if this was intended all along.  Since this wasn't announced before the launch and just after a lot of nagging my take is that either:

a) they didn't catch the issue in QC (because they didn't test such VRAM usage scenarios or not every chip is affected), and then came up with the "memory partition" explanation. 

b) they knew beforehand but thought that no one would find out.  Apparently the post that started all of this was from a guy that owned both a 980 and a 970 and wondered why both showed a substantial difference in memory usage under the same conditions (same system, same game, same settings).


----------



## FordGT90Concept (Jan 25, 2015)

Constantine Yevseyev said:


> This "power user" probably forgot to retarget his super awesome CLI application from "All CPU" to "x64", LOL.


FYI, "_Any_ CPU" means x86 on x86, x64 on x64, IA64 on IA64, and ARM on ARM.  It is what Visual Studio uses to denote a platform-neutral binary.  This is almost exclusive to virtual machines (.NET and Java) where the same byte code is actually executed by distinct binaries.


The problem might not be with the card and instead either the driver or something on Windows mucking it up.  There are really too many variables.  NVIDIA needs to find the heart of it.



Xzibit said:


> Where the remaining 0.5GB is far slower then the rest of 3.5GB.


The only explanation I can think of for that is those chips are far away from the GPU.  I don't trust that idea.

If this is the case, class-action lawsuit incoming.


----------



## The N (Jan 25, 2015)

well, 960 already in market, someone, wth 960 shoould bench or test it for memory utilization along with bandwidth, may be it comes to flaw as well. its time ofor quick 960Ti draw fromNVIDIA. rumors turn out to be long long critic discussion,  i am sure in other forums as well, where nvidia co social people monitoring the complaints about the performance.

this can effect the 960 sales and preferences, mot by much but still people will have their concern regarding these memory utiliztio problems on 960 too. NVIDIA address on it. on the other hand, AMD will get a good opportunity to market their best product at good price.


----------



## TRWOV (Jan 25, 2015)

The N said:


> well, 960 already in market, someone, wth 960 shoould bench or test it for memory utilization along with bandwidth, may be it comes to flaw as well. its time ofor quick 960Ti draw fromNVIDIA. rumors turn out to be long long critic discussion,  i am sure in other forums as well, where nvidia co social people monitoring the complaints about the performance.
> 
> this can effect the 960 sales and preferences, mot by much but still people will have their concern regarding these memory utiliztio problems on 960 too. NVIDIA address on it. on the other hand, AMD will get a good opportunity to market their best product at good price.



I don't think this will affect nVidia that much unless there are reports all over the web or something but, ironically, nVidia's response might be the ultimate cause for a meltdown.

So far a handful of outlets have covered it and, going by the posts on OCN, it's not universal. Besides, lots of posters were using the benchmark incorrectly (Nai's benchmark must be run on a GPU that's not the primary display device) and many post are showing bad results even for older cards like the 660  so it might even be a smaller issue (bad batch?) but now that nVidia has answered the potential for a FUBAR scenario is high since you can bet that an nVidia announcement is going to be covered. Lot's of people that haven't experienced ANY problem with their 970 will then (incorrectly) use Nai's benchmark and decide that their card has a problem.


----------



## Xzibit (Jan 25, 2015)

FordGT90Concept said:


> The only explanation I can think of for that is those chips are far away from the GPU.  I don't trust that idea.
> 
> If this is the case, class-action lawsuit incoming.



Someone will end up suing someone for sure.  You know Samsung is smiling at this with them having sued Nvidia for false advertising on Tegra and might want to prove its a standard practice or go as far as financially backing legal suits against Nvidia.


----------



## RejZoR (Jan 25, 2015)

Anyone checked Radeon R9-290X for this (since it too has 4GB of VRAM)? Just out of curiosity...


----------



## puma99dk| (Jan 25, 2015)

RejZoR said:


> Anyone checked Radeon R9-290X for this (since it too has 4GB of VRAM)? Just out of curiosity...



It's AMD they don't do a memory mistake, only bad drivers.... 

sry, i couldn't help myself, but i doubt this here is a layout or memory problem of the GTX 970 maybe GPU problem, that can be fixed with a bios update even this here is taking too long to find the issue.


----------



## RejZoR (Jan 25, 2015)

puma99dk| said:


> It's AMD they don't do a memory mistake, only bad drivers....
> 
> sry, i couldn't help myself, but i doubt this here is a layout or memory problem of the GTX 970 maybe GPU problem, that can be fixed with a bios update even this here is taking too long to find the issue.



Well, driver mistakes can be fixed. Broken hardware feature, not so much. Apparently this was pretty much hacked into the GTX970 because it's a cut down GTX980 and it simply entiely lacks that part.


----------



## the54thvoid (Jan 25, 2015)

RejZoR said:


> Well, driver mistakes can be fixed. Broken hardware feature, not so much.



AMD had to redesign crossfire implementation after Tahiti as it was dysfunctional. PR for CF would have showed a misrepresentation of frame rates, implying smooth visual experience, which was far from the truth. So yeah, AMD have had very similar problems. But they fixed it with XDMA implementation in Hawaii, for DX10 forwards.
HOWEVER, I would have bought a 4Gb card expecting it to be able to handle memory usage up to 4Gb. If my fps tanked well before that I'd be pissed.
Nvidia have grossly misrepresented the cards memory capacity. It should have stated in the PR it had 3.5Gb effective gaming memory, or something similar.


----------



## RejZoR (Jan 25, 2015)

Well, CF is a very specific thing and pairing cards has ALWAYS been problematic one way or another. Seeing such moronic issues on a single card, I'll never accept any excuses. Not even from AMD.


----------



## BiggieShady (Jan 25, 2015)

the54thvoid said:


> Nvidia have grossly misrepresented the cards memory capacity. It should have stated in the PR it had 3.5Gb effective gaming memory, or something similar.



Full 4 GB can be used and are being used. The issue is if and only if you use last 512 MB, you get lower memory bandwidth which luckily translates to only 1 to 3 % frame rate loss.


----------



## TheoneandonlyMrK (Jan 25, 2015)

So it's ok to you then is it, lieing and withholding info because what many are not saying is this,

NVIDIA KNEW and still said nothing all along (that's false advertising. ........), and then took a while to fesss up.

Unscrupulous bs , yall should not be backing up this kind of company practice fanboi or not.


----------



## Yorgos (Jan 25, 2015)

BiggieShady said:


> Full 4 GB can be used and are being used. The issue is if and only if you use last 512 MB, you get lower memory bandwidth which luckily translates to only 1 to 3 % frame rate loss.


the issue is that from 400 GB/s you get an enormous drop down to 25 GB/s.
Now, how does that affect the game, it is based upon what's the importance of the data being stored there. If you have the most frequent used data there, then you could have up to 20 times less performance.
If you never use that data then you have 0 times less performance.
The 3% is totally unrealistic, it happens on 3 games, without taking into consideration, what's being loaded before the game starts.
On a normal user there are a lot of things loaded beforehand into the vram, e.g. streaming applications,multi-monitor setup, browsers e.t.c. that most likely are using valuable fast nvidia vram.

In the end, it's not how much the end user is affected(which in most of the cases the average fps rate does not show the real thing... stuttering) but what the were tricked into buying.


----------



## BiggieShady (Jan 25, 2015)

Yorgos said:


> In the end, it's not how much the end user is affected(which in most of the cases the average fps rate does not show the real thing... stuttering) but what the were tricked into buying.



They had to handle asymmetric memory configuration somehow, and this is IMHO the best way to handle it. You certainly would be worse off had they made 3.5 GB card, because in that case once vram is full, moving textures from system ram over pcie would be considerably worse stuttering wise. It's entirely possible you'd fell less tricked though.


----------



## Yorgos (Jan 25, 2015)

theoneandonlymrk said:


> So it's ok to you then is it, lieing and withholding info because what many are not saying is this,
> 
> NVIDIA KNEW and still said nothing all along (that's false advertising. ........), and then took a while to fesss up.
> 
> Unscrupulous bs , yall should not be backing up this kind of company practice fanboi or not.


There are people that after that scum, they are going to buy the 980, instead of ditching the nVidia at all.




the54thvoid said:


> AMD had to redesign crossfire implementation after Tahiti as it was dysfunctional. PR for CF would have showed a misrepresentation of frame rates, implying smooth visual experience, which was far from the truth. So yeah, AMD have had very similar problems. But they fixed it with XDMA implementation in Hawaii, for DX10 forwards.
> HOWEVER, I would have bought a 4Gb card expecting it to be able to handle memory usage up to 4Gb. If my fps tanked well before that I'd be pissed.
> Nvidia have grossly misrepresented the cards memory capacity. It should have stated in the PR it had 3.5Gb effective gaming memory, or something similar.


by "very similar problems" you mean:
blowing up cards?
mis-rendering scenes to boost frame rates?
introducing filters to cripple other's gpus?
refusing to support important h/w on different OSes?
supporting games to boost optimizations on your platform?
"paying" OEM to sell only your h/w and trash-talk other vendors?
I guess CF frame issues is similar even to 295 and 590 not being able to make it through several months of use.


----------



## Fluffmeister (Jan 25, 2015)

TweakGuides tested FarCry 4:



> The GTX 970 is a very popular GPU, so recent claims from some users that it is effectively limited to 3.5GB of its VRAM, and starts to suffer when using all 4GB, have caused a lot of concern. Nvidia's official response confirms that there is a segmentation of the 970's VRAM between a 3.5GB section and a 512MB section, but that this has no performance impact.
> 
> I decided to test this out for myself. Running Far Cry 4 at settings just high enough to use around 4GB of VRAM (3,840x2,400 via DSR plus all other settings to maximum, except SMAA) resulted in expectedly lower framerates, but no significant stuttering or hitching as demonstrated in this YouTube Video. See this Screenshot from the video to confirm that 4GB is being used - zoom in on the top left, second entry on the second line of the Afterburner overlay.
> 
> Unfortunately some people have been "testing" this issue by using system-crippling settings, such as 4K resolution combined with 8x MSAA, and blaming the inevitable 5FPS slideshow on the VRAM. Quite aside from the fact that no current single GPU performs well at those settings, remember that slow or insufficient VRAM manifests itself as severe hitching (longer pauses) and stuttering (frequent brief hiccups), not an overall reduction in FPS. I did notice in my testing however that the GTX 970 definitely prefers using only 3.5GB of its VRAM in most cases; in the VRAM-hungry Watch Dogs for example, as settings were raised the 970 remained stuck at ~3.5GB VRAM usage right up until 8x MSAA was engaged at 4K resolution. After several hours of testing though my conclusion is that there's no discernible practical impact from this issue: the GTX 970 performs smoothly, whether using 3.5 or 4GB of VRAM. If you're experiencing stuttering or low framerates on a 970, in my opinion it is quite likely due to a general system issue or excessive GPU load, not VRAM segmentation.



http://www.tweakguides.com/


----------



## TheoneandonlyMrK (Jan 25, 2015)

Well one game tested equates to thorough yeah.

Right hold up people fluffmiester has 1 rebuter  doing 1 game test here so all that other stuffs been gerzumped it's all ok again.

Really dude wtf


----------



## Fluffmeister (Jan 25, 2015)

theoneandonlymrk said:


> Well one game tested equates to thorough yeah.
> 
> Right hold up people fluffmiester has 1 rebuter  doing 1 game test here so all that other stuffs been gerzumped it's all ok again.
> 
> Really dude wtf



This place is so childish these days, sorry I posted that link, sorry he didn't test more games, sorry I don't exprience problems either, sorry all the reviews never showed anything negative about this in the first place, sorry sorry sorry so very sorry.


----------



## the54thvoid (Jan 25, 2015)

Fluffmeister said:


> This place is so childish these days, sorry I posted that link, sorry he didn't test more games, sorry I don't exprience problems either, sorry all the reviews never showed anything negative about this in the first place, sorry sorry sorry so very sorry.



Ignore him, he's always been very pro AMD, and very harsh towards NV.

We need more testing to show it's a non issue. W1zzard could do it but then he'd be seen as pro NV by the AMD fan base. In fact, anyone refuting it will be a conspirator.


----------



## TRWOV (Jan 25, 2015)

Well, nVidia has admitted that much so it's not a no-issue but it's certainly going to be blown out. _*The mystery here is if the second memory partition actually hurts performance.*_ Many people are just running games at insane DSR levels and then bitch about the (expected) fps drop due to overloading the ROPs but I think I saw a couple that have a compelling case, one being a guy that just loaded a HD texture pack to get over 3.5GB (and thus not pushing the pixel fillrate) and his fps thanked to 10fps (his words,he didn't upload a video or something) and then we have the video Rahmat Sofyan linked to although in that case I would say that his 512MB partition has bad RAM instead (artifacts) so _*SOME*_ 970s could present problems with this configuration that nVidia didn't foresee.


----------



## Devon68 (Jan 25, 2015)

Well TBH I am surprised at Nvidia's response to the "issue", but as many said there are not a lot of people that will hit that > 3.5GB limit especially on 1080p games.

I see some fanboy's are trying to start an AMD VS Nvdia war. Well use which ever card works for you and dont hate the other products people, if one or the other would not be equally as good people would not buy them.


----------



## Steevo (Jan 25, 2015)

the54thvoid said:


> AMD had to redesign crossfire implementation after Tahiti as it was dysfunctional. PR for CF would have showed a misrepresentation of frame rates, implying smooth visual experience, which was far from the truth. So yeah, AMD have had very similar problems. But they fixed it with XDMA implementation in Hawaii, for DX10 forwards.
> HOWEVER, I would have bought a 4Gb card expecting it to be able to handle memory usage up to 4Gb. If my fps tanked well before that I'd be pissed.
> Nvidia have grossly misrepresented the cards memory capacity. It should have stated in the PR it had 3.5Gb effective gaming memory, or something similar.




http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/Radeon_HD_5870_CrossFire/27.html

Up to 68% scaling efficiency. 

I think it was more to do with the VLIW and how fast the drivers needed a CPU to be to make it efficient.


----------



## RejZoR (Jan 25, 2015)

Fluffmeister said:


> TweakGuides tested FarCry 4:
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.tweakguides.com/



Their reply is load of nonsense. Like they are 8 and they just got their first graphic card, not knowing how graphic cards even work. If no one has noticed, difference between GTX 970 and GTX 980 isn't all that big. But they are saying like 970 gets so hindered by performance that's the cause of it. And yet, GTX 980 doesn't get such massive performance drop. Now why is that?

And whoever says that remaining memory doesn't affect anything, if GPU has to wait for data to be fetched from the shitty part, what good is it the 400GB/s part? That's like pairing a RAID0 of fastest SSD's and run everything on a 486 CPU with 32MB of RAM. It makes zero sense.


----------



## XL-R8R (Jan 25, 2015)

I think people are too easy to jump on this bandwagon, evidence or none, and start bashing or spouting shit lol


IF this was as big of a problem as its being made out, WHY has it taken until now for everyone to start going crazy about it?


Either it isnt as big of an issue as it appears OR its just a few cards.... I'm gonna go with that its probably not even an issue for 99% of people... the others that're crying so loud just need attention and probably dont even own a 970 lol


I own a 970 and I'm not butthurt.  Why? Its still as quick as the 780Ti, costs a bit less (fair amounts, actually) and has an extra .5GB of "real" (cough cough) VRAM, even if you dont included the (reputedly) slower ½GB that remains.

Though, what I do see with this is some shady (read: clever) PR and marketing ... technically, they arent lying in any way by saying this is a 4GB card, even if the latter 0.5GB of that is disastrously slow.


----------



## GhostRyder (Jan 25, 2015)

the54thvoid said:


> Ignore him, he's always been very pro AMD, and very harsh towards NV.


Same for fluff since hes extremely pro NVidia and does the same things except for the opposite side...  So its the pot calling the kettle black...



the54thvoid said:


> AMD had to redesign crossfire implementation after Tahiti as it was dysfunctional. PR for CF would have showed a misrepresentation of frame rates, implying smooth visual experience, which was far from the truth. So yeah, AMD have had very similar problems. But they fixed it with XDMA implementation in Hawaii, for DX10 forwards.
> HOWEVER, I would have bought a 4Gb card expecting it to be able to handle memory usage up to 4Gb. If my fps tanked well before that I'd be pissed.
> Nvidia have grossly misrepresented the cards memory capacity. It should have stated in the PR it had 3.5Gb effective gaming memory, or something similar.


The problem was not the CFX implementation it was the cable and connector itself that were limited.  It just was hitting/getting near the limit of being effective which was expected to happen eventually and AMD had either to design a newer version that could keep up with the new demands or do a totally different implementation method (IE using the PCIE to transfer the data).  Same will happen to SLI eventually and NVidia will have to make the same decision, it was always known the CFX cable was not as good as the SLI cable so it just happened to become obsolete first.

This could have been avoided in a much better way, should just have auto limited the card to 3.5gb and said that its a 3.5gb card as using the slower ram seems to be a bigger problem than just not using it though we need more testing to see which idea is correct.  This issue is something that should not be and can be avoided in ways a lot better than what has been done because now this sounds like there was something being sneaked by people which tends to annoy people.  Does not even matter how many people this will effect right now, its the long run that is more worrisome than anything as games get higher and higher in graphical fidelity and now there are less ways for this to be dealt with effectively.


----------



## VulkanBros (Jan 25, 2015)

Oh oh... Friday I ordered a ASUS GTX  970 Strix..... Damn always unlucky......


----------



## the54thvoid (Jan 25, 2015)

VulkanBros said:


> Oh oh... Friday I ordered a ASUS GTX  970 Strix..... Damn always unlucky......



at 1080p you'll be fine.


----------



## VulkanBros (Jan 25, 2015)

Aparently there is a test program so you can test your VRAM yourself...

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/does-the-geforce-gtx-970-have-a-memory-allocation-bug.html


----------



## Fluffmeister (Jan 25, 2015)

RejZoR said:


> Their reply is load of nonsense. Like they are 8 and they just got their first graphic card, not knowing how graphic cards even work. If no one has noticed, difference between GTX 970 and GTX 980 isn't all that big. But they are saying like 970 gets so hindered by performance that's the cause of it. And yet, GTX 980 doesn't get such massive performance drop. Now why is that?
> 
> And whoever says that remaining memory doesn't affect anything, if GPU has to wait for data to be fetched from the shitty part, what good is it the 400GB/s part? That's like pairing a RAID0 of fastest SSD's and run everything on a 486 CPU with 32MB of RAM. It makes zero sense.



What he says is perfectly valid, but you're of course welcome to disagree with him. I didn't write it after all.

What are these massive drops I'm supposed to be seeing?


----------



## RejZoR (Jan 25, 2015)

See the Youtube recording of a user here. Page 3 or 4 I think. It's down to like 25fps in Far Cry 4.


----------



## Rahmat Sofyan (Jan 25, 2015)

Wait till tomorrow, let we hope good news from nvidia...
The big problem, if this "3.5GB and 0.5GB partition system" was a new technology or something new from nvidia, why they didn't  told to us before...

And it's been 4 months... and found by end user, really odd.

Still GTX970 the best  price/performance card from nvidia, but for 1080p, I believed that was not the first reason if you buy a 4GB card... and hei GTX960 already for 1080p..

Go Green!!!


----------



## Fluffmeister (Jan 25, 2015)

RejZoR said:


> See the Youtube recording of a user here. Page 3 or 4 I think. It's down to like 25fps in Far Cry 4.



A user on YouTube, well i might as well copy and paste theoneandonlymrk's childish post, he sounded like he is 8 too, but you didn't call him out on it:

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/t...e-to-3-3-gb-report.209205/page-5#post-3227622

I was playing Shadow of Mordor and cranked it as high as i could, and had soo much fun killing Orcs I forgot I was supposed to be having a terrible experience!


----------



## TRWOV (Jan 25, 2015)

VulkanBros said:


> Aparently there is a test program so you can test your VRAM yourself...
> 
> http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/does-the-geforce-gtx-970-have-a-memory-allocation-bug.html




And Guru3d didn't tell people how to correctly use this tool  so we're sure to find more mis-reports. Well, I'll be watching eBay, picking up a used 970 for $200 shouldn't be hard if shit hits the fan


----------



## Fluffmeister (Jan 25, 2015)

TRWOV said:


> And Guru3d didn't tell people how to correctly use this tool  so we're sure to find more mis-reports. Well, I'll be watching eBay, picking up a used 970 for $200 shouldn't be hard if shit hits the fan



Let me know too, I'd love a second one.


----------



## AnnCore (Jan 25, 2015)

TRWOV said:


> And Guru3d didn't tell people how to correctly use this tool  so we're sure to find more mis-reports. Well, I'll be watching eBay, picking up a used 970 for $200 shouldn't be hard if shit hits the fan



I have recently bought the Asus Strix version. To use the tool you just need to run the test with the monitor disconnected correct? If that is the case, then I can verify that my card has the so called vram performance issue.


----------



## TRWOV (Jan 25, 2015)

AnnCore said:


> I have recently bought the Asus Strix version. To use the tool you just need to run the test with the monitor disconnected correct? If that is the case, then I can verify that my card has the so called vram performance issue.



Nope, you must use another GPU for display (iGPU for example) otherwise windows compositing will reserve some portion of VRAM and alter the results.

A better way to test would be to use a game with a high res texture mod or something as to not overload the pixelfillrate. Most users are just cranking up DSR to get over 3.5GB and then think that the fps drop is due to the memory partition. Nai's benchmark is a CUDA program and the driver could be handling those different than a game.


----------



## AnnCore (Jan 25, 2015)

TRWOV said:


> Nope, you must use another GPU for display (iGPU for example) otherwise windows compositing will reserve some portion of VRAM and alter the results.
> 
> A better way to test would be to use a game with a high res texture mod or something as to not overload the pixelfillrate. Most users are just cranking up DSR to get over 3.5GB and then think that the fps drop is due to the memory partition. Nai's benchmark is a CUDA program and the driver could be handling those different than a game.



I'm not huge into games but I am curious to see if my card is affected or not. A question of principle if you will. I have Skyrim still installed. Would that do the trick you think?


----------



## RejZoR (Jan 25, 2015)

Fluffmeister said:


> A user on YouTube, well i might as well copy and paste theoneandonlymrk's childish post, he sounded like he is 8 too, but you didn't call him out on it:
> 
> http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/t...e-to-3-3-gb-report.209205/page-5#post-3227622
> 
> I was playing Shadow of Mordor and cranked it as high as i could, and had soo much fun killing Orcs I forgot I was supposed to be having a terrible experience!



And now you're acting like an 8 year old. No one said anything, people just state observations and they get very little factual explanations in return. If it was that easy to answer, NVIDIA would explain it in detail. And yet tehy just made some half ass excuse in my opinion. If you're not having problems now, that doesn't mean all will be fine half a year in the future when games become more demanding. But since you're apparently on a NVIDIA's payrole, you don't mind it at all. The rest who paid big bucks for the card however do care.


----------



## Fluffmeister (Jan 25, 2015)

RejZoR said:


> And now you're acting like an 8 year old. No one said anything, people just state observations and they get very little factual explanations in return. If it was that easy to answer, NVIDIA would explain it in detail. And yet tehy just made some half ass excuse in my opinion. If you're not having problems now, that doesn't mean all will be fine half a year in the future when games become more demanding. But since you're apparently on a NVIDIA's payrole, you don't mind it at all. The rest who paid big bucks for the card however do care.



Here we go... I'm on Nvidia's payroll now? It's a waste of time discussing anything here frankly.


----------



## HumanSmoke (Jan 25, 2015)

XL-R8R said:


> I think people are too easy to jump on this bandwagon, evidence or none, and start bashing or spouting shit lol


It's the echo chamber.

Note that not a single actual further fact has surfaced since this story broke, yet the thread is moving as if its a constantly updating situation, when in fact it is just the same shit being regurgitated ad nauseam.
Three things seem certain:
1. Testing for this issue is not straightforward for the most part, and requires some effort and particular parameters to be met to be measurable - which goes some way to explain why many owners of the card seem fine with it - if you don't personally encounter a problem, it becomes more academic interest ( the prevailing attitude of owners of Evergreen series of cards during the GSoD phenomena - excepting the vociferous Apple owners of course (see point #3))
2. Most of the hysteria is coming from people who don't own, and would never consider owning the card, or any Nvidia card for that matter
3. Internet culture: Big business + conspiracy theory + overblown sense of entitlement + armchair activism. All that's missing is a trite naming convention alluding to Benghazi or ending in "-gate" (You know its coming).


----------



## the54thvoid (Jan 25, 2015)

Why don't all the people trying to make some form of observational comment based on experience they have themselves just leave so that all the bloody idiots starting fights over shit they know little about can just listen to their own verbal crap.
Frankly it boils down to this:
Does the 970 have an issue above 3.5Gb in real world use? Likely answer is probable but not always.  Does this mean Nvidia sold a small lie?  Yes it absolutely does.  Nvidia owners can't defend that.  If it doesn't affect the 980 but does affect the 970, then they (NV) have been 'evasive' and deserve some form of backlash.
If you have a 970 and don't feel any effects of this PR 'lie' then feel free to comment - your contribution adds balance to real world usage.
If you're here trolling like a few are because you're anti NV, state facts, not opinions or at least, keep opinions civil and smart.  Don't be retarded asswipes spouting shite.
The way I see a lot of posts here are NV owners saying it's not an issue.  NV 'loyalists' blindly defending their brand choice and then their is the AMD crowd baying for blood.
And their are logical people saying yes it's quite bad NV have done this but is it affecting people in real life?

Some people need a cyber punch.


----------



## BiggieShady (Jan 25, 2015)

I wonder why other Maxwell and Kepler GPUs (like GTX980M, GTX970M or GTX660) with their asymmetric memory configurations aren't affected?


----------



## eidairaman1 (Jan 25, 2015)

this is pretty bad


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## Xzibit (Jan 25, 2015)

BiggieShady said:


> I wonder why other Maxwell and Kepler GPUs (like GTX980M, GTX970M or GTX660) with their asymmetric memory configurations aren't affected?



It might have to do with the prioritizing of the segmented memory.  Nvidia has stated that so unless its force or pushed to recognize the remaining segment it will likely be restricted (Software or Hardwire) to the 3.5GB segment.  Then it becomes a question as to how and why for those interested.


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## GhostRyder (Jan 25, 2015)

The problem is the people who paid for the card expecting 4gb to be easily useable just like you would get.  Especially considering the way they are handling it on the card seems to be more foolish then just cutting that last 500mb of ram and calling it a day.  I am pretty sure people would not be disappointed with the card just buying a 3.5gb card but it would help people be more in the loop on what they are buying especially depending on the scenarios people are expecting with this card.  Frankly there are people that were expecting a decent budget option for 4K and for 1440p 60+ FPS or the likes which could get hurt with this problem.  Imagine someone who purchased 3 of these and a 4K monitor expecting this to be great and ended up with this problem in some games (Maybe many more down the line) as I would be pretty mad.  Its not so much that 500gb is a big deal as most people here probably would not ever use that to its full extent anyway (The 4gb) but the fact that people were advertised as such and now they are in a situation that has very limited options for them to make this right.

It is not something people should just ignore or else things like this become the norm.


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## eidairaman1 (Jan 25, 2015)

ones trying to defend such a screw up are just like the democratic party of the united states, ass backwards


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## Xzibit (Jan 25, 2015)

eidairaman1 said:


> ones trying to defend such a *screw up* are just like the democratic party of the united states, ass backwards



Its not a screw up if it was intentional. They just told you the convenient details. So its just like the government. 

If it was a non-issue. It would have been disproven long ago with the million or so of the 9xx series sold users disproving it.  There would be no reason for Nvidia to release a statement after having meetings about it.

I do find it curious as to how few of them are in various forums given the owners clubs.  I'm starting to think the majority just buy to showcase then return them with-in the return policy window.  I was expecting way more test results being posted. Probably the same for both sides.


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## AlienIsGOD (Jan 25, 2015)

this may be of help : http://www.eteknix.com/nvidia-release-statement-regarding-gtx-970-vram-issue


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## Dave65 (Jan 25, 2015)

eidairaman1 said:


> ones trying to defend such a screw up are just like the democratic party of the united states, ass backwards



I think you mean the NAZI/republican party!


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## vega22 (Jan 25, 2015)

Fluffmeister said:


> It's a waste of time discussing anything here frankly.



it is with some yes, head buried deep in the sand.

so is this christened 4gb-gate yet or what?

:rofl:



AlienIsGOD said:


> this may be of help



that is the same thing copy pasted on another site dude.

this thread has made my weekend, the buttsore fanbois on one side and the stockholm syndrome on the other...priceless


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## AlienIsGOD (Jan 25, 2015)

marsey99 said:


> that is the same thing copy pasted on another site dude.
> 
> this thread has made my weekend, the buttsore fanbois on one side and the stockholm syndrome on the other...priceless


im not a fanboi, nor do i own a 970, i was just posting something that was relevant.....


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## vega22 (Jan 26, 2015)

sorry dude that was not aimed at anyone in particular, just a generalization of the thread on the whole you know.


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## Fluffmeister (Jan 26, 2015)

marsey99 said:


> it is with some yes, head buried deep in the sand.
> 
> so is this christened 4gb-gate yet or what?
> 
> :rofl:



Hey I guess Nvidia are ruthless and AMD are inept, one is successful the other just can't seem to make any money.

If your implying Nv should give me a free upgrade to a 980, I agree.... I agree with you all!


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## Xzibit (Jan 26, 2015)

TRWOV said:


> And Guru3d didn't tell people how to correctly use this tool  so we're sure to find more mis-reports. Well, I'll be watching eBay, picking up a used 970 for $200 shouldn't be hard if shit hits the fan



Well if your in China

*$69 Asus Strix GeForce GTX 970 DCII
*
The shipping is what gets you. Its x3 the price of the card. LOL!


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## AsRock (Jan 26, 2015)

Xzibit said:


> Well if your in China
> 
> *$69 Asus Strix GeForce GTX 970 DCII
> *
> The shipping is what gets you. Its x3 the price of the card. LOL!



Common way of doing it as you end up only being able to claim $69 which is cost of item.


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## Uplink10 (Jan 26, 2015)

Perhaps this is lord`s way of equalizing the market share with AMD. What if Nvidia has to refund every GeForce 970?


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## TRWOV (Jan 26, 2015)

Uplink10 said:


> Perhaps this is lord`s way of equalizing the market share with AMD. What if Nvidia has to refund every GeForce 970?



It won't come to that. At worst they'd get hit with a class action suit or something and even that's a stretch.

This isn't as bad as the bumpgate and nothing serious came out of that (they paid 200mill to settle but that's it). Plus they can always force the card to just use 3.5GB by drivers (which I suppose it already does).


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## Xzibit (Jan 26, 2015)

TRWOV said:


> It won't come to that. At worst they'd get hit with a class action suit or something and even that's a stretch.
> 
> This isn't as bad as the bumpgate and nothing serious came out of that (they paid 200mill to settle but that's it). Plus they can always force the card to just use 3.5GB by drivers (which I suppose it already does).



Microsoft had to settle a CALS about usable memory/storage on the Surface.  Apple has been fighting off the same thing with there iPhones/iPads/iPods for awhile.  They recently got one dismissed and just got hit with another one this month. Both of them MS & Apple make it clear that storage varies.

If anything the marketing will be what hurts Nvidia the most by reputation or financially.

They should have taken a page out of AMDs PowerTune and used "up to" 4GB of memory or kept with the GPU Boost theme and called it "3.5GB base mem with 0.5GB boost"


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## darkangel0504 (Jan 26, 2015)




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## The N (Jan 26, 2015)

lol, man the GiF seems too much attractive in the current situation of NVIDIA. and for 970 users, they can bear it. at all


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## xBruce88x (Jan 26, 2015)

Well, I've got a 1440P 144hz monitor... so i suppose i'll notice the problem before many others will. though so far I haven't noticed any big issues.


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## HumanSmoke (Jan 26, 2015)

Fluffmeister said:


> Hey I guess Nvidia are ruthless and AMD are inept, one is successful the other just can't seem to make any money.


AMD tried ruthless some time back - unfortunately they tried ruthless with the wrong market segment and ruthless turned to inept almost immediately. After Randy Allen telling anyone who'd listen that Barcelona had a 40% performance advantage over Intel's server parts, AMD doubled down with the false benchmarks and non-existent processors. They've pretty much steered clear of ruthless ever since, reverting back to its strengths (aside from some very dubious Bulldozer PR).


TRWOV said:


> This isn't as bad as the bumpgate and nothing serious came out of that (they paid 200mill to settle but that's it).


Nvidia's actual total charge was $475.9 million (claims and warranty replacements).


TRWOV said:


> Plus they can always force the card to just use 3.5GB by drivers (which I suppose it already does).


Likely if they rewrite the driver they'd look to use the 0.5GB partition for Windows/ancillary processes, and prioritize the larger portion for game/app resources, assuming that it is deemed a significant enough issue. From my reading, maxxing out the vRAM still doesn't alleviate the bottleneck from the reduced SM count. A large majority of users seem unfazed due to not experiencing the issue first-hand, and virtually every graphics reviewer seems to view it as a non-story - which leaves a very few (judging by those posting results) affected, those with an affection for synthetic vRAM loading programs, and a vociferous mob of people with no real vested interest.


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## RejZoR (Jan 26, 2015)

Fluffmeister said:


> Here we go... I'm on Nvidia's payroll now? It's a waste of time discussing anything here frankly.



Then why are you defending NVIDIA if something fishy is clearly going on around GTX 970 specifically?


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## RejZoR (Jan 26, 2015)

darkangel0504 said:


>



Ahahahaha, you're killing me  Should be GB/s though, but oh well, we get it


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## The N (Jan 26, 2015)

yeah, Vram throttled or un usable after 3.5 which turned out to be huge throttling for memory bandwidth. and that is killing for NVIDIA users espeially 4K - 1440p users.


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## Fluffmeister (Jan 26, 2015)

RejZoR said:


> Then why are you defending NVIDIA if something fishy is clearly going on around GTX 970 specifically?



I'm really not, just pointing out I geniuninly haven't experienced any slow downs in actual real world gaming scenarios, in fact I've been finding myself "going out of my way" pulling extreme DSR res and the like to try and see what happens.



The N said:


> yeah, Vram throttled or un usable after 3.5 which turned out to be huge throttling for memory bandwidth. and that is killing for NVIDIA users espeially 4K - 1440p users.



Fine here @ 1440P


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## RCoon (Jan 26, 2015)

Don't benchmarks in GPU reviews prove these cards work perfectly fine in modern games from 1080p upwards to 4K? They're tested on plenty of resolutions, and W1zzard tests them in plenty of games. Not to mention I run VRAM usage figures in my benchmarks, and I've not come across any particular excessive performance bugs.

I mean, going out of your way to utterly cripple a card, and then proclaiming that the card is crippled seems to be a slightly awkward situation to be in. How many people with 970's are playing games and complaining about it?


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## Prima.Vera (Jan 26, 2015)

darkangel0504 said:


>


love this meme. which movie is it from??


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## rtwjunkie (Jan 26, 2015)

BiggieShady said:


> I wonder why other Maxwell and Kepler GPUs (like GTX980M, GTX970M or GTX660) with their asymmetric memory configurations aren't affected?


 
Actually, GTX 660 had a problem too, that only worked like it should on the 3GB version.  IIRC, the 660 had its memory in 1.5GB sections.  Only 3Gig versions got the full, seamless use of all the memory.  the 2 GB versions, which was the vast majority sold, had a 1.5GB portion and a .5GB portion, and reportedly there was some lag as the half gig section was addressed and confined to that half a gig.  But no issues reported in the 3GB versions due to symetrical layout.


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## vega22 (Jan 26, 2015)

Fluffmeister said:


> Hey I guess Nvidia are ruthless and AMD are inept, one is successful the other just can't seem to make any money.
> 
> If your implying Nv should give me a free upgrade to a 980, I agree.... I agree with you all!



tell you the truth dude i hope they do.

if not that then those affected should be compensated in some way. i mean while i do not own a 970 myself i have built systems with them for others and talked a few into buying them too. now 3 out of 4 of those friends have seen this issue and i feel like a cunt....


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## rruff (Jan 26, 2015)

rtwjunkie said:


> Actually, GTX 660 had a problem too,  the 2 GB versions, which was the vast majority sold, had a 1.5GB portion and a .5GB portion, and reportedly there was some lag as the half gig section was addressed and confined to that half a gig.



And I'm guessing Nvidia did nothing about that? They are still selling those cards...

Anybody here smart enough about video card design, who knows why this happens? I'm guessing it's the way the chip is cut down or some parts disabled, and there is no other viable way to do it. Would this be typical of any reduced chip, or rare? 

Nvidia could have just sold this with reduced specs I guess, but that would have hurt their marketing against the R9 290 and 290x.


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## BiggieShady (Jan 26, 2015)

They say picture speaks more than words ...
 
Looks like they lied ... did I say lied ... I mean miscommunicated the information about missing L2 cache


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## rtwjunkie (Jan 26, 2015)

BiggieShady said:


> They say picture speaks more than words ...
> View attachment 62160
> Looks like they lied ... did I say lied ... I mean miscommunicated the information about missing L2 cache


 
LOL, they were misquoted.


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## TRWOV (Jan 26, 2015)

The thing here is that nVidia has changed the internals of their GPUs since Fermi and thus SM count is the main variable for GPU performance; pixel fillrate isn't ROP dependent for example (both 970 and 980 feature 64 ROPs but 970 has 20% less fillrate at the same speed):

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8568/the-geforce-gtx-970-review-feat-evga/13

Now we realize that SM count has an effect on VRAM allocation too.


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## BiggieShady (Jan 26, 2015)

TRWOV said:


> Now we realize that SM count has an effect on VRAM allocation too.


It doesn't. Crossbar is used so it wouldn't have an effect.
You could always bin the SM-s without changing memory bus width, what's new is L2 cache is now also binnable. If this was a kepler both memory controllers would be gone also with the other cache module. It would be 192 bit bus card.


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## Steevo (Jan 26, 2015)

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8935/...cting-the-specs-exploring-memory-allocation/4


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## TRWOV (Jan 26, 2015)

Steevo said:


> http://www.anandtech.com/show/8935/...cting-the-specs-exploring-memory-allocation/4



What to the who now? A specs correction? So it's down to 56 ROPs now? 

Well, now the lower pixel fillrate makes sense, I thought it was due to the changes in the Fermi family and thus the limitation wasn't in the ROPs anymore... so this means that previous GPUs could have exhibited this same behavior just that people didn't notice/cared??   I recall rtwjunkie saying that 660s also behaved this way. (edit:yes, some posts above)


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## rtwjunkie (Jan 26, 2015)

TRWOV said:


> What to the who now? A specs correction? So it's down to 56 ROPs now?
> 
> Well, now the lower pixel fillrate makes sense, I thought it was due to the changes in the Fermi family and thus the limitation wasn't in the ROPs anymore... so this means that previous GPUs could have exhibited this same behavior just that people didn't notice/cared??   I recall rtwjunkie saying that 660s also behaved this way. (edit:yes, some posts above)



True, it had the issue, but not regarded as a problem, more of an efficiency thing, with the VRAM being more efficient with two 1.5GB sections vs a 1.5 and a .5. Remember when it came out, very few games used that much VRAM.  2 was a lot, and 3 was viewed as something a mid-tier chip couldn't use.


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## RejZoR (Jan 27, 2015)

Now that they have stated the cards actually have less L2 and ROP's despite advertising otherwise, will people still be defending these liers? Seeing how they are now correcting their shit I have serious doubts on the sincerity of the memory allocation explanation from their side...

No matter how good GTX 970 performs, you still didn't get the advertised goods. End of story.


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## Constantine Yevseyev (Jan 27, 2015)

FordGT90Concept said:


> It is what Visual Studio uses to denote a platform-neutral binary.


But I wasn't talking about Visual Studio! And I'm pretty sure that the compiler option was called "All CPUs"... In LLVM, I mean. It always used to produce 32-bit binaries no matter what. It's not Microsoft's thing (and is not translated into any sort of intermediate language, but rather to processor instructions directly). I mean, it is, the base toolset (although I always used it in conjunction with at least something), but not the particular tool chain that came into my mind when I saw those screenshots. Don't really know why, maybe because it was so popular back in the days of GPGPU craze.

And why would you write a GPU benchmark using .NET, anyway?.. Like, that's going to be a huge overhead (and the only two "true" .NET parts are going to be the data points and the CLI itself, I think). The rest (the logic) is still going to remain unmanaged, which really makes no sense when you're writing such a small tool.


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## BiggieShady (Jan 27, 2015)

Funny funny stuff ... engineering department miscommunicated specs to marketing department ... and the whole company is these two departments. This had to be one person responsible that still uses pen and paper and has really bad handwriting ... or they may blame it on autocorrect


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## Brian@NVIDIA (Jan 28, 2015)

VulkanBros said:


> Oh oh... Friday I ordered a ASUS GTX  970 Strix..... Damn always unlucky......



Hey VulkanBros,
Just checking out the forums, and stumbled upon this thread regarding the GTX 970 vram issue. I work for NVIDIA out here in Santa Clara, CA.

With all of the questions and concerns going around, let me just jump in and say that while the GTX 970 is just as amazing today as it was when the card launched, we've obviously did not communicated thoroughly as a company.

We understand why GTX 970 owners have concerns regarding the misinformed specs and that we didn't properly explain the memory architecture. We never intended to deceive anyone but despite our best intentions many of you recieved wrong information/specs that impacted your purchasing decision. 

The GTX 970 is still an amazing GPU in my opinion and still deserves the praise it has received throughout the community and reviews since launch.

But, with that said, you and others may feel different. You might feel mislead and left out of options.  I'd like to inform you that you now have an option. 
If any of you feel the need to return the GTX 970 that you have purchased, knowing what you know about the performance in your system, you should return it. Get a refund or an exchange. You should do what will give you the best gaming experience possible and if you need help to get that done let me know, we'll help.


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## xfia (Jan 28, 2015)

@Brian@NVIDIA  can you explain the first release about the issue?  at first it seemed to me that there was really no memory issue if the 980 was receiving the same performance hit in the games shown over 3.5gb. 
this brings me to thoughts about a article I read and the reviewer shared that when he recommends gpu's he takes vram into little consideration.. someone on the nvidia forum said shadow of mordor can eat over 3.5gb at 1080p  I would like to see what happens on a 3gb gpu with the same settings and res.. ya know?
could just closing off the slower part of the vram solve most of it and make a game respond differently?

on a side note.. I think its great that someone from the source is here even if its not the best of circumstances. I have long thought the major players for technology need full time representatives on forums such as nvidia, amd, intel, microsoft, samsung.. etc.. people like it when someone from like msi, gigabyte, asus.. etc.. pops in but its not the same.


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## BiggieShady (Jan 28, 2015)

Brian@NVIDIA said:


> I'd like to inform you that you now have an option.
> If any of you feel the need to return the GTX 970 that you have purchased, knowing what you know about the performance in your system, you should return it. Get a refund or an exchange.



It would be great if any owner of GTX 970 could do that, but as an NVIDIA representative how can you speak for all different card manufacturers about their product exchange/refund policies?


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## 64K (Jan 28, 2015)

Brian@NVIDIA said:


> If any of you feel the need to return the GTX 970 that you have purchased, knowing what you know about the performance in your system, you should return it. Get a refund or an exchange. You should do what will give you the best gaming experience possible and if you need help to get that done let me know, we'll help.



Some of your partners have already said they will not be doing returns based on the misrepresented specs of the GTX 970. Also why would anyone want to do an exchange when they would just be getting the same thing that they aren't happy with already. For me I am enjoying my GTX 970 and haven't had any problems with it. I would like a partial refund though.


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## dwade (Jan 28, 2015)

EVGA said no refund because I bought it somewhere else. Tigerdirect just gives me the middle finger. So yeah... I have to deal with this awful coil whine along with nerfed VRAMs now. I can't think of any GPU I've ever purchased that's as bad as this one.


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## Nullifier (Jan 28, 2015)

dwade said:


> EVGA said no refund because I bought it somewhere else. Tigerdirect just gives me the middle finger. So yeah... I have to deal with this awful coil whine along with nerfed VRAMs now. I can't think of any GPU I've ever purchased that's as bad as this one.



Sounds like BS to Me.
EVGA has always had the return items to us policy, and have always been nothing but helpful to me and others who I know.
Thats one thing EVGA is really well known for, their RMA, Step Up Policy, and Customer support....


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## xorbe (Jan 29, 2015)

rruff said:


> And I'm guessing Nvidia did nothing about that? They are still selling those [660] cards...



Right, but the unbalanced vram was documents, reviewed, and known upfront.


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## EatGamer (Jan 29, 2015)

dwade said:


> EVGA said no refund because I bought it somewhere else. Tigerdirect just gives me the middle finger. So yeah... I have to deal with this awful coil whine along with nerfed VRAMs now. I can't think of any GPU I've ever purchased that's as bad as this one.



This is a bit off brand for EVGA. I work for NVIDIA and know those guys well. If you PM me your email and incident ID/ticket # with them I can maybe look into it.


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## xfia (Jan 29, 2015)

scam? you cant just ask for peoples personal info. if you work for nvidia you should register with tpu as such and have a badge saying so.

the other so called nvidia employee has yet to respond.. so whats the deal?


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## EatGamer (Jan 29, 2015)

xfia said:


> scam? you cant just ask for peoples personal info. if you work for nvidia you should register with tpu as such and have a badge saying so.
> 
> the other so called nvidia employee has yet to respond.. so whats the deal?



He went home. I'm still around. If a mod wants to contact me to verify, that's fine.


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## mouacyk (Jan 29, 2015)

EatGamer said:


> He went home. I'm still around. If a mod wants to contact me to verify, that's fine.



I asked you to provide verification of association with NVidia on the OCN forums and have not received any reply.  It seems the mods don't care about their own community and you might be taking advantage of that fact.


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## RCoon (Jan 29, 2015)

EatGamer said:


> He went home. I'm still around. If a mod wants to contact me to verify, that's fine.





xfia said:


> scam? you cant just ask for peoples personal info.





mouacyk said:


> I asked you to provide verification of association with NVidia on the OCN forums and have not received any reply.  It seems the mods don't care about their own community and you might be taking advantage of that fact.



I'm not high enough up to say officially or change his new member title to rep, but I can confirm his IP is shared with Brain@NVIDIA.

Frankly, if he were a random internet person that wants to profess his love of your case number via your email address, I wouldn't judge that much.



dwade said:


> I can't think of any GPU I've ever purchased that's as bad as this one.



Heh, I've bought a few stinkers in the past that surpassed this in terms of horror.


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## RejZoR (Jan 29, 2015)

Constantine Yevseyev said:


> NVIDIA (and basically all of their retail partners) cannot ship a device unless it passes specific tests, including writing memory with digits until it's full. If some addresses are never reached, the test utility will simply print nice red "FAILED" string on the display.
> 
> I won't believe that engineers are so stupid these days that they don't know how to manage device memory (or at least how to make sure that it's accessible at runtime).



The issue is not writing/reading from memory, it's the speed at which you do that, particularly in the last 0,5GB of memory...


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## Rahmat Sofyan (Jan 29, 2015)

BiggieShady said:


> It would be great if any owner of GTX 970 could do that, but as an NVIDIA representative how can you speak for all different card manufacturers about their product exchange/refund policies?



Yeahhh... in my country, really hard to do that, any brand!


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## Tatty_One (Jan 29, 2015)

Might I suggest that anyone who contributes here and claims they "represent" NVidia or any other company messages W1zzard with their credentials, @W1zzard will then give them a custom title to confirm their status...... thank you.


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## The N (Jan 31, 2015)

Galax 970 EXOC Black Edition design to Work fine on V-ram allocation - Reported

HERE: http://wccftech.com/users-reporting...970-graphics-cards-games-utilizing-full-vram/


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## rruff (Jan 31, 2015)

The N said:


> Galax 970 EXOC Black Edition design to Work fine on V-ram allocation - Reported



That's 3 week old news.


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## Faïçal HMD (Feb 8, 2015)

please , try update the bios of GTX970 to GTX980 ... Thanks


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## xorbe (Feb 9, 2015)

Faïçal HMD said:


> please , try update the bios of GTX970 to GTX980 ... Thanks



Generally the parts are fused making this impossible.  At one time, some cards could be flashed to semi-Quadros.


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## hertz9753 (Feb 9, 2015)

Thinking...


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