No, the VRAM stays the same because both cards are rendering the same scene. They need the same information.
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GeForce GTX 970s seem to have an issue using all 4GB of VRAM, Nvidia looking into it
- Thread starter Naked Snake
- Start date
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Pathfinder
Member
There is no best way. If you want a refund from Newegg, you will have to pursue that yourself.
Otherwise, you can just keep and enjoy the card, but be mindful of this limitation.
0.1.1.2.3.5.8.13.21.34.55
Banned
Ask yourself. Is your potential (not guaranteed) refund of 350 bones, going to buy you anything better, with regard to performance?
Naked Snake
Member
Nope. Just half of that.
Edit: didn't realize there was another page to the thread.
Yeah, I'd just try to get one from where you bought it, and if you run into any problems, I dunno, maybe "Peter" can help?
http://www.maximumpc.com/nvidia_wil...ers_get_refund_says_driver_update_coming_2015
Personally, I'm probably going to go ahead and buy a second one in the near future...
opticalmace
Member
No, it only uses that of a single card (the one that has the lowest, if the config isn't balanced). So two 970s in SLI only have 4GB of memory total, like a single card.
edit: haha shit, I should have refreshed the page before replying. Beaten x 1 million.
opticalmace
Member
Bit of a cross-post because both threads are active on the same topic:
Frame time analysis is up on PC Per.
The tl;dr is there is definitely frametime variance when you use more than 3.5GB on the 970, but it cannot be said if that is strictly due to the memory issue or perhaps the other differences between the 970 and 980. Also, some games appear to really try to prevent the 970 from using that last 0.5GB of memory.
I highly recommend giving it a good read to determine if it matters to you or not.
Frame time analysis is up on PC Per.
The tl;dr is there is definitely frametime variance when you use more than 3.5GB on the 970, but it cannot be said if that is strictly due to the memory issue or perhaps the other differences between the 970 and 980. Also, some games appear to really try to prevent the 970 from using that last 0.5GB of memory.
I highly recommend giving it a good read to determine if it matters to you or not.
Allnamestakenlol
Member
Well'p, my mind is blown.
alright guys, last one from me on this unless anyone needs anything specific. i wasn't too interested in waiting to see what nvidia had to say any longer after finding out that about the post where the guy at nvidia said he'd work with that one individual to get a refund and the nvidia announcement that they're going to try to improve the hardware issue through drivers. ever since i bought the card the option to upgrade to the 980 was on the table and i took it. i may burn myself down the road for $100 or so MAYBE, if nvidia offers like a cheap upgrade program or anything like that, which i doubt, but i felt way more comfortable returning the card within my local store's window and upgrading to the 980.
i haven't had a chance to test it extensively but from what i have been able to do: WOW, what a difference. comparing my
1460MHZ OC'd 970 to the stock 1316MHZ 980.
both MSI Gaming 4g cards
Shadow of Mordor @ 1080p/60; every setting maxed w/ HD texture pack
GTX 970
GTX 980
edit: i shrunk the graph down. it looks like there was something maybe wrong with the monitoring as it doesn't really show ANY movement in gpu/mem usage for a long period of time. i'll redo one tmrw and throw it up. final thoughts remain the same.
the stuttering and tearing are gone and the card now uses the full bank of memory. there's not much more i can say about that. Shadow of Mordor is the only game i'm aware of right now where you can hit the 3.5GiB mark without affecting performance too badly. if games stay on this trend and barring nvidia doing some serious magic with the driver update, the 970 is not where you want to be going forward, from my experiences with it.
i haven't had a chance to test it extensively but from what i have been able to do: WOW, what a difference. comparing my
1460MHZ OC'd 970 to the stock 1316MHZ 980.
both MSI Gaming 4g cards
Shadow of Mordor @ 1080p/60; every setting maxed w/ HD texture pack
GTX 970
GTX 980
edit: i shrunk the graph down. it looks like there was something maybe wrong with the monitoring as it doesn't really show ANY movement in gpu/mem usage for a long period of time. i'll redo one tmrw and throw it up. final thoughts remain the same.
the stuttering and tearing are gone and the card now uses the full bank of memory. there's not much more i can say about that. Shadow of Mordor is the only game i'm aware of right now where you can hit the 3.5GiB mark without affecting performance too badly. if games stay on this trend and barring nvidia doing some serious magic with the driver update, the 970 is not where you want to be going forward, from my experiences with it.
daninthemix
Member
Has there been any indiction that Nvidia will allow us to disable the .5MB partition? Would rather have consistency that an extra 500MB.
Thanks. The guy seems well balanced and not having an agenda.
So, he spent all day trying to get a convincing argument against the 970 and he got back mixed.
Clearly, SLI should not be favored for the 970, but SLI is already a source of stuttering and bugs for every card.
For mono-GPU, it seems the card is still doing the job unless you want to play at max settings and 15fps.
I will keep it and change when Pascal will be here.
CyanideFuse
Member
alright guys, last one from me on this unless anyone needs anything specific. i wasn't too interested in waiting to see what nvidia had to say any longer after finding out that about the post where the guy at nvidia said he'd work with that one individual to get a refund and the nvidia announcement that they're going to try to improve the hardware issue through drivers. ever since i bought the card the option to upgrade to the 980 was on the table and i took it. i may burn myself down the road for $100 or so MAYBE, if nvidia offers like a cheap upgrade program or anything like that, which i doubt, but i felt way more comfortable returning the card within my local store's window and upgrading to the 980.
i haven't had a chance to test it extensively but from what i have been able to do: WOW, what a difference. comparing my
1460MHZ OC'd 970 to the stock 1316MHZ 980.
both MSI Gaming 4g cards
Shadow of Mordor @ 1080p/60; every setting maxed w/ HD texture pack
GTX 970
GTX 980
edit: i shrunk the graph down. it looks like there was something maybe wrong with the monitoring as it doesn't really show ANY movement in gpu/mem usage for a long period of time. i'll redo one tmrw and throw it up. final thoughts remain the same.
the stuttering and tearing are gone and the card now uses the full bank of memory. there's not much more i can say about that. Shadow of Mordor is the only game i'm aware of right now where you can hit the 3.5GiB mark without affecting performance too badly. if games stay on this trend and barring nvidia doing some serious magic with the driver update, the 970 is not where you want to be going forward, from my experiences with it.
Thanks for providing the information. I am going to give this some serious thought.
I am really swayed to (if I can) get a refund and go back to my trusty 670 until the next set of cards come out later this year.
Hopefully those having full speed access to all available VRAM...
I know AMD are releasing cards sooner rather than later but I am not fully confident that these will run at decent temperatures / power usage.
Full speed acces is dependent on the size of the bus. So, to go over 4GB, you need 384 or 512 bus wide access, which will be costly. Do not expect the cards to be cheap. Every other cards will do bank switching.
I just switched from AMD, and honestly, I would not go back.
alright guys, last one from me on this unless anyone needs anything specific. i wasn't too interested in waiting to see what nvidia had to say any longer after finding out that about the post where the guy at nvidia said he'd work with that one individual to get a refund and the nvidia announcement that they're going to try to improve the hardware issue through drivers. ever since i bought the card the option to upgrade to the 980 was on the table and i took it. i may burn myself down the road for $100 or so MAYBE, if nvidia offers like a cheap upgrade program or anything like that, which i doubt, but i felt way more comfortable returning the card within my local store's window and upgrading to the 980.
i haven't had a chance to test it extensively but from what i have been able to do: WOW, what a difference. comparing my
1460MHZ OC'd 970 to the stock 1316MHZ 980.
both MSI Gaming 4g cards
Shadow of Mordor @ 1080p/60; every setting maxed w/ HD texture pack
GTX 970
GTX 980
edit: i shrunk the graph down. it looks like there was something maybe wrong with the monitoring as it doesn't really show ANY movement in gpu/mem usage for a long period of time. i'll redo one tmrw and throw it up. final thoughts remain the same.
the stuttering and tearing are gone and the card now uses the full bank of memory. there's not much more i can say about that. Shadow of Mordor is the only game i'm aware of right now where you can hit the 3.5GiB mark without affecting performance too badly. if games stay on this trend and barring nvidia doing some serious magic with the driver update, the 970 is not where you want to be going forward, from my experiences with it.
Thanks so much for this man. I'm gonna just save up for a 980
Good times aheadNvidia's little game of deceit has made me wish I opted for 4GB 670s all the more as I'd be able to sit the 9xx series out. With reality being what it is, though, my intention had long been to buy one 970, sell my 670s and then put that money towards a second 970, however the frametime issues the 970 has when it needs to dip into that controversial 512MB pool has thrown a spanner into the works -- there's no point in me going that route now if I'm compelled to upgrade again in 12 months because the games I'm playing demand more than 3.5GB. I can only hope that PC Case Gear is still selling 980s for $649 a week from now, as bitter a pill that +$180 is.
dgrdsv
Member
What consistency are you talking about? Disabling these 500 MB will result in going to system RAM once you run out of 3.5 GBs. That operation is two times slower than going into the 500 MB memory pool.
daninthemix
Member
No, because games will try to use the full amount of VRAM - no matter how much driver finagling Nvidia do - whereas they know better than to store, for instance, textures in main RAM.
Xcell Miguel
Gold Member
I've just tried something with BF4 and vRamBandWidthTest to force the game to use the last 500 MB, and I did not see any change in performances, the game stayed at stable smooth 60 FPS, maybe a little drop in texture quality as the VRAM was full.
Memory used :
- desktop : 320 MB
- BF4 : arround 2000 MB
So I ran vRamBandwidthTest with this command line to use 2048 MB and I let it open then launched BF4 :
"vRamBandwidthTest.exe 128 2048"
VRAM usage was near 2500 MB on desktop and near 4000 in BF4.
No frame drop, stutter or anything, really smooth game and about the same texture quality.
So I ran another test :
"vRamBandwidthTest.exe 128 2500"
VRAM usage was near 3000 MB on dektop and BF4 ate what left.
No frame drop again, but some textures were lowered.
I tried "vRamBandwidthTest.exe 128 3072", 3500MB on desktop, but it seems that the driver or Windows frees some VRAM as when leaving BF4 VRAM usage was only near 2500 MB.
I don't know if its a good test, I should try more games, but I think the best way to see if this "low" bandwidth 500 MB have an impact on performance is testing the games/benches with the same settings, as in some games settings the textures or any other setting higher changes its performance (more textures to handle, higher textures, ... even if the VRAM limit is not reached).
Memory used :
- desktop : 320 MB
- BF4 : arround 2000 MB
So I ran vRamBandwidthTest with this command line to use 2048 MB and I let it open then launched BF4 :
"vRamBandwidthTest.exe 128 2048"
VRAM usage was near 2500 MB on desktop and near 4000 in BF4.
No frame drop, stutter or anything, really smooth game and about the same texture quality.
So I ran another test :
"vRamBandwidthTest.exe 128 2500"
VRAM usage was near 3000 MB on dektop and BF4 ate what left.
No frame drop again, but some textures were lowered.
I tried "vRamBandwidthTest.exe 128 3072", 3500MB on desktop, but it seems that the driver or Windows frees some VRAM as when leaving BF4 VRAM usage was only near 2500 MB.
I don't know if its a good test, I should try more games, but I think the best way to see if this "low" bandwidth 500 MB have an impact on performance is testing the games/benches with the same settings, as in some games settings the textures or any other setting higher changes its performance (more textures to handle, higher textures, ... even if the VRAM limit is not reached).
You dont know how the games VRAM has been mapped to the Cards VRAM. All of your BF4 VRAM could be sitting in the faster 3.5Gb section. So this is not a very good test.
He can look at the results of Vrambenchtest.
If this bench is allocated to the 500MB, then its score will lower.
Xcell Miguel
Gold Member
I know, but as vRamBandwidthTest only showed some ~150 GB/s bandwidth tests, I assume it only allocated in the "good" memory and what left include the low bandwidth 500 MB.
It's really hard to see if it has an impact as games handle memory differently, some allocate all they can, some just what they need, ...
Most of the time ACU uses 3500 to 3700 MB on my 970s in SLI (and an i7 5930K @4.6GHz), and I get perfectly smooth 60 FPS with everything in ultra high and 4x MSAA (except in some ingame cutscenes). It rarely goes above 3800 MB but when it does I don't get any drop nor stutter.
For now I'm happy with my 970s and I don't think I'll change, except if I get a really good offer, but on my side it does not look like a real perf problem.
SliChillax
Member
I'm going to contact Overclockers UK today and see what they tell me. Problem is if I return the card I don't know what else to get. Not really into AMD because of all the issues that I hear with some games running bad, worse drivers etc. I also have a Gsync monitor so not worth it. I'm gonna update the situation once I call them and see what they tell me.
CyanideFuse
Member
Did you keep your previous card? If so what is it?
cyberheater
PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 Xbone PS4 PS4
Looks like Overclockers are starting to take back some brands of GTX 970.
SliChillax
Member
No I sold my 4Gb 680 unfortunately.
CyanideFuse
Member
What is all the talk of Kepler cards suffering in latest games? Is it true they are falling off the pace?
I thought I read someone say the cards are not being supported by new drivers. That is a load of rubbish (I would guess)?
alright guys, last one from me on this unless anyone needs anything specific. i wasn't too interested in waiting to see what nvidia had to say any longer after finding out that about the post where the guy at nvidia said he'd work with that one individual to get a refund and the nvidia announcement that they're going to try to improve the hardware issue through drivers. ever since i bought the card the option to upgrade to the 980 was on the table and i took it. i may burn myself down the road for $100 or so MAYBE, if nvidia offers like a cheap upgrade program or anything like that, which i doubt, but i felt way more comfortable returning the card within my local store's window and upgrading to the 980.
i haven't had a chance to test it extensively but from what i have been able to do: WOW, what a difference. comparing my
1460MHZ OC'd 970 to the stock 1316MHZ 980.
both MSI Gaming 4g cards
Shadow of Mordor @ 1080p/60; every setting maxed w/ HD texture pack
GTX 970
GTX 980
edit: i shrunk the graph down. it looks like there was something maybe wrong with the monitoring as it doesn't really show ANY movement in gpu/mem usage for a long period of time. i'll redo one tmrw and throw it up. final thoughts remain the same.
the stuttering and tearing are gone and the card now uses the full bank of memory. there's not much more i can say about that. Shadow of Mordor is the only game i'm aware of right now where you can hit the 3.5GiB mark without affecting performance too badly. if games stay on this trend and barring nvidia doing some serious magic with the driver update, the 970 is not where you want to be going forward, from my experiences with it.
I completly fail to see the "wow" difference. I also played through SOM on my 970 a while ago and it ran absoutely fine at 6ßFPS after some tweaking. It's a rather demanding game for the graphics it presents and it's certainly not as performant as it could be, but the experience overall was a B+.
Hmm look how stable the GPU Usage is on the 980, the frame times spike around 10 times only. Compared to the 970 the frame times spike more than twice that amount and in correlation the GPU usage drops at the same time - That to me indicates the GPU core is waiting on VRAM operations.
Did you play using more or less than 3.5Gb though? Less than 3.5Gb and its very smooth. Obviously i dont even try to play at more than 3.5Gb since the fps is terrible.
Imagine if AMD made such a blunder, they'd be taken out to the back and chastised for the next 10 years. Since this is Nvidia, its simply an "error" with the "reviewer guide" when they had ample time and opportunity to own up and come clean.
I imagine the 970 sales may have been like iPhone 6/6+ for the GPU market which is probably why Nvidia intentionally held off from "correcting" their "error".
I imagine the 970 sales may have been like iPhone 6/6+ for the GPU market which is probably why Nvidia intentionally held off from "correcting" their "error".
Well, that's what happen when you make great products for years, it barely damage your good reputation.
SliChillax
Member
I got the 970 in November and up until then my 680 was supported but it wasn't really working for me at 1440p. I would have kept the card if I had stayed with 1080p definitely.
Yep, rubbish. Kepler should be supported as long as Maxwell cards are. For a good few years.
It's anecdotal of course, but my oc'd GTX 680 was still getting great performance with the newer games I was playing. The only real difference is more headroom for downsampling (and the 970/980 can't quite do Alien Isolation 4k res at a solid 60fps anyway).
I would really like to know what is going on already at the driver level to keep games hovering around the 3.5GB VRAM mark. Perhaps it is something built into the game engines when bandwidth drops are detected. With SoM almost immune under single 970 scenarios exceeding 3.5GB, perhaps someone should have a closer look to see if the IQ is dropping in-engine at all to compensate. I guess it really shouldn't matter though once 3.5 is breached..
SliChillax
Member
I contacted Overclockers UK and they said to keep an eye on their forums in the next few days for updates from my card manufacturer (Gigabyte). We'll see what they say before Overclockers take action on refunds etc.
I tried reaching out to Peter from NVidia, the guy who said he would help. Yea, it was pretty much bullshit. This is what he responded with after I asked for help
"Hello,
Are you having a specific issue with the 970 that I can help you with? We are really proud of the 970, we think it's the best card on the market for the money. It's won a ton of awards and it has the same excellent performance it had a few weeks ago."
I specifically said: "can u help me return my card? Newegg rejected the return."
So there was no room for misinterpretation. Luckily EVGA approved my step up even tho I was pasted the 90 days
"Hello,
Are you having a specific issue with the 970 that I can help you with? We are really proud of the 970, we think it's the best card on the market for the money. It's won a ton of awards and it has the same excellent performance it had a few weeks ago."
I specifically said: "can u help me return my card? Newegg rejected the return."
So there was no room for misinterpretation. Luckily EVGA approved my step up even tho I was pasted the 90 days
Mengy
wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
No, it wouldn't be built into game engines, it would be at the Nvidia driver level for the game.
For example, when Elite Dangerous came out many 970 owners were experiencing small stutters when flying around close to planets. Nvidia released new drivers within days with "Elite enhancements", and the stutters were gone. I'd bet real money that the new drivers addressed this very 3.5GB wall problem, and that the stutters beforehand were most likely due to Elite games trying to make use of all 4GB like it was all the same memory. Which we now know that it isn't.
Which, if true, speaks volumes to what Nvidia did or didn't know all of this time about their new 970 graphics cards.
Naked Snake
Member
Nvidia, pls.
CyanideFuse
Member
Way to completely avoid a specific answer to your question. It reads like a copy & paste reply that is being put into the (I would estimate) some what vast number of messages sent to him.
I can only think that an official statement is being held back whilst all avenues are being investigated. I am sure a few lawyers are involved advising to keep quiet until they have a concrete course of action.
Just added as I was about to post message:
This page shows a screenshot of a reply reading just like yours: https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/803518/geforce-900-series/gtx-970-3-5gb-vram-issue/212/
Banderas also shows his thoughts.
Dictator93
Member
ugh... that is gross
Im not sure why, this doesnt comply with UK law, you should put your foot down.
Gigabyte didnt sell you a GPU, OcUK did. OCUK are responsible for the product that lands in your hands, its their responsibility to check that the product they sold is advertised on their website as the product that you get. OcUK are covering their back, they are telling you, 'if we cant get our money back from Gigabyte, you cant get a refund'. When that shouldnt be the case, they should refund you under UK/EU Laws and deal with Gigabyte themselves in their own time for their own benefit.
Great i am checking what gibbo says also. Tho in the same boat. Love my MSI 970 but cant afford the 980. So what to do :S
Well just for giggles I reaponded with this:
I am not having a specific issue with my 970 but I am having one with my trust in NVidia, which is different than it was a few weeks ago. I owned a 780 up until last year when I saw the advertised specifications for the 970. In order to future proof my PC a bit further I decided to upgrade to a 970, even though the performance was about the same, due to the extra advertised VRAM specifications. The card was originally advertised to have the same memory subsystem as the 980 but it has recently come to light that this was not true and the published specs for the 970 where wrong. GTX 970 has a 256-bit memory bus, but 1 of the 4 ROP/memory controller partitions is not fully enabled like the 980. this means that the GTX 970 only has 56 of 64 ROPs and 1.75MB of 2MB of L2 cache enabled. In order for me to continue being a customer this trust needs to be reestablished and the only way that to happen is that I am allows to return this product so that I can make my next purchase with the correct specifications at hand. My problem is not with the card but with the information provided by Nvidia that led me to purchase it.
Naked Snake
Member
Dictator93
Member
Manlytears.jpg
I was thinking about that PCPer analysis. They couldn't get COD:AW to utilize more than 3.6GB of VRAM regardless of resolution. And then AC:U with all of its well-known performance issues, that filling the majority of the 4GB, and hence the lower-bandwith 0.5GB VRAM.
I am starting to wonder if Nvidia worked with, or specific developers were quick to notice, the issues with accessing the 0.5GB VRAM segment. Like, did Infinity Ward notice and restrict access this as part of their development, or even "Nvidia-specific performance updates" in post-release patches? And I wonder if the same was part of the solution in the post-release patches for AC:U, that maybe they caught these issues late in development and were part of the performance improvements post-release?
It seems to me that the solution has been card-specific optimizations for each game, and now Nvidia might address this with a driver update of their own?
Not to be the conspiracy theorist, but I did mention AC in this post, didn't I???
I am starting to wonder if Nvidia worked with, or specific developers were quick to notice, the issues with accessing the 0.5GB VRAM segment. Like, did Infinity Ward notice and restrict access this as part of their development, or even "Nvidia-specific performance updates" in post-release patches? And I wonder if the same was part of the solution in the post-release patches for AC:U, that maybe they caught these issues late in development and were part of the performance improvements post-release?
It seems to me that the solution has been card-specific optimizations for each game, and now Nvidia might address this with a driver update of their own?
Not to be the conspiracy theorist, but I did mention AC in this post, didn't I???
Haha nice.
Nvidia Driver at play. The driver seems to do different things to try optimise this 512MB on a per game basis.
FairXchange
Member
Air tight, great work.
holygeesus
Banned
alright guys, last one from me on this unless anyone needs anything specific. i wasn't too interested in waiting to see what nvidia had to say any longer after finding out that about the post where the guy at nvidia said he'd work with that one individual to get a refund and the nvidia announcement that they're going to try to improve the hardware issue through drivers. ever since i bought the card the option to upgrade to the 980 was on the table and i took it. i may burn myself down the road for $100 or so MAYBE, if nvidia offers like a cheap upgrade program or anything like that, which i doubt, but i felt way more comfortable returning the card within my local store's window and upgrading to the 980.
i haven't had a chance to test it extensively but from what i have been able to do: WOW, what a difference. comparing my
1460MHZ OC'd 970 to the stock 1316MHZ 980.
both MSI Gaming 4g cards
Shadow of Mordor @ 1080p/60; every setting maxed w/ HD texture pack
GTX 970
GTX 980
edit: i shrunk the graph down. it looks like there was something maybe wrong with the monitoring as it doesn't really show ANY movement in gpu/mem usage for a long period of time. i'll redo one tmrw and throw it up. final thoughts remain the same.
the stuttering and tearing are gone and the card now uses the full bank of memory. there's not much more i can say about that. Shadow of Mordor is the only game i'm aware of right now where you can hit the 3.5GiB mark without affecting performance too badly. if games stay on this trend and barring nvidia doing some serious magic with the driver update, the 970 is not where you want to be going forward, from my experiences with it.
So a £200 more expensive card performs better? This can't be news to people surely?
No, look at the frame time consistency.
- Status