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[PetriP-TNT]

Awww yiss, cheap upgrade for 980 coming right up

 

[Haint]

Same here.

The slower VRAM reduces the lifespan of this card a bit for me, not to mention we were lied to about the true specifications of the card.

Don't worry about it, 970 owners will come out on top one way or the other. This is so flagrant and open and shut I don't expect Nvidia are even going to wait for the inevitable class action(s) to be filed, they're going to preempt with some kind of offer. If it's something relatively worthless like an Ubishit game code, I'd advise NOT taking them and signing away your rights, cause this will likely go further a game code.

970 OWNERS PSA: DO NOT SIGN AWAY YOUR RIGHTS FOR THE INEVITABLE GAME CODE OFFER, this will almost assuredly go further than that.

 

[wanderingprostheyltite]

Don't worry about it, 970 owners will come out on top one way or the other. This is so flagrant and open and shut I don't expect Nvidia are even going to wait for the inevitable class action(s) to be filed, they're going to preempt with some kind of offer. If it's something relatively worthless like an Ubishit game code, I'd advise NOT taking them and signing away your rights, cause this will likely go further a game code.

I want to believe, but I seriously doubt they're going to do anything substantial for us.

 

[Honey Bunny]

Don't worry about it, 970 owners will come out on top one way or the other. This is so flagrant and open and shut I don't expect Nvidia are even going to wait for the inevitable class action(s) to be filed, they're going to preempt with some kind of offer. If it's something relatively worthless like an Ubishit game code, I'd advise NOT taking them and signing away your rights, cause this will likely go further a game code.

I already got a Ubishit game code as a promo when I bought the card

 

[PetriP-TNT]

I already got a Ubishit game code as a promo when I bought the card

I choose Far Cry 4 over Unity and now I have to take Unity too

 

[Bastables]

I disagree. People bought this card in droves because of the benchmarks not because of the specs on the box. Also no you weren't forced to pay marked up prices at all. I was able to grab the MSI version for retail price on Amazon and this was a week before Christmas.



Stuck with a great card that will easily last you the next 3 or 4 years at least. :'(

I disagree as well. I am in the market for a gfx card upgrade, it was pretty much going to be a 970. Now with the revelations it's certainly not going to be a 970.

 

[themadcowtipper]

Don't worry about it, 970 owners will come out on top one way or the other. This is so flagrant and open and shut I don't expect Nvidia are even going to wait for the inevitable class action(s) to be filed, they're going to preempt with some kind of offer. If it's something relatively worthless like an Ubishit game code, I'd advise NOT taking them and signing away your rights, cause this will likely go further a game code.

970 OWNERS PSA: DO NOT SIGN AWAY YOUR RIGHTS FOR THE INEVITABLE GAME CODE OFFER, this will almost assuredly go further than that.

I think that will be all they offer, people expecting a free upgrade to a 980 is living in fantasy world. At most maybe they will let you pay the difference of the 970 to get a 980, if you return the 970, but I highly doubt it. I personally wouldn't expect more then a free game or two.

I already got a Ubishit game code as a promo when I bought the card

A free Ubisoft game, you got cheated twice..

 

[cyberheater]

Have you been mis-sold a GTX 970. Contact 555-1234 and a agent will help to resolve your problem.

 

[Fularu]

I'm pissed

I was hesitating between a 290x and the 970 and now I feel robbed.

 

[Barzul]

I'm pissed

I was hesitating between a 290x and the 970 and now I feel robbed.

I actually think despite this the 970 is still a better card than the 290x. Still a shitty situation.

 

[Yudoken]

I already got a Ubishit game code as a promo when I bought the card

I was smart enough to sell it for a good price (The crew was just released and I sold it only a few € less than the original release price).
If they offer a 980 upgrade (but I wouldn't give more than 100€ more) I would agree but I'm pretty sure that they are not gonna do this.
Can someone show an example of a similar case and what the people got out of it?

 

[Haint]

I was smart enough to sell it for a good price (The crew was just released and I sold it only a few € less than the original release price).
If they offer a 980 upgrade (but I wouldn't give more than 100€ more) I would agree but I'm pretty sure that they are not gonna do this.
Can someone show an example of a similar case and what the people got out of it?

Recent gaming related example, Sony will have to pay consumers $50 PSN Bucks or $25 cash for advertisements suggesting Vita could remote play certain unsupported games and that it allowed play over 3G connections. The 970's case seems much more explicit and the product involved is on average about $100 more expensive. I'm not even sure this would fall under false/misleading advertising as they knowingly and explicitly misstated the product's descriptions full stop, not open to interpretation. A $20 game code for sure isn't going to cover it though.

 

[AmyS]

Assuming Nvidia launches GTX 1080 and 1070 cards (regardless of whatever the naming scheme actually is) later this year based on the GM200 Big Maxwell, they'd be wise not to make the same mistake with 1070's VRAM / ROPs setup as they did with the 970.

There was no problem with the GTX 770 like this right? I'm sure it did not.

 

[GUN-NAC]

There was no problem with the GTX 770 like this right? I'm sure it did not.

The GTX 770 was the full GK104 GPU (the same one as the GTX 680 had, the 770 was clocked slightly higher & had faster rated memory). The Titan/780 etc was the GK110.

The GK104 cards priced directly below - GTX 670 and the later GTX 760 - had no unusual memory configurations or anything like that.

 

[Moral Panic]

Recent gaming related example, Sony will have to pay consumers $50 PSN Bucks or $25 cash for advertisements suggesting Vita could remote play certain unsupported games and that it allowed play over 3G connections. The 970's case seems much more explicit and the product involved is on average about $100 more expensive. I'm not even sure this would fall under false/misleading advertising as they knowingly and explicitly misstated the product's descriptions full stop, not open to interpretation. A $20 game code for sure isn't going to cover it though.

They misstated their specs to reviewers though, not to the general audience. AFAIK all the stuff on their website etc is accurate. I'm not a lawyer so I dunno if there is a legal case to answer.

 

[Haint]

They misstated their specs to reviewers though, not to the general audience. AFAIK all the stuff on their website etc is accurate. I'm not a lawyer so I dunno if there is a legal case to answer.

They disseminated the specifications to outlets for the explicit purpose of publishing to the general public. Even ignoring that, the pertinent specs are published on their own website's product page:

GTX 970 Memory Specs:
7.0 GbpsMemory Clock
4 GBStandard Memory Config
GDDR5Memory Interface
256-bitMemory Interface Width
224Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec)

You'll note the lack of any asterisk* denoting a functional 3.5GB limit or reduction to the stated bandwidth or bus width.

 

[AmyS]

The GTX 770 was the full GK104 GPU (the same one as the GTX 680 had, the 770 was clocked slightly higher & had faster rated memory). The Titan/780 etc was the GK110.

The GK104 cards priced directly below - GTX 670 and the later GTX 760 - had no unusual memory configurations or anything like that.

Opps, you're right, my bad. I knew GTX 770 was the full GK104 but it slipped my mind for a sec.

 

[cyberheater]

In terms of ROPs etc... What does the bios of the GTX 970 actually report? Does anyone know?

 

[Iacobellis]

Don't worry about it, 970 owners will come out on top one way or the other. This is so flagrant and open and shut I don't expect Nvidia are even going to wait for the inevitable class action(s) to be filed, they're going to preempt with some kind of offer. If it's something relatively worthless like an Ubishit game code, I'd advise NOT taking them and signing away your rights, cause this will likely go further a game code.

970 OWNERS PSA: DO NOT SIGN AWAY YOUR RIGHTS FOR THE INEVITABLE GAME CODE OFFER, this will almost assuredly go further than that.

So did we overpay for our cards, or would have the 970 with the original specs been in the $400 area?

 

[Kezen]

I wonder what Nvidia will do to put out the fire.

 

[protomouse]

970 OWNERS PSA: DO NOT SIGN AWAY YOUR RIGHTS FOR THE INEVITABLE GAME CODE OFFER, this will almost assuredly go further than that.

Sound advice.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Oh man I'd love to get a partial refund on my 970.

Not because I need it, I just like money. When I sent an E-mail to Amazon asking if they would be retroactively applying the Pick Your Path Ubisoft bundle to launch customers, after a few "we'll get back to you" responses, they gave me an 85 (Australian) dollar "goodwill refund".

So I basically only paid 344 AUD for the card (including international shipping). If Nvidia gave me any more back it would be like the greatest value of all time.

 

[Bricky]

I wonder what Nvidia will do to put out the fire.

"Well, we needed to get rid of those leftover Ubisoft game codes sooner or later."

I choose Far Cry 4 over Unity and now I have to take Unity too

I already got Far Cry 4 from buying the Unity season pass, so I'd be forced to take The Crew.

 

[Dambrosi]

They misstated their specs to reviewers though, not to the general audience. AFAIK all the stuff on their website etc is accurate. I'm not a lawyer so I dunno if there is a legal case to answer.

Phisheep signal activated?

 

[bootski]

bootski, have you tried Lords of the Fallen yet?

I have everything cranked on the game and I noticed that the vram sits at 3.5MB used. I have MSI Afterburner set up to monitor my stats.

haven't had a chance. i ended up getting shadows of mordor and it was the same old story. there was an addition to the 3.5GiB holdout of some stuttering and tearing but i wasn't sure if it was game or memory issue related. the graphic above in this thread somewhere seems to suggest that the game is just a dick to 970 owners in general and even to the 980 owners, but less so.

however, shadow of mordor is a game that, for me, really shows the issue at hand here. i run the game at a 1080p w/ the hi-def pack and the settings at high/ultra. as it is, i'm at 60fps but with some framerate dips and some weird stuttering and tearing. the memory is also locked right at 3.5GiB and only went to 3.6 in the last 10 or so mins of my hour playtime. who's to say that that extra 4-500MiB that i expected to get when i bought a 4GiB card wouldn't alleviate some of those issues?

all in all, with that very nice writeup from pcper (thnx for the shoutout) and one from anandtech, i think we now have a much better understanding of what's going on and it up to buyers to choose what they want to do. i personally would not be rushing out to the store to buy a 970 if i didn't have one already and would hold off a bit until you can see where this issue is going. in a world where games are recommending 6GB of VRAM for textures, buying what's essentially a 3.5GB w/ 500MB-buffer card doesn't seem so appealing (i know this description will piss some people off).

in fact, the sole reason why i chose the 970 over the 980 is because i figured with just slightly lesser cuda cores and a lower base clock speed, it was going to be a straight performance decrease not an actual logic difference. and the spec sheets and benchmarks reflected that for the most part. now, it's turned out to be less cores, rop's, l2 cache, essentially less ram and lower overall average bandwidth.

again, for me, since i can still return this card for a 980, i may very well do it before friday. however, if nvidia offers any sort of compensation for the issue, the card drops in price to a price/perfomance that's well beyond anything on the market today. even more so than the current champion which is the 970 is at its current price. decisions decisions.

anyways, that's all i gotta say about that for now. thanks for the kind words everyone.

this was an 64min playtime recorded. you can see i only break the barrier towards the last 10mins or so. i really didn't think it was even going to do it. also, the graph doesn't show this or provide any explanation as to why but towards the end of my playtime, tearing and stuttering got noticeable and very distracting. this is the 3rd example i've posted of the 970 behaving as if it only has 3.5GiB of VRAM. Shadow of Mordor, Far Cry 4 and COD:AW (youtube link).

Heh, bootski got mentioned in the pcper article and they linked to his post in this thread.

you da real mvp

fuckin hilarious

 

[jfoul]

Would be nice if EVGA offered a discount to step-up to the GTX980.

 

[CyanideFuse]

A bit more testing of Mordor: By chance I found a good place to test VRAM increases/decreases at Nurnen Peninsula at the top left of second area of game.

This area allowed me to get the VRAM usage from 3.3GB up to about 3660MB quickly. From outside the stronghold (where your tower is) the VRAM is around 3.3GB. Entering the Nurnen Fisheries stronghold ups this to over 3.5GB in a short walking distance so it is quite useful for testing.

I structured my play so that I would spend a bit of time in the 3.3GB area and then run into the 3.5GB area to create as clear a picture as I could.

I have attached a graphic and have highlighted spikes within the purple box occurring at 10:47:02 through to 10:47:13. The spreadsheet will provide exact figures as to what the VRAM usage and frametimes are of this highlighted area. The spikes occurred when VRAM was below 3.5GB. This was the only time when frametime spiked badly; ironically it was when VRAM was lower than 3.5GB.

The frametime spikes at the end of the graphic coincide with when I paused the game to go back to the menu to quit. I cut this data from the spreadsheet.

Spreadsheet data of playthrough (250ms polling rate of data): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uvFjlFofH5Es4PKerPQZ4gO3CXp2g8pz-OD6-21IJYs/pubhtml

I didn't pause the game or alter any settings. I set my card to a standard profile without any overclocking: Speed of 1316MHz / Memory 3506MHz.

 

[knerl]

Is someone suing them yet?
I payed for 64 ROPs, but I got 56.
Nvidia knows exactly how their card works yet they didn't bother to print out the true specifications.

 

[V1LÆM]

now i'm glad i held off building my pc. was gonna get a 970. definitely won't be buying one anymore. a 960 is a joke and 980 is out of budget. looks like AMD will be getting my £300 for one of their new cards.

 

[Mr. Enigma]

I just bought a 970 last month too. Great.

 

[deoee]

I just bought a 970 last month too. Great.

I got mine ~2 weeks ago x0

 

[knerl]

The worst part is that pretty much all of them suffer form terrible coil whine too.
Went through five of them which all had horrible buzzing that cut through a noise isolated Define R4 even while pushing only 60-120fps or 120-300fps. Finally I got a card that doesn't have any coil whine at all. Gigabyte's GTX 970 G1 Gaming barely has any whining even at 5000+fps. Tried 2x EVGA (SC and SSC), 2x Asus Strix and one msi gaming. Gigabyte's card is the only one without coil whine. Might add that I'm very sensitive to high pitched frequencies. Love the card, but now this? Nvidia is my choice of manufacturer because of better driver support and in some games I actually think PHYSX looks absolutely fantastic and actually add to the immersion. Depending on how AMD's 380X measure I don't know anymore.

 

[Unai]

I sold my titan and got two 970. I wouldn't do that today.

 

[motogoto]

Got my msi 970 gaming edition today and I love it.

 

[PetriP-TNT]

Someone posted on the nVidia forum that Titans have the same design

 

[nowarning]

It doesn't really bother me that much, I got a 970 last year it's still a great card and it blitzes every game I play. I've only ever had coil whine when vsync was disabled on a few games (e.g. Dead Island menu, card goes mental at that)

I'll be looking to upgrade whenever rift CV comes out anyway so I'm really not bothered. I suppose every cloud has a silver lining in that there is the possibility of a free game code or a discounted upgrade or something?

No getting around Nvidia's shitty marketing though, this is definitely not cool.

 

[Terbinator]

The one part I don't get is why even bother sticking the extra RAM chips on the card? Surely they'd have benefited from less costs to themselves and having a more defined split between the 970 and 980 to boot.

 

[NingenJanai]

The one part I don't get is why even bother sticking the extra RAM chips on the card? Surely they'd have benefited from less costs to themselves and having a more defined split between the 970 and 980 to boot.

I think it's because the 970 are just defective 980s to which they just disable some parts of the memory controllers or something, I might be wrong tho.

 

[Naked Snake]

The one part I don't get is why even bother sticking the extra RAM chips on the card? Surely they'd have benefited from less costs to themselves and having a more defined split between the 970 and 980 to boot.

I don't think the 0.5gb is a separate chip. It's a logical partition, like splitting an HDD into different logical drives

 

[LilJoka]

I don't think the 0.5gb is a separate chip. It's a logical partition, like splitting an HDD into different logical drives

It has 8x512Mb chips.

The extra 512mb has got to be somewhat useful if they optimise properly.

 

[Salaadin]

Anyone know if retailers are issuing refunds on these cards now because of this issue?
Really contemplating ditching mine and going with AMD.

 

[LilJoka]

Anyone know if retailers are issuing refunds on these cards now because of this issue?
Really contemplating ditching mine and going with AMD.

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/803518/geforce-900-series/gtx-970-3-5gb-vram-issue/post/4438090/#4438090

Hey,

First, I want you to know that I'm not just a mod, I work for NVIDIA in Santa Clara.

I totally get why so many people are upset. We messed up some of the stats on the reviewer kit and we didn't properly explain the memory architecture. I realize a lot of you guys rely on product reviews to make purchase decisions and we let you down.

It sucks because we're really proud of this thing. The GTX970 is an amazing card and I genuinely believe it's the best card for the money that you can buy. We're working on a driver update that will tune what's allocated where in memory to further improve performance.

Having said that, I understand that this whole experience might have turned you off to the card. If you don't want the card anymore you should return it and get a refund or exchange. If you have any problems getting that done, let me know and I'll do my best to help.

--Peter

 

[potam]

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/803518/geforce-900-series/gtx-970-3-5gb-vram-issue/post/4438090/#4438090

I'm not sure how to read that, though. In that specific thread, he's replying to someone who bought the card last month. At first I read it as a general, "If you're unhappy with your card and the retailer won't offer a refund, contact us." But when I went back and reread it, I'm not so sure.

 

[LilJoka]

I'm not sure how to read that, though. In that specific thread, he's replying to someone who bought the card last month. At first I read it as a general, "If you're unhappy with your card and the retailer won't offer a refund, contact us." But when I went back and reread it, I'm not so sure.

No harm in trying though.

 

[Salaadin]

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/803518/geforce-900-series/gtx-970-3-5gb-vram-issue/post/4438090/#4438090

Hmmmm. I'll give it a shot.
I don't have a lot of hope for amazon to issue a refund 4 months after I got the card.
It'd be nice if nvidia issued a statement to retailers or something telling them to accept returns up to a certain date.

My other hangup is this: I can afford to upgrade to a 980 if I get a refund but the 380x is supposedly close and I'm kinda leaning towards AMD since my impression of nvidia is soured at the moment. But I'm not sure I should wait a month to try to return this.

 

[potam]

No harm in trying though.

Oh for sure. I could be totally wrong about my interpretation of that post, but I just don't want people seeing that and thinking it's some sort of official statement from Nvidia saying: "Call us to get your money back."

edit: I've already contacted Newegg about it, but they already have a canned response which I assume means they've already been hearing a lot of complaints. Whenever I have some time I'll be calling Nvidia next, and then possibly MSI, though I'm not sure if it's really MSI's problem to deal with or what.

 

[gogogow]

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/803518/geforce-900-series/gtx-970-3-5gb-vram-issue/post/4438090/#4438090

Eh....i'm not even sure how that would work. Unless Nvidia have like officially contacted all the retailers on all continents that they will take back any GTX 970 cards that are returned by costumers, because of the RAM issue. People have them for months, no retailer will take them back, unless, like I said, Nvidia would compensate them.

Nvidia have done nothing other than brushing it off and downplaying it. Are we getting another official statement by them? Or is it basically "deal with it" and it's "done"?

 

[Salaadin]

Eh....i'm not even sure how that would work. Unless Nvidia have like officially contacted all the retailers on all continents that they will take back any GTX 970 cards that are returned by costumers, because of the RAM issue. People have them for months, no retailer will take them back, unless, like I said, Nvidia would compensate them.

Nvidia have done nothing other than brushing it off and downplaying it. Are we getting another official statement by them? Or is it basically "deal with it" and it's "done"?

I've gotten amazon to issue a refund after the 30 day window but they will charge a restocking fee. Really don't feel like that...

I'll try and contact them after work tonight

 

[potam]

Ok, nm...maybe they will be announcing some official return program.

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1041390151&postcount=287

Yo.

So.

Mostly I just lurk in these parts but some of the modders might recognize me from PMs and the like. Besides being a lurker on the forums, I'm actually the NVIDIA GeForce social media guy. I work for NVIDIA out here in Santa Clara, CA.

I know there's a lot of dialogue about is or isn't the 970 perf a problem, what's the impact, what's the next step, does 970 suck now? Let me just jump in and say that while our communication as a company has clearly been problematic the 970 is just as amazing today as it was at launch if not better.

But I get it. I understand why GTX 970 owners are upset and why NVIDIA fans are disappointed.

We posted stats. We didn't properly explain the memory architecture. We messed up. We never intended to deceive anyone but despite our best intentions mistakes were made and many of you got information that you thought you could trust and then made decisions based on that info.

We screwed up.

But it's not that simple for me. I really think the 970 is an awesome card. I STILL think it's an awesome card and as a rational human being I have to realize that it wouldn't get the praise it has if it weren't every bit as incredible as I like to think it is.

But, with that said, others might feel different. You might feel deceived and maybe you don't want to trust me/us/nvidia. Maybe you just want to know what your options are...

So, here's the thing. If anyone doesn't want their GTX 970 now, knowing what they now know, you should know you have the option to return it. You should do what will give you the best gaming experience possible and if you need help to get that done let me know.

I think most will find they still love their GTX 970 as much now as they did when they purchased itbut for those that need to take another route, you have the option.

If needed, I'll help. Just let me know.

edit: He's posted on reddit as well: http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/co..._benchmarked_gtx_970s_in_sli_at_1440p/co3790k

 

[bj00rn_]

I wonder what Nvidia will do to put out the fire.

Without saying what they should do for us, strategically it wouldn't be good for them to admit errors suggesting that there is some kind of serious problem with the card. It's going to take a lot for them to do that. But I'll be impressed if they do.