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

[the54thvoid]

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

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

 

[RejZoR]

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

 

[BiggieShady]

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

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

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

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

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

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

 

[Yorgos]

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

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

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

 

[BiggieShady]

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

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

 

[Yorgos]

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

[Fluffmeister]

TweakGuides tested FarCry 4:

The GTX 970 is a very popular GPU, so recent claims from some users that it is effectively limited to 3.5GB of its VRAM, and starts to suffer when using all 4GB, have caused a lot of concern. Nvidia's official response confirms that there is a segmentation of the 970's VRAM between a 3.5GB section and a 512MB section, but that this has no performance impact.

I decided to test this out for myself. Running Far Cry 4 at settings just high enough to use around 4GB of VRAM (3,840x2,400 via DSR plus all other settings to maximum, except SMAA) resulted in expectedly lower framerates, but no significant stuttering or hitching as demonstrated in this YouTube Video. See this Screenshot from the video to confirm that 4GB is being used - zoom in on the top left, second entry on the second line of the Afterburner overlay.

Unfortunately some people have been "testing" this issue by using system-crippling settings, such as 4K resolution combined with 8x MSAA, and blaming the inevitable 5FPS slideshow on the VRAM. Quite aside from the fact that no current single GPU performs well at those settings, remember that slow or insufficient VRAM manifests itself as severe hitching (longer pauses) and stuttering (frequent brief hiccups), not an overall reduction in FPS. I did notice in my testing however that the GTX 970 definitely prefers using only 3.5GB of its VRAM in most cases; in the VRAM-hungry Watch Dogs for example, as settings were raised the 970 remained stuck at ~3.5GB VRAM usage right up until 8x MSAA was engaged at 4K resolution. After several hours of testing though my conclusion is that there's no discernible practical impact from this issue: the GTX 970 performs smoothly, whether using 3.5 or 4GB of VRAM. If you're experiencing stuttering or low framerates on a 970, in my opinion it is quite likely due to a general system issue or excessive GPU load, not VRAM segmentation.

http://www.tweakguides.com/

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Well one game tested equates to thorough yeah.

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

Really dude wtf

 

[Fluffmeister]

Well one game tested equates to thorough yeah.

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

Really dude wtf

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

 

[the54thvoid]

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

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

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

 

[TRWOV]

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

 

[Devon68]

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

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

 

[Steevo]

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

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

Up to 68% scaling efficiency.

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

 

[RejZoR]

TweakGuides tested FarCry 4:



http://www.tweakguides.com/

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

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

 

[XL-R8R]

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


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


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


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

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

 

[GhostRyder]

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

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

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

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

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

 

[VulkanBros]

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

 

[the54thvoid]

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

at 1080p you'll be fine.

 

[VulkanBros]

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

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

 

[Fluffmeister]

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

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

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

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

 

[RejZoR]

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

 

[Rahmat Sofyan]

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

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

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

Go Green!!!

 

[Fluffmeister]

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

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

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

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

 

[TRWOV]

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

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

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