Graphics Nvidia’s GTX970 has a rather serious memory allocation bug

http://techreport.com/blog/27143/here-another-reason-the-geforce-gtx-970-is-slower-than-the-gtx-980

the weirdness was first talked about in October of last year -but where techreport was slightly wrong , the disabled SM`s actually had an effect on ROP count

 

Reading what Anandtech have said, I feel those with 2 or more of these cards playing at high resolutions are the ones most likely to be affected. I am one of these people. These setups will likely need greater access to the full 4GB and so experience the slower speed.

 

After reading the latest developments, and true technical data on this card, I'm starting to change my mind about this. I bought a card SPECIFICALLY to replace my SLI 670s in order to give me headroom for when I upgrade soon to 4K, and use less power. Given the likelihood that a maxxed out game like Far Cry 4 running at 4K will use all 4GB, I'm starting to feel a little pi$$ed off actually, because I've NOT bought the ideal card for that purpose.. despite thinking that I had thanks to NVidia publishing the wrong specs.

I've actually bought a card with 56ROPs, 1.75MB of L2, and 500GB of VRAM that shares a memory controller and runs 7 times slower than the rest.

While that in itself may not be the end of the world, it's NOT the card I thought I was buying when I read NVidia's specs, because THAT card had 64ROPs, 2MB of L2, and a full 4GB of VRAM that ran at full speed.

I've not a cat in hell's chance of getting a refund from Scan now, and raising a ticket with EVGA will result in sod all, so I think I'll stick it on Ebay. I just feel cheated and lied to, which is why I want rid of the ****ing thing.

 

I don't get the fuss. I'm pretty impressed with the 4k benchmarks from the 970, for the money. Doesn't seem to drop off relative to the 980, that I can see.

 

Don't get me wrong... I'm not saying it's a bad card.. far from it. It's just not really the card I was told I was buying. Seeing as I specifically wanted a card ideal for 4K gaming when I drop another one in there later that also saves a shedload of power while still using it now as a single card, I could have made a better choice had I KNOWN it's REAL technical specifications.

The whole experience is tainted somehow now. May sound silly to some... but there you go. I feel what I feel. I've amended my sig accordingly in protest.

 

(from this thread)

 

original titan pete - not the new one , no way I can justify that much for the new one

 

Good job you didn't post the follow on sentences from anandtech otherwise it would have made what you quoted seem inaccurate.

 

I think my initial assessment is partially correct, the HOW part is correct: it is to do with the way memory is accessed in relation to parts of disabled GPU. I got the WHAT part wrong, one L2 memory block is also disabled causing one memory controller to hang off another.

End of the day, 970 owners are at the mercy of nVidia driver team. If they mess up optimisation on a game that needs 4GB of VRAM, we'll see shuttering. Personally I'm not very comfortable with this, it would have been nice to know this at the start.

But I'm sticking with my 1440p monitor so hopefully 970 will be alright for at least 2 years. I've not had a single shutter on Shadow of Mordor, probably because I didn't use Ultra texture setting, where the game warned "6GB VRAM required".

 

I feel the same as Pookeyhead. Had I known this in November I would not have bought two 970s to run my 4k screen. I find it hard to believe there will not be a consumer backlash for nvidia? Is it not false advertising, unintentional or not?

 

No, it isn't false advertising. The 4GB of VRAM on the box is correct. The benchmarks in reviews are all correct. You've still got exactly the same card as you purchased, performing in exactly the same manner. This use of dual memory speeds isn't new, NV have been using unbalanced memory since the 500 series and it has never been more than a by-line as the performance 'hit' is part and parcel of the benchmarks.

This is a case of a mistake in published technical specifications. You still have 4GB of VRAM, but you've definitely 'lost' 8 ROPs and 0.25MB of L2 cache (but the point stands that this is what it shipped with and benchmarks don't change).

I'd argue that selling the R9 295 as an 8GB card (as listed everywhere) is more of an issue. It's not 8GB, it's 2x4GB.

 

As I say, a mistake in published technical specs is false advertising. I read these specifications carefully before spending £1090 on two cards and a monitor, and they were incorrect.

The different testers that have published benchmarks did not know to look for issues such as stuttering or slowdown when in demanding VRAM situations.

I can see the 970 has 4GB of VRAM, that is clearly not the issue.

 

Give it a few days and there's bound to be some kind of community effort to sue Nvidia for false advertising, good luck with that BTW.

 

Except NVIDIA don't publish the detailed technical specifications. The number of ROPs is not on retailers' websites, nor is the L2 cache size.

To find those incorrect numbers you must have read reviews, and therefore benchmarks. You knew exactly how fast the card would perform, and it still performs exactly like that. Plenty of sites did 4K testing without noticing any problems (including Bit-Tech). I really doubt you purchased the card based solely upon the number of ROPs and the amount of L2 cache it had.

The 970 is a few percentage slower than the 980 at 4K. That's a fair trade for being significantly cheaper.

 

I purchased the card happy in the knowledge that there was not some wonky memory interface that will require the crackerjack Nvidia driver team to work their backsides off on every big (read: ultra textures and increasing graphical finery) release to prevent crippling bandwidth and allocation issues.

Cei, you are writing as if this was to be expected and we should all be grateful. Some of you can stick you head in the sands but Nvidia are taking notice; as Anandtech said, they have never seen their GPU vice president performing lip service on a Sunday about a ROP count.

Corky, the 970 has been a very successful card in terms of sales. A few suits may get filed one hopes!

This is performance in synthetic or standardized testing based on the review benchmarks.

 

Except NVIDIA have done exactly the same work in the past with the likes of the 660 and 660Ti. Nobody cared, nobody even noticed. They've been doing this fine-tuning work for the 970 since it came out as well.

Yes, this is a problem for NVIDIA, hence their response. However people are literally blowing this out of proportion. NVIDIA are not coming along and taking your 970 and stripping out stuff. That stuff was never there in the first place.

There's one plus thing though, might mean lots of cheap 970s as people overreact and sell theirs. You might get lucky (I doubt it) and get a whole $10 in compensation in about five years if this goes to class action.

 

Maybe I should hang on for a cheap 970 then?

 

That's my plan. Did they ever come with the Titan style cooler? Anybody wanting to sell one of them for £150? I think that's fair, I mean they're totally gimped cards that simply aren't worth buying.

 

OCUK commissioned a "stock" 970, but it's currently on pre-order. It's expensive, but then the Titan cooler is a beast - no other blower touches it. I would have bought it if I hadn't already jumped the gun and bought its bigger brother

Linkage.