# Specs Don't Matter: TechPowerUp Poll on GTX 970 Controversy



## btarunr (Feb 5, 2015)

In the thick of the GeForce GTX 970 memory controversy, last Thursday (29/01), TechPowerUp asked its readers on its front-page poll, if the developments of the week affected the way they looked at the card. The results are in, and our readers gave a big thumbs-up to the card, despite the controversy surrounding its specs. 

In one week since the poll went up, and at the time of writing, 7,312 readers cast their votes. A majority of 61.4 percent (4,486 votes) says that the specs of the GTX 970 don't matter, as long as they're getting the kind of performance on tap, for its $329.99 price. A sizable minority of 21.2 percent (1,553 votes) are unhappy with NVIDIA, and said they won't buy the GTX 970, because NVIDIA lied about its specs. 9.3 percent had no plans to buy the GTX 970 to begin with. Interestingly, only 5.1 percent of the respondents are fence-sitters, and waiting for things to clear up. What's even more interesting is that the lowest number of respondents, at 3 percent (219 votes), said that they're returning their GTX 970 cards on grounds of false-marketing. The poll data can be accessed here.





*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


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## dwade (Feb 5, 2015)

The sheeps have spoken. baaaa


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## Uplink10 (Feb 5, 2015)

Too bad the law doesn`t see it that way. It was false advertising. If they would sacrifice a little more of their profit and left those parts enabled and active (you know usable) they could avoid that.


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## Jack1n (Feb 5, 2015)

When i voted the majority was set on not buying the 970 or returning theirs, how did it did change so dramatically?


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## damric (Feb 5, 2015)

3.5GB is fine since it's not a 4K capable card anyway.


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## silapakorn (Feb 5, 2015)

If I use 970 I wouldn't bother returning the card as well.


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## Nullifier (Feb 5, 2015)

damric said:


> 3.5GB is fine since it's not a 4K capable card anyway.



It is very much a 4k capable card in SLI. So no 3.5gb is not "fine"


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## etayorius (Feb 5, 2015)

TPU to nVidia Rescue!


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## manofthem (Feb 5, 2015)

I was waiting for the next 970/3.5gb/etc thread, and now it looks like TPU is trolling all of us


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## ShockG (Feb 5, 2015)

Interesting numbers and very revealing.
If you look at the number of people who are satisfied with the GTX 970 or will be buying it. It's a few percentage points down, but it does echo a little with NVIDIA's market share at around the 60 to 64% mark. Not sure if this is coincidence or there's more to it, but perhaps a vocal minority vs a buying majority. Who knows?


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## NC37 (Feb 5, 2015)

Who cares! These cards are going to be dirt cheap the moment Win 10 hits cause everyone is going to be dumping them for DX12 boards.


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## Dave65 (Feb 5, 2015)

If your government did that you guys would not give it a second thought, but for a video card omg the world is ending


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## rruff (Feb 5, 2015)

Xorium said:


> It is very much a 4k capable card in SLI. So no 3.5gb is not "fine"



^^^ This. 

Makes me sad that so few are upset. I was waiting for Nvidia to offer some resolution, but it now seems likely they will do nothing.


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## ShockG (Feb 5, 2015)

NC37 said:


> Who cares! These cards are going to be dirt cheap the moment Win 10 hits cause everyone is going to be dumping them for DX12 boards.


These are DX12 cards which is the cool part.


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## Caring1 (Feb 5, 2015)

Dave65 said:


> If your government did that you guys would not give it a second thought, but for a video card omg the world is ending


What do you mean IF?


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## Protagonist (Feb 5, 2015)

The fact still remains nvidia was deceptive with the GTX970 specs, as much as the card delivers I will not buy or recommend the particular card to any of my clients. Anyway i personally don't like cut-down cards.

On that note it seems nvidia will be skipping 16nm in favor of 14nm Samsung, either way waiting for a die shrink then I'll purchase my next GPU, I have personally had enough of the 28nm GPUs.


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## john_ (Feb 5, 2015)

I answered "No plans to buy GTX 970". Next time I will remember *not* to be honest with a TPU poll concerning Nvidia, because in the end the poll will be used to twist reality. I should have posted "I'm returning mine" even not having a 970.


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## Rahmat Sofyan (Feb 5, 2015)

Tottaaalllyyy Damage Controulller by TPU.com ... since that poll can be done anonymously, hell yeah, you know what I mean..


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## las (Feb 5, 2015)

Xorium said:


> It is very much a 4k capable card in SLI. So no 3.5gb is not "fine"


 Actually it's not. 970 SLI won't be maxing any demanding game at 4K.


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## Assimilator (Feb 5, 2015)

john_ said:


> I answered "No plans to buy GTX 970". Next time I will remember *not* to be honest with a TPU poll concerning Nvidia, because in the end the poll will be used to twist reality. I should have posted "I'm returning mine" even not having a 970.



So poll results that don't correspond with your conception is "twisting reality"? Do you know how stupid you sound?

For me the most important thing about this "controversy" is that it's shown up who are the nVidia haters and/or morons who don't understand, or refuse to understand, how graphics cards work. Those of us who own GTX 970s, and are perfectly happy with them, are thankful for the amusement you've given us.


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## the54thvoid (Feb 5, 2015)

All I want to say is those that relentlessly accuse TPU of being an Nvidia shill really ought to find a new forum.
By all means condemn Nvidia but the frankly infantile responses to democratic polls from generally AMD owners is ironically a neon sign post to Red bias.
AMD in context sold the stock 290 cards that were unable to stay at their PR advertised boosts. In many cases they throttled well below 1ghz. I don't recall quite so much hate or as many posts on that misleading sales pitch.
It took custom solutions, months later to let the cards fly free. 
I wouldn't touch a 970 knowing the issue and knowing my gaming resolution would maybe in a small % of games cause problems. But it doesn't mean I need to pour such illogical hatred and conspiracy on TPU.
And 'specs don't matter' is a valid point. My 3gb cards outperform 4gb cards, even at some 4k settings. Game coding is more relevant to performance in many cases.
Have Nvidia been dishonest? Of course.
Does the card still suit the vast majority of owners? Apparently.
Should Nvidia do something honest about it? Yes.
Will they? No.
Will I still buy Nvidia? If they still perform better than AMD, yes.
Even if its a tad expensive? Probably.
Would I buy AMD? If their card is better.

All very simple....


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## RejZoR (Feb 5, 2015)

And now specs all of the sudden don't matter because NVIDIA fucked it up. If anyone else would, they'd literally eat them alive, not just make a small controversy outrage. They lied and they didn't bother to fix it in lets say a week or month. users had to point it out 4 months later. F U NVIDIA and your shitty business practices.

They are dishonest the entire time starting even with software things like PhysX where they hardcode, lockdown and block things that shouldn't be limited at all and then they act like it's our fault and that it's normal to be that way up to far more concerning things like this GTX 970 crap. I'm no fanboy of either camp, but when one side is continuously and repeatably dishonest like NVIDIA has been for several years now, I tend to buy from the other camp more. More people should think about this.


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## HumanSmoke (Feb 5, 2015)

Rahmat Sofyan said:


> Tottaaalllyyy Damage Controulller by TPU.com ... since that poll can be done anonymously, hell yeah, you know what I mean..



Why yes Rahmat, I think I do...







/Didn't vote in the poll


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## john_ (Feb 5, 2015)

Assimilator said:


> So poll results that don't correspond with your conception is "twisting reality"? Do you know how stupid you sound?


I was reading polls for a month here in Greece and I know how you can twist the meaning of a poll even while presenting it. Also see what you are doing in your post. First you downgrade my opinion "that don't correspond with your conception", then you call me stupid. How nice.



> For me the most important thing about this "controversy" is that it's shown up who are the nVidia haters and/or morons who don't understand, or refuse to understand, how graphics cards work. Those of us who own GTX 970s, and are perfectly happy with them, are thankful for the amusement you've given us.



More attacks because there where infidels among the voters who insulted your card? Really? You are funny.


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## scorpion_amd13 (Feb 5, 2015)

If specs wouldn't matter, you wouldn't see them in literally every hardware review out there. Sure, some matter more than others. The fact of the matter is that when you pick a new graphics card and there are several choices regarding memory capacity, you're sure as hell not just going to roll dice on what to get (for those who remember 8800GTS 320MB versus 8800GTS 640MB).

If nVidia would have been honest from the start about the real specifications of the GTX 970, nobody would have given it a second thought. The card does perform admirably (and I don't mean just raw performance here) and for a pretty decent price. But for some reason, they decided to let this one slip and lie to everyone. And this has "marketing decision" written all over it.

The 3.5GB "direct access" memory amount would seem to suggest a 224-bit bus, which wouldn't be anything new for nVidia (they had quite a few cards in the past that used atypical memory bus configurations). But someone in the marketing department probably looked at it and said "hey, they'll probably think a 256-bit bus is barely enough, they'll never buy a card with a 224-bit bus". And lo and behold, they slapped on the card the full amount of memory chips for a 4GB card and declared it as having a fully functional 256-bit bus, when in reality the core has a lower number of ROPs and whatever else than the GTX 980.

How many people would have minded about the GTX 970 having a different configuration for its memory and memory bus? Maybe a few. They'd probably complain about it on the forums and whatnot (like they always do, let's face it), but at the end of the day, it would have been a matter of you get what you pay for. If you want more, you pay more. Nothing to see here, move along.

Right now, however, they have people returning purchased cards on account of false advertising. Quite a few people are miffed about being lied to, and rightly so. I don't find false advertising something that is so easily forgivable. After all, what would happen if you, as a customer, would say you want to buy one of these cards, but would only pay less than the asking price at the cash register? What would happen then?


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## john_ (Feb 5, 2015)

the54thvoid said:


> AMD in context sold the stock 290 cards that were unable to stay at their PR advertised boosts. In many cases they throttled well below 1ghz. I don't recall quite so much hate or as many posts on that misleading sales pitch.


I don't recall any articles at the press defending AMD and asking from their readers to concentrate on the card's performance. Do you? The press attacked AMD back then. The press is defending Nvidia this time. That different approach makes people react differently. Also in the case of AMD the problems with the gpu clock where spotted from the first reviews. In the case of 970 Nvidia was lying for months and we wouldn't have known about that for even more months if no one had noticed that. And what does the press do? Accepts Nvidia's explanation that even they didn't know about that.


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## trenter (Feb 5, 2015)

I don't ever remember a poll getting a headline article. Who are you trying to convince?


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## RCoon (Feb 5, 2015)

I for one found it pretty hilarious. All those people banging on about returning their cards and getting a refund, and lo and behold, most of them didn't bother 

Also, if somebody wants to randomise their IP address just so they can vote in a poll on a random front page forum post multiple times, well, let 'em. I highly doubt anybody did however.

I'll also go ahead and note that 7000 people doesn't exactly represent the entire market of GPU buyers across the world. So, you know, don't read too much into it.


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## Rahmat Sofyan (Feb 5, 2015)

HumanSmoke said:


> Why yes Rahmat, I think I do...
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Whuttttttttt...??? , have fun bro, why so serious


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## rooivalk (Feb 5, 2015)

Nothing unusual on TPU 

nVidia apologists vs 24/7 PMS AMD fanboys.


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## Recus (Feb 5, 2015)

john_ said:


> I answered "No plans to buy GTX 970". Next time I will remember *not* to be honest with a TPU poll concerning Nvidia, because in the end the poll will be used to twist reality. I should have posted "I'm returning mine" even not having a 970.



Here you go. AMD shills faking pools.



RejZoR said:


> And now specs all of the sudden don't matter because NVIDIA fucked it up. If anyone else would, they'd literally eat them alive, not just make a small controversy outrage. They lied and they didn't bother to fix it in lets say a week or month. users had to point it out 4 months later. F U NVIDIA and your shitty business practices.
> 
> They are dishonest the entire time starting even with software things like PhysX where they hardcode, lockdown and block things that shouldn't be limited at all and then they act like it's our fault and that it's normal to be that way up to far more concerning things like this GTX 970 crap. I'm no fanboy of either camp, but when one side is continuously and repeatably dishonest like NVIDIA has been for several years now, I tend to buy from the other camp more. More people should think about this.



Just like efficiency doesn't matter after Nvidia become more efficient. Or big GPU die doesn't matter after rumors about R9 300 500+ mm2?



john_ said:


> I was reading polls for a month here in Greece and I know how you can twist the meaning of a poll even while presenting it. Also see what you are doing in your post. First you downgrade my opinion "that don't correspond with your conception", then you call me stupid. How nice.



Nvidia lied about specs - return my money.
European Union lend money to Greece - we won't return debt.


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## buggalugs (Feb 5, 2015)

I would take the survey with a grain of salt. There are nvidia guys here who troll every thread, talking up Nvidia and criticising AMD at every opportunity.  They are like religious people spreading the word of their god. I guarantee most of them don't even own a 970.

 Even when this issue first broke, these guys were saying there is no issue and Nvidia would be vindicated.

 Anyone who is OK with misreporting specs is a MORON and has no credibility , morals or common decency.


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## BlandFantasy (Feb 5, 2015)

The GTX970 is still the same card that got rave reviews at its launch. The problem isn't with the card, it's with the lack of clear information nvidia provided for its advertising.


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## HumanSmoke (Feb 5, 2015)

RCoon said:


> I for one found it pretty hilarious. All those people banging on about returning their cards and getting a refund, and lo and behold, most of them didn't bother


That's modern life on the internet right? Can't solve a pressing issue in half a day, just move on to the next crime against humanity! 


RCoon said:


> Also, if somebody wants to randomise their IP address just so they can vote in a poll on a random front page forum post multiple times, well, let 'em. I highly doubt anybody did however.


Probably the only ones who did, would be those posting for all they're worth in some modern rendition of Crusaders looking to drive the Infidel out of the Holy Lands.


Rahmat Sofyan said:


> Whuttttttttt...??? , have fun bro, why so serious


Whatever sunshine. If the GIF and my sig weren't enough of a clue, the last time I took the bulk of the internet seriously Netscape Navigator owned 80% market share for browsers.


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## john_ (Feb 5, 2015)

Recus said:


> Here you go. AMD shills faking pools.


Yeah, I lost that chance by casting an honest vote. Damn. Next time.



> Nvidia lied about specs - return my money.


Nvidia lied about specs. Oh Nvidia you are so clever. Here take more of my money.



> European Union lend money to Greece - we won't return debt.


Wrong. But anyway I could only explain in Greek, and even then it would take me time. Now in English.... Not to mention that you don't really care anyway.


>


Didn't vote him.


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## scorpion_amd13 (Feb 5, 2015)

the54thvoid said:


> By all means condemn Nvidia but the frankly infantile responses to democratic polls from generally AMD owners is ironically a neon sign post to Red bias.
> AMD in context sold the stock 290 cards that were unable to stay at their PR advertised boosts. In many cases they throttled well below 1ghz. I don't recall quite so much hate or as many posts on that misleading sales pitch.
> It took custom solutions, months later to let the cards fly free.



You know, everyone and their dog knew about the behavior of AMD's R9 290/X stock cards from launch day reviews. Those who bought stock cards knew exactly what they were getting if the read the reviews, they didn't find out 4 months later. Nobody forced them to get a stock card instead of waiting for custom cooled versions. Everyone knew that stock cards tended to get toasty, just like they all knew how the cards would behave, and that it would be a helluva lot smarter to just wait a little and get a custom cooled version. That's not false advertising.

With the GTX 970, you get to find out 4 months after launch day that what you bought isn't exactly what nVidia and the reviewers everywhere and the spec-sheet said you were getting. Nobody, not from the press community, and certainly not the customers, knew anything about it until a few enthusiasts noticed something strange and looked into it. But nVidia knew. Those ROPs didn't disable themselves, after all. And they sure as hell don't just use a random number generator to divine what specs they should use for the cut-down versions of their cards.

After all, at the end of the day, do you know what matters most? You can easily get a custom cooled R9 290/290X that will exhibit none of the problems the stock versions did. But you're never going to be able to get a GTX 970 that's everything nVidia said it was at launch day.


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## Sony Xperia S (Feb 5, 2015)

Jack1n said:


> When i voted the majority was set on not buying the 970 or returning theirs, how did it did change so dramatically?



Indeed, I also noticed the shift. In the beginning it was normal and afterwards the nvidia employees took some serious actions to change the vote. What a shame.


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## MustSeeMelons (Feb 5, 2015)

> A sizable minority of 21.2 percent (1,553 votes) are unhappy with NVIDIA



This is not entirely true - I'm not returning my card or anything, but I'm still unhappy with them about this issue.


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## the54thvoid (Feb 5, 2015)

john_ said:


> I don't recall any articles at the press defending AMD and asking from their readers to concentrate on the card's performance. Do you? The press attacked AMD back then. The press is defending Nvidia this time. That different approach makes people react differently. Also in the case of AMD the problems with the gpu clock where spotted from the first reviews. In the case of 970 Nvidia was lying for months and we wouldn't have known about that for even more months if no one had noticed that. And what does the press do? Accepts Nvidia's explanation that even they didn't know about that.



The press is also attacking Nvidia. The issue lies with what was designed by the engineers and what was sold.
I believe in using facts, not rumour to support any logical discussion where I state an opinion.
Given Nvidia could be lying about the processes that led to this issue, we can't know the truth. Only Nvidia does, therefore I can't have any genuine opinion on that. All I know is the card isn't suitable for a very small % of users. As long as people are allowed to return cards, its actually okay. 
Further, Nvidia should do something about the 512mb memory usage and pursue that avenue. If not, perhaps those angry enough can consult the lawyers.
Should Nvidia address this issue formally? Of course they should.
It doesn't detract from the red mist and some green, that has descended into a rabble of noise though. 
The issue isn't closed and it will hurt Nvidia, hopefully they will do something but we'll have to wait and see.
As for AMD, its fair to bring them in as they have misled in the past (bulldozer cores, dysfunctional crossfire, throttling etc) but they were caught out as soon as most things released. I personally ditched AMD after my not so awesome £1000 hd7970 water cooled crossfire let down. It was just as bad for me that so much investment was broken (to my eyes) in most dx9 titles. They never fully fixed dx9 crossfire, enough time progressed that dx10 was prevalent.
Both teams are dishonest but yes, as an Nvidia owner I agree Nvidia are worse.

Anyway, I can't be bothered posting anymore because the terrible merry go round of these spurious posts with more emotion than fact are wasting my precious hours.

BTW, only solution is a sticker for all 970 retail boxes that can be plastered over the 4gb text that reads, "3.5". And driver work to eliminate that problematic half Meg.


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## mroofie (Feb 5, 2015)

rooivalk said:


> Nothing unusual on TPU
> 
> nVidia apologists vs 24/7 PMS AMD fanboys.


lol lol pms amd fanboys so true xD


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## john_ (Feb 5, 2015)

the54thvoid said:


> The press is also attacking Nvidia. The issue lies with what was designed by the engineers and what was sold.


The press is investigating the problem with really good articles(no irony or sarcasm here) and then it comes to the conclusion that "OK Nvidia lied, but they say that it wasn't intentional and no one noticed for months and we totally believe them and the cards are a pure engineering masterpiece and if we had to consider this card again we would have loved it again". I fail to see the attacks here.



> I believe in using facts, not rumour to support any logical discussion where I state an opinion.


Me too.



> Given Nvidia could be lying about the processes that led to this issue, we can't know the truth. Only Nvidia does, therefore I can't have any genuine opinion on that. All I know is the card isn't suitable for a very small % of users. As long as people are allowed to return cards, its actually okay.
> Further, Nvidia should do something about the 512mb memory usage and pursue that avenue. If not, perhaps those angry enough can consult the lawyers.
> Should Nvidia address this issue formally? Of course they should.
> It doesn't detract from the red mist and some green, that has descended into a rabble of noise though.
> The issue isn't closed and it will hurt Nvidia, hopefully they will do something but we'll have to wait and see.


 No argue here. But they probably can't do anything about it in the firmware or in the drivers that they where not already doing.



> As for AMD, its fair to bring them in as they have misled in the past (bulldozer cores, dysfunctional crossfire, throttling etc) but they were caught out as soon as most things released. I personally ditched AMD after my not so awesome £1000 hd7970 water cooled crossfire let down. It was just as bad for me that so much investment was broken (to my eyes) in most dx9 titles. They never fully fixed dx9 crossfire, enough time progressed that dx10 was prevalent.
> Both teams are dishonest but yes, as an Nvidia owner I agree Nvidia are worse.


Bulldozer was a bad design, much like Pentium 4, no misleading there. You do get 8 cores. You also get 8 cores on ARM devices that don't perform as good as an FX. Bay Trail gives you four cores, but it is also much slower than a quad core Haswell. There is no misleading there either. Different architectures, different performance or/and different prices. 
Throttling was spotted from the beginning, a simple better cooler was fixing it, but yes they should have used a better cooler. As for the Crossfire, yes, that was a real problem. No excuses there. ABSOLUTELY NO excuses there, and No, I haven't had a crossfire to have a reason to be upset. It was just a huge mistake in their part.




> Anyway, I can't be bothered posting anymore because the terrible merry go round of these spurious posts with more emotion than fact are wasting my precious hours.
> 
> BTW, only solution is a sticker for all 970 retail boxes that can be plastered over the 4gb text that reads, "3.5". And driver work to eliminate that problematic half Meg.


What you call emotion, it could be a fact. What you call a fact it could be emotion. For someone else it could be the other way around. Driver work is going to be difficult to fix hardware specification, in the same way that the "Wonder Driver" in the end didn't transformed the DX11 in DX12.


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## Recus (Feb 5, 2015)

lololo


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## W1zzard (Feb 5, 2015)

john_ said:


> Nvidia lied, but they say that it wasn't intentional and no one noticed for months and we totally *DO NOT* believe them and the cards are a pure engineering masterpiece and if we had to consider this card again we would have loved it again



fixed that for you. (my personal view)


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## the54thvoid (Feb 5, 2015)

W1zzard said:


> fixed that for you. (my personal view)



Any chance of a 970 versus 980 bench up at 4k ultra IQ?


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## Lionheart (Feb 5, 2015)

This thread is quite entertaining lol


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## RCoon (Feb 5, 2015)

the54thvoid said:


> ultra IQ



I have no idea what that means, please explain so I don't feel stupid the next time somebody mentions it.


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## the54thvoid (Feb 5, 2015)

RCoon said:


> I have no idea what that means, please explain so I don't feel stupid the next time somebody mentions it.



Image Quality. You knew that, you were just testing me. Weren't you? I mean, weren't you... (Just say yes).


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## RCoon (Feb 5, 2015)

the54thvoid said:


> Image Quality. You knew that, you were just testing me. Weren't you? I mean, weren't you... (Just say yes).



I would have just said max settings. Shortening it to IQ made me think of intelligence, and then I over thought it, and then I felt emasculated. Better to ask than to google 4K ultra IQ on google for 10 minutes (which, by the way, told me nothing other than a brand name of some monitor).

But that's fine, I can still bamboozle people by using the word pezaz and feel good about my knowledge of shoddy language.


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## the54thvoid (Feb 5, 2015)

RCoon said:


> I would have just said max settings. Shortening it to IQ made me think of intelligence, and then I over thought it, and then I felt emasculated. Better to ask than to google 4K ultra IQ on google for 10 minutes (which, by the way, told me nothing other than a brand name of some monitor).
> 
> But that's fine, I can still bamboozle people by using the word pezaz and feel good about my knowledge of shoddy language.



I maybe missed a comma and instead meant "run a test at 4k, ultra IQ" thus inferring W1zzard to use his maniacal intellect to usurp the brainless masses. 
He is after all a machine made of silicon and only purports to use hookers. Those hookers are in fact fembots, delivering nano tech every Friday night via a coupling process we would perceive as vulgar sexual acts.
Or not.


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## HumanSmoke (Feb 5, 2015)

john_ said:


> The press is investigating the problem with really good articles(no irony or sarcasm here) and then it comes to the conclusion that "OK Nvidia lied, but they say that it wasn't intentional and no one noticed for months and we totally believe them and the cards are a pure engineering masterpiece and if we had to consider this card again we would have loved it again". I fail to see the attacks here.


That sounds hyperbolic on your part. I think the reason that many sites didn't go straight into OHNOTHESKYIS FALLING mode, is because the performance is what it was on launch day. Sure Nvidia misrepresented the specs, and sure, some people have had cause to regret their purchases - but for the most part, many people aren't affected because 1. they don't load the vRAM to it's full extent, and 2. many have recourse for refund. In the end, it is still a product that mostly works as advertised for most people. It doesn't blow up, it isn't made by child slave labour, and it isn't responsible for the decline of Western civilization. It's a graphics card that will be yesterdays news as soon as the next graphics card arrives.


john_ said:


> Bulldozer was a bad design, much like Pentium 4, no misleading there.


The misleading was prior to launch. Viral marketing by John Fruehe (and AMD's unofficial "leaker" Donanimhaber) who vociferously stated that Bulldozer's IPC was significantly better than 10h. Hiding behind the "personal opinion" card, whilst proudly proclaiming his AMD Vice-President status. Sold quite a few 900 chipset boards, and basically locked people in to a Bulldozer purchase on the strength of dubious marketing.
Basically shit happens - and AMD haven't been immune. Remember when AMD got caught falsely advertising that its flagship card had functioning hardware UVD ? No? Nor does anyone else, because the issue was largely hand waved away thanks to the card being less than popular. In the same time frame, AMD deliberately misled with their fictitious processor and bogus benchmarking. Somewhat higher profile, but largely excused by AMD fans because of their underdog status. The fact that in all probability you don't remember either just goes to show how quickly bad behaviour slips from the public consciousness. If that's too long ago, how about AMD and Nvidia's price fixing judgement, or the LCD panel price fixing scandal. In the end, the next shiny thing on the shelves trumps social conscience for the most part. If this sounds cynical, its because this *and worse*, happens time and time again.


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## Sony Xperia S (Feb 5, 2015)

While you are arguing on nonsense, smart do:

*Overclockers UK and Caseking accept returned GTX 970*


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## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Feb 5, 2015)

*So what is the actual return rate then* ?  even approximately.  Actions speak louder than words.

Why would TPU manipulate results ?
  I have more faith in TPU and its members giving me reliable info than any marketing or political points scoring exercise by fanboys from either camp.

Nvidia  vs  AMD   ..........boring
Intel   vs   AMD    ...........boring


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## Serpent of Darkness (Feb 5, 2015)

ShockG said:


> These are DX12 cards which is the cool part.



DX12 is more of a "CPU optimizer" upgrade.  This doesn't really restrict you from having to purchase a future generation of graphic cards from either camp to use it.

As far as I know, all current generations, NVidia 700 and AMD R#-200s for the most part, can run DX12.




Protagonist said:


> On that note it seems nvidia will be skipping 16nm in favor of 14nm Samsung, either way waiting for a die shrink then I'll purchase my next GPU, I have personally had enough of the 28nm GPUs.



Saw the news about that on Tweaktown.com.  I don't feel optimistic that Samsung will continue to do business, produce 14 FF chips for NVidia after the current sue job.  I'm not saying it isn't going to happen, I am saying that I feel it won't happen unless the case was settled, or the agreement to produce said 14 ff chips for NVidia was agreed before the patent infringement case.  Of course money always talks.  So it's possible if NVidia was paying Samsung more $$$, it could happen.




damric said:


> 3.5GB is fine since it's not a 4K capable card anyway.



You're mistaken.  VRam isn't summed up together as one when you add an additional graphic card to your system.  If you have 3 GTX 970s in SLI with 4 GBs VRam, it doesn't mean you have a total of 12 GBs VRam.  It means that each GPU has a 4 GB VRam framebuffer, and that's dedicated to each GPU.  3.5 GBs VRam each if you want to be technical plus how much ROPs less per card than previously stated by the manufacture's specs.  If you go 4k and you have a 3way SLI 970 setup, and 3.8 GBs VRam is needed in this hypothetical scenario, each card will try and access 3.8 GBs VRam to store information for the image that's being rendered and sent to the display device.

I've read on Tweaktown.com that AMD is making a claim, or hinting one that after DX12 aka Win10 is released, AMD may eventually make it where AMD Mantle will allow VRam, from each GPU, to be summed up as one.  This hint was made next to the one about the GPU could also use CPU memory, eventually...

@ the post,

Worst case scenario, Nvidia could be faced with false advertisement for misleading their customers with a faulty product.  Consumers could take that route.  It be ironic if that were to happen after trying to sue Samsung and Qualcomm.  Think about it.   It's not surprising.  First they came out with the GTX Titan-Z for $3,000 as a high end gaming card with 64bit floating point capabilities.  Hoping for AMD to fail with the  R9-295x  Now they've pretty much mis-lead their consumer base, or claim ignorants to the truth about their product.  For consumers, worst case scenario is you couldn't play any future PC Games with high textures, surround, or go 4k HD.  A heavily modded Skyrim is a big no for GTX 970.  So if this was an investment that's going to last you for the next 5 years, you're totally screwed on any future PC game that requires more VRam usage.  You are crap out of luck.  I know Star Citizens is possibly going to be one of those games.

I don't feel it's right that AMD owners should degrade themselves or toss dirt on NVidia, but in another point of view, NVidia had it coming from the AMD camp because they've pretty much pulled the same "QQ-cry-cry-cry" card about the Frame Time Variance issues with the GPU king of 2013 aka AMD 7990.  AMD took it's punches and improved from their mistakes in their own way.  Now if you ask me, did NVidia deserved it, and the answer is yes.  Thank your consumers for that.  It's basically a natural "eye for an eye" reaction from the AMD camp at NVidia.  Is NVidia going to learn from this.  I highly doubt it because a majority of the base has basically rolled over, or gave into the compromise that "oh it only an issue for the card is a piece of crap if I go above 3.5 GBs VRam Usage" comments.  The reals message being sent to NVidia by consumers is I will pay more for less, but don't be truthful about it.

Sadly, I think NVidia consumers deserve better than this even if NVidia consumer's don't want to stand up for themselves.  Say "hey, you sold me a faulty card, this isn't what I paid for when I purchased this product."  Now a lot of members on this forum are going to make the argument that "oh when AMD R9-200 cards were throttling, AMD customers didn't cry to AMD about it, or the Frame Time Variance on 7000 series cards in Crossfire was crap" case, and you know what, I think those issues are less significant than NVidia covering up a drop in ROPs or lack of full direct memory access on the GTX 970.  The reasoning for that is because AMD didn't really, intentionally mislead their consumers.  R9-290x cards would go up to 1.0Ghz core clock until it started throttling because of the increased temperatures.  AMD fixed its Frame Time Variance issues over time.  In addition, AMD Catalyst Drivers (Both beta and WHQL) are not causing issues for AMD users as much as haters would believe.  The question really isn't what NVidia consumers should say to counter-argument AMD consumers about the GTX 970 issues.  NVidia consumers are either going to refund their cards, or stick with their purchase because it meets there needs or expectation.  I think the best question NVidia consumers should ask is are you willing to let NVidia continue to provide you with a product that doesn't meet specs when they are suppose to have a track record, over AMD, of producing reliable, premium products.  Are NVidia consumers paying $500, $600 for premium NVidia products in the future that don't live up to expectations anymore....  A lot of NVidia users saying this is acceptable behavior.  It's acceptable for NVidia to live up to AMD's failed standards.  It won't upset you so long as you don't know right......  Once you bought these faulty products, your locked until you buy more NVidia products down the line.

It really doesn't matter what this poll represents.  The polls could be a misrepresentation of the truth, it could be the truth, but it doesn't represent the 100%, bigger picture.


----------



## W1zzard (Feb 5, 2015)

the54thvoid said:


> Any chance of a 970 versus 980 bench up at 4k ultra IQ?


Just check my reviews. Not using AA for 4K though because it makes no sense for the performance hit.


----------



## HumanSmoke (Feb 5, 2015)

Serpent of Darkness said:


> As far as I know, all current generations, NVidia 700 and AMD R#-200s for the most part, can run DX12.


Fermi, Kepler, Maxwell, and GCN architectures all have at least some preliminary DX12 support.


Serpent of Darkness said:


> Saw the news about that on Tweaktown.com.  I don't feel optimistic that Samsung will continue to do business, produce 14 FF chips for NVidia after the current sue job.


If the contract is in the public arena now, it most certainly was signed some time ago. Also note that Samsung is more a collection of divisions than a single company. Samsung Electronics had a bitter patent dispute with Apple, but it doesn't stop Samsung from supplying Apple.


Serpent of Darkness said:


> I've read on Tweaktown.com that AMD is making a claim, or hinting one that after DX12 aka Win10 is released, AMD may eventually make it where AMD Mantle will allow VRam, from each GPU, to be summed up as one.


Many sites carried the story, and pooled memory is slated for both Mantle and DX12.


----------



## RCoon (Feb 5, 2015)

the54thvoid said:


> Any chance of a 970 versus 980 bench up at 4k ultra IQ?





W1zzard said:


> Just check my reviews. Not using AA for 4K though because it makes no sense for the performance hit.


In other words:





Potaters




Gonna




Potate


----------



## rpsgc (Feb 5, 2015)

Fanboysim is one hell of a drug.


The cult of NVIDIA is almost as bad as the cult of Apple. And they call themselves intelligent people....


----------



## Sony Xperia S (Feb 5, 2015)

CAPSLOCKSTUCK said:


> *So what is the actual return rate then* ?  even approximately.  Actions speak louder than words.



Well, we will see by the end of February.


----------



## john_ (Feb 5, 2015)

HumanSmoke said:


> That sounds hyperbolic on your part. I think the reason that many sites didn't go straight into OHNOTHESKYIS FALLING mode, is because the performance is what it was on launch day. Sure Nvidia misrepresented the specs, and sure, some people have had cause to regret their purchases - but for the most part, many people aren't affected because 1. they don't load the vRAM to it's full extent, and 2. many have recourse for refund. In the end, it is still a product that mostly works as advertised for most people. It doesn't blow up, it isn't made by child slave labour, and it isn't responsible for the decline of Western civilization. It's a graphics card that will be yesterdays news as soon as the next graphics card arrives.


Performance is not the case here. I think I was explaining this in many cases. It wasn't the case with 290X's gpu clock speed, it's not in the case of 970 either. A company should NEVER lie because the marketing department thinks it is good idea.



> The misleading was prior to launch. Viral marketing by John Fruehe (and AMD's unofficial "leaker" Donanimhaber) who vociferously stated that Bulldozer's IPC was significantly better than 10h. Hiding behind the "personal opinion" card, whilst proudly proclaiming his AMD Vice-President status. Sold quite a few 900 chipset boards, and basically locked people in to a Bulldozer purchase on the strength of dubious marketing.
> Basically shit happens - and AMD haven't been immune. Remember when AMD got caught falsely advertising that its flagship card had functioning hardware UVD ? No? Nor does anyone else, because the issue was largely hand waved away thanks to the card being less than popular. In the same time frame, AMD deliberately misled with their fictitious processor and bogus benchmarking. Somewhat higher profile, but largely excused by AMD fans because of their underdog status. The fact that in all probability you don't remember either just goes to show how quickly bad behaviour slips from the public consciousness. If that's too long ago, how about AMD and Nvidia's price fixing judgement, or the LCD panel price fixing scandal. In the end, the next shiny thing on the shelves trumps social conscience for the most part. If this sounds cynical, its because this *and worse*, happens time and time again.


Prior to launch? Does it count? All companies are trying to create a very positive image of a product they are about to show. But then the product comes out, everyone see it's performance, everyone knows what this product does and how it performs and end of story. Donanimhaber? Who cares about Donanimhaber? Someone gone and bought a new motherboard based on expectations? His mistake. I have said that many times in the past - I don't know if i had done it here. After reading the first Bulldozer review, I gone at an online shop's page and ordered the Phenom 1055T that I am still using. No I don't remember about UVD. That case looks like the same as this one with 970(didn't read the link). 
But what you are trying to tell me reminds of the political situation the last 40 years in Greece that brought us where we are today. Two political parties both corrupted and their voters using as arguments, not how much better their political party is, but how much worst the other political party is. You put two voters, one from each political party in a table, and they both had FACTS that where proving that both parties where corrupted and bad choices. The result? Everyone can see it today. If today half of us excuse lies from one company and the other half excuse lies from the other company, in a duopoly, tomorrow we will be reading mostly lies on the specs. Believe me.


----------



## john_ (Feb 5, 2015)

W1zzard said:


> fixed that for you. (my personal view)


Well, in most articles their authors totally believed that excuse from Nvidia and where asking their viewers to understand that it was totally possible to be also the truth.


----------



## the54thvoid (Feb 5, 2015)

rpsgc said:


> Fanboysim is one hell of a drug.



Superbly cutting remark.  It's quite novel to hear.



rpsgc said:


> The cult of NVIDIA is almost as bad as the cult of Apple.



Informative, of course, there is no cult of AMD.



rpsgc said:


> And they call themselves intelligent people....



Hmm, now that's just supposition.  You bombed out on that one, sorry.


----------



## RCoon (Feb 5, 2015)

john_ said:


> Well, in most articles their authors totally believed that excuse from Nvidia and where asking their viewers to understand that it was totally possible to be also the truth.



GPU engineers are smart, GPU marketers doubly so. To think it was an honest mistake would be foolish, even I can see that. I'm not saying those authors were morons, just that taking information from the source of the problem as 100% fact isn't always a wise publishing decision.


----------



## HumanSmoke (Feb 5, 2015)

john_ said:


> No I don't remember about UVD. That case looks like the same as this one with 970(didn't read the link).


No, they are actually quite different. As you've stated,  you've read many articles about the 970 issue. The one article concerning the UVD issue you couldn't be bothered reading....but don't feel bad, many people in the day couldn't be arsed either. The more things change the more they stay the same.


----------



## Ferrum Master (Feb 5, 2015)

It would be interesting to see if the DX12 will have the same side effect as mantle...

Increased VRAM ussage...


----------



## HumanSmoke (Feb 5, 2015)

Ferrum Master said:


> It would be interesting to see if the DX12 will have the same side effect as mantle...
> Increased VRAM ussage...


Might be a long wait to find out. Game developers weren't in any great hurry to get DX 11 utilised, and I've yet to see any 11.1/11.2 options!


----------



## JBVertexx (Feb 5, 2015)

Keep in mind that Nvidia had >70% of the market in Q3 and most likely Q4 (http://hexus.net/tech/news/graphics/78209-nvidia-pulls-away-amd-graphics-card-market-share/)

So the fact that only 61% in the poll said that "Spec's don't matter" still poses a problem for Nvidia

Also, you didn't separate those actually in the market for a new GPU.  Those not in the market for a new GPU are probably more likely to say they don't matter (plus it was the first answer in the poll, which always skews results).

Those actually in the market for a new GPU I would bet my paycheck that there would be more of those who are concerned or at a minimum "fence sitters".

I myself came close to pulling the trigger on a 970.  The controversy caused me to pause, and I think I'll wait it out to see what AMD comes out with next year.


----------



## Ferrum Master (Feb 5, 2015)

HumanSmoke said:


> Might be a long wait to find out. Game developers weren't in any great hurry to get DX 11 utilised, and I've yet to see any 11.1/11.2 options!



DX11.1 and DX11.2 are supported by AMD only, aint it?, thus not covering the market. Frostbyte only supports DX11.1 as far I remember.

It depends how UT4 starts to become a most used game engine whore again as UT3 was.

Or... how fast this thing will pop in Xbone SDK and thus automatically ported to game engine and then to PC... So I think not that long really... might be even late this year...

Where's Crytek? He's quite silent like a partisan lately... I guess the money crisis lol kind of broke them down?


----------



## Dalai Brahma (Feb 5, 2015)

Yeah.. 3.5GB is still a good spec,  makes great job.. I think.. but... If I pay for 4GB (working 100%), I won't get a 3.5GB...
Remember me ads about smartphone with "8GB"... "what?! I have only 5.1GB.. my phone is defective..."


----------



## Caring1 (Feb 5, 2015)

No different to buying a computer with a 500Gb hard drive and only 450Gb is usable....


----------



## dj-electric (Feb 5, 2015)

Why do so many people find it hard to believe that most people simply don't care about the last 512MB as it is completely useless for 1080P and 1440P users? If it was only the last 256MB would you care? and about about the last 128MB or 64MB?


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## RejZoR (Feb 5, 2015)

Playing Battlefield 4 on Ultra and I'm kinda asking myself if I even have to replace my HD7950 with anything else... It works smooth as butter through Mantle API lol. And so do all the other games that I've tried so far...


----------



## Nelly (Feb 5, 2015)

Problem with these polls is you will get Nvidia fanboys just praising the card even though they don't own a GTX 970.

If the vote was somehow able to let only people who own the GTX 970, how different would the actual poll be?  Who knows...


----------



## GhostRyder (Feb 5, 2015)

the54thvoid said:


> All I want to say is those that relentlessly accuse TPU of being an Nvidia shill really ought to find a new forum.
> By all means condemn Nvidia but the frankly infantile responses to democratic polls from generally AMD owners is ironically a neon sign post to Red bias.
> AMD in context sold the stock 290 cards that were unable to stay at their PR advertised boosts. In many cases they throttled well below 1ghz. I don't recall quite so much hate or as many posts on that misleading sales pitch.
> It took custom solutions, months later to let the cards fly free.
> ...


A good sum up of the issues at hand and everything, though I will say this much being an owner of reference R9 290X's (3 overclocked to 1030 stock) they never throttled on the stock coolers at uber mode setting though that was after the driver update that "Fixed" the issue with fan speed variance when I got them.

I don't see how the results were not expected, the card is still a decent card and that has not changed, just its value perspective and where it sits is now a bit off.  People who bought 1 GTX 970 are probably not going to ever experience the problem at least until the point of upgrade down the line because the GPU's only have enough power to really run 1440p 60hz effectively.  1080p 120/144 with, or 1440p 60hz-144hz as well are hard enough to run as is (Well maybe not the 1080P option as much, and DSR is a different story) and its going to require 2+ cards to be effective as it is (Also including 4K 60hz) which just means use other options/go for the gold if you want to run them effectively.  I don't see having 3.5gb as really a problem for this card, just being told it has more than it can run effectively as being the issue and honestly people should have a problem being told a lie.  But you should not be forced to return a card your satisfied with as that makes no sense...


----------



## Sony Xperia S (Feb 5, 2015)

Caring1 said:


> No different to buying a computer with a 500Gb hard drive and only 450Gb is usable....



Yeah, kind of.

It is like buying a 1TB drive, expecting it to be 1000 GB, but in reality usable only 930 GB.

And that is exactly what happens and no one sues Seagate or WD... 



*But, why don't you concentrate on the upcoming Radeon R9 380X which promises very significant performance improvements, low temperatures and high durability???*


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## Jorge (Feb 5, 2015)

*The results (sadly) show that*:

1. Many consumers are technically challenged
2. Many consumers don't mind be defrauded
3. Many consumers have no moral compass
4. Nvidia is unscrupulous
5. Nvidia intentionally deceived the sheeple


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## GreiverBlade (Feb 5, 2015)

spec don't matter, maybe but lies does ... and it was a lie ... oh well ... the 970 is still a good 3.5gb card and the top in her segment but still ... 


ah! whatever...


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## Casecutter (Feb 5, 2015)

HumanSmoke said:


> product that _mostly_ works as advertised for most people


The 970 is a product that... works, although _not as_ advertised
As W1zzard said...


W1zzard said:


> fixed that for you. (my personal view)


----------



## Dalai Brahma (Feb 5, 2015)

GreiverBlade said:


> spec don't matter, maybe but lies does ... and it was a lie ... oh well ... the 970 is still a good 3.5gb card and the top in her segment but still ...
> 
> 
> ah! whatever...


+1

For Who mencioned HDD... I know (maybe you also do) that 1000GB is a unformatted space. For standard...
But did we Know that 4GB Nvidia VRAM is 3.5GB faster + 0.5GB slower, and 64ROPs means 56, and etc...??
That is a "little" diference...


----------



## Casecutter (Feb 5, 2015)

Sony Xperia S said:


> *But, why don't you concentrate on the upcoming Radeon R9 380X which promises very significant performance improvements, low temperatures and high durability???*


Ah, who's saying that???


----------



## R-T-B (Feb 5, 2015)

Indeed.  I have yet to hear anything concrete about it's specs, let alone it's "durability."


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## 64K (Feb 5, 2015)

Sony Xperia S said:


> Yeah, kind of.
> 
> It is like buying a 1TB drive, expecting it to be 1000 GB, but in reality usable only 930 GB.
> 
> ...



There will be plenty of talk of the R9 380X as it gets closer to being available and more leaks come out.
If rumors are true then it should have significant improvements in performance probably beating a GTX 980 by a fair bit. I don't think it will have low temps since it's rumored to be a 300 watt card.


----------



## RejZoR (Feb 5, 2015)

Sony Xperia S said:


> Yeah, kind of.
> 
> It is like buying a 1TB drive, expecting it to be 1000 GB, but in reality usable only 930 GB.
> 
> ...



As much as I hate what NVIDIA did with GTX 970, no one really said anything about low temperatures for R9-380X.  High performance yes, but for low temperatures, not really. They did mention R9-480X series to be very power efficient. But that is still very far away...


----------



## Uplink10 (Feb 5, 2015)

HumanSmoke said:


> Fermi, Kepler, Maxwell, and GCN architectures all have at least some preliminary DX12 support.



DirectX 12 also proably has elements of DX9, DX11 so a lot of cards probably support DX12, but not fully.



Caring1 said:


> No different to buying a computer with a 500Gb hard drive and only 450Gb is usable....





Sony Xperia S said:


> It is like buying a 1TB drive, expecting it to be 1000 GB, but in reality usable only 930 GB.



You two are both wrong, Windows shows numbers (930) in binary and the unit (GB) in decimal, they should show the unit also in binary (GiB). This is not HDD manufacturer fault, it is Microsoft fault. Microsoft for some reason won`t change their units to binary. I hope they fix this in Windows 10.


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## Kaotik (Feb 5, 2015)

ShockG said:


> These are DX12 cards which is the cool part.


They're not any more "DX12 cards" than anything else on the markets currently. 
Yes, they support 4 new features included in DX12, but those are not the only new features of DX12. 
When NVIDIA released the card and boasted about DX12 compatibility, DirectX development head from MS said that there are no final conformance tests available for hardware manufacturers. 
Of those 4 features, Intel supports at least 1, possible 2, 3 or 4. In fact, one of those features is nothing more than DX-version of Intel PixelSync (Raster Ordered Views).
Of those 4 features, GCN supports at least 1 (Raster Ordered Views), 1 very very likely (Volume Tiled Resources) and possibly the other 2, too.


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## Hood (Feb 5, 2015)

The sub-group of humanity known as "gamers" have traditionally had only one sure way to be heard - voting with their wallets.  But we love any chance to get vocal about "the enemy", even over petty lies by admen (like that's a real shock - who knew that our trusted advertisers could sink so low?  People who rage about this have obviously never told any lies in their entire lives).  So if this crap has your panties in a wad, go buy an AMD card, I'm sure they never lied about any of their crappy cards.  Otherwise you should just keep running your 970 and be glad that it beats a 780 for $100 less. (and that they both blow away any Radeon card).  Who can blame AMD for taking a cheap shot, they are rapidly losing market share and heading for bankruptcy.  I recently bought a brand-new EVGA Classified GTX 780 Ti for $400, how is AMD going to beat that?


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## Animalpak (Feb 5, 2015)

if anyone giveaway their GTX 970 i will take it !


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## john_ (Feb 5, 2015)

HumanSmoke said:


> No, they are actually quite different. As you've stated,  you've read many articles about the 970 issue. The one article concerning the UVD issue you couldn't be bothered reading....but don't feel bad, many people in the day couldn't be arsed either. The more things change the more they stay the same.


I also have read many articles and reviews about CrossFire problems and the GPU throttling on the 290X. Probably much more than about Nvidia's lies with 970.
So, your point about what I bothered reading is what? That I don't care reading about AMD problems? If this is the case, don't create a false image by specifically choosing only one line from my post and ignoring/deleting/downgrading the rest of it.
If this is not the case, ignore this comment and tell me what you really meant.


----------



## Petey Plane (Feb 5, 2015)

Xorium said:


> It is very much a 4k capable card in SLI. So no 3.5gb is not "fine"




you're right, all the previous benchmarks are now invalid .  

at 4k in SLI, there would be virtually no performance difference between a true 4gb card and the 3.5gb the 970 has.


----------



## bogami (Feb 5, 2015)

As far as efficiency dilemma of RAM and GTX970 is another proof of advertising, handling and throwing sand in the eyes ! 
Which all of them are not seeing is grist to the mill to nVidia. Talking about the lower middle class !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! failed!!!!!!!!!!! it failure!!! cut out processor !!!!!!!!!!!!! it can not be measured with AMD R 9 290X.
The criterion would only be GTX780 !! Is Not 20 nm, but 27 nm a new generation of processors that should be sufficient for 4K gaming .wich does not for all the games and anyway overestimated by 120$. all together gave a good advertisement for Nvidia. 
And hiding the fact that we will set you up with TITAN X again the same error and failure cut processor for much more 1000$ at list


----------



## scorpion_amd13 (Feb 5, 2015)

Dalai Brahma said:


> Yeah.. 3.5GB is still a good spec,  makes great job.. I think.. but... If I pay for 4GB (working 100%), I won't get a 3.5GB...
> Remember me ads about smartphone with "8GB"... "what?! I have only 5.1GB.. my phone is defective..."



Sure, as long as all the other smartphones have that 8GB memory completely empty, then yeah, this is a good comparison.



Caring1 said:


> No different to buying a computer with a 500Gb hard drive and only 450Gb is usable....



Of course it is, as long as all the other 500GB hard drives out there offer 500GB of usable space. With the GTX 970, the full amount of memory IS there (as in, on the card). It's just that the last 512MB of it are accessed differently to the rest of the card's memory, which leads to lower (or drastically lower) performance, depending on the game's requirements.

This isn't the real problem, though. As it has been said before, suddenly finding out that the card's memory configuration isn't what nVidia stated it was doesn't change the performance numbers, not in the slightest. The real problem is that nVidia LIED about it. There's NO WAY the decision-makers at nVidia didn't know about all this since before the card was launched. It's not like they let TSMC figure out the specs for the batches of chips that would end up in GTX 970 cards.

Let's face it, if the marketing department would have gotten the wrong spec-sheet from the engineering teams about the GTX 970 specs, considering that the whole of the internet has reported those numbers, they would have sent out a press release the next day (absolutely worst case scenario, the reviews are closely monitored to a level that would make the NSA jealous), saying that there had been a mix-up, along with a PDF with the real specs. That didn't happen. This means that nVidia's marketing department were either knowingly lying through their teeth, or someone in charge had ordered the engineering teams to feed them false information.

There is absolutely NO WAY the engineers didn't know the correct specs for the GTX 970 and even if there was a mix-up somewhere down the line, somebody would have noticed it before launch day. Launch day press events held for both AMD and nVidia graphics cards usually contain all the technical specs the reviewers would ever be interested in knowing. That's just about all the technical details you would normally read in one of W1zzard's reviews. Then there's a Q&A session, where the press gets to ask whatever they want to ask about the product. Now, unless the marketing staff has a technical background (they changed from the engineering teams to the marketing department somewhere down the line, usually), they are pretty much technically illiterate. In such a case, they wouldn't be able to properly mount a graphics card inside a PC and all they're ever able to do is quote from the presentation they've just gone through. In such a case, though, they ALWAYS have an engineer with them. Said engineer handles the technical part of the briefing and, of course, the technically-oriented questions from the press. Whichever the case, two things stand out clearly: 1) the engineering and marketing teams do more than just exchange a single botched-up PDF and 2) there's absolutely NO WAY this was an honest mistake, one of those things that routinely get overlooked, like, say, the plastic shroud isn't black, but a very dark shade of grey.

Personally, I only care about this because they most clearly lied about this willingly. I don't buy or recommend graphics cards because they're from nVidia or AMD, the only thing that actually matters to me is what said card offers for the money (performance, noise, overclocking, reliability, good drivers, etc.). I've had cards from both companies over the years and I've tested hundreds more. I don't care who's caught lying, I can always buy from the other guy after all. But I do care when both the press and (implicitly) the consumers are being lied to so blatantly. Such an event should never be treated as casual by either side because it sets the worst kind of precedent possible: it sends the liar a signal that it's ok to continue lying and that they can easily get away with it.



Hood said:


> The sub-group of humanity known as "gamers" have traditionally had only one sure way to be heard - voting with their wallets.  But we love any chance to get vocal about "the enemy", even over petty lies by admen (like that's a real shock - who knew that our trusted advertisers could sink so low?  People who rage about this have obviously never told any lies in their entire lives).  So if this crap has your panties in a wad, go buy an AMD card, I'm sure they never lied about any of their crappy cards.  Otherwise you should just keep running your 970 and be glad that it beats a 780 for $100 less. (and that they both blow away any Radeon card).  Who can blame AMD for taking a cheap shot, they are rapidly losing market share and heading for bankruptcy.  I recently bought a brand-new EVGA Classified GTX 780 Ti for $400, how is AMD going to beat that?



So, in your opinion, the fact that you got to buy nVidia's third best card (for its generation) for a price that used to get you a high-end flagship not so long ago is reason enough to overlook the fact that your favorite company intentionally lied to its customers? Fanboys never, ever cease to amaze...


----------



## xorbe (Feb 5, 2015)

I don't like it, but it's a first world problem, so I don't care much.


----------



## 64K (Feb 5, 2015)

scorpion_amd13 said:


> So, in your opinion, the fact that you got to buy nVidia's third best card (for its generation) for a price that used to get you a high-end flagship not so long ago is reason enough to overlook the fact that your favorite company intentionally lied to its customers? Fanboys never, ever cease to amaze...



What? The GTX 780Ti was the flagship of that generation (Kepler) and the Classified version is still a very nice card. Why are you saying that you could get a Flagship for that same price ($400)?

At launch

GTX 480 $500
GTX 580 $500
GTX 780 $650
GTX 780Ti $700


----------



## HumanSmoke (Feb 5, 2015)

john_ said:


> I also have read many articles and reviews about CrossFire problems and the GPU throttling on the 290X. Probably much more than about Nvidia's lies with 970.
> So, your point about what I bothered reading is what? That I don't care reading about AMD problems? If this is the case, don't create a false image by specifically choosing only one line from my post and ignoring/deleting/downgrading the rest of it.
> If this is not the case, ignore this comment and tell me what you really meant.
> 
> ...


I would have thought it was obvious. Consumers in general have short memories - especially so in markets with a high incidence of built in obsolescence. Nothing in my previous post(s) was a personal attack aimed at you, yet you've chosen to see it as such - so that's something you're best answering yourself. As for singling out a part of your post, it was done so to highlight the general malaise that consumers view tech. As I pointed out earlier


HumanSmoke said:


> In the end, the next shiny thing on the shelves trumps social conscience for the most part.


The rest of your post? Well, that - buyer beware, in essence - was stated as your opinion, and your opinion is as valid as anyone else's. Why would I argue opinion when the represented values have differing levels of impact from person to person?
My _opinion_ is that if fugitive war criminals whose part-time hobby was spreading Ebola through orphanages decided to sell graphics cards at 30% of MSRP, people would get crushed in the stampede to buy them.


----------



## xvi (Feb 5, 2015)

I'm hoping everyone gets upset and the market gets flooded with barely used 970s. I'd buy one used (at a good price) knowing the 970 is a little gimped, but I'd be pretty miffed if I got less than what was advertised.

As many have pointed out, those of us who actually take vram usage in to account when purchasing a card have certainly got grounds to stand on here. We expected to be able to properly use 4GB of video memory and we're missing ~12%.

True, that doesn't make the benchmarks and reviews any less factual. The issue persisted then. Still, consumers who purchased that card with the intent of it performing well down the line when vram usage is higher will be disappointed.


----------



## scorpion_amd13 (Feb 5, 2015)

64K said:


> What? The GTX 780Ti was the flagship of that generation (Kepler) and the Classified version is still a very nice card. Why are you saying that you could get a Flagship for that same price ($400)?
> 
> At launch
> 
> ...



Ok, second-best if you don't count dual-GPU stuff. Either way, you're forgetting about one or a couple of Titans (Titan Black Edition and Titan-Z, the original Titan was slower than 780 Ti).

As for price, you just need to go a little bit before the GTX 480. Namely, the GTX 285 had a 400$ price tag attached to it at launch and it was the single-GPU flagship of its generation.


----------



## Ja.KooLit (Feb 5, 2015)

Poll dont matter because you can vote anonymously. The fact that NVIDIA lied makes me sick. If nobody found out about that gimped 970, would they even have the courage to say "oops, wrong specs". They just keep their mouth shut and hope nobody find out. Of course fanboy will always defend even its too obvious that nvidia keeps milking the consumers.


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## efikkan (Feb 5, 2015)

Complain all you want, but it's the real world performance which counts. A little lower memory bandwidth and L2 cache doesn't matter much for the GTX 970 since it's bottlenecked by processing power long before memory bandwidth. Anyone who do the calculations will see the GTX 970 has higher memory bandwidth per GFlop, which means memory bandwidth will be a smaller problem for the GTX 970. Tests like these prove that when overclocking the GPU alone, the GTX 970 shrinks the performance gap to GTX 980.

Most people don't realise that higher memory bandwidth offer little difference given a set GPU performance, while increasing the GPU performance also increases the need for memory bandwidth. This means a higher performing GPU is more bottlenecked by memory bandwidth.

This is why GTX 970 is a more "balanced" GPU than GTX 980, and is also why GTX 980 in theory should be ~32% faster but in reality is only <15% faster.


----------



## the54thvoid (Feb 5, 2015)

scorpion_amd13 said:


> Fanboys never, ever cease to amaze...



Says scorpion_*amd*13.  Unless that's not the relevant AMD we're talking about in context with Nvidia?

And wtf?  You've been a member 9+ years and posted 13 times?  That must be a record you hermit - post more


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## scorpion_amd13 (Feb 5, 2015)

efikkan said:


> This is why GTX 970 is a more "balanced" GPU than GTX 980, and is also why GTX 980 in theory should be ~32% faster but in reality is only <15% faster.



You do realize that what you described has absolutely nothing to do with memory bandwidth, right? Upping the shader count never yields the same percentage in regards to real-life performance gain. Never ever. It's because of the way the GPU itself schedules tasks for its many shader groups, basically. The more shader groups, the more complex and hairy it all gets, so yeah, ~15% gain sounds about right considering the difference in frequency and shader count between the 970 and the 980.

Want a famous example? Radeon HD 3870 (320 VLIW5 shaders) versus Radeon HD 4870 (800 of the same VLIW5 shaders). The 4870 was about 56% more powerful, even though the shader count alone would indicate a massive jump in performance. And memory bandwidth had absolutely nothing to do with it.

@the54thvoid : Heh, long story, that part of the nickname actually has to do with the initials of my name. Not that hard to guess that I was rather young (although not 13) when I chose the nickname. And yeah, I've been around a really long time. I just rarely post. I enjoy the site and the community (gotta love those slug-fests between fanboys, eh?), I'm just rarely tempted to get involved.


----------



## Ja.KooLit (Feb 5, 2015)

the54thvoid said:


> Says scorpion_*amd*13.  Unless that's not the relevant AMD we're talking about in context with Nvidia?
> 
> And wtf?  You've been a member 9+ years and posted 13 times?  That must be a record you hermit - post more



up for a long term hibernation I guess?


----------



## xvi (Feb 5, 2015)

scorpion_amd13 said:


> You do realize that what you described has absolutely nothing to do with memory bandwidth, right? Upping the shader count never yields the same percentage in regards to real-life performance gain. Never ever. It's because of the way the GPU itself schedules tasks for its many shader groups, basically. The more shader groups, the more complex and hairy it all gets, so yeah, ~15% gain sounds about right considering the difference in frequency and shader count between the 970 and the 980.
> 
> Want a famous example? Radeon HD 3870 (320 VLIW5 shaders) versus Radeon HD 4870 (800 of the same VLIW5 shaders). The 4870 was about 56% more powerful, even though the shader count alone would indicate a massive jump in performance. And memory bandwidth had absolutely nothing to do with it.
> 
> @the54thvoid : Heh, long story, that part of the nickname actually has to do with the initials of my name. Not that hard to guess that I was rather young (although not 13) when I chose the nickname. And yeah, I've been around a really long time. I just rarely post. I enjoy the site and the community (gotta love those slug-fests between fanboys, eh?), I'm just rarely tempted to get involved.


You don't post often, but when you do, you post well.


----------



## apoe (Feb 5, 2015)

I may be an outlier here, but when it comes to graphics cards, I have never paid any attention to the specs. When checking reviews, I typically skip the spec charts entirely and go straight to the performance numbers. I bought the 970 based on game performance and was very pleased with it. If I was running 4k, the 3.5 + 0.5 issue would annoy me, but I'm still on 1080p144 for the time being.

I've used 4k (DSR) and 4x SGSSAA on some older games and haven't run into VRAM problems, but what about newer, more demanding games at 4k for people running multi GPU setups?

I find it incredibly scummy that nvidia would lie like this, so I fully understand those that returned their cards out of principle. Really stupid actually, the card would have sold perfectly fine without needing to twist the specs like that. Shameful.


----------



## johnerz (Feb 5, 2015)

For the price, the performance is terrific and I'm happy with my purchase, its also a folding monster and I use it for that as well as some gaming, its still better than any of the single AMD cards regardless of their price, and if you are an EVGA buyer, you can always "step up" to a 980 (there is a cost to this of course)

I'm very happy with my EVGA 970 FTW+ @1540 and only using 76.6% tdp


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## ensabrenoir (Feb 6, 2015)

gonna buy a 970 next week.... but even if i had one already:


----------



## Jurassic1024 (Feb 6, 2015)

I'm just glad I'm not part of the 99% of people that blew this way out of proportion.


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## xfia (Feb 6, 2015)

eh.. this aint the only thing this thing has going on.. 
so damn overclocked there is people that have to turn up the voltage for stability with stock clocks. not really a large number of people but still a fact. 
kepler was the real deal and they didnt skimp out and turn up the clocks for more profit.


----------



## Regenweald (Feb 6, 2015)

TPU really seems to be going the extra mile to push the 'no big deal' wagon. NP really, this is the real world, and websites aren't paid for with unbiased reporting and personal integrity.

I wonder if Samsung or Apple advertised a 4GB next gen and really delivered 3.5, if the Nvidia NBD chorus would sing as loud, or would they chastise the Apple apologists for being cultish and demand a refund when their supposed multi-tasking android monsters started stuttering under memory pressure ?


----------



## Zantetsu (Feb 6, 2015)

Specs of the GTX 970 don't matter, so stay with the IGP, the specs doesn't matter anyway...


----------



## toddincabo (Feb 6, 2015)

I check out The Tech Report every day and have kept an eye on that poll. All week long it was    "Unhappy with NVIDIA, and said they won't buy the GTX 970, because NVIDIA lied about its specs"  by a wide margin and then overnight it jumped to 61.4%.

Just sayin'


----------



## toddincabo (Feb 6, 2015)

Jack1n said:


> When i voted the majority was set on not buying the 970 or returning theirs, how did it did change so dramatically?


Same here.


----------



## xfia (Feb 6, 2015)

maybe a memo went out to nv employees to shift the vote 

it doesnt mean anything anyway..  its a small sample that doesnt reflect the whole world. 

I would have to say most people who bought it got one for perfect 1080p gaming. at least it can do that with no worries.


----------



## Saidrex (Feb 6, 2015)

For me personally - wouldn't matter, since it has fantastic performance per $ anyway. Of course shame for those 500GB but since there is nothing better for that price and I'm perfectly happy with 1080p... (just don't start pointing fingers at "red", I hate that brand and everything associated with it, no way I'm ever buying any "red" card again. Some things will be never forgiven ).


----------



## alwayssts (Feb 6, 2015)

Dj-ElectriC said:


> Why do so many people find it hard to believe that most people simply don't care about the last 512MB as it is completely useless for 1080P and 1440P users? If it was only the last 256MB would you care? and about about the last 128MB or 64MB?



It's not completely useless, and a valid point of consternation (especially because of latency spikes associated when transitioning in/out of the partitions), but there becomes a point where it becomes time to stop bitching about it unless someone is actually going to do something about it wrt nvidia directly.  I mean absolutely no ire directed at you or anyone else personally...this is just all getting very old...especially when people are weighing in on performance when they don't and have no intention to own the card (amongst other biases).  I own it.  The limitations associated with this debacle is a very practical bummer.  I will ditch the card when there is a better option for my use.  It almost saddens me that may end up being a '5.5GB' GM200.  I follow perf/value etc, but I certainly feel better about my amd purchases up until this point, and affirmation on my long-held perception of nvidia.  I am also completely fed up with (especially professional) apologists...not to be confused with those that hold different opinions or have had different experiences.

TBH, I am saddened by how much TPU has milked this story, and also think the poll was inherently flawed.  I want to know where the 'I am pissed/disappointed about it but am not going to return it/still going to buy it' option?  The basis of this post has a black/white assertion which is categorically incorrect, and _I feel doesn't reflect how most people see the situation._

Is it still a good value considering features (like HDMI 2.0, smaller card sizes, lower power consumption) the competition can't match?  Sure.  

Is it still fairly priced given it's performance (when not limited by 3.5GB) and those features?  In terms of raw value, it's now in the typical 'pay slightly more for nvidia' price/perf, so yes.  It's fair, and a good compromise given current options for many...but it's just that: fair.  Far from ideal or the massive value it was made out to be at launch as these issues have decreased both it's perceived and real value while amd's price cuts increased theirs (if their cards will work for your situation).

I don't mean to sound hypocritical when I say I think the issue has been beaten to death and needs to stop being flaunted for page views (which is sad given some still don't understand the impact the real specs cause), while also stating I think nvidia surely is dead-set counting on this blowing over...which it can't be overstated is _super *expletive* shady_.   They know the card is still priced fair, and are using that as an excuse, but we were sold it as 'better than fair'...which I understand can sound naive from the outside.  The no free lunch is certainly a way to look at this, but that really isn't the point.  The point is they shouldn't be able to get away with it by spinning that web after the fact.

I don't have a good answer to what should happen next from publications/users, but I hope it doesn't involve beating the drawn, quartered, sliced, ground hamburger that used to be a horse.  If anything it should just lay as a black mark on nvidia's record and hopefully neither users nor reviewers forget it.  If there was any kind of question what kind of company nvidia is, let this remove all doubt.


----------



## RCoon (Feb 6, 2015)

Did anyone see the figures that released this morning? Out of all the 970's purchased, less than 5% were returned after all the media blowout.


----------



## john_ (Feb 6, 2015)

HumanSmoke said:


> I would have thought it was obvious. Consumers in general have short memories - especially so in markets with a high incidence of built in obsolescence. Nothing in my previous post(s) was a personal attack aimed at you, yet you've chosen to see it as such - so that's something you're best answering yourself. As for singling out a part of your post, it was done so to highlight the general malaise that consumers view tech. As I pointed out earlier


Just checking, and no I wasn't feeling that you where attacking me, but that there was possibility trying to downgrade my opinion. The only reason I didn't check that article about UVD was that, I didn't cared reading that article and trying to find a way to defend or whatever AMD. The fact that I didn't cared reading it, doesn't mean that I didn't noted it.



> The rest of your post? Well, that - buyer beware, in essence - was stated as your opinion, and your opinion is as valid as anyone else's. Why would I argue opinion when the represented values have differing levels of impact from person to person?
> My _opinion_ is that if fugitive war criminals whose part-time hobby was spreading Ebola through orphanages decided to sell graphics cards at 30% of MSRP, people would get crushed in the stampede to buy them.


 If Nvidia starts selling 970 at 30% I will try quad SLi with them the next minute. But I will still question their business practices. So while "people would get crushed in the stampede to buy them", after getting the cards in their hands will still want the heads of those fugitive war criminals on a plate.


----------



## john_ (Feb 6, 2015)

RCoon said:


> Did anyone see the figures that released this morning? Out of all the 970's purchased, less than 5% were returned after all the media blowout.


You return the card now. Then buy a 290X? A 780Ti? Pay even more for 980? Take your money back and stay for a few months with the card you have as reserve, that G210 something, waiting for the new ones?
Or you don't return the card now, but when 300 series or the next Nvidia comes out?
_"I just found out, I want a refund or a 300 series or the 980 that just come down to $400 because the new 980Ti was introduced yesterday"_.
If I am not mistaken Overclockers and Caseking who offered to take back the cards, specifically say that this offer is limited for February. The reason is obvious I believe.


----------



## Assimilator (Feb 6, 2015)

xfia said:


> eh.. this aint the only thing this thing has going on..
> so damn overclocked there is people that have to turn up the voltage for stability with stock clocks. not really a large number of people but still a fact.
> kepler was the real deal and they didnt skimp out and turn up the clocks for more profit.



Source?


----------



## HumanSmoke (Feb 6, 2015)

john_ said:


> The only reason I didn't check that article about UVD was that, I didn't cared reading that article and trying to find a way to defend or whatever AMD. The fact that I didn't cared reading it, doesn't mean that I didn't noted it.


Why would you feel the need to defend AMD ? It happened years ago, the company took the hit and moved on. I just used it as an example of how shady behaviour goes from being the cause célèbre to barely registering on the consciousness over a period of time. Consumers don't tend to hold a grudge long term- especially in tech. Plenty of graphics card makers have existed, but I can't think of any that have gone under from anything other than a failure to keep pace with their competitors and bad business planning.


john_ said:


> If Nvidia starts selling 970 at 30% I will try quad SLi with them the next minute.


That would be a waste. The 970 is only capable of tri-SLI 


john_ said:


> But I will still question their business practices. So while "people would get crushed in the stampede to buy them", after getting the cards in their hands will still want the heads of those fugitive war criminals on a plate.


See my earlier point. The vast majority of end-users don't give a shit. Intel had a strategic business plan built on anticompetitive practice ( Suing Seeq, ULSI, and Chips & Technologies into oblivion, all but crushing Cyrix in a wrongful lawsuit, stifling AMD and NEC sales through litigation etc. etc.) that has a higher public awareness and vaster scale than virtually any other misdeeds in the industry, yet Intel have recorded record revenue consistently throughout.


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## xfia (Feb 6, 2015)

of course there would be no article to back it up but there was someone on another forum that shared and one other person said they had the same thing. there was someone here too that said the same so whoever it was will maybe see this. 
I think its probably hard to bin for the high clocks much like with the 9590 and AMD also has a few that get through the cracks.


----------



## RCoon (Feb 6, 2015)

xfia said:


> of course there would be no article to back it up but there was someone on another forum that shared and one other person said they had the same thing. there was someone here too that said the same so whoever it was will maybe see this.
> I think its probably hard to bin for the high clocks much like with the 9590 and AMD also has a few that get through the cracks.



I thought it was just a specific model of Zotac cards that had to bump up the voltage in some cases.


----------



## xfia (Feb 6, 2015)

must be then..  I know there is at least one model that boosts over 1500mhz core clock. cool and all to see those high clocks but more cores is where its at for gpu's in my opinion.


----------



## FourtyTwo (Feb 6, 2015)

The poll confirms what I've seen on most forums.

The vast majority of GTX 970 owners are very happy with its performance and find all this a storm in a teacup.

It's mostly the people that do NOT own the GTX 970 that cry foul and are very vocal about all this. Check the comments above .


----------



## 64K (Feb 6, 2015)

Regenweald said:


> TPU really seems to be going the extra mile to push the 'no big deal' wagon. NP really, this is the real world, and websites aren't paid for with unbiased reporting and personal integrity.
> 
> I wonder if Samsung or Apple advertised a 4GB next gen and really delivered 3.5, if the Nvidia NBD chorus would sing as loud, or would they chastise the Apple apologists for being cultish and demand a refund when their supposed multi-tasking android monsters started stuttering under memory pressure ?



I guess you missed W1zzard's post a while back where he said Nvidia lied to us and they lied to you. If he was in Nvidia's pocket then he never would have said that.


----------



## ensabrenoir (Feb 6, 2015)

Ummm guys ......this is Nvidia were talking about here. .....the 970 was probably  the original 960 (hence what we precieve as a great price) but it  performed too well in spite of their efforts to gimp it.  So a little name swapping (someone forgot to update the specs though) and here we are.  Nice card in the middle of a mess.


----------



## scorpion_amd13 (Feb 6, 2015)

night.fox said:


> up for a long term hibernation I guess?



Nah, just sitting back and watching the show unfold all this time. "Stalker-Mode™", I guess... 



xvi said:


> You don't post often, but when you do, you post well.



Thanks. This is also why I don't post very often (that and the fact that sometimes I'm too lazy... well, I'm lazy most of the time...).



Jurassic1024 said:


> I'm just glad I'm not part of the 99% of people that blew this way out of proportion.



Come on now, we're not gathering in the town square with torches and pitchforks come dusk. nVidia fanboys go on far more savage witch-hunts whenever anybody says nVidia did anything wrong or they just feel like gloating. This is domestic by comparison.



RCoon said:


> Did anyone see the figures that released this morning? Out of all the 970's purchased, less than 5% were returned after all the media blowout.



Considering their regular return rate for defective cards is about 10% (all models, this figure includes custom cards), 5% may make this more of a problem for nVidia than most would think. It is disappointingly low, I must admit, but the real backlash for this screw-up is likely to come from retailers (trust me, they're really pissed) and partners (the guys that would consider it a big win if they get to save a single cent per card).



FourtyTwo said:


> The poll confirms what I've seen on most forums.
> 
> The vast majority of GTX 970 owners are very happy with its performance and find all this a storm in a teacup.
> 
> It's mostly the people that do NOT own the GTX 970 that cry foul and are very vocal about all this. Check the comments above .



Of course they're happy with the card's performance. It's a pretty great card and I don't remember anyone saying otherwise. That's not the issue, though. The issue is that nVidia LIED in order to increase its profits. So far, the only people that just don't seem to understand the importance of what this means are nVidia fanboys. The polls and forum discussions and everything else confirms this also, even more clearly than anything else. You people just don't want to understand that THIS affects everyone else, not just GTX 970 owners, and that as such, everyone should rally to send a clear message that this cannot be allowed to stand. The way things stand now, nVidia got away with it better than they ever expected. They'll most certainly do this again, because they have their goon squads of white... erm... green knights in shining armor, always ready and willing to let them get away with murder and silence anyone that would complain. Maybe next month they'll decide to rebrand all GTX 960 cards as GTX 970 and sell them at GTX 970 prices, you folks should be really pleased then.


----------



## ensabrenoir (Feb 6, 2015)

I guess there should have been a poll asking if the 970 launched with the correct specs would you have still bought it.  As far as companies goes......they all lie and slant thr truth in some way.  Nvidia got caught with its pants down.  But to think they're alone or it's the first time is naive.    People are still pleased with the 970 because of its performance peroid.


----------



## xvi (Feb 6, 2015)

scorpion_amd13 said:


> RCoon said:
> 
> 
> > Did anyone see the figures that released this morning? Out of all the 970's purchased, less than 5% were returned after all the media blowout.
> ...


I think the biggest issue for nVidia isn't how many people want to return their cards, but how many people won't be buying nVidia cards in the future.
If I get a bad tasting coffee, I'll still drink it, but I'm likely to explore other options before I consider coming back.


----------



## FourtyTwo (Feb 6, 2015)

scorpion_amd13 said:


> Of course they're happy with the card's performance. It's a pretty great card and I don't remember anyone saying otherwise. That's not the issue, though. The issue is that nVidia LIED in order to increase its profits. So far, the only people that just don't seem to understand the importance of what this means are nVidia fanboys. The polls and forum discussions and everything else confirms this also, even more clearly than anything else. You people just don't want to understand that THIS affects everyone else, not just GTX 970 owners, and that as such, everyone should rally to send a clear message that this cannot be allowed to stand. The way things stand now, nVidia got away with it better than they ever expected. They'll most certainly do this again, because they have their goon squads of white... erm... green knights in shining armor, always ready and willing to let them get away with murder and silence anyone that would complain. Maybe next month they'll decide to rebrand all GTX 960 cards as GTX 970 and sell them at GTX 970 prices, you folks should be really pleased then.


Most of what you write above is BS, an overblown and at times nearly hysterical reaction to what is essentially a marketing issue.


----------



## DeNeDe (Feb 6, 2015)

the Poll also doesn't matter. i don't think that many gtx 970 owners have account here.


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## xfia (Feb 6, 2015)

FourtyTwo said:


> Most of what you write above is BS, an overblown and at times nearly hysterical reaction to what is essentially a marketing issue.


marketing issues? cant say I agree with everything scorpion said but you should take off the blinders. companies lie all the time and most of them get away with it. pc hardware is not suppose to take a shit because its trying to take advantage of all the resources it has.
ok ok.. just for shits and giggles lets say it was marketed with the right specs.. well it would still be wrong.. why? because it has that small segment of useless vram there. that is ouch.. why? simply because it is there and not blocked off. touch that vram and you will stutter.. any tech site that said it is better than having a plain 3.5gb..  I wont get into it further.


----------



## JMO (Feb 6, 2015)

RCoon said:


> Did anyone see the figures that released this morning? Out of all the 970's purchased, less than 5% were returned after all the media blowout.



IT figures. Pretty hard to have high rates of return when Nvidia, it's partners, and most retailers are refusing to accept returns (based on the false advertising claims).


----------



## RCoon (Feb 6, 2015)

JMO said:


> IT figures. Pretty hard to have high rates of return when Nvidia, it's partners, and most retailers are refusing to accept returns (based on the false advertising claims).



Where are you trying to return your card to? Ebuyer will accept a return, but I'm not returning my card, OCUK accepted returns, so I imagine most other UK etailers will accept returns too.


----------



## JMO (Feb 6, 2015)

RCoon said:


> Where are you trying to return your card to? Ebuyer will accept a return, but I'm not returning my card, OCUK accepted returns, so I imagine most other UK etailers will accept returns too.


 
Oh, I don't own a GTX 970 . 

My trusty HD 6970 is till chugging away.

I'm aware that some people are having success with the returns, but I am also seeing a a fair number of posts describing a struggle at the retailer level to get any kind of RMA.

At the manufacturer level, well most of the majors have made there position clear (and Nvidia certainly has).'


Personally, _if _ I owed a 970, and had no complaints about performance, I'd probably keep it if I was offered some kind of compensation. Otherwise, I'd return it on principle with a big FU to Nvidia.


----------



## HumanSmoke (Feb 6, 2015)

scorpion_amd13 said:


> Considering their regular return rate for defective cards is about 10% (all models, this figure includes custom cards)


Just out of interest, what's your source. I pored over pretty much all the publicly available returns data some time ago for a historical PC graphics article series ( I used the same updated source in a post a couple of weeks ago) , and aside for some particular SKUs (reduced BoM mainly, and badly designed cooling), very few card models approached that figure - and those returns aren't all card failures ( buyers remorse, dissatisfaction with noise/coil whine/heat, maybe the card was too big for the chassis). The sample size starts at 100 returns of individual SKUs, so the overall numbers sold would be a minimum of 1000 units for a 10% return rate. A reasonable sample size. 


scorpion_amd13 said:


> 5% may make this more of a problem for nVidia than most would think. It is disappointingly low, I must admit, but the real backlash for this screw-up is likely to come from retailers (trust me, they're really pissed) and partners (the guys that would consider it a big win if they get to save a single cent per card).


Nvidia will likely come to an arrangement with resellers and AIB/AIC/OEM's. It would be very likely that that these outlets will either return the cards to the OEM/ODM or distro, refurbish the cards and sell them as such in the same markets. EVGA already does this with their Step Up program - B stock (coded -RX) is sold discounted to recoup the majority of the cost. The biggest issue facing Nvidia (and AMD for that matter) would be if these cards show up in quantity at a sizeable discount either through resell or eBay (say $250 or less), which would impact new card sales. My guess is that the cards will be sold as open box by the large resellers like Newegg, and the majority will go to secondary markets, where pricing of new cards is fairly exorbitant thanks to shipping costs and local tax......IMO.


----------



## Fluffmeister (Feb 6, 2015)

Loving nVidia's DX12 performance:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8962/the-directx-12-performance-preview-amd-nvidia-star-swarm


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## HumanSmoke (Feb 6, 2015)

Fluffmeister said:


> Loving nVidia's DX12 performance:
> 
> http://www.anandtech.com/show/8962/the-directx-12-performance-preview-amd-nvidia-star-swarm


Thanks for providing the link. Very promising - and that's without the image quality enhancements promised by the feature set.
Would have been nice to see the vRAM usage comparison (DX11 vs DX12 vs Mantle) on the 290X just to round out the preliminary testing.


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## xfia (Feb 7, 2015)

HumanSmoke said:


> Thanks for providing the link. Very promising - and that's without the image quality enhancements promised by the feature set.
> Would have been nice to see the vRAM usage comparison (DX11 vs DX12 vs Mantle) on the 290X just to round out the preliminary testing.



yeah seems they left that out along with the 970


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## efikkan (Feb 7, 2015)

Have anyone happened to run across the specs from Nvidia where they actually state the wrong L2-cache and ROPs? I know there are plenty of reviews showing the wrong specs for GTX 970, but I want to see proof that that mistake is done by Nvidia, not by the reviewers assuming the specs would be the same as GTX 980.

I'm still wondering when people are going to sue AMD for incorrect performance claims about Mantle, and the fact that it's still not open source as they claim?


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## HumanSmoke (Feb 7, 2015)

efikkan said:


> Have anyone happened to run across the specs from Nvidia where they actually state the wrong L2-cache and ROPs? I know there are plenty of reviews showing the wrong specs for GTX 970, but I want to see proof that that mistake is done by Nvidia, not by the reviewers assuming the specs would be the same as GTX 980.


The incorrect specifications were printed in the GTX 970/980 reviewers guide. ROPs and cache aren't listed in any actual product specification information viewable from product pages via Nvidia themselves, nor their card partners - it's a little esoteric for general specs.


efikkan said:


> I'm still wondering when people are going to sue AMD for incorrect performance claims about Mantle, and the fact that it's still not open source as they claim?


Unlikely. There are enough proviso's and generalities in AMD's literature to preclude anything like that, as there are with any claimed performance benefits from all vendors. The biggest issue might be continued support with the strides DX12 is making, considering the big head start Mantle supposedly had over it and AMD's claims that the Mantle API is tailored for their own GCN architecture. The last point is probably the most salient, since DX12 is vendor agnostic yet is performing on par (using less mature drivers I'd speculate) with Mantle on AMD architecture.


xfia said:


> yeah seems they left that out along with the 970


At this stage, you'll probably find the 970 outperforming the 290X under DX12. As for memory usage, Ryan Smith, the author of the article, stated that AMD cards were allocating 4GB of virtual memory, and that Nvidia allows a 16GB allocation (as shown by the DX Diagnostic screens here)


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## omnimodis78 (Feb 8, 2015)

970 owner here and I genuinely agree with nearly every point of view - from my own which is that the 970 remains a top-tiered option, to how NVIDIA very deliberately allowed false specs to disseminate; to those who won't be touching this card because of all this.  But the one thing that irks me are the comments coming from AMD lovers who have not seen the 970 in action and yet they are talking as if they personally experienced what has been demonstrated time and time again isn't even happening with the 970.  I have and am playing a lot of modern to fresh-off-the-press games at either the very max settings and I have not had any issues.  Any.  The drivers are maturing for Maxwell, so essentially this card is actually getting better.  So to all the AMD comrades out there, sorry to tell you, the 970 is an A+ card.  It has been since day one and remains to this day.


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## Caring1 (Feb 8, 2015)

Spoken like a true fanboy.
You could have excluded AMD from your statement and still sounded reasonably valid.


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## xfia (Feb 8, 2015)

I would like to see microsoft put this kind of memory system to the test and how the driver treats it.  i guess they have been doing it for a long time if its true about 660's..


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## the54thvoid (Feb 8, 2015)

Caring1 said:


> Spoken like a true fanboy.
> You could have excluded AMD from your statement and still sounded reasonably valid.



Why is someone stating that the performance of the product they bought is meeting their needs indicative of a fanboy? By your logic, everyone who owns any card and says they are happy with it, is as well.
He even says Nvidia lied, that's not fanboy behaviour, he simply states his card is running well, in the face of many accusations that come from non 970 owners that the card doesn't work. Fact is, like the Anandtech article shows, most people are finding a hard time forcing the issue.
It doesn't mean it's not there though, simply that his needs aren't meeting any problems. If that irks you enough that you wish to call out fanboy, it paints the same picture on you I'm afraid.


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## Caring1 (Feb 8, 2015)

I can say I am extremely happy with my Nvidia card without the need to slag of AMD in the same sentence.
I can also say I am extremely Happy with my Radeon card without the need to slag of Nvidia, get my point?
P.S. don't be afraid.


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