# "It Won't Happen Again:" NVIDIA CEO Breaks Silence on GTX 970 Controversy



## btarunr (Feb 24, 2015)

In the wake of bad PR, and a potentially expensive class-action lawsuit over the GeForce GTX 970 memory controversy, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang wrote a candid letter addressed to everyone concerned, explaining in the simplest possible language what went wrong with designing and marketing the chip, how it doesn't affect the design-goals of the product, its quality or stability, and how it could be misconstrued in a whole different ways.

Huang's explanation of the issue isn't much different from the one we already have, but bears the final stamp of authority from the company, especially with the spate of discrepancies between what NVIDIA representatives post on GeForce forums, and what ends up being the company's position on certain things. Huang's letter signs off with "we won't let this happen again. We'll do a better job next time."

The transcript of Huang's letter follows.




> Hey everyone,
> 
> Some of you are disappointed that we didn't clearly describe the segmented memory of GeForce GTX 970 when we launched it. I can see why, so let me address it.
> 
> ...



*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


----------



## EarthDog (Feb 24, 2015)

TLTLate... but that is nice to see... 

Queue nonbelievers.......................


----------



## Cheeseball (Feb 24, 2015)

Technically this is what most of us were speculating from the beginning. If NVIDIA had only disclosed how memory is handled in cut-down Maxwell parts from the start, the backlash wouldn't have grown this big.


----------



## natr0n (Feb 24, 2015)

So basically...

"We won't let this happen again. We'll do a better job next time."

really means

"We will try harder to cheat customers again next time"


----------



## $ReaPeR$ (Feb 24, 2015)

oh you dont say... at least they are apologising.
seriously though, why not just tell the truth? it is a damn good card anyway and the reviews would show that (as they did). bsing customers is not the way to go. especially when the cheapest 970 here costs 400 euro. which is alot.


----------



## esrever (Feb 24, 2015)

"It's a feature"


----------



## bubbleawsome (Feb 24, 2015)

I like the apology except the part where he says "Instead of being excited that we invented a way to increase memory of the GTX 970 from 3GB to 4GB, some were disappointed that we didn't better describe the segmented nature of the architecture for that last 1GB of memory."

They didn't invent jack, it's just a variant of the 660/660ti (which one had the mismatched memory?) They didn't increase the memory, they didn't make a 2GB memory chip into a 4GB chip by magic. They could have made them 8GB and said they figured out a way to make it a 8GB card. Nothin would be figured out there.


----------



## Ahhzz (Feb 24, 2015)

esrever said:


> "It's a feature"


I believe the appropriate phrase is "Working as intended".....


----------



## 荷兰大母猪 (Feb 24, 2015)

It is great because at least NV does care about that issue and did something. It is better than just kept silence before. And for me, I don't care about the specs, but some people do. So~ it is hard to deal with this problem, especially in China.


----------



## heydan83 (Feb 24, 2015)

So basically they tried to make the 970 a 4gb card and they saw that they would not make it and maybe they saw that advertising the card has a 3gb card wouldn´t be that excitement from a 780 3gb card and decided to advertise it as a 4gb card.


----------



## Jorge (Feb 24, 2015)

Nvidia = Dumb and dumber with every disclaimer


----------



## Jurassic1024 (Feb 24, 2015)

I think the backlash from consumers when this came out were 100x more pityful than nVIDIA's handling of this whole ordeal. I mean how dare nVIDIA try to give us more performance for less money!

Did nVIDIA eff up? Sure, but y'all used the card for 4 months and needed a third party to tell you that there was something wrong with it.

nVIDIA 1 - Y'alls stupid asses 0


----------



## Toothless (Feb 24, 2015)

What the hell guys. You all have miscommunications, and don't make a big deal. We're all human, we make mistakes, get over it. 
NV had a miscommunication, so what, no one is perfect. Quit bashing them when they at least own up to their mistake.

Next time I see one of you mess up, I'll just link this thread into your post and remind you of how much of an ass you are.

NO HUMAN IS PERFECT.


----------



## jordan199 (Feb 24, 2015)

Nvidia it's time for a new CEO, I hope will replace with someone who RESPECT the company and consumers...


----------



## heydan83 (Feb 24, 2015)

Toothless said:


> What the hell guys. You all have miscommunications, and don't make a big deal. We're all human, we make mistakes, get over it.
> NV had a miscommunication, so what, no one is perfect. Quit bashing them when they at least own up to their mistake.
> 
> Next time I see one of you mess up, I'll just link this thread into your post and remind you of how much of an ass you are.
> ...




We are not sure if this is really a mistake or not, and also it is a mistake that the minute you saw it the minute you correct it, and they say nothing until people start notice the problem, why anyone at nvidia raise the hand when seeing wrong advertise from the media? and also they could advertise something about the 1gb working differently but they don´t till now, why the box doesnt have maybe an asterisk aside from the "4gb" so you know there´s something with the vram advertised? and I doubt that Huang or any archiquitec did not have in their hands a box saying "4gb" before lunching it so they wouldnt manage to notice the problem..... so has we said in my country, dont make good things that looks like bad things...


----------



## 荷兰大母猪 (Feb 24, 2015)

I am thinking how NV deal with this problem in China. It seems the best way is compensate the games but as u know in China almost everybody use the illegal version of games which means they don't think we need to pay for the games. Even most Chinese think paying for the games is silly. Another way is return the GTX970. However, in China the prices from every single way to buy the GPU are so different. Just in zhongguancun, Beijing, the prices in just one market had a huge gap, so some people bought the gpu at much higher price than normal. And the third solution is pay more to get gtx 980. But many people who are using gtx 970 don't want to do that because they can't afford it in China. So it is really a hard problem in Chinese market.


----------



## Ja.KooLit (Feb 24, 2015)

荷兰大母猪 said:


> It is great because at least NV does care about that issue and did something. It is better than just kept silence before. And for me, I don't care about the specs, but some people do. So~ it is hard to deal with this problem, especially in China.



of course they have to start apologizing to maybe reduce people who file a class suit. I bet if nobody found out about it they would'nt even admit it.


----------



## CounterZeus (Feb 24, 2015)

If they just told this from the start, nobody would be complaining. I hope they get sanctioned with a symbolic amount, they shouldn't have lied to us.


----------



## 荷兰大母猪 (Feb 24, 2015)

night.fox said:


> of course they have to start apologizing to maybe reduce people who file a class suit. I bet if nobody found out about it they would'nt even admit it.


Yes, I agree.


----------



## xorbe (Feb 24, 2015)

We just want to take the time to formally apologize (that we got caught)!


----------



## the54thvoid (Feb 24, 2015)

lol, 

It's a very clever apology, not sincere in the slightest but very clever.


----------



## RejZoR (Feb 24, 2015)

It's too late for existing GTX 970 users, but this is the EXACT reason why we shouldn't just say "oh well it's working ok as it is". NO. You should NEVER say that. And because we weren't silent, this happened. And this is good for ALL consumers. So companies won't pull shit like this in the future. Not NVIDIA and not anyone else. Consumers have to show greedy companies that we aren't some assholes who can be manipulated with bullshit.

I just hope tehy really mean it, because if they don't and people find out again about something like this, the shit will hit the fan with triple force of this GTX 970 controversy...


----------



## bogami (Feb 24, 2015)

That I do not believe that will happend..  Otherwise, a year late with a 20 nm processor says it all.


----------



## yogurt_21 (Feb 24, 2015)

jordan199 said:


> Nvidia it's time for a new CEO, I hope will replace with someone who RESPECT the company and consumers...


lol that would pretty much ensure the opposite happens. AMD has gone through how many ceo's in the last 22 years? How's that worked out for them? Did Hector Ruiz respect the consumer? how about the others? Did amd stay true to its roots of offering low cost microprocessors and motherboard chipsets when it got the performance lead during the Athlon 64 and X2 or did they resort to 250$ mortherboards and 500$ cpus?

seriously ones who don't care don't respond.


----------



## Bugsy004 (Feb 24, 2015)

*”...GTX 970 is a 4GB card. We wanted GTX 970 to have 4GB of memory...” *
next time you should add memory card slot, an microSD card slot, *...up to 128GB memory...???!!!
*
Same issue where with the GTX660Ti graphics cards... same here...


----------



## heydan83 (Feb 24, 2015)

yogurt_21 said:


> lol that would pretty much ensure the opposite happens. AMD has gone through how many ceo's in the last 22 years? How's that worked out for them? Did Hector Ruiz respect the consumer? how about the others? Did amd stay true to its roots of offering low cost microprocessors and motherboard chipsets when it got the performance lead during the Athlon 64 and X2 or did they resort to 250$ mortherboards and 500$ cpus?
> 
> seriously ones who don't care don't respond.




I dont think this is a Nvidia vs AMD discuss, this is about consumer vs enterprises, and also all that you said is not "hidden the truth" to the consumer but maybe change the strategy, so even if AMD or any other company that make this kind of thing should be treated the same....


----------



## GhostRyder (Feb 24, 2015)

Not sure how to count this, the wording hints at multiple things instead of sounding like an apology.



the54thvoid said:


> lol,
> 
> It's a very clever apology, not sincere in the slightest but very clever.


Yea I am with you on that, it really has no sincerity in it but more than anything it almost sounds to me at least like he is saying we are ungrateful to them for this.  Maybe I am reading into it to much...



Toothless said:


> What the hell guys. You all have miscommunications, and don't make a big deal. We're all human, we make mistakes, get over it.
> NV had a miscommunication, so what, no one is perfect. Quit bashing them when they at least own up to their mistake.
> 
> Next time I see one of you mess up, I'll just link this thread into your post and remind you of how much of an ass you are.
> ...


We are all human, and we all do make mistakes.  However your telling me a multi-million dollar company did not catch these types of things before sending it out to the public along with specs sheets for months?  That's a different story and I am pretty sure NVidia has some sort of way to check these things before speaking or showing to the public since most businesses want to cover themselves as much as possible.



heydan83 said:


> So basically they tried to make the 970 a 4gb card and they saw that they would not make it and maybe they saw that advertising the card has a 3gb card wouldn´t be that excitement from a 780 3gb card and decided to advertise it as a 4gb card.


That sounds about right honestly if we are going off of the intentional theory.

I honestly see something more here overall than just an oversight, but that is just my opinion and Jen-Hsun's comment did not exactly help my opinion on that.


----------



## BUCK NASTY (Feb 24, 2015)

I accept your apology  Jen-Hsun Huang. Now give me my settlement money for the 6x GTX 970's that I own.


----------



## Outback Bronze (Feb 24, 2015)

They should have marketed a 3GB card so everyone would have been talking about the BONUS 512 of memory
instead of marketing a 4GB and everybody getting pissed about only having 3.5GB.
No excuses and extremely unprofessional from a multi million/billion dollar company.


----------



## EarthDog (Feb 24, 2015)

BUCK NASTY said:


> I accept your apology  Jen-Hsun Huang. Now give me my settlement money for the 6x GTX 970's that I own.


SMH...LOL


----------



## cokker (Feb 24, 2015)

"This is a good design"

No, Jen-Hsun... No it is not...

This letter is about as apologetic as putting lemon juice in my eyes.


----------



## nunyabuisness (Feb 24, 2015)

if this is an apology letter. they its the worst! 
no offer to refund, no offer to upgrade, nothing! frigging CHEAT


----------



## metalslaw (Feb 24, 2015)

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

4 months ago...

Me - "Did you hear about that new feature with the gtx970... I'm so excited by it!"

Friend - "No, what is it?"

Me - "I don't know. They haven't told us about it. So i'm excited by it!"

Friend - "That's great logic dude! I'm excited now too."


----------



## heydan83 (Feb 24, 2015)

metalslaw said:


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




Completly agree with this, if they want us to be exicited about "adding aditional weird 1gb" at least they should told us on release date...


----------



## Xzibit (Feb 24, 2015)

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



That's the BS part. The driver team knew since they were allocating low access resources into the 512mb sector.  It doesn't fly that there was a communication problem if 2 separate departments hardware and software knew with software developing drivers continuing to optimize for it.  Reeks of deception or cover your ass because the lawsuits are coming.


----------



## RejZoR (Feb 24, 2015)

Isn't Heng


heydan83 said:


> I dont think this is a Nvidia vs AMD discuss, this is about consumer vs enterprises, and also all that you said is not "hidden the truth" to the consumer but maybe change the strategy, so even if AMD or any other company that make this kind of thing should be treated the same....



Exactly. I'm not against NVIDIA as such. I'm against them when they pull shit like this with GTX 970. I don't hate GTX 980, because that one is a good card. But at the same time it sucks to be their cusotmer, because you're placed in a shitty position because of it. Have a GTX 970 with potentially questionable performance or fork out a lot more for GTX 980 in which case you'll just be fueling their lies. After all, the controversy kinda forced more people to buy more expensive GTX 980 if they wanted NVIDIA card for whatever reason...


----------



## HumanSmoke (Feb 24, 2015)

the54thvoid said:


> lol,
> It's a very clever apology, not sincere in the slightest but very clever.


More like an explanation worded to sound like an apology


BUCK NASTY said:


> I accept your apology  Jen-Hsun Huang. Now give me my settlement money for the 6x GTX 970's that I own.


Don't count on too big a windfall


----------



## esrever (Feb 25, 2015)

Buy a table and and 4 chairs,
Some one sits on the fourth chair,
It collapses.
"Well we were originally going to sell it with only three chairs, but we found an innovative new way to add a fourth. The last one is made of cardboard and bubble gum. We thought you'd be excited!"


----------



## renz496 (Feb 25, 2015)

jordan199 said:


> Nvidia it's time for a new CEO, I hope will replace with someone who RESPECT the company and consumers...



if anything i think this is the hardest thing to happen. AFAIK they have much worse mess with Fermi and JHH still lead the company after that. plus JHH won't give up the CEO position even if other company to buy Nvidia lol.


----------



## heydan83 (Feb 25, 2015)

esrever said:


> Buy a table and and 4 chairs,
> Some one sits on the fourth chair,
> It collapses.
> "Well we were originally going to sell it with only three chairs, but we found an innovative new way to add a fourth. The last one is made of cardboard and bubble gum. We thought you'd be excited!"




I dont know why is everyone complaining about it, my table works great and I dont have any intentions to use the fourth chair either way, and if I need it, Ill change my hole set for a new better set..... of course of the same brand... just in case I want finish this by saying I'm being sarcastic...


----------



## HumanSmoke (Feb 25, 2015)

renz496 said:


> jordan199 said:
> 
> 
> > Nvidia it's time for a new CEO, I hope will replace with someone who RESPECT the company and consumers...
> ...


Companies as a general rule don't oust successful CEO's - especially when they are founders. Balance the GTX 970 issue against both a record last quarter and record year, and outselling their principle competitor with discrete GPUs versus the competitions GPU + APU portfolio. If the role was reversed, how likely would it be that AMD or Intel would fire their CEO after a record year in revenue because of an issue with a single SKU?


heydan83 said:


> I dont know why is everyone complaining about it, my table works great and I dont have any intentions to use the fourth chair either way


Seating for three, or up-end the chairs and you have seating for 12 of the lawyers involved in the civil suit.


----------



## iO (Feb 25, 2015)

But hey it only took them five weeks and an incoming class-action suit to officially respond on the topic...


----------



## Iceni (Feb 25, 2015)

I would love to defend Nvidia in this. 

My own 970's are fantastic. They would have still been fantastic if they had not attempted to hide a "feature".

If they had not bothered to add in that last 1GB then the problem is where does the 780 end and the 970 start. So they tweaked the configuration and put-in a semi working feature with the hopes of controlling it with software designed to not allocate to that segment of memory.

What that statement is actually saying is we were hoping to force these cards to opperate as a 3.5GB card via drivers. So they had no intention of ever having the final user have access to the whole 4GB of memory. So in effect the statement he has given is more of a rod for his own back in this instance. 

Bring me the popcorn this is better than Samsung V/s Apple.


----------



## harry90 (Feb 25, 2015)

"it wont happen again" "next time well do better" lol there is no next time nvidia, no way im gonna buy nvidia ever.


----------



## newtekie1 (Feb 25, 2015)

harry90 said:


> "it wont happen again" "next time well do better" lol there is no next time nvidia, no way im gonna buy nvidia ever.


So who will be buy?  AMD?  You remember when they released a card marketed at 1000MHz and then after a reasonable gaming session was found to drop down as low as 550MHz? It could last long enough to get through benchmarks, so the reviews were good, but actual user experience wasn't as good.  Remember that?  No?  How about the time AMD released a card, let it go through all the reviews(which gave it very good reviews) and then released a driver that purposely and drastically reduced performance to stop the cards from dying pre-maturely?  No.  Don't remember that?  Remember how they didn't even bother to apologize for either?  Yeah, good times!

All you people need to get over your hate on nVidia because this is nothing compared to what some other companies have done and never even bothered to apologize for.  What nVidia did was a marketing mistake, it doesn't affect the performance of the card we bought compared to the reviews we all read.


----------



## Xzibit (Feb 25, 2015)

newtekie1 said:


> So who will be buy?  AMD?  You remember when they released a card marketed at 1000MHz and then after a reasonable gaming session was found to drop down as low as 550MHz? It could last long enough to get through benchmarks, so the reviews were good, but actual user experience wasn't as good.  Remember that?  No?  How about the time AMD released a card, let it go through all the reviews(which gave it very good reviews) and then released a driver that purposely and drastically reduced performance to stop the cards from dying pre-maturely?  No.  Don't remember that?  Remember how they didn't even bother to apologize for either?  Yeah, good times!
> 
> All you people need to get over your hate on nVidia because this is nothing compared to what some other companies have done and never even bothered to apologize for.  What nVidia did was a marketing mistake, it doesn't affect the performance of the card we bought compared to the reviews we all read.



Obviously you don't remember that AMD got crap over it because it never specified a base clock and used the words *"Up To".*  Many people here defending Nvidia complained about that or they just conveniently forgot.

You seem to be implying its okay and should be accepted because others do it as its common practice.  That's a sad state to be in as a consumer.


----------



## Naito (Feb 25, 2015)

I think Nvidia need to do less apologizing and more explaining of how they will correct the performance issues seen in some scenarios. It's obvious that having segmented memory seems to slow the entire memory system down when it has to deal with the smaller segment. Perhaps they need to add a 'switch' to their drivers in which the card completely ignores the smaller 512MB segment as to keep the 3.5GB segment at maximum speed. This may help remove micro-stutter and the other various issues reported.


----------



## newtekie1 (Feb 25, 2015)

Xzibit said:


> Obviously you don't remember that AMD got crap over it because it never specified a base clock and used the words *"Up To".*  Many people here defending Nvidia complained about that or they just conveniently forgot.
> 
> You seem to be implying its okay and should be accepted because others do it as its common practice.  That's a sad state to be in as a consumer.



I do remember they got crap over it, but they never apologized, they got crap over their drivers deliberately reducing performance too but didn't apologize either.

What I'm directly saying, not implying anything, is that people need to cut nVidia some slack.  Their mistake was on paper, on paper that was private, it didn't affect the performance we were promised through reviews.  The card has not changed just because the specs on paper did.  People shouldn't be buying cards on specs anyway, or name, they should be buying them based on the performance they get in reviews.  And nVidia did not change that performance, AMD on the other hand did.  AMD did cheat in the reviews, nVidia didn't.  Yet, nVidia apologizes and people still want to bash, AMD never even comments on the problems when they get caught.



Naito said:


> I think Nvidia need to do less apologizing and more explaining of how they will correct the performance issues seen in some scenarios. It's obvious that having segmented memory seems to slow the entire memory system down when it has to deal with the smaller segment. Perhaps they need to add a 'switch' to their drivers in which the card completely ignores the smaller 512MB segment as to keep the 3.5GB segment at maximum speed. This may help remove micro-stutter and the other various issues reported.



That is the thing, having the 512MB only improves performance.  Turning if off means that the card would start paging out to system RAM instead of accessing the 512MB, that is way worse.


----------



## heydan83 (Feb 25, 2015)

newtekie1 said:


> So who will be buy?  AMD?  You remember when they released a card marketed at 1000MHz and then after a reasonable gaming session was found to drop down as low as 550MHz? It could last long enough to get through benchmarks, so the reviews were good, but actual user experience wasn't as good.  Remember that?  No?  How about the time AMD released a card, let it go through all the reviews(which gave it very good reviews) and then released a driver that purposely and drastically reduced performance to stop the cards from dying pre-maturely?  No.  Don't remember that?  Remember how they didn't even bother to apologize for either?  Yeah, good times!
> 
> All you people need to get over your hate on nVidia because this is nothing compared to what some other companies have done and never even bothered to apologize for.  What nVidia did was a marketing mistake, it doesn't affect the performance of the card we bought compared to the reviews we all read.



I would say at least skip this generation donr support this kind of things


----------



## damric (Feb 25, 2015)

Dear Jen-Hsun,

Don't worry. As a consumer, my memory is shorter than that of an American voter. I'll still buy your stuff, even if you use lead paint and baby fetuses for thermal grease.

Your dearly beloved,

Fanboy.


----------



## HumanSmoke (Feb 25, 2015)

Xzibit said:


> Obviously you don't remember that AMD got crap over it because it never specified a base clock and used the words *"Up To".*


Probably comes down more to degree ( 700+ posts in four front page articles and a few forum threads - something AMD's throttling didn't even approach even though it affected more than one SKU, and many user scenarios). Everyone kind of gets it as this point, and while it is fun for some people to pile on because the company is - lets face it, a stereotype tech villain, most of these threads are populated by people who don't own the card, and wouldn't buy Nvidia products in general. Great for blowing off steam, but in the greater scheme of things means close to nothing.

When there are twice as many forum posts about (un)/locking overclocking of Nvidia mobile graphics cards than there is about the NSA secreting spyware in hard drive firmware across the whole planet, it's probably time to take stock of what kind of yardstick you measure wrongdoing by...IMO


----------



## nothappy (Feb 25, 2015)

When you receive an item you bought, you check it physically and tried your hardest to ensure of its quality. Reviewers do an even thorough job by putting it through the loops of benchmarks. But to truly understand it you need the engineers to determine it to the bone.

You can debate a 3.5 + 0.5 GB (of a lower spec) equals 4GB all you like. But as we know a Hyperthreaded 4 core is actually 2 REAL cores, and its not the same as a REAL 4 Core Chip. *nt*l said it out loud at the beginning, we bought it and loved it. If you think its not an apple to apple comparisson, its yours to decide.

 So this letter is an undoubtable evidence of their screw up, and we have been given the right to do whatever we want with the 970, own your mistakes Nvidia, and shove it up your ...


----------



## CrAsHnBuRnXp (Feb 25, 2015)

Ahhzz said:


> I believe the appropriate phrase is "Working as intended".....


This isnt Blizzard.


----------



## Prima.Vera (Feb 25, 2015)

Bugsy004 said:


> *”...GTX 970 is a 4GB card. We wanted GTX 970 to have 4GB of memory...” *
> next time you should add memory card slot, an microSD card slot, *...up to 128GB memory...???!!!
> *
> Same issue where with the GTX660Ti graphics cards... same here...


Yeah, like in the good ol' days. 
Remember S3 was doing that:


----------



## heydan83 (Feb 25, 2015)

newtekie1 said:


> So who will be buy?  AMD?  You remember when they released a card marketed at 1000MHz and then after a reasonable gaming session was found to drop down as low as 550MHz? It could last long enough to get through benchmarks, so the reviews were good, but actual user experience wasn't as good.  Remember that?  No?  How about the time AMD released a card, let it go through all the reviews(which gave it very good reviews) and then released a driver that purposely and drastically reduced performance to stop the cards from dying pre-maturely?  No.  Don't remember that?  Remember how they didn't even bother to apologize for either?  Yeah, good times!
> 
> All you people need to get over your hate on nVidia because this is nothing compared to what some other companies have done and never even bothered to apologize for.  What nVidia did was a marketing mistake, it doesn't affect the performance of the card we bought compared to the reviews we all read.




So you´re not willing to buy amd because of doing the same thing nvidia has done... then that doesn´t make any sense, I think we should make notice us as a good and power consumers and just skip this generation to let them know we have the control and not them...


----------



## Naito (Feb 25, 2015)

newtekie1 said:


> That is the thing, having the 512MB only improves performance.  Turning if off means that the card would start paging out to system RAM instead of accessing the 512MB, that is way worse.



Paging out to RAM will increase access times for non-critical stuff, but it also, to the best of my knowledge, does not create memory contention. If I understand correctly, a XOR situation occurs when one or the other segment needs to be written or read from, it causes a scenario where the other has to wait. This means any request to the 512MB segment has the possibility of harming the performance of the main 3.5GB segment.

EDIT: Either way, the GTX 970 will be a more driver dependent card, as Nvidia will probably have to spend more time working on how to manage this memory architecture with certain games.


----------



## Xzibit (Feb 25, 2015)

Jen-Hsun said:
			
		

> Instead of being excited that *we invented a way to increase memory of the GTX 970 from 3GB to 4GB*, some were disappointed that we didn't better describe the segmented nature of the architecture for that last 1GB of memory.
> This is understandable. But, let me be clear: Our only intention was to create the best GPU for you. We wanted GTX 970 to have 4GB of memory, as games are using more memory than ever.



How long until Nvidia tries to patent this invented way of increasing memory.    Lets disable L2 cache re-route the controller and slow it down. BAM!!! we invented more memory.

He is also saying a 3GB card wasn't enough since more games are using more and more memory.  Kind of shooting his explanation in the foot.  You needed more memory but you slowed it down. Then have software to allocate less access data in the 512mb segment   That sounds more like software/driver efficiency "optimization" not architecturally limited to Maxwell.


----------



## btarunr (Feb 25, 2015)

Xzibit said:


> That's the BS part. The driver team knew since they were allocating low access resources into the 512mb sector.  It doesn't fly that there was a communication problem if 2 separate departments hardware and software knew with software developing drivers continuing to optimize for it.  Reeks of deception or cover your ass because the lawsuits are coming.



The miscommunication was between engineering and technical-marketing (the team that writes the Reviewer's Guide). Software is another department.


----------



## HalfAHertz (Feb 25, 2015)

> Some of you are disappointed that we didn't clearly describe the segmented memory of GeForce GTX 970 when we launched it.



No, they're disappointing because they unknowingly got a cut down part...



> We invented a new memory architecture in Maxwell. This new capability was created so that reduced-configurations of Maxwell can have a larger framebuffer



No, it was "invented" so that you could stick more RAM to crippled silicone and sell it for more $$...



> This is a good design because we were able to add an additional 1GB for GTX 970 and our software engineers can keep less frequently used data in the 512MB segment.



If it was such an amazing design decision, why did you hide if from both your customers and the aforementioned software engineers?



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



Indeed very conveniently unfortunate that you failed to do so consecutively for months.




> some were disappointed that we didn't better describe the segmented nature of the architecture for that last 1GB of memory.



I would guess that more were disappointed that they unknowingly got a potentially crippled component...




> Our only intention was to create the best GPU for you.



I totally believe you Mr. Jen! And I bet those shareholders want exactly the same...



> This new feature of Maxwell should have been clearly detailed from the beginning.



Yay for new "features"!



> We'll do a better job next time.



Oh God, no. What will be next? Shaders that only work with a monthly subscription? "Geforce Ultra Boost 9001! Get the extra power only when you really need it!"


----------



## Bugsy004 (Feb 25, 2015)

Best Mr. Jen & nvidia explained!!!


----------



## Xzibit (Feb 25, 2015)

btarunr said:


> The miscommunication was between engineering and technical-marketing (the team that writes the Reviewer's Guide). Software is another department.



Yes, That's what is questionable.  Engineering would have been done with their part long time ago and would have handed it off to software team long before the Reviewers Guide would be even conceived.  Software team would have had months developing an appropriate driver and done memory allocation optimization that would differ from the 980 leading up to the release. One would think engineering and software teams would have input on the guide to what's possible or not, features and differences since the 980 and 970 were in the same guide.  Just makes it seam like it was a copy and paste from the 980 when both engineering and software teams knew it was different from the start.

They are making it seam like everything is put together at last minute.  We all know the hardware goes through months of testing before its even stable.

The break down would have been from all departments to the marketing team if that's plausible.


----------



## xfia (Feb 25, 2015)

so that is the word!  it is a great new feature they forgot to market!  seems more like the new feature was for more efficient binning to raise that profit margin. 

how does the letter even make since..  they say they figured out how to add more memory in a way like it was so hard and had to spend millions in research on it.

maybe they should talk to asus and ask them how they fit full 4gb on a 750ti if they are so clueless.

i dont know what to say to whoever believes this trash but I will say it will be interesting to see who stands up to challenge this architectures great new feature.


----------



## john_ (Feb 25, 2015)

Can you spot the sentence about false specs on ROPs and cache? No? I bet the lawyers they where also looking for those two words in the text.


----------



## Ahhzz (Feb 25, 2015)

CrAsHnBuRnXp said:


> This isnt Blizzard.


OMG! someone recognized


----------



## MustSeeMelons (Feb 25, 2015)

It wont happen again they say? Yesterday I was playing Dying Light (@ 1920x1200) and at one moment the card started using more than 3.5 Gb (Afterburner reported ~3900Mb) I got frame drops and stuttering, I got a feeling this is going to happen again and more often. My jump-ship finger is already tingling a bit.


----------



## Fluffmeister (Feb 25, 2015)

What a disaster, and AMD still had to lower their prices.


----------



## rtwjunkie (Feb 25, 2015)

harry90 said:


> "it wont happen again" "next time well do better" lol there is no next time nvidia, no way im gonna buy nvidia ever.


 
So you would deliberately limit yourself to a less capable card in the future (assuming correctly that at some point again Nvidia will have the top performing card again), even if it was cheaper?  That doesn't make sense.  I would think most logical people would try to buy the best performing card they can, no matter the brand.

Moving on: I have to say, it's obvious most people here are not familiar with how big companies work (rightly or wrongly is immaterial, it's reality).  It's not uncommon at all for departments to not communicate thoroughly with each other, each in their own little turf, and who think and act as if they are THE central role of the company, with other departments merely supporting players.  And no matter the product, the department that gets left out of the loop and looked down on the most? Marketing.


----------



## EarthDog (Feb 25, 2015)

rtwjunkie said:


> So you would deliberately limit yourself to a less capable card in the future (assuming correctly that at some point again Nvidia will have the top performing card again), even if it was cheaper?  That doesn't make sense.  I would think most logical people would try to buy the best performing card they can, no matter the brand.
> 
> Moving on: I have to say, it's obvious most people here are not familiar with how big companies work (rightly or wrongly is immaterial, it's reality).  It's not uncommon at all for departments to not communicate thoroughly with each other, each in their own little turf, and who think and act as if they are THE central role of the company, with other departments merely supporting players.  And no matter the product, the department that gets left out of the loop and looked down on the most? Marketing.


Quoted For Truth....


----------



## Casecutter (Feb 25, 2015)

HumanSmoke said:


> More like an explanation worded to sound like an apology


"More like a justification for a cover-up worded to sound like an apology"

This all might have been contrite... except for the fact the GM204 had "engineered" in the "Memory Crossbars" to connect and unused memory controller to still use the L2 that was orphaned.  This just opened up the sink-hole, did no one in PR help this knucklehead.


----------



## THE_EGG (Feb 25, 2015)

esrever said:


> Buy a table and and 4 chairs,
> Some one sits on the fourth chair,
> It collapses.
> "Well we were originally going to sell it with only three chairs, but we found an innovative new way to add a fourth. The last one is made of cardboard and bubble gum. We thought you'd be excited!"


Quite possibly the best analogy I've seen yet haha.

Though I thought I'd add to that and say that the fourth chair is still useable as the seat base still elevates one's butt off the ground however only at about 1/7th of the comfort of the rest of the chairs. Be happy that one's butt is not on the ground.


----------



## RejZoR (Feb 25, 2015)

btarunr said:


> The miscommunication was between engineering and technical-marketing (the team that writes the Reviewer's Guide). Software is another department.



If they are unable to communicate something as basic as this, one starts to wonder what else they intentionally fucked up and no one at NVIDIA even knows about it, because there were more of these "communication errors" within their own company...


----------



## Uplink10 (Feb 25, 2015)

I don`t believe this guy, can`t he say "We gimp graphic cards to reduce their performance but this time we burned ourself because we gimped them too much". Do they really want to avoid class action lawsuit by saying we gimped 300$ graphic card less than usual but we still gimped it too much for all features to work normally?
Who makes this stuff up?


----------



## EarthDog (Feb 25, 2015)

> "We gimp graphic cards to reduce their performance but this time we burned ourself because we gimped them too much"


If that was what happened, he would have probably said that... but, that isn't what happened (gimped them "too" much).


----------



## newtekie1 (Feb 25, 2015)

heydan83 said:


> So you´re not willing to buy amd because of doing the same thing nvidia has done... then that doesn´t make any sense, I think we should make notice us as a good and power consumers and just skip this generation to let them know we have the control and not them...



I never said I wouldn't buy AMD.  I was just pointing out the hypocrisy of saying they won't buy nVidia again because of this situation because AMD has done worse and never even apologized.

When it comes to my purchases, I'll buy the best card for the money, I don't really care who it comes from.



Naito said:


> Paging out to RAM will increase access times for non-critical stuff, but it also, to the best of my knowledge, does not create memory contention. If I understand correctly, a XOR situation occurs when one or the other segment needs to be written or read from, it causes a scenario where the other has to wait. This means any request to the 512MB segment has the possibility of harming the performance of the main 3.5GB segment.
> 
> EDIT: Either way, the GTX 970 will be a more driver dependent card, as Nvidia will probably have to spend more time working on how to manage this memory architecture with certain games.



The way I understand it is before anything can even be accessed by the GPU, it has to be brought back into VRAM from system RAM then accessed.  This is a lot slower than the wait cycle to access the non-critical partition.  Basically the main VRAM has to page something else out to system RAM(because it is already full), then read the data it wants into VRAM. That is a long process compared to the wait time to directly access the non-critical area.



HalfAHertz said:


> No, they're disappointing because they unknowingly got a cut down part...



Actually we already knew it was a cut down part.



RejZoR said:


> If they are unable to communicate something as basic as this, one starts to wonder what else they intentionally fucked up and no one at NVIDIA even knows about it, because there were more of these "communication errors" within their own company...



You obviously have no clue how hard it is to communicate technical shit to a marketing team.  Almost everyone in this forum probably has more technical knowledge than anyone on a marketing team.  If you tell the marketing team the card has 4GB, but 0.5GB of it is partitioned in a way that it is non-priority because the way the crossbar works now, you can disabled part of the L2, but still keep the memory controller associated with that L2 portion working by linking it over to the adjacent L2 portion, and because of this configuration the card has 64 ROPs but only 56 will be used because the other 8 ROPs are also accessed over this link to the adjacent L2 and it would actually hurt performance to use those extra 8 ROPs, even though they are enabled and technically could be used...

The marketing team is going to look at you with a blank stare and say "So the card is a 4GB card with 64 ROPs."



Uplink10 said:


> I don`t believe this guy, can`t he say "We gimp graphic cards to reduce their performance but this time we burned ourself because we gimped them too much".



Ironically, it was actually their attempt to not gimp the card as much as previous generations that bit them in the ass.  If they did it the way they did in the past, the GTX970 would have been a 224-Bit 3.5GB card.  However, the new method allowed them to not have to disabled that 32-bit memory controller and not loose the 0.5GB of memory that they normally would have had to.


----------



## heydan83 (Feb 25, 2015)

newtekie1 said:


> I never said I wouldn't buy AMD.  I was just pointing out the hypocrisy of saying they won't buy nVidia again because of this situation because AMD has done worse and never even apologized.
> 
> When it comes to my purchases, I'll buy the best card for the money, I don't really care who it comes from.
> 
> ...





So if they would have been explained well, every 970 box would have a legend that reads "3.5 GB + 500!! MB that works weird" who would have purchased something like that?, it would be a 780 with 500 MB extra and no one would buy it.

And also the basis of any company is the communication between every of the work areas, what a coincidence that this communication problem happened when there was something bad with the card, why they don´t communicate the 980 was 3GB by mistake and then everyone realize it was actually a 4GB card.

Ok yes it is difficult to communicate somthing like this to the marketing team.... so what they did? maybe they lie the marketing team and just tell them the card is a 4GB card....


----------



## rtwjunkie (Feb 25, 2015)

heydan83 said:


> And also the basis of any company is the communication between every of the work areas


 
That's just it...as I tried to point out above.  Rarely do departments communicate well with each other in a large company.  And Marketing gets left out alot because, as @newtekie1 points out, they aren't regarded as the sharpest bunch of people by the braniacs, finance and operations people.  The fact that marketing many times does get it right in alot of products accross many different industries is more luck than anything.


----------



## Xzibit (Feb 25, 2015)

rtwjunkie said:


> That's just it...as I tried to point out above.  Rarely do departments communicate well with each other in a large company.  And Marketing gets left out alot because, as @newtekie1 points out, they aren't regarded as the sharpest bunch of people by the braniacs, finance and operations people.  The fact that marketing many times does get it right in alot of products accross many different industries is more luck than anything.



Many here put Nvidia in a class of its own on a pedestal yet still somehow akin there communication methods to the 3 stooges for this one.

Hardware - chip bin
Finance  - analysis of chip cost with lower ROP and L2 cache and segmented memory to market and other variants of cost of chip to market
Software - driver development to utilize segmented memory
Marketing - market said features to buyers/reviewers and public
Legal - Vetted details and material

It had to makes its way through all these departments without anyone raising a concern over a 2yr or more time period.  Not to mention the closer you get to launch window the more each department is to go over material to see if anything is change and double check their work for final release.



john_ said:


> Can you spot the sentence about false specs on ROPs and cache? No? I bet the lawyers they where also looking for those two words in the text.



It seems they're busy updating the Reviewers Guide posted by some sites with the new info.

*Original*








*Retro updated*


----------



## john_ (Feb 25, 2015)

EarthDog said:


> he would have probably said that...


In his apology letter, he doesn't mention not even once about ROPs, cache and data bus. The 4GB fiasco, as many Nvidia fanboys have proved countless of times, can be justified as 3.5GB+0.5GB=4GB=nothing to see here, everything is OK, it was desighned to be that way. It is a good design!!!!!
But he doesn't touches the other specs because he would either have to lie in our faces in a very ugly and dishonest way, or if he mentions them, the whole letter will be used against Nvidia in the lawsuits against it.


----------



## rtwjunkie (Feb 25, 2015)

@Xzibit No, I don't put Nvidia in a class of their own or give them a pass on this. I merely tell you what reality is in big corporations. Marketing are most of the time left out of things till the end...and then you have to dumb things down for them so they know what they are selling.

And in real life, departments give lip-service to cooperation. They are like little Middle Ages fiefdoms.


----------



## xorbe (Feb 25, 2015)

john_ said:


> ... as many Nvidia fanboys have proved countless of times, can be justified ...



Probably most of the action is entirely from nv fans -- some nv fans are sympathetic, and the other nv fans are pissed off.  Probably Radeon users are like, oh is that smoke from the green camp over there, whatever can't hear the fuss over my gpu cooler.


----------



## heydan83 (Feb 25, 2015)

I want to congratulate nvidia for creating loyal consumer that even when they spit hard in their consumer faces they still sucking their balls, nvidia fan boys wtf, you should realize they cheat all the 970 buyers and accept it , its not your fault, and Im not saying you to stop buying nvidia products but at least stop buying this gpu generation, they should realize we have the control over our choices and that they need to stop doing thing like this, what you´re just let them know with all this thing is that no mather if they give you shit, you´re gonna still buying it and defending it like the best product. Im not saying amd is better or a saint maybe they fuck the the things latter and we need to make the same things, they are not making us a favor.


----------



## Xzibit (Feb 25, 2015)

rtwjunkie said:


> @Xzibit No, I don't put Nvidia in a class of their own or give them a pass on this. I merely tell you what reality is in big corporations. Marketing are most of the time left out of things till the end...and then you have to dumb things down for them so they know what they are selling.
> 
> And in real life, departments give lip-service to cooperation. They are like little Middle Ages fiefdoms.



I disagree.  This isn't your entry level job at the local electronic store or Best Buy marketing/sales person.

Your reality and mine differ.  I'll direct you to Nvidias Tom Petersen their marketing guy and he doesn't seem to be left out of the loop and most often he'll say he cant talk about details if asked directly or side step the issue to avoid comparisons.  Hes by no means clueless and if he is any reflection of the type of people through the department I find it hard to believe the information wasn't extracted or known through-out the development process and gotten to him or his department in some manner.  Whether they choose to disclose it was another matter that's been playing out.


----------



## rtwjunkie (Feb 25, 2015)

Xzibit said:


> I disagree.  This isn't your entry level job at the local electronic store or Best Buy marketing/sales person.
> 
> Your reality and mine differ.  I'll direct you to Nvidias Tom Petersen their marketing guy and he doesn't seem to be left out of the loop and most often he'll say he cant talk about details if asked directly of side step the issue to avoid comparisons.  Hes by no means clueless.



Notice I repeatedly said the phrase large corporations. I'm not talking about an electronics store or Best Buy.

I base my reality on having worked at a high level in the Fortune 500 world. Do I think Nvidia was wrong? You bet I do! But you expect way too much of an ideal compared to the way corporations really operate.

I can't talk about details is codespeak for I don't know shit, but I'm not going to admit that on the record.


----------



## xfia (Feb 25, 2015)

I really thought they would have announced a 970ti or something by now..  might make it as fast as a 980 but I guess a 6 or 8gb 980ti could fix that..  

I see a 290x as a perfectly viable option but if I was all nv fanboy I would be like wtf is this jacked up lineup and wait till I had coin for a 980. 

the 970's should be collecting dust on the shelves if people want to see a sound lineup.


----------



## EarthDog (Feb 26, 2015)

john_ said:


> In his apology letter, he doesn't mention not even once about ROPs, cache and data bus. The 4GB fiasco, as many Nvidia fanboys have proved countless of times, can be justified as 3.5GB+0.5GB=4GB=nothing to see here, everything is OK, it was desighned to be that way. It is a good design!!!!!
> But he doesn't touches the other specs because he would either have to lie in our faces in a very ugly and dishonest way, or if he mentions them, the whole letter will be used against Nvidia in the lawsuits against it.


Hey John... Read what I quoted and replied to please...pay specific attention to the part in parentheses, 'too gimped'.

...or perhaps I'm tired and missing your point. LoL


----------



## newtekie1 (Feb 26, 2015)

heydan83 said:


> So if they would have been explained well, every 970 box would have a legend that reads "3.5 GB + 500!! MB that works weird" who would have purchased something like that?, it would be a 780 with 500 MB extra and no one would buy it.
> 
> And also the basis of any company is the communication between every of the work areas, what a coincidence that this communication problem happened when there was something bad with the card, why they don´t communicate the 980 was 3GB by mistake and then everyone realize it was actually a 4GB card.
> 
> Ok yes it is difficult to communicate somthing like this to the marketing team.... so what they did? maybe they lie the marketing team and just tell them the card is a 4GB card....



They had 3 options.  Cripple the card further and make it 224-bit 3.5GB or design it the way they did and market it the way they did or design it the way they did and market it differently.

IMO, if they would have marketed the design we got properly, it still would have been just as successful.  The reviews would have still been amazing, the performance and price would have been amazing, the power consumption would be amazing because the card in its current form is amazing.

If they would have simply included the explanation they gave, even just this one image, with the reviewers packet they gave to all the reviewers, everything would have been fine and the card would have still sold like crazy because it is a damn good card.


----------



## Naito (Feb 26, 2015)

newtekie1 said:


> Ironically, it was actually their attempt to not gimp the card as much as previous generations that bit them in the ass. If they did it the way they did in the past, the GTX970 would have been a 224-Bit 3.5GB card. However, the new method allowed them to not have to disabled that 32-bit memory controller and not loose the 0.5GB of memory that they normally would have had to.



I'd argue it was their attempt to _gimp _the card more, which has lead to this. Neither the GTX 670 nor GTX 780 had a trimmed memory bus, so why bother doing it this time around? For a mid-tier GPU, surely the yields were decent enough? My guess is that Nvidia didn't want a repeat of when the GTX 670 was within 7% of a standard GTX 680; they didn't want to offer _too_ much value.

It's still essentially a 224-bit 3.5GB card as both segments can't be accessed simultaneously, it's just now that it has 512MB cache. Surprised Nvidia didn't make a big fuss over this 'new' method and market it like "Nvidia's new super-dooper-extreme-smart-GeCache" or something.


----------



## Sony Xperia S (Feb 26, 2015)

newtekie1 said:


> I never said I wouldn't buy AMD.  I was just pointing out the hypocrisy of saying they won't buy nVidia again because of this situation because AMD has done worse and never even apologized.
> 
> When it comes to my purchases, I'll buy the best card for the money, I don't really care who it comes from.



Yes, there is always a risk that the situation will repeat with some of the future cards. 

So, I wouldn't buy a new graphics card straight after it is launched.


----------



## rtwjunkie (Feb 26, 2015)

Sony Xperia S said:


> Yes, there is always a risk that the situation will repeat with some of the future cards.
> 
> So, I wouldn't buy a new graphics card straight after it is launched.


 
That's very good advice that I try to follow all the time.  When I do pull the trigger on a "new" card, I wait till about the 6 month time frame.  Usually that helps with availability too, as a side benefit.


----------



## BiggieShady (Feb 26, 2015)

Xzibit said:


> Hardware - chip bin
> Finance - analysis of chip cost with lower ROP and L2 cache and segmented memory to market and other variants of cost of chip to market
> Software - driver development to utilize segmented memory
> Marketing - market said features to buyers/reviewers and public
> Legal - Vetted details and material



If they all did it to sell more GPUs, they shot themselves in the foot because their products are selling themselves anyway.
Almost like marketing fucked up while the rest of the company was on deserved collective vacation  ... marketing GPU like they're marketing running shoes or box of cereal.
Who's gonna say how healthy this cereal really is? Independent lab that does the analysis months after the new flavour is already on the shelves and the old one is gone. Who's gonna say shoes are as durable as advertised or they last less? Someone would have to argue the pattern of usage and stress done to the product. Too convoluted for a law suit.
That logic doesn't work on GPU specs, as they are painfully aware of it now.
After the vacation they were all praying nobody notices. After it got noticed they were all kicking themselves for not coming out before.
One mistake after another.
Jen-Hsun makes another mistake in the letter: between the lines he is almost telling us we are ungrateful as if we don't know how good that GPU really is for the price - of course we know but it is beside the point. The point is we also know a dishonest practice when we see one. I'm quite pleased with my GTX 970 and not at all with dishonest nvidia practices.
I'd be happy if he said "Marketing guys fucked up and I fired them all. From now on we are marketing GPUs exclusively by showing FCAT graphs and x-ray photos of the die."


----------



## newtekie1 (Feb 26, 2015)

Naito said:


> I'd argue it was their attempt to _gimp _the card more, which has lead to this. Neither the GTX 670 nor GTX 780 had a trimmed memory bus, so why bother doing it this time around? For a mid-tier GPU, surely the yields were decent enough? My guess is that Nvidia didn't want a repeat of when the GTX 670 was within 7% of a standard GTX 680; they didn't want to offer _too_ much value.
> 
> It's still essentially a 224-bit 3.5GB card as both segments can't be accessed simultaneously, it's just now that it has 512MB cache. Surprised Nvidia didn't make a big fuss over this 'new' method and market it like "Nvidia's new super-dooper-extreme-smart-GeCache" or something.




My guess is they probably did it because 2MB of L2 cache led to yield problems on the first batch.  The GTX 670 only had 512KB of L2, and the GTX780 only has 1.5MB, the 290X only has 1MB.  The more cache you put on a chip, the more errors you get, and the lower your yields, especially on early runs.


----------



## xorbe (Feb 26, 2015)

newtekie1 said:


> My guess is they probably did it because 2MB of L2 cache led to yield problems on the first batch.  The GTX 670 only had 512KB of L2, and the GTX780 only has 1.5MB, the 290X only has 1MB.  The more cache you put on a chip, the more errors you get, and the lower your yields, especially on early runs.



Depends on the number of spare replacement lines available.


----------



## Serpent of Darkness (Feb 27, 2015)

Cheeseball said:


> Technically this is what most of us were speculating from the beginning. If NVIDIA had only disclosed how memory is handled in cut-down Maxwell parts from the start, the backlash wouldn't have grown this big.



I concur.




荷兰大母猪 said:


> It is great because at least NV does care about that issue and did something. It is better than just kept silence before. And for me, I don't care about the specs, but some people do. So~ it is hard to deal with this problem, especially in China.



The "I don't care about the specs" comment absolutely made very little sense to a rational person such as myself.  Look at it this way from a realistic, down to Earth point of view.  This would imply that if NVidia sold you a rock with the Nvidia Logo on top, and it's spec said it was a rock, "but you assumed" before hand it was a graphic card with the premium price tag in this hypothetical situation, you'd buy it.  You would definitely buy it because it's NVidia, and you are a loyal, hardcore Nvidia Enthusiast.  If you actually did this in real life, what does this say about you or your character as a person and consumer.  To make a claim that you wouldn't buy a Graphic Card for it's specs, features, expectations, or performance measures, is highly unrealistic.  This also tells a person that the price of a graphic card shouldn't be based on it's specs, it's internal functions, or performance.  Thus giving Jen Hsun Hsung justification to pull a fast one on the NV Consumers with the GTX 970....  Wouldn't this be rational?




Ahhzz said:


> I believe the appropriate phrase is "Working as intended".....



This isn't Planetside 2 or SOE--oh wait, it's owned by Daybreak Games.

Blizzard has recently been getting a lot better...




heydan83 said:


> I dont think this is a Nvidia vs AMD discuss, this is about consumer vs enterprises, and also all that you said is not "hidden the truth" to the consumer but maybe change the strategy, so even if AMD or any other company that make this kind of thing should be treated the same....



I concur.




rtwjunkie said:


> So you would deliberately limit yourself to a less capable card in the future (assuming correctly that at some point again Nvidia will have the top performing card again), even if it was cheaper?  That doesn't make sense.  I would think most logical people would try to buy the best performing card they can, no matter the brand.QUOTE]
> 
> Explain to the masses how GTX Titan-Z was a performance gain over 2-way SLI GTX Titan Blacks?  What justified the $3,000 dollar price tag for a dual GPU from NVidia?  In addition, explain to me how paying $100 to $200 for 10% more FPS (at best) with GTX 780 ti is more reasonable and practical over AMD R9-290x, within context, when both products were first released?
> 
> ...


----------



## Breit (Feb 27, 2015)

> Since then, Jonah Alben, our senior vice president of hardware engineering, provided a technical description of the design, which was captured well by several editors.


----------



## rtwjunkie (Feb 27, 2015)

@Serpent of Darkness I am confused what your question to me after my quote has to do with what I asked. The point I was making is to exclude one brand forevermore, no matter which brand it is, denies you the best card there is (and I should have added "at your pricepoint").


----------



## 64K (Feb 27, 2015)

You don't rise the level of CEO of a corporation like Nvidia by being unaware of the details of a major release like the GTX 970.

Where I work that would be a fire for being so incompetent as to not communicate with the CEO at this level of operations.

Huang is looking after his yearly bonus and his stock value for now. If/when the shit hits the fan with litigation then we will see some real drama.


----------



## AsRock (Feb 27, 2015)

heydan83 said:


> Completly agree with this, if they want us to be exicited about "adding aditional weird 1gb" at least they should told us on release date...



Yeah but then people would of bitched about that although nVidia would of not been caught bending the truth.

But would it of turned people away knowing it was not a a card capable of giving access to 4GB how we would of expected it ?. They know the amount of ram on a card influences sales.

I was not in the market as i already had a 4GB video card, how ever if that was not the case i might of avoided the 970 too and just waited for a true 4GB card as some of my games were hitting over the 3GB so would not of settled for less.

I believe they know or some one did at least and kept there mouths shut but as seen as i have not heard anyone getting fired for failing there job i am leaning to they knew after they started selling or soon after and just fastened their seat belts.

@GhostRyder yes some thing(s) stink in that letter that's for sure.

One thing for sure they going in to "cover their asses mode".


----------



## Initialised (Feb 27, 2015)

Lying about the memory configuration might not happen again.

A flagship card catching fire hasn't happened again.

Paying developers to gimp games when run on AMD hardware hasn't happened again.

Paying resellers to slate AMD's drivers hasn't happened again.

Programming drivers to 'cheat' on popular benchmarks and stress tests hasn't happened again.

Makes you wonder what they'll pull next!


----------



## heydan83 (Feb 27, 2015)

Initialised said:


> Lying about the memory configuration might not happen again.
> 
> A flagship card catching fire hasn't happened again.
> 
> ...




That´s why we need to stand against corporation and let them know we have the control, but fan boys from either side makes things difficult, they should be more open mind because if they make their "daily purchases" just to support their favorite brand, they probably have a lot of shit in their homes... no offense. This "fight against" which brand is better is intentional created so you can take a side and support no matter what your side, open your eyes guys, they are not making us a favor, I think the best think to do here is to skip this generation from nvidia to let them know we are not gonna support this kind of shit.


Edited: And by the way Im not saying the 970 its a bad card, but it was sell with lies, if you support lies what the companies are gonna say is... if they don´t mind we sell to them with lies once, let´s do it again, and maybe amd will be tented to do the same, so here we the consumers are the ones that get screw


----------



## Fluffmeister (Feb 27, 2015)

heydan83 said:


> That´s why we need to stand against corporation and let them know we have the control, but fan boys from either side makes things difficult, they should be more open mind because if they make their "daily purchases" just to support their favorite brand, they probably have a lot of shit in their homes... no offense. This "fight against" which brand is better is intentional created so you can take a side and support no matter what your side, open your eyes guys, they are not making us a favor, I think the best think to do here is to skip this generation from nvidia to let them know we are not gonna support this kind of shit.



With millions of cards sold giving record profits and capturing more market share than ever.... I think your boycott might be a little late.


----------



## heydan83 (Feb 27, 2015)

Fluffmeister said:


> With millions of cards sold giving record profits and capturing more market share than ever.... I think your boycott might be a little late.




Its never too late, I was thinking on this card... but I prefer to wait, and obviously there are more potential buyers out there, or you´re telling me we are out of buyers?


----------



## Sony Xperia S (Feb 27, 2015)

Fluffmeister said:


> With millions of cards sold giving record profits and capturing more market share than ever.... I think your boycott might be a little late.



It is rather a shame and pity and not occasion to vaunt. So many stupid and blind people buying products of the evil nvidia.


----------



## newtekie1 (Feb 27, 2015)

Sony Xperia S said:


> It is rather a shame and pity and not occasion to vaunt. So many stupid and blind people buying products of the evil nvidia.


When the alternative is just as evil, arguably more so, ya can't really blame them.


----------



## EarthDog (Feb 27, 2015)

> So many stupid and blind people buying products of the evil nvidia.


Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahhahalololol.


----------



## Sony Xperia S (Feb 27, 2015)

newtekie1 said:


> When the alternative is just as evil, arguably more so, ya can't really blame them.




Oh really, then be so kind to tell all those blind people with nvidia cards HOW THE HELL to calibrate their image settings, so that the image on the screen has something to do with reality!


----------



## the54thvoid (Feb 28, 2015)

Sony Xperia S said:


> Oh really, then be so kind to tell all those blind people with nvidia cards HOW THE HELL to calibrate their image settings, so that the image on the screen has something to do with reality!



I have no issues. My image settings are all good and image is great. If you took off those red tinted glasses, things might appear more normal.
Of course, normal to me is crisp, smooth, colourful and immersive. If you require different parameters might I suggest a ZX Spectrum.


----------



## Bugsy004 (Feb 28, 2015)

Has anyone returned their GTX970?


----------



## newtekie1 (Mar 1, 2015)

Bugsy004 said:


> Has anyone returned their GTX970?


On the contrary I literally just ordered a second for SLI.


----------



## RichF (Mar 1, 2015)

Fluffmeister said:


> With millions of cards sold giving record profits and capturing more market share than ever.... I think your boycott might be a little late.


Because apathy will surely teach them a lesson.

Every one of your posts that I've seen about this has been trying to minimize the issue. What do you suggest people do? Look at how profitable Nvidia has been lately and praise the company for their bait and switch marketing and flawed designs?


----------



## RealNeil (Mar 1, 2015)

Bugsy004 said:


> Has anyone returned their GTX970?





newtekie1 said:


> On the contrary I literally just ordered a second for SLI.



This. SLI 970s will be a good thing,..............

The sales of "refurbished & open box" 970s are already starting, so anyone who blames NVIDIA and can't see a way ~not~ to choke on your 970s, send them back so we, (us po' boys) can buy them for less money.
Nothing changes the performance in reviews when they were introduced, they're still the same.


----------



## HumanSmoke (Mar 1, 2015)

RichF said:


> Because apathy will surely teach them a lesson.


It's less a case of apathy, than a statement of fact regarding the average consumers mindset - many of whom will never, ever read the thousands of posts on numerous websites concerning the matter.

You actually believe that a few outcries from a group of people  (many of whom would never entertain owning an Nvidia product regardless of the issue or not) and whom represent a miniscule percentage of the consumer buying base, somehow wield enough power to cause a paradigm shift in OEM/ODM and consumer buying trends?
Were Nvidia and AMD taught any lesson when the colluded to price fix discrete graphics? When was the last price war since the judgement? How many people speak out against the two companies strategy of dovetailing prices and actually boycott both vendors products? How many people said "fuck this shit, I'm boycotting both these companies and buying a S3 Chrome" (obviously no one since the whole division went to HTC, with SiS/XGI and Matrox faring no better)
Were Intel taught a lesson after litigating Cyrix and C&T out of existence and keeping their foot on AMD's throat ? How many flocked to Motorola based products? (Record revenues year after year says not a lot)
Were AMD taught a lesson after they were caught cheating on benchmarks with fictitious processors and hobbling Intel numbers using out of date software results? How many boycotted AMD as a result? (Answer: Not a lot. Many defended AMD because of the "underdog" status. Win at all cost is acceptable if you're starting with a big enough handicap)
Were Samsung, Toshiba, and LG taught a lesson when they paid settlement after settlement for their part in seven years of LCD price fixing? Where was the outcry, and why is it never mentioned when any of these companies launch new product? 
I think we can all agree that anti-trust, patent warfare, and widespread price fixing are more injurious to the consumer that the technical specification of a single SKU, yet none of these previous egregious (and more wide ranging) instances -any many more besides, met with anything other than a metaphorical shrug of the consumers shoulders in the greater scheme.
Consumers ain't care even if a significant proportion are aware of the issue - which is very seldom the case even when it makes the mainstream news including international TV coverage. Fewer still allow morality to intrude upon their quest for the next newest widget....if it did most. if not all the offending companies I mentioned above would have been blown into the weeds by consumer buying power.


----------



## RichF (Mar 1, 2015)

RealNeil said:


> This. SLI 970s will be a good thing,..............
> 
> Nothing changes the performance in reviews when they were introduced, they're still the same.


Not quite.

With the passage of time the 3.5 GB VRAM limit is going to become an increasing issue. I'm sure some thought that the 1.5 GB that the GTX 580 shipped with was more than enough.

When the 970 was reviewed it offered the promise of 4 GB of VRAM, not 3.5. That means more potential performance in the future. Games were also less likely to bump into the problematic partition back then than they are now and going forward.


----------



## newtekie1 (Mar 1, 2015)

RichF said:


> Not quite.
> 
> With the passage of time the 3.5 GB VRAM limit is going to become an increasing issue. I'm sure some thought that the 1.5 GB that the GTX 580 shipped with was more than enough.
> 
> When the 970 was reviewed it offered the promise of 4 GB of VRAM, not 3.5. That means more potential performance in the future. Games were also less likely to bump into the problematic partition back then than they are now and going forward.



Not likely.  It handled the top AAA titles today on the highest possible settings with 4k.  If I have to turn off AA when running 4k I won't be too upset.

Also, the 1.5GB on the GTX580 was enough, in fact I had SLI 470s with 1.25GB.  They worked perfectly fine, the memory amount wasn't an issue during their lifespan.


----------



## EarthDog (Mar 2, 2015)

500mb isn't going to make this card suddenly obsolete. 3.5gb is plenty for 2560x1400 gaming on down for the next two years for 90% of titles. 

Go ahead peeps. Sell em... I'll happily swipe a couple.


----------



## RichF (Mar 2, 2015)

EarthDog said:


> 500mb isn't going to make this card suddenly obsolete. 3.5gb is plenty for 2560x1400 gaming on down for the next two years for 90% of titles.
> 
> Go ahead peeps. Sell em... I'll happily swipe a couple.


The microstutter from 28 GB/s bandwidth and XOR contention is surely a bonus.


----------



## EarthDog (Mar 2, 2015)

When you use over 3.5gb in certain situations, yes. Which is why I qualified the statement..


----------



## Eric_Cartman (Mar 2, 2015)

RichF said:


> The microstutter from 28 GB/s bandwidth and XOR contention is surely a bonus.


Well now nVidia has something to match the horrible micro-stuttering caused by Crossfire!


----------



## HumanSmoke (Mar 2, 2015)

RichF said:


> With the passage of time the 3.5 GB VRAM limit is going to become an increasing issue.


Two points:
1. The vast majority of discrete graphics cards sold are 3GB and lower ( 2GB probably is the norm for mainstream gaming), so unless you see gaming developers, TWIMTBP, and Gaming Evolved moving to quickly alienate HD 6000, HD 7000, GTX 600, and GTX 700 series owners in the next year or so, 3.5GB should be ample for the most part- and where it isn't, it is pretty common practice to lower game image quality. And,
2. "With the passage of time" - say 12 months, the GTX 970 will be at a level that the GTX 670/680/760/770 is at now - EOL'ed and a $200 purchase. Just as GF 104/114 gave way to GK 104, and GK 104 gave way to GM 204, it is near certainty that GP 104/204 will relegate GTX Maxwell to the realms of the mainstream gamer.


RichF said:


> I'm sure some thought that the 1.5 GB that the GTX 580 shipped with was more than enough.


Well, it was for me four years ago. Are you expecting the GTX 970 to remain a performance segment card for the next 3-4 years?


----------



## heydan83 (Mar 2, 2015)

HumanSmoke said:


> Two points:
> 1. The vast majority of discrete graphics cards sold are 3GB and lower ( 2GB probably is the norm for mainstream gaming), so unless you see gaming developers, TWIMTBP, and Gaming Evolved moving to quickly alienate HD 6000, HD 7000, GTX 600, and GTX 700 series owners in the next year or so, 3.5GB should be ample for the most part- and where it isn't, it is pretty common practice to lower game image quality. And,
> 2. "With the passage of time" - say 12 months, the GTX 970 will be at a level that the GTX 670/680/760/770 is at now - EOL'ed and a $200 purchase. Just as GF 104/114 gave way to GK 104, and GK 104 gave way to GM 204, it is near certainty that GP 104/204 will relegate GTX Maxwell to the realms of the mainstream gamer.
> 
> Well, it was for me four years ago. Are you expecting the GTX 970 to remain a performance segment card for the next 3-4 years?




I think the observation these guys want to make is that maybe the vram wont be enough, faster than every 970 buyer thought when making the purchase and dont forget some games start to demand 3.5/4 GB on 1440p+ like shadows of mordor, and this card wasnt design fot 1080p...


----------



## HumanSmoke (Mar 2, 2015)

heydan83 said:


> I think the observation these guys want to make is that maybe the vram wont be enough, faster than every 970 buyer thought when making the purchase and dont forget some games start to demand 3.5/4 GB on 1440p+ like shadows of mordor, and this card wasnt design fot 1080p...


I don't doubt that there are games that will peg the vRAM limit, and if you are user buying specifically for those titles then you would definitely have a cause for complaint, but those games aren't the norm, and likely wont be in a world dominated by console ports. A bigger cause for complaint would be those looking for a cheapish (by Nvidia standards) SLI option where doubling up on cards should translate to better image quality, but as an SLI and CFX user myself, it should be taken as read that multiplying the number of graphics cards doesn't automatically translate into a performance multiplier.
So for those running SLI, triple SLI, or buying predominantly for an RTS game, I would see the performance drop off as a major disappointment, but is gaming heading in the short term (say the next 12 months) where 3.5+GB of vRAM is the price of entry for the majority games at the majority of game image quality levels for 19x10 (valid for those running at better than 60Hz) and 25x16/1440 gaming?


----------



## GhostRyder (Mar 2, 2015)

RealNeil said:


> This. SLI 970s will be a good thing,..............
> 
> The sales of "refurbished & open box" 970s are already starting, so anyone who blames NVIDIA and can't see a way ~not~ to choke on your 970s, send them back so we, (us po' boys) can buy them for less money.
> Nothing changes the performance in reviews when they were introduced, they're still the same.


Time does make a difference and VRAM limits are going up at a very high right now partially due to the fact that the new consoles give more room for performance so even console ports to PC use more resources than ever.  Evolve for instance is already showing something is going on with the GTX 970 as it significantly drops down the list after being the top dog at 1080p once you move of to 1600/1440p.  That's just one game I have seen recently but we have already seen Shadows of Mordor and a few others hitting that problem area which is going to make it self more apparent when you put two together.  While 3gb is enough for more than enough scenarios, cards like that were released over a year or more ago and people can still get by, your long term is going to suffer.



Eric_Cartman said:


> Well now nVidia has something to match the horrible micro-stuttering caused by Crossfire!


Good luck with that argument...Because CFX stutters horribly and people like punishing themselves...


heydan83 said:


> I think the observation these guys want to make is that maybe the vram wont be enough, faster than every 970 buyer thought when making the purchase and dont forget some games start to demand 3.5/4 GB on 1440p+ like shadows of mordor, and this card wasnt design fot 1080p...


Bingo, the fact you can already hit the VRAM limit now only means it will get worse with time.  While 3.5gb is enough for more things than naught, its not exactly comforting to be told that you bought a 4gb card and to basically stop being ungrateful and enjoy it by the company.  Not really the type of thing I like to hear from a company honestly...

What matters is the cards market point, a single one at 1440p is still going to be pretty good and serves well at the price point.  Its just not going to be as good for as long and it renders the idea of buying 2-3 a little less than optimal since your more likely to hit that 3.5gb limit with that much more power from the extra GPU's.


----------



## rtwjunkie (Mar 2, 2015)

RichF said:


> Not quite.
> 
> With the passage of time the 3.5 GB VRAM limit is going to become an increasing issue. I'm sure some thought that the 1.5 GB that the GTX 580 shipped with was more than enough.


 
That's the situation for ALL GPU's.  They aren't meant to be the last purchase you'll ever make.  Every single top-end GPU is enough for the time period it is released.  They fall behind.  All have a finite life as games are developed that either need more processing power or more VRAM, or both.  The GTX 580's 1.5GB of VRAM was enough for when it was released as well.  Nobody thought "Hey, I have a 580 with 1.5GB of VRAM, I'm all set forever!"


----------



## newtekie1 (Mar 2, 2015)

heydan83 said:


> I think the observation these guys want to make is that maybe the vram wont be enough, faster than every 970 buyer thought when making the purchase and dont forget some games start to demand 3.5/4 GB on 1440p+ like shadows of mordor, and this card wasnt design fot 1080p...



Here is the funny thing, the Ultra-HD Texture Pack that makes Shadow of Mordor use all that RAM actually needs 6GB of VRAM, and I hit the VRAM limit on my 4GB 290Xs and the stuttering was just as bad as with 970s.  And the visual difference it makes wasn't really that noticeable when you are actually playing the game.  Plus, for whatever reason, Shadow of Mordor doesn't use the extra 0.5GB of memory, once it hits the 3.5GB it starts paging out to system RAM right away, at least I've never seen it use the extra 0.5GB.


----------



## heydan83 (Mar 2, 2015)

newtekie1 said:


> Here is the funny thing, the Ultra-HD Texture Pack that makes Shadow of Mordor use all that RAM actually needs 6GB of VRAM, and I hit the VRAM limit on my 4GB 290Xs and the stuttering was just as bad as with 970s.  And the visual difference it makes wasn't really that noticeable when you are actually playing the game.  Plus, for whatever reason, Shadow of Mordor doesn't use the extra 0.5GB of memory, once it hits the 3.5GB it starts paging out to system RAM right away, at least I've never seen it use the extra 0.5GB.




Yes, and if that continues the same, we will need at least 6GB more quickly than anyone though...


----------



## HumanSmoke (Mar 2, 2015)

heydan83 said:


> Yes, and if that continues the same, we will need at least 6GB more quickly than anyone though...


And yet, AMD's next flagship, the 390X is set to arrive with a 4GB framebuffer. So is the prediction of 4GB+ wrong, or are AMD shooting themselves in the foot, or are they making some serious compromises with color compression and hoping that non-Gaming Evolved partners scale back on use of uncompressible data (like that is going to happen on TWIMTBP titles if GM 200 arrives with 6GB of GDDR5)?


----------



## RealNeil (Mar 2, 2015)

Who knows what they're up to?
But I think it will be easier to get 8GB 390X cards for non-crazy prices. AMD seems to facilitate this with their partners.
You can buy *Sapphire Vapor-X 8GB R9-290X*  (*and other*) GPUs now, and they're not that bad as to price.

8GB NVIDIA based GPUs are not even listed for sale at *Newegg.com* right now, but I know they exist. (Probably expensive as hell)

I'm not sure that huge amounts of memory will help unless GPU's memory ~bandwidth~ gets a wider highway for data throughput.


----------



## mexicanscoper69 (Mar 2, 2015)

Dear Jen-Hsun,
You can say sorry all you want but it does knot change the fact that you false advertised and the value of my 970 has fallen and it stutters like hell at 1440p. 25%+ partial refund or full refund for this bulls***.  I don't believe you guys mess up those crucial specs and hope you guys pay for it. Its not ok to do what you did.

Cordially,
Juan


----------



## HumanSmoke (Mar 2, 2015)

RealNeil said:


> I'm not sure that huge amounts of memory will help unless GPU's memory ~bandwidth~ gets a wider highway for data throughput.


Double the memory of existing cards doesn't generally fully utilize the resource. It is more advertising and marketing opportunity. Double the memory but adding no increase in back end raster ops just moves the bottleneck from the framebuffer to the render. The only real advantage is that large textures can be held, which is often less an advantage for the 6GB/8GB card than it is a hobbling of the 3GB/4GB card...i.e., you're making the larger framebuffer card look better by choking the standard card.


RealNeil said:


> 8GB NVIDIA based GPUs are not even listed for sale at *Newegg.com* right now, but I know they exist. (Probably expensive as hell)


You probably won't see them until Nvidia needs a marketing push ( that is to say AMD releases a comparable competitor and Nvidia needs to reply). Chances are the 8GB versions will sport 8Gbps IC's, which with colour compression factored in should equate to a nominal 50% improvement in bandwidth


----------



## newtekie1 (Mar 2, 2015)

heydan83 said:


> Yes, and if that continues the same, we will need at least 6GB more quickly than anyone though...



I don't think so.  The Ultra-HD textures don't make a big difference during actual gameplay, in fact the difference isn't even noticeable when you're actually playing.

The areas where you need more than even 3GB right now is stupid situations that won't affect 99.99% of people.


----------



## Sony Xperia S (Mar 2, 2015)

Bugsy004 said:


> Has anyone returned their GTX970?



At least 10 000 people are against nvidia in the class law suit. 

And that's very nice.


----------



## HumanSmoke (Mar 2, 2015)

Sony Xperia S said:


> At least 10 000 people are against nvidia in the class law suit.
> And that's very nice.


You mean this one? If that's the case then it's just people signing up. It means neither that 10K people have done so, nor that those people necessarily owned a GTX 970.
The fact that the petition has had some people sign 100+ times (and publicize that they did), and requires no proof of card ownership just proves that while some people undoubtedly are affected, Change.org petitions tends to attract a lot of trolls, marketeers, armchair activists, and sceptics all eager to wage some PR war outside the confines of tech blog sites.


----------



## heydan83 (Mar 2, 2015)

HumanSmoke said:


> And yet, AMD's next flagship, the 390X is set to arrive with a 4GB framebuffer. So is the prediction of 4GB+ wrong, or are AMD shooting themselves in the foot, or are they making some serious compromises with color compression and hoping that non-Gaming Evolved partners scale back on use of uncompressible data (like that is going to happen on TWIMTBP titles if GM 200 arrives with 6GB of GDDR5)?



First Im not an amd fanboy Im not defending them, so if you think I will argue your comment you´re wrong, maybe your´re right will see what happen... I don´t know why fan boys keep bringing amd to the conversation, we´re talking about nvidia selling with lies...


----------



## HumanSmoke (Mar 3, 2015)

heydan83 said:


> First Im not an amd fanboy Im not defending them, so if you think I will argue your comment you´re wrong, maybe your´re right will see what happen... I don´t know why fan boys keep bringing amd to the conversation, we´re talking about nvidia selling with lies...


This has nothing to do with fanboyism. It has to do with one of the two primary graphics cards makers deciding that 4GB is sufficient for next generation gaming. If they believe this to be so, doesn't that imply that this is indeed the case? or do you know something that the world's second largest producer of discrete graphics doesn't? After all, you're the one making pronouncements. I'm just trying to understand how you came by this belief


heydan83 said:


> Yes, and if that continues the same, we will need at least 6GB more quickly than anyone though...



Awesome debating technique you have though....call people fanboys rather than explain how the you arrived at a conclusion. Way to get out of having to explain.


----------



## harry90 (Mar 3, 2015)

newtekie1 said:


> Not likely.  It handled the top AAA titles today on the highest possible settings with 4k.  If I have to turn off AA when running 4k I won't be too upset.
> 
> Also, the 1.5GB on the GTX580 was enough, in fact I had SLI 470s with 1.25GB.  They worked perfectly fine, the memory amount wasn't an issue during their lifespan.



Fanboy alert. I actually run 4k games maxed out setting with no AA and 970Sli failed where 295X performed well. 970 is limited to 1080p only anything higher and folks have a high chance of going over 3.5GB, stuttering and lagging all over. Even techspot recognized the issue and are calling the 970 3584+512MB. 512 being the fake illusionary memory part.


----------



## Eric_Cartman (Mar 3, 2015)

harry90 said:


> I actually run 4k games maxed out setting with no AA and 970Sli failed where 295X performed well.



All the way up until the 295x2 overheats, throttles, and framerates go to absolute shit, right?



harry90 said:


> 970 is limited to 1080p only anything higher and folks have a high chance of going over 3.5GB, stuttering and lagging all over.



You make statements like that and you're calling other people fanboys?!?


----------



## harry90 (Mar 3, 2015)

Eric_Cartman said:


> All the way up until the 295x2 overheats, throttles, and framerates go to absolute shit, right?
> 
> 
> 
> You make statements like that and you're calling other people fanboys?!?


Truth is bitter.


----------



## Eric_Cartman (Mar 3, 2015)

harry90 said:


> Truth is bitter.



How bitter?  Like a lime or a lemon?


----------



## EarthDog (Mar 3, 2015)

harry90 said:


> Fanboy alert. I actually run 4k games maxed out setting with no AA and 970Sli failed where 295X performed well. 970 is limited to 1080p only anything higher and folks have a high chance of going over 3.5GB, stuttering and lagging all over. Even techspot recognized the issue and are calling the 970 3584+512MB. 512 being the fake illusionary memory part.


Here is the thing you may have missed... it doesn't ALWAYS happen over 3.5GB It would only happen if whatever minimally used data that is stored in that 512MB portion gets accessed a lot. 

I had one, reviewed it, played games (BF4, Grid Autosport, Return to Castle Wolfenstein) at 2560x1440p with no visible issues. 

I think the truth lay somewhere in between your apocolyptic account and the its all rosey crowd.


----------



## 64K (Mar 3, 2015)

EarthDog said:


> Here is the thing you may have missed... it doesn't ALWAYS happen over 3.5GB It would only happen if whatever minimally used data that is stored in that 512MB portion gets accessed a lot.
> 
> I had one, reviewed it, played games (BF4, Grid Autosport, Return to Castle Wolfenstein) at 2560x1440p with no visible issues.
> 
> I think the truth lay somewhere in between your apocolyptic account and the its all rosey crowd.



Surely you meant Wolfenstein: The New Order. You could run Return to Castle Wolfenstein on a potato today and iirc 800X600 was the max resolution (Circa 2001). Great game though with some cool mods. I had a lot of fun with it. Dammit, now I want to download it and play it again. I will never get to my new games this way.


----------



## RealNeil (Mar 4, 2015)

64K said:


> Surely you meant Wolfenstein: The New Order. You could run Return to Castle Wolfenstein on a potato today and iirc 800X600 was the max resolution (Circa 2001). Great game though with some cool mods. I had a lot of fun with it. Dammit, now I want to download it and play it again. I will never get to my new games this way.



Ha-Ha!
There are plenty of cool older games that still call out to me. Return to Castle Wolfenstein is one of them.


----------



## EarthDog (Mar 6, 2015)

64K said:


> Surely you meant Wolfenstein: The New Order. You could run Return to Castle Wolfenstein on a potato today and iirc 800X600 was the max resolution (Circa 2001). Great game though with some cool mods. I had a lot of fun with it. Dammit, now I want to download it and play it again. I will never get to my new games this way.


ROFLMAO... surely I did.. Was thinking back to my original Xbox days apparently... LOL!


----------

