Riccochet
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Thank you, Golden Tiger! I'm at work and didn't have the time to dig up all the reference material.
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GTX 970 flaw
- Thread starter ManofGod
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Well shit, I totally misread that graph set before
Maxwell 2.0 chips are basically the 2600K of GPU's
I sent mine back for a refund too.
1440p now. Which is ok because 4k is really not ready I guess. I will wait for the big chips to arrive.
Me too, now.
Yeah... I'm going to have to see what comes up later in the year, I guess at this point. I don't want to sell these cards on ebay given their brand spanking new 180-day return policy implemented through paypal... and I can't replicate that deal I had on the 4k monitor anyway
Well dang GoldenTiger, had no idea all this had come up. Maybe I could sell you my Acer for a mere $900
Looks like it might have been the cards after all. Still loving the Acer myself. Wonder if you're ready to sign this now?https://www.change.org/p/nvidia-refund-for-gtx-970
Been keeping up with it over at MaximumPC and there is quite a shitstorm brewing. Not sure if Green made an intentional or honest mistake but it seems a bit of misrepresentation on their part. Doubt the 970 buyers will find much remedy after
all is said and done.
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Wrong:
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Geforce-GTX-970-Grafikkarte-259503/Specials/zu-wenig-VRAM-1149056/
Please do your research first... articles already are coming out showing there's no extra adverse impact due to the segmentation. And before that, we had no proof one way or the other, so stating that as fact is mind-boggling.
Oh, and just to mention, GTX 970 perf in 4k is beautiful
I ended up shipping my monitor back at this point but I will probably go 4K again once a gsync IPS model launches
You are not maxing your 3.5 GB vram.
AllBlackFan
Weaksauce
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This is such a poor argument. I see a lot of whataboutism/tu quoque in threads about this issue.
What AMD has done or might have done doesn't have any relevance to the mistakes Nvidia has made in regards to this issue. AMD could have adverstised a card as having 100 ROPS which had 10 and it wouldn't negate in any way what's being discussed in this thread.
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...68595-gtx-970s-memory-explained-tested-2.html
They haven't posted the actual FCAT charts yet.
The problem is at that res the GPU grunt is the bigger factor than the Vram bandwidth which still affects it to some extent.
What needs to be done textures need to be used to fill up the Vram and not GPU intensive things like resolution and other GPU intensive settings.
They haven't posted the actual FCAT charts yet.
The problem is at that res the GPU grunt is the bigger factor than the Vram bandwidth which still affects it to some extent.
What needs to be done textures need to be used to fill up the Vram and not GPU intensive things like resolution and other GPU intensive settings.
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.
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.
We need frametimes, not FPS. Don't know why they chose to show the latter.
I just saw your post over on Reddit. In all seriousness though, for those of us that are months outside of our return window (4 months in my case), what do you think NVIDIA will do? I purchased my 970 SLI (ASUS is the vendor) setup back in October thinking it should last me a long time. Had I known the real specs of the card, I would have opted for a single 980 instead. I know I'm not the only one in this situation.
Yup. Sucks to feel like you have no options. I can help.
If a return/exchange is the route you need to take then contact the retailer first, card maker second. I know I'm asking you to do some legwork but asking is the first step and we'll get you taken care of at the end. If they will not exchange/return then hit me up in a PM with the following:
Site purchased from
Order #
Products
First and Last Name
email address
Some users are already getting positive responses for returns long past the retailer window (though yours might be the furthest back I've encountered so far).
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I purchased my card from Best Buy and am way outside my 15 day return window, they have told me I need to take it up with NVidia and they will not help me further... (it's an NVidia branded card, so I think NVidia is the manufacturer?)
honestly I find this very disappointing... I pay the extra "green" tax because I have had fairly good luck (or say, better luck) with NVidia cards vs AMD cards...
but this incident is very, very concerning... I understand new architectures can do interesting things to optimize price/performance but at the same time you can't slap a 4GB thumb drive on a 970 and call it an 8Gb video card... sure it *has* 8gb, but if it's atrociously slow to the point where it's causing visible artifacts, well, then it's useless now isn't it??
Honestly I upgraded from a GTX470 and the 970 obviously blows it out of the water (and even 3.5GB is more than the 1.25GB my 470 had) so I don't have a super strong desire to return it on technical aspects, but the more it seems this is a real issue, the more I want to return it simply due to the principal and the fact that eventually I may run games that exceed that 3.5GB barrier and it may become an issue...
I buy an expensive video card from NVidia (or anyone) I expect it to fulfill the specifications that are on the box... I think the biggest loser here is NVidia's reputation, and that sucks, because ever since I removed my Voodoo 5 5500 from my box I have had I'd say about 90% NVidia graphics cards in my builds (I went red during the FX dark ages)
Couldn't we just merge the two threads? http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1849707 and http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1849838
Anyway I'm glad nvidia made g-sync work again in non-native res with no scaling because there is no way I'm replacing my 970 or my 1440p monitor. So if I really run into a game that hits 3.5Gb+ VRAM I'll lower the res to 1080p and I should be fine for a couple more years. I'm struggling to breach the 2Gb mark with any of the games I currently play. Shadow of Mordor is the only one (out of the games I give a damn about) that I can see doing it for now. The upcoming Battlefront might too but I'm not going to speculate on a game with no actual release date.
The frametimes from pcgameshardware.de are exactly what I was expecting to see when I learned that this is a 3.5Gb card with an extra slow 512Mb. Even if they can tweak it with drivers I don't believe in miracles - and I'm quite the nvidia fanboy (or rather, I dislike them a whole lot less than I dislike AMD ). The last 512Mb are simply too slow, they could just disable it entirely for all I care, I'll do my best to not use it.
But there's only two hardware manufacturers so I'll stick with the one I consider to be the least worst no matter what
Also, I care about power consumption/silence so it's not like I have any alternative with this level of performance.
No, it's still a great card and frankly I would probably still have bought it if they had sold it as a 3.5Gb card. And then maybe not... I might have waited a little longer or picked the 980.
Anyway I'm glad nvidia made g-sync work again in non-native res with no scaling because there is no way I'm replacing my 970 or my 1440p monitor. So if I really run into a game that hits 3.5Gb+ VRAM I'll lower the res to 1080p and I should be fine for a couple more years. I'm struggling to breach the 2Gb mark with any of the games I currently play. Shadow of Mordor is the only one (out of the games I give a damn about) that I can see doing it for now. The upcoming Battlefront might too but I'm not going to speculate on a game with no actual release date.
The frametimes from pcgameshardware.de are exactly what I was expecting to see when I learned that this is a 3.5Gb card with an extra slow 512Mb. Even if they can tweak it with drivers I don't believe in miracles - and I'm quite the nvidia fanboy (or rather, I dislike them a whole lot less than I dislike AMD
). The last 512Mb are simply too slow, they could just disable it entirely for all I care, I'll do my best to not use it. But there's only two hardware manufacturers so I'll stick with the one I consider to be the least worst no matter what
Also, I care about power consumption/silence so it's not like I have any alternative with this level of performance.
No, it's still a great card and frankly I would probably still have bought it if they had sold it as a 3.5Gb card. And then maybe not... I might have waited a little longer or picked the 980.
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that's the real irony, had they properly disclosed this I probably would have sucked it up and gone the 980 route, giving them more money!
I tried PMing you, but nothing is appearing in my sent folder. If you happen to see this, would you mind PMing me?
Riccochet
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What if, and this is only hypothetical, we threw in an extra 2GB of VRAM that wasn't usable, an extra mucho bigger fan and a $5 game for an extra $50? Does that sounds like something you'd be interested in?
I don't blame Nvidia as much as I blame the manufacturers of these cards. Most of these have custom PCB's and should have gone through their own levels of testing prior to being released. You'd THINK, hehe, you'd think they would have noticed something and was up and put that information on the box of product they were selling. But, nope.
My little blurb up top is just something manufacturers, like ASUS and MSI, have been doing for years. Slapping some extra VRAM on a card that they KNOW the card can't utilize due to bus or GPU limitations and marketing as a better card and charging more for it. Yet, no hell's fury about any of that. I wonder why none of the blame is being placed on ASUS and MSI here. What about EVGA, Gigabyte, Zotac, PNY? You're telling me none of these manufacturers did any fucking testing of these cards they are selling with wrong information in their descriptions? It's a massive conspiracy to screw over the buying public?
smh ..... smh
I don't blame Nvidia as much as I blame the manufacturers of these cards. Most of these have custom PCB's and should have gone through their own levels of testing prior to being released. You'd THINK, hehe, you'd think they would have noticed something and was up and put that information on the box of product they were selling. But, nope.
My little blurb up top is just something manufacturers, like ASUS and MSI, have been doing for years. Slapping some extra VRAM on a card that they KNOW the card can't utilize due to bus or GPU limitations and marketing as a better card and charging more for it. Yet, no hell's fury about any of that. I wonder why none of the blame is being placed on ASUS and MSI here. What about EVGA, Gigabyte, Zotac, PNY? You're telling me none of these manufacturers did any fucking testing of these cards they are selling with wrong information in their descriptions? It's a massive conspiracy to screw over the buying public?
smh ..... smh
VonGriffin
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at this point its rather absurd
there is a sole nvdia guy over there at geforce forums (PeterS) who offered to help people with their refunds and hes flooded by now
How the company handles this its rather very unprofessional
Riccochet
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Nvidia didn't build the cards. Nvidia didn't factory overclock the cards and make custom PCB's. Nvidia didn't put those specs on MSI, EVGA, ASUS's websites. Nvidia didn't do the testing on these custom cards. MANUFACTURERS DID. Has one review been done on an Nvidia branded card manufactured by Nvidia? You think these companies don't do their own testing? Just slap some components on a PCB, rubber stamp the packaging with what Nvidia provides them and ships the shit out? EVGA, MSI, ASUS knew about this issue much longer than 4 months ago. You're fooling yourself if you think otherwise.
What do OCs on the GPU clock have to do with anything....
Nvidia built that chip and if you think you can convince others that they were not responsible for providing the right information on a chip they built then you are crazy.
I cannot even begin to recall a time when a Company like Nvidia or AMD forgot to list the correct specifications.
Nvidia also listed specs for this card to reviewers.
Nvidia also promoted its own GPU in deals with BestBuy that saw Nvidia branded GPUs being sold. Or what did Nvidia not make their own GPUs in that case either?
Nvidia knew all about this and it was their job to speak up about it months ago.
Nvidia built that chip and if you think you can convince others that they were not responsible for providing the right information on a chip they built then you are crazy.
I cannot even begin to recall a time when a Company like Nvidia or AMD forgot to list the correct specifications.
Nvidia also listed specs for this card to reviewers.
Nvidia also promoted its own GPU in deals with BestBuy that saw Nvidia branded GPUs being sold. Or what did Nvidia not make their own GPUs in that case either?
Nvidia knew all about this and it was their job to speak up about it months ago.
Uh...that's exactly what they do. Yes they might overclock cards and market them as faster, but all they're going to do is test that they're properly overclocked and stable. They're not going to go over the architecture with a fine toothed comb and verify everything Nvidia tells them is actually true. That would assume that the manufacturers think Nvidia is lying to them to begin with, which is ridiculous when you have them as a partner for so long.
Furthermore, most of these "manufacturers" are manufacturers in name only, the people that physically handle their products are working for a 3rd party company somewhere in China doing exactly what the manufacturer is telling them to do with the product.
There wouldn't be anything stopping them releasing double VRAM cards if there is public demand for them. Many many people out there care more about VRAM on cards than what VRAM the GPU is capable of using. When there is public demand, it is a good business sense to serve it, even when the public demand doesn't make sense.
If nVidia or AMD publicly announce that 980/290x cannot effectively use 8GB VRAM under any configuration, there will still be people going "WTF? Consoles have 6GB, I want more VRAM!", and there will always people going to buy 8GB versions of 290x or 980 when they are released, as long as the specs of the card matches what was advertised.
However the part that is different here is, it's one matter to sell useless gimmicks at a premium if the customer still got what he paid for, but it's a totally different matter when what you got was less than what it said on the tin. In this case the VRAM issue, selling at 4GB, delivering only 3.5GB. So for everyone, this hurts a lot, especially those who bought 970 specifically for its VRAM and nothing else.
As I have said before though, this revelation about VRAM issues doesn't diminish my opinion how the 970 is going to perform now and going to perform in the future, and I still do not think I will choose the 980 over the 970 despite the revelation. I think that since VRAM requires are in the process of exploding, I doubt that there will be many games in the future that will run well on 980 but not on 970 due to the half gig VRAM difference. It can happen, I just feel there isn't going to be enough of them for 980 to last much longer than 970.
The frametime does show that at 3.5GB vram used 970 starts choking while 980 isn't, but the conditions that it was tested is essentially forced, IE it was deliberately loaded in such a way that the VRAM will fill up. Do I care about it? No, because the FPS under the conditions they tested already shows that both 970 and 980 are already taxed well before VRAM degrades the performance further, the only difference being that 970 hit the VRAM degradeation faster than 980, but both still remained in totally unplayable conditions anyway.
I bought my 970's not because what it says on the box, but what was inside the box, hence I do not think I will return them for anything else (I can't anyway, since our refund policy sucks). but I am still very miffed about nVidia doing this kind of thing, be it a genuine mistake, marketting error, deliberate fraud or Illuminati conspiracy.
TLDR: It's not about selling useless stuff, but more about selling stuff that don't exist. 970 is still a great card, 4GB or 3.5GB, nVidia is losing points on the marketting.
p3sty
2[H]4U
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If it cant be fixed.....Sue the motherphukers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yakk
Supreme [H]ardness
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Whoa, somebody got the office short straw, or ticked off somebody higher up the command chain!
LoL...Agreed, this is totally unprofessional.
That would be nice and easier to follow.
TaintedSquirrel
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I assume there's less spin in this thread since it's not within the Nvidia forum, haven't even looked at the other thread.
The AMD section can get pretty bad at times.
The AMD section can get pretty bad at times.
dandragonrage
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And yet the people most in the wrong are the people who don't care or who even defend this kind of BS.
dandragonrage
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Companies WOULD learn if consumers reacted en masse, which Capitalism pretty much requires to run smoothly. Even if we only had two companies, both of which are problematic in this way, if each time we bought a card, we bought from whichever company had recently been more moral, they would start learning that being and STAYING moral actually pays off for the company. But when you get a bunch of idiots that make excuses and refuse to use the power of their wallet to punish a company, the companies really will never care.
If, every time Nvidia did this, consumers swayed to AMD for the next year or two until AMD screws them over, it would make Nvidia think twice about continuing to screw customers because it would lose them market share, even if only temporarily. Same way with AMD - if they realized that screwing customers over lost them market share, even if temporary, they would also make an effort to do it as little as possible.
The world would be a better place without these apologists. They think they are some sort of voice of moderation, but in actuality they are the voice of apathy (and thus indirectly the voice of corruption). They refuse to care about anything. Corporate immorality. Political corruption. Whatever it is, they are there to not only not care about it, but to make you look like some sort of demon for caring about it.
If, every time Nvidia did this, consumers swayed to AMD for the next year or two until AMD screws them over, it would make Nvidia think twice about continuing to screw customers because it would lose them market share, even if only temporarily. Same way with AMD - if they realized that screwing customers over lost them market share, even if temporary, they would also make an effort to do it as little as possible.
The world would be a better place without these apologists. They think they are some sort of voice of moderation, but in actuality they are the voice of apathy (and thus indirectly the voice of corruption). They refuse to care about anything. Corporate immorality. Political corruption. Whatever it is, they are there to not only not care about it, but to make you look like some sort of demon for caring about it.
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What does any of that have to do with the 970 issue we're discussing? It's the GPU that is the problem here, not the PCB it was installed on. Nvidia is the one that built the 970 GPU and published its supposed specs, not any of their AIB's.
Riccochet
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Oh, you're right! I forgot that companies like EVGA, MSI and ASUS just slap some components on a board mated with this GPU and don't do any testing. Why would they bother making sure the thing actually runs up to spec? Nope. Ain't nobody got no time fo dat! Boots? Yup! Slap it in a box and ship it out!
It's not just the GPU, but a combination of components that make up a video card and it capabilities.
Yall are delusional if you think those companies didn't know.
GoldenTiger
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Same here, or even saved up extra for two 980's, or waited for a stronger single card to come out. I bought my GTX 970 SLI pair on launch day, and was having stuttering/etc. when running 4K native res a lot of the time but attributed it to the monitor or some other issue with my system. Ultimately, due to an extended holiday return policy on my 4k monitor which I had gotten for $675 instead of the current normal going rate of $1000+, I finally returned the monitor now because I thought it was the most likely cause, not seeing the issues when using my 2560x1440 panel. As it turns out it's frametime problems from going over 3.5GB of VRAM as we now know
.Very disappointed, and would very seriously consider doing a refund if it were offered to me for my MSI GTX 970 SLI that I purchased from newegg if nvidia could arrange it somehow. Given that I bought them in mid-September, they're far out of the original return window.
Yeah, it wasn't hitting 3.5gb in that testing, after looking back at the logs. So the graph there is irrelevant, you're right.
Just saw this and am editing the quote in. Thanks for posting here on this... I'm going to contact newegg and see if I can get it done through them probably soon (I want to see a bit more testing and weigh what I would buy instead), but if they won't help I'll send you a PM
.
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Mr. Bluntman
Supreme [H]ardness
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Apparently NVIDIA is offering refunds for those unhappy with the new official specs. I know that at least a few of you will be lining up for that
http://www.pcper.com/news/Graphics-...iver-Update-GTX-970-Memory-Issue-Help-Returns
http://www.pcper.com/news/Graphics-...iver-Update-GTX-970-Memory-Issue-Help-Returns
GoldenTiger
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Heya, I'm not him obviously, but the forum by default doesn't save sent messages in your sent folder, but it does go through. You can change the option to store a copy automatically in the user control panel here
.
GoldenTiger
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They only barely top it (a little below 3.6gb per the article), so their tests wouldn't be impacted as much (only hitting the slow segment occasionally and for a tiny amount of data, ~60mb out of 3600 roughly even in-segment in the first place). PCGH did a test using 4gb on their card and the results were awful on frametime as a result compared to a 980 downclocked in the same situation. It's important to keep an eye out for details like that.
Dayaks
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Well it sounds like nVidia is taking the right approach of offering refunds to those who want them, albeit maybe not via the correct method (sending your info to a 1.6 yr hardocp account ) it'd be more responsible via the nVidia website or mfg for refunds... as a non-affected 980 owner I will follow this closely and make my future choices, nVidia or AMD, in accordance with nVidia's response and AMD performance until then.
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