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Petitioning for 970 Refund

durquavian said:
It was a single 4k monitor he returned thinking it was the issue before the memory config came to light.
Click to expand...
Point being that a single 970, single 1440p configuration is not going to experience this issue, and unlikely even for a multi GPU 1440p setup, before it hits a wall due to other limitations.
 
mope54 said:
Point being that a single 970, single 1440p configuration is not going to experience this issue, and unlikely even for a multi GPU 1440p setup, before it hits a wall due to other limitations.
Click to expand...

But again the issue isn't the performance, at least not entirely. It was the lying or omission of the facts. Dance all around the issue all you want but again it doesn't change the sole issue.

No one is claiming the 970 as a DO NOT BUY, that is asinine. But the memory segmentation is an issue, albeit limited to rare situations. And like CF 3yrs ago, it is great it isn't affecting you or there are solutions that remedy or limit the chance for negative impact, but like CF the issue does exist and when drivers nullify the issue even in SLI I am sure the multitude that say now it isn't an issue will rejoice in the streets.
 
n=1 said:
That OCN thread? It's like watching chimps pound their chests and fling shit at each other lol.
Click to expand...


That is the best description of OCN threads i've ever heard.:D I'd give you an upvote but because I hate that shit, have a cookie.
 
Omg im dying of laughter over mopes posts. Even prime1 is smart enough to stay out of this cut and dry situation.
 
MorgothPl said:
Still... After 2 weeks of using 290 from xfx that was supposed to last till new generation of Cards arrive, and after dealing with this noisy, power hungry, hot card, that has lots of drivers issues and scored much worse fps than I'm used to, I gave up on it, and with refund money I bought again 970 (MSI not Asus this time) . Screw the high horse. Despite the issue it's still best 1080p single card you can get. It will last me till Pascal, and if not, I'll just get the 2nd.
Click to expand...

Few questions

1. What xfx card?
2. What driver issues?
 
So I'm still debating taking up neweggs refund offer. How much of a gain do you think I will see in terms of performance and longevity if I pony up the $$ for the 980? (Gigabyte G1 Gaming). Having trouble making sense of it from the notes.

Worth noting that currently I mainly game at 1080p (with a 3D vision display, so the extra performance is handing in 3D apps)
 
Ghoststalker said:
So I'm still debating taking up neweggs refund offer. How much of a gain do you think I will see in terms of performance and longevity if I pony up the $$ for the 980? (Gigabyte G1 Gaming). Having trouble making sense of it from the notes.

Worth noting that currently I mainly game at 1080p (with a 3D vision display, so the extra performance is handing in 3D apps)
Click to expand...

The 980 would likely carry you further as far as future proof. Add in DSR and the 980 has more value. BUT I can't say if the price difference is worth the extra performance.
 
durquavian said:
The 980 would likely carry you further as far as future proof. Add in DSR and the 980 has more value. BUT I can't say if the price difference is worth the extra performance.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I have used DSR on some games with the 970 and its a nice feature. If I can find a coupon for neweggbusiness I'll probably bite.
 
Ghoststalker said:
So I'm still debating taking up neweggs refund offer. How much of a gain do you think I will see in terms of performance and longevity if I pony up the $$ for the 980? (Gigabyte G1 Gaming). Having trouble making sense of it from the notes.

Worth noting that currently I mainly game at 1080p (with a 3D vision display, so the extra performance is handing in 3D apps)
Click to expand...

20% more or less for 50% price premium. Hard to justify imho when gm200/fiji cards are around corner.
 
Romir said:
Newegg gave me the same offer for both of my cards today and I'm taking them up on it. I'm more upset about DSR still not working with SLI and G-Sync and the lack of MFAA with SLI.

I'm getting closer to finishing my HT room and about to import a 4k projector. I don't ever want to worry about that last .5gb of ram and course will need faster gpus sooner than later. The full refund sits well with me.
Click to expand...

Newegg gave me the same deal. When I asked if the store credit would be applied prior so that I would not be without a card during the process, they offered to apply it as a refund (instead of store credit) if I provide them the new order number before or during the RMA process.
 
I managed to hit the memory limit in WoW of all things, with all the new graphical goodies with Patch 6.1.

I got my 970s from Newegg... how abouts would I go getting a refund/exchange for something that isn't gimped?
 
Message them and get it started asap. Also I'm curious as to what resolution you were gaming at in WoW.
 
I think I'm going to do the GTX 980 swapity do. With DX 12 around the corner I think that will buy me the extra performance and time that I originally hoped to have with the 970. It's a lot of money, but at least I'll be set for a few years.
 
Ghoststalker said:
I think I'm going to do the GTX 980 swapity do. With DX 12 around the corner I think that will buy me the extra performance and time that I originally hoped to have with the 970. It's a lot of money, but at least I'll be set for a few years.
Click to expand...

A 980 isn't going to have a lot of extra longevity over a 970. The performance gap is small and neither will be enough when 6 and 8GB cards are more common. You are paying 60% more for an extra 15% performance, you would be better off just saving the extra $200 until a new generation of cards launches.
 
ocellaris said:
A 980 isn't going to have a lot of extra longevity over a 970. The performance gap is small and neither will be enough when 6 and 8GB cards are more common.
Click to expand...

With all the differences between the 2 the gap is not as small as say 290-290X. However the price difference is quite a bit larger than the performance gap. Also with the recent findings of the actual differences the 970 has a much more stout limitation than say a 290 in this case. The 980 would be a bit more carefree if one could afford the cost without the worry of limitations imposed by the unique architecture of the 970. I usually prefer the less worry route.
 
jwcalla said:
The ROPs and L2 cache weren't advertised. And the VRAM capacity is as advertised. Just smh that people keep going with this. You could not have packed more error into your two short sentences.
Click to expand...

Actually the ROPs and L2 cache were advertised and marketed. They used it to differentiate the GTX 970 and 980 on review and tech sites. You know, where they aim to stir up interest and gossip throughout the community, not to mention where many potential buyers base their info. Creig already explained this on the last few pages.

I refuse to believe that you bought this card because of the ROP count. You don't even know what a ROP is, just admit it.
Click to expand...

Look, whoopdeedoo. I concede that I'm no expert on GPU architecture and technology. As far as I know, the higher the ROPs, the better for people who use larger resolutions and higher refresh rates. They affect anti-aliasing, Gpixel/s, and send the final image data to the output buffer, or something like that. If you want to educate me more on this, feel free. But, at the end of the day, it changes nothing. They still lied about specifications.

Either way, if this card did have 64 ROPs it would make zero difference, because its performance is not ROP-limited.
Click to expand...

It would be interesting to see how an originally spec'd 970 (2048 L2 cache, 64 ROPs, 4 full GDDR, 1664 CUDA) would compare to a GTX 980 (2048 L2 cache, 64 ROPs, 4 GDDR, 2048 CUDA). Difference might be marginal, or not. Who knows. It could make the $220 cost difference even more controversial, though...

The 970 is the same exact GPU as the 980 except with the defective parts turned off.
Click to expand...

It's about the effectiveness of the advertised memory man. That's like saying racing horse A is the same as racing horse B, except for the injury-laden knee on racing horse A that the previous owner conveniently forgot to inform you about. As a result, the horse will never ride as hard as was advertised (some games simply won't push beyond 3.5gb).

By the way, I have to really laugh at Jen-Hsun's excuse for the 0.5gb of memory for their software engineers.

"GTX 970 is a 4GB card. However, the upper 512MB of the additional 1GB is segmented and has reduced bandwidth. This is a good design because we were able to add an additional 1GB for GTX 970 and our software engineers can keep less frequently used data in the 512MB segment."

Honestly, why do I even care about what their software engineers can use? Since when did their software engineers need to keep track of this special data anyway? It's like buying a racing horse (I know I know, bear with me), then finding out it's got a bad knee. The seller/previous owner, who failed to communicate this to me, then tells me it is an intended feature so horse medical study people can learn from it. What the fuck? I didn't buy the horse for that, I bought it to race it, as was advertised.

You mean NVIDIA intentionally made the 970 perform less than the 980? When did they start doing such things?!
Click to expand...

Yawn.

My theory is Nvidia smelled blood from AMD. Last I checked, AMD is not doing so well on the market. They have a lot of debt and their cards are renowned for running hot and hungry. Nvidia wanted to go for the jugular for the holiday season by cutting corners on the production of the 970 to wreak havoc on the $300-400 GPU range, which AMD previously held strong in.

They did this at the expense of the consumer. Sorry, but I don't buy for one minute that nobody on Nvidia's engineering team over the course of many months didn't stop and say "Hey guys, I think the specifications the tech, review, and vendor sites are using are incorrect... Should we tell them?" It was by design, just as Jen-Hsun's "good feature" was by design.
 
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xorbe said:
Look at this:

http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Nvidiamemory.png

The main 3.5GB is missing a vram port.

(178 / 8) * 7 = 155 and the 970 peaks at 150
Click to expand...

Look at around chunks 25 and 26. It completely goes downhill for the 970 while the 980 stays consistent and strong. But hey guys, this is because of "good design" and an "intended feature".

To think some people are actually defending Nvidia or making excuses for them on this. I mean... wow. You have to stand in awe... AWE. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r-e2NDSTuE&feature=youtu.be&t=17s
 
mope54 said:
That's on the crossbar, not the memory controllers. There are 8 32bit memory controllers and they are all fully functional. The interface is between the controllers and the vram, which is a full 256bit and not the bottleneck.
Click to expand...

On paper they are fully functional.
In reality the 7th and 8th cannot be used at the same time which is why it is an issue.
 
I have two of these cards. I find it unacceptable that I don't have 0.5 GB of ram and would have done an RMA had it not been for the fact that...

1) I got cards from newegg and live halfway across the world in UAE so returning the cards will cost me about 200 dollars or more
2) There are really no other options I would consider from AMD as a replacement and I don't want to spend 550 a pop on each card (please don't make it to AMD vs. nVidia thread; reason for not considering a 290X etc is simply because I don't trust their drivers and newer games continue to have issues with AMD such as Farcry 4, Ass Creed Unity, Dying Light blah blah plus I like HBAO+, ability to have 3D etc)
3) Hoping new cards around the corner from AMD maybe faster and worth the upgrade

So holding off on any upgrades for now and dealing with the 970s that I have right now. The 3 games where the cards really go to shit; that I tested are:

Mordor with max settings 1080P including ultra textures and it stutters like mad in DLC part of the game; main game seems to be OK for the most part

Massive stutters in Dying Light when maxing out settings in 1080P and having view distance above 50%

Massive stuttering in COD AW with 2 cache settings enabled

However, at least for games 1 and 3 the scenario was the same with 780s in SLi that I had. 780s in SLi also stuttered like mad in Ass Creed Unity, Farcry 4 etc. with maxed settings at 1080P.

Given what I play, I am going to keep the cards and see if I get similar issues in upcoming games (like GTA V, Batman Arkham Knight and so on). All my other games are running like a champ.
 
this whole thing makes me wonder.

How come that the drivers worked diffrently on the cards to begin with.

the case of games where the 980 used 4gb and the 970 used about 3,5

why would that happen? unless they allways knew, and the drivers reflected that.


Otherwise the system should fill up the same amount of ram on both cards. since the OS sees them as having the same amount of memory available.

So, question is - how long did nVidia know? from the beginning.. most likely.

and all the aftermath excuses are just that.. excuses.. its better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

Marketing FUD.. i just don't buy it..

a concious decision? i'll buy that one.. and the proof is in the different memory allocation across the games, from the beginning!

Thank you so much nVidia.. (i'll buy Ati next)
 
what happened here is shady. If AMD did this shady stiff all of you saying it's OK for Nvidia to do this would be screaming bloody murder and you know it...
 
Iklos said:
this whole thing makes me wonder.

How come that the drivers worked diffrently on the cards to begin with.

the case of games where the 980 used 4gb and the 970 used about 3,5

why would that happen? unless they allways knew, and the drivers reflected that.


Otherwise the system should fill up the same amount of ram on both cards. since the OS sees them as having the same amount of memory available.

So, question is - how long did nVidia know? from the beginning.. most likely.

and all the aftermath excuses are just that.. excuses.. its better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

Marketing FUD.. i just don't buy it..

a concious decision? i'll buy that one.. and the proof is in the different memory allocation across the games, from the beginning!

Thank you so much nVidia.. (i'll buy Ati next)
Click to expand...

They never plead ignorance, just that they accidently didn't tell the marketing team the difference. Then they never noticed that the review literature was false. For months! :D
 
KickAssCop said:
The 3 games where the cards really go to shit; that I tested are:

Mordor with max settings 1080P including ultra textures and it stutters like mad in DLC part of the game; main game seems to be OK for the most part

Massive stutters in Dying Light when maxing out settings in 1080P and having view distance above 50%

Massive stuttering in COD AW with 2 cache settings enabled

However, at least for games 1 and 3 the scenario was the same with 780s in SLi that I had. 780s in SLi also stuttered like mad in Ass Creed Unity, Farcry 4 etc. with maxed settings at 1080P.
Click to expand...
what's your explanation for why the same thing occurred with your 780's if it's due to the memory architecture in the 970?
 
Because at maxed settings with AA thrown in the cards need more than 3 GB of vram to cope.
Ass Creed Unity maxes out at 3.3 GB for me and Farcry 4 maxes out at 3.4 GB for me.

Mordor hits 3.7 GB, COD AW hits 3.9 GB and Dying Light hovers between 3.4-3.6 GB resulting in massive stuttering on 970s.
 
I bet it's because he only has 8gb ram and you have 16gb. I notice anytime the vram gets high on the 970s my ram jumps up around 12gb
 
mope54 said:
what's your explanation for why the same thing occurred with your 780's if it's due to the memory architecture in the 970?
Click to expand...

Because the 780s are 3gb cards... Vram limitation caused it in both. 970s want supposed to be limited...
 
Tgrove said:
I bet it's because he only has 8gb ram and you have 16gb. I notice anytime the vram gets high on the 970s my ram jumps up around 12gb
Click to expand...
Very interesting. I will test if my system ram is filled to the brim with the settings causing stuttering.
 
so........how is all this panning out? are all 970 owners getting a refund check soon?
 
KickAssCop said:
I have two of these cards. I find it unacceptable that I don't have 0.5 GB of ram and would have done an RMA had it not been for the fact that...

1) I got cards from newegg and live halfway across the world in UAE so returning the cards will cost me about 200 dollars or more
2) There are really no other options I would consider from AMD as a replacement and I don't want to spend 550 a pop on each card (please don't make it to AMD vs. nVidia thread; reason for not considering a 290X etc is simply because I don't trust their drivers and newer games continue to have issues with AMD such as Farcry 4, Ass Creed Unity, Dying Light blah blah plus I like HBAO+, ability to have 3D etc)
3) Hoping new cards around the corner from AMD maybe faster and worth the upgrade

So holding off on any upgrades for now and dealing with the 970s that I have right now. The 3 games where the cards really go to shit; that I tested are:

Mordor with max settings 1080P including ultra textures and it stutters like mad in DLC part of the game; main game seems to be OK for the most part

Massive stutters in Dying Light when maxing out settings in 1080P and having view distance above 50%

Massive stuttering in COD AW with 2 cache settings enabled

However, at least for games 1 and 3 the scenario was the same with 780s in SLi that I had. 780s in SLi also stuttered like mad in Ass Creed Unity, Farcry 4 etc. with maxed settings at 1080P.

Given what I play, I am going to keep the cards and see if I get similar issues in upcoming games (like GTA V, Batman Arkham Knight and so on). All my other games are running like a champ.
Click to expand...

I did the same up upgrade as you and also had the same issues at 1440p. Luckily I just bought mine at best buy and they have a decent return policy. Paid the difference for two 980's and haven't had the issues with stuttering since. I wanted the 980's originally but the 970's seemed like a steal performance wise. I'll definitely be more cautious when buying GPUs in the future.
 
Well I just got off the chat with an Amazon support rep and he said Amazon's stance was there was nothing wrong.

Guess I missed out on that refund.
 
I have to give kudos to Newegg on my purchase, I bought a release MSI 4g in October and after giving the chat rep my dissatisfaction on this she issed a full refund(store credit) and a return shipping label prepaid. Whole process took 6 days and I'm now a happy camper.
 
I received an email from Best Buy rep asking if I am happy with my purchase. I am not sure if the Nvidia rep passed on my information which I gave to on the Nvidia forum, or they are doing their own communication from store purchases. Asked if I want to return the product for a full refund. Hmmm.
 
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