Wednesday, January 28th 2015
NVIDIA to Tune GTX 970 Resource Allocation with Driver Update
NVIDIA plans to release a fix for the GeForce GTX 970 memory allocation issue. In an informal statement to users of the GeForce Forums, an NVIDIA employee said that the company is working on a driver update that "will tune what's allocated where in memory to further improve performance." The employee also stressed that the GTX 970 is still the best performing graphics card at its price-point, and if current owners are not satisfied with their purchase, they should return it for a refund or exchange.
Source:
GeForce Forums
89 Comments on NVIDIA to Tune GTX 970 Resource Allocation with Driver Update
nVidia says that the last 512MB chunk is 4 times faster than system RAM over PCIe... but you have to take into account that if said 512MB were accessible over the same link you wouldn't need to use system RAM in the first place making the comparison moot.
A CMT core/thread (call it whatever you want) has fully functional cores/threads.
The pipeline is complete for each one, as opposed to SMT.
2 billion transistors vs 1.2 billion. REALLY, is this even an argument. So you wake up one day and decide to buy 2 billion transistors? It's not like they told you that there are 2 billion transistors but the .8 are overbaked and the 1/3 of the CPU is not working.
The way I see it, is that there is two issues here:
1. Nvidia mislead customers. If you purchased the GTX 970 purely on the basis that it has the same memory subsystem as the GTX 980 then sure, by all means be pissed off however, the GTX 970 still performs where it did in the initial reviews and still competes with the competitors products. Its ability to run high resolution/high quality content hasn't changed, it just has optimization issues in very particular scenarios.
2. Perhaps the biggest problem here is not that it has 3.5GB primary partition and a 0.5GB secondary partition, but rather how it is utilized. From what I have read, only one partition can be accessed at a time in hardware and due to optimization issues it can, on occasion, cause stuttering. Not knowing anything about the inner workings and latencies associated with VRAM to system RAM vs VRAM partition one to VRAM partition two and vice versa, I'd hazard a guess and say while having the secondary partition as a cache of sorts, with the idea that it saves time accessing system RAM, may seem like a good idea, if it limits access to primary partition and still gives similar/more latency to VRAM to system RAM access, it may not be such a good idea after all (i.e. it causes more stuttering than it helps reduce it). Either way, Nvidia really need to work out the optimization issues.
Now, I know you haven't had any problems with yours on any games but there are people that has had them so the algorithm that nVidia used isn't 100% reliable. You can see lots of videos on YouTube showing random stuttering on the 970. Granted, several were uploaded this week so some could be fake but there are some that were uploaded weeks before the drama imploded:
So the card has problems in some setups. I've often had to help people with a problem I can't reproduce, not every PC is the same even if you have two with the same components, OS, etc.
I suppose if the driver can resolve the 0.5GB secondary partition running slower and more seamless in transitioning between the partitions then they'll have redemption. Well YES! Nvidia engineering said they fused off the L2. Just because the company says that marketing wast unaware doesn't mean it wasn't "planned".
"This team (PR) was unaware that with "Maxwell," you could segment components previously thought indivisible, or that you could "partial disable" components."
There big boys and darn well knew at Executive level meetings (marketing isn’t part of that?) what and how those chips were needing to be “segmented” to achieve the volumes asked for by marketing? I don't start the treads. As above... this can’t be sloughed-off as just some "miss-step" by low level marketing nerds. Agreed, while owners who run into this might see the level at which some in community more "white-washing" legitimate concerns just because the "canned" reviews didn't expose it! (Nvidia darn well knew they wouldn't.) If it has no effect as you intend, why couldn't Nvidia not just put information (at release or since) of the use of "segmented" implementation of memory, which something they’re executed in the past. I can't believe there wasn’t many engineers and executives reading reviews who couldn’t recognize this “supposed marketing over-site”, but those employees/company couldn't come out right then, or months ago after they saw the rise of issues on their own forums!
Yeah! All of you guys start returning your 970s and I'll buy them used or refurbished for a lot less!
But the question I have for everyone trying to say AMD is somehow above doing what nVidia did is, do you remember when AMD released a series of graphics cards and then 2 months later after all the reviews were done and published, released a driver that sneakily reduced performance to stop the cards from overheating and dying prematurely? Do you remember that?
So, which is worse, revising some specs on paper and leaving the performance the same, or purposely lowering the performance with a driver update and not telling anyone?;)
An indication might be seen with the poll TPU are conducting. The comments seem to indicate that while Nvidia did wrong, the hardware is OK - but the poll indicates an overwhelming difference of opinion. Matters not a jot. People gotta get their hate on. You aren't living unless you embrace armchair/hashtag activism, and join the raging against everyone from Obama to why Japan has more flavours of Kit-Kats than your country.
From my understanding, nvidia is doing it's best to shove everything typically contained in ram (driver/os stuff even used at idle) into that .5GB partition so games will generally not utilize it. That *should* help, granted I have no idea what is typical in that regard. As I sit idle at my desktop currently, the OS is using 1GB video ram (but that is also at 4k60). I have no idea how much of that generally is taken away from the OS when a game takes exclusive control of the gpu.
PeterS@Nvidia has edited his original post.
Looks like Nvidia is erasing any knowledge of culpability for any potential legal action to come.
Once an engineer now customer care. :( Poor Peter is going to be tossed to the wolfs.
Nvidia GeForce twitter response Since this has blown up they are going into shut-down mode. Any statement they make will have to be vented through there legal team and I'm sure they are telling them don't reference 970 as it can be seen and used as an admission of culpability.
Plus there were plenty of opportunities where this should have come up in the reviews. W1z did a lot of testing at 4k with the card both single card and SLI. You'd think he would have mentioned the stuttering instead of praising the card as a great card for 4k. He even tested BF4 and Watch_Dogs at 4k, both of which I know use more than 3.5GB.