Petitioning for 970 Refund

n=1 · Jan 31, 2015

PRIME1 said:
http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/middle-earth-shadow-of-mordor-geforce-gtx-970-vram-stress-test.html

Here we go. They went past 3.5gb and could not find stuttering.

I bet I could find benchmarks where the 290x starts to crap out once the settings are turned up high enough.

Storm in a teacup.

Ugh, that Guru3D is about the worst example you can pull up right now, see these posts:
http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1041390866&postcount=319
http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1041391037&postcount=329
http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1041391044&postcount=331

And of course then you have sites showing the following:

Source

Google Translate of the last two paragraphs:

However, once the memory above 3.5 gigabytes is really needed and the driver can not shirk that it be situated in Ultra-HD with 4 x MSAA and "High" texture maps with up to 3,980 MiB, shows that there must be tricked, to view the full four gigabytes. The frametimes be far more uneven compared to the GTX 980 (which, incidentally, may approve about 70 MiB more still) and it shows not only in the diagram, but sensitive natures can do this in a direct comparison in the game notice. The Radeon, according to a shaky performance in Full HD, here acts over long distances at the level of (clocked down) GTX 980, but gets to the end of our benchmarks towards problems of memory management.

Away from "normal" benchmarks are the differences between GTX 970 and 980 clearly than would imply the previously known specifications - at least in the on our benchmarks. While the behavior of the driver and the heuristic possibly obtain different application-specific good results, remains a stale aftertaste whether one or the other or stuttering stutterers in the border area with the previously announced Nvidia configuration would not be avoided.

Same thing seen with other games like ACU, Far Cry 4, and Talos Principle. You can check their frame time results here

As an aside, interesting how most of the US based sites have either kept silent or announced everything is peachy, but those Germans keep finding problems. Those pesky Germans I tell ya!

5150Joker · Jan 31, 2015

I think what Kyle said is what summarizes it best: If you feel wronged by what NVIDIA did, get a lawyer and sue them like some guy on AT is doing. You can even get together as a group and file a class action lawsuit. This website highlighting information that's already widely available and acknowledged by NVIDIA won't change anything.

gman · Jan 31, 2015

I think HardOCP is about as fair as it gets. Just my 2.

Anyway talked to Newegg and they are looking into to it. Not sure refunds or replacements or upgrades will happen, but they said they'd contact me about it at least.

MavericK · Jan 31, 2015

Let me know what you hear from them (I also purchased my card from Newegg back in November).

Damar · Jan 31, 2015

I got my two reference style 970's from Best Buy, and I highly doubt they'd do much to help with anything, especially considering it took them nearly 3 months to get me my two game codes for the purchase.

I dont feel completely burned by NV, since I've not run into the issues others have, and doubt I ever will considering the games I play, but I can say I'm not thrilled either. They run smooth and cool for what I play though.

If I had an easy out for the cards I've got, I might swap them for 980's as a future proofing step, but in my case, I dont think that will be an option.

Starrbuck · Jan 31, 2015

[FONT=&quot]For my twin 970s purchased last November:
[/FONT]

[FONT="]Hello Mr. Xxxxxx,[/FONT]
[FONT="] Our return policy remains the same; however, any time a unique situation is reported we are able to request an exception. The exceptions are not always approved but we will always try our best to advocate for our customers. In regards to your order, I did attempt to get an exception approved but due to the timeframe of this order the exception was not processed. I do apologize for the inconvenience. If you have any other questions please feel free to contact me. Have a nice day.[/FONT]

[FONT="]Thank you,[/FONT]

[FONT="]Andrew Jimenez[/FONT]
[FONT="]Customer Service Representative[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]

FLECOM · Jan 31, 2015

Starrbuck said:
[FONT=&quot]For my twin 970s purchased last November:
[/FONT]
[/COLOR]

what retailer?

FrgMstr · Jan 31, 2015

For those of you not good with your purchase of a GTX 970 I would suggest that ALL of you push back on the etailer you purchased it from first to get the card returned. This will in fact cause headaches and issues that NVIDIA has to deal with through it AIB partners.

ApeXiTT · Jan 31, 2015

Why are some of these gtx 970 threads being disabled?? Any one else notice this?

FrgMstr · Jan 31, 2015

ApeXiTT said:
Why are some of these gtx 970 threads being disabled?? Any one else notice this?

Already addressed in this thread.

Starrbuck · Jan 31, 2015

FLECOM said:
what retailer?

Sorry, meant to say it's Newegg.

Dave65 · Jan 31, 2015

I will keep mine since I don't game at anything above 1080P..But I can understand people being pissed about this..

gman · Jan 31, 2015

The main thing that kinda pisses me off is resale value. I'm sure I can't get as much for it now if I choose now or later to list on eBay or somewhere else. I haven't seen it studder on the games I play so I'm not terribly upset on that end it's also kinda the principle of the whole thing. What if you later found out a car you bought had a different size engine in it than you originally thought? You wouldn't be happy.

Also that reply from Newegg on your 2 cards is not very promising, but if enough of the owners who bought from them complain ya never know.

Meeho · Jan 31, 2015

Rizen said:
I think some of you are missing Kyle's point. Their reviews highlight the best playable settings for each card. If the 970 was limited by the memory configuration, this would already be reflected in the [H] reviews, because they test the cards at the highest possible settings that are playable. If they ran into stuttering or issues with pageswapping VRAM, it would be felt in the actual gameplay, and it would have been noted in the review. In fact they did note just that, read the comments on the Watch Dogs benchmarks in their 970 SLI article. Obviously at the time it was written no one realized how the memory on the 970 was configured, but they did note the stuttering in their experiences. Their conclusion in the 970 SLI article - if anyone bothered to read it - even says for 4K or other large resolution configurations, go with 290X CrossFire or 980 SLI.

I'm not condoning NVIDIA's misrepresenting the card, not at all. But if you think that the articles here did not reflect the actual performance of the card, I'm thinking you didn't read them closely.

I've addressed this argument in one of my previous post, so I'll repeat it here:

Yes, but had they known from the beginning about the true specs and resulting possible issues, they could have changed their buying decision. The problem is that games are coming out today, or mods for older games, that are making it a real world performance issue that was not seen when the cards were reviewed.

If anything, the lesson is that disclosing true specs matters a lot. Take the GTX 960 for example. It is a relatively narrow bus 2 GB card. It performs well in real world tests and everyone's happy. But, we all know it is a relatively narrow bus 2 GB card and that it is possible it will be limited in upcoming games, or current mods(!), that require large amounts of RAM for e.g. texture data. When we see performance issues resulting from that, no one will be surprised or feel cheated. The card's performance was known and its specs and resulting potential limitations as well.

Now, imagine if it was advertised as a higher bus, more RAM card. You look at the specs, you look at real world performance, check out the competition and higher end cards, and decide that this is definitely the card for you. Future proof enough for your needs. Some time passes and suddenly you experience stuttering and performance issues while playing your new games and modded old ones, and have no clue what is going on. Then, you find out it is actually a lesser specced card and those differences are causing your problems. You would feel cheated and angry, because had you gone for a competitors product or to the next model up, or had the card that was advertised and you thought you bought, you would be playing them just fine as you had expected. Yet, the fact still remains that it is still that same card with that same excellent real world performance that you've read about in HardOCP's review and on all the other sites you've checked. It is very much true that that hasn't changed. But alas...

And some more here: http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1041397234&postcount=134

Papaj · Jan 31, 2015

I think its about time someone summed up the important info presented here, compiled it, and give it the old /thread because quite frankly I don't think much more needs to be said than the following:

1) The GTX 970 is more accurately described as a 3.5GB + 0.5GB buffer video card the latter of which (according to nVidia) can have its behavior and interaction with the 3.5GB portion heuristically tuned via drivers to negate the perceived performance hit of having higher frame time variances than a 'real' 4GB card.

2a) If you feel nVidia has misrepresented its performance capabilities and that the GTX 970 does not give you the performance/specs you paid for then pummel your retailers collectively with refund requests, chargebacks, or file a class action against nVidia and go get yourself a new card that you personally feel meets your performance/specification expectations.

2b) Be aware that if you swap a card, you will either be paying nVidia (the company that you personally feel just got done screwing you like a $5 whore) more money for a GTX 980 or will be introducing a space heater into your case that offers essentially the same performance at all resolutions/configurations other than 4K SLi or surround gaming - at which point it offers more performance than the GTX equivalent.

3a) The crew at the [H] has always been keen to mention issues with playability either in framerates or observed stuttering/choppiness during their reviews (remember the frame pacing issues being constantly mentioned in reviews in regards to Catalyst drivers from over a year ago). In their 4K/surround GTX 970 SLi review the [H] crew did in fact mention that in one game there was an unacceptable amount of stutter/choppiness that made the experience unplayable and that based on framerates the culprit was most likely a SLi profile issue (nothing out of the ordinary there).

3b) [H] even recommend either going GTX 980 SLi or AMD R9 290X Crossfire for 4K/surround gaming based on obtainable performance numbers. There is no reason to believe that if there was a noticeable issue with stuttering resulting in a degrading gameplay experience (due to higher frametime latencies) that it would have been omitted from the review. Therefore, the [H] crew feels it unnecessary to redo testing because they already provided the data relating to the best possible gameplay experience and the hardware has not physically by some act of magic reconfigured itself to 3.5+0.5GB of memory from 4GB - it has always been 3.5+0.5 - thus no reevaluation is required due to a change of specifications/capabilities.

/thread?

Meeho · Jan 31, 2015

ComputerBase.de's investigation, for those who have missed it:

In the low quality settings, there are only minor differences between the two Maxwell graphics cards. So shows the GeForce GTX 970 in Assassin's Creed: Unity in general a greater number of irregular frametimes than the GeForce GTX 980. But the biggest "Spike" shows on the GeForce GTX 980, which is also reflected by a visible hanger in the game - but the problem is the engine. In Far Cry 4 shows the same behavior, as in The Tale Principle.

At higher settings then changes the result. Because there show up in Assassin's Creed: Unity on the GeForce GTX 970 significantly worse results. Increase especially towards the end of the test sequence at the time intervals between frames, which can be felt in the game.

And also in Far Cry 4, there are more hangers with the small Maxwell accelerators draw attention to themselves by a stuttering in the game. The GeForce GTX 980 is not running perfectly, but is noticeably less vulnerable. In The Talo Principle then shows the mehrsekündige stop the GeForce GTX 970. From this apart are the result of the 3D accelerator very similar.

Is parallel to play a second monitor connected to the computer, which is the Windows desktop, it automatically has approximately 200 additional megabytes of video memory - with each other, there are around 200 megabytes more. The configuration is driving the GeForce GTX 970 so that X × 200 megabytes rather. In the critical 3.5 to 4.0 gigabytes Not only in theory.

All three test matches show with a second monitor in the higher quality setting massive losses compared to a single monitor.

Conclusion

Until the end of January 2015 technical characteristic of GeForce GTX 970 and GTX 980 did not play a role in the choice between the two models: the memory. 4 GB, 256-bit and 3500 MHz offered both models. Other differences? Obviously none. In no scenario of the world should thus provide a disadvantage of VRAM one way or the other card. This view has overtaken this week.

In all three carefully selected from H Titles in this comparison can find graphic settings in which the GeForce GTX 970 only because of the limitations on memory compared to the GeForce GTX 980 falls back. All scenarios are common high resolution and high-resolution textures, while graphics settings, mainly stress the GPU, were reduced in order to achieve practical relevance FPS.

All test sequences are at the present time is extreme scenarios, as they will choose only very few players. But they allow conclusions to other application scenarios beyond the extreme cases where both graphics cards can differ only by reason of the storage or can be.

1. Assassin's Creed: Unity and Far Cry 4 are the first actual examples that show the path that will developers who develop games with a focus on next-gen consoles PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Both consoles have 8 GB of video memory, the CPU and GPU indeed have to share, but the developers still leaves more space. Future titles to be ported to the PC, follow this example.
2. The more monitors are operated in parallel to play with alternative content, the more memory you will need. Computer with the GeForce GTX 970 launched here "500 MB earlier" to the critical limit as systems with GeForce GTX 980. remedy to manually disable the additional screens in Windows.
3. The number of parallel driven graphics cards makes a difference in memory usage. So two graphics cards in SLI mode automatically require more memory than a single, because they reserve a portion of memory for the tuning of the computational work. In addition to easily higher resolutions and detail levels are driven with a SLI system, so that the gap between memory requirements and available storage volume from both sides is narrower. SLI systems, the GeForce GTX 970 so even earlier drive to their own border as a single-GPU machines.

The result after four days of testing: The GeForce GTX 970 is a very good, very fast graphics card for players who will not be disadvantaged as a rule in current games and in typical resolutions and settings of their limitations in memory compared to the GeForce GTX 980. In scenarios that make four gigabytes of memory required, but differences are visible, go through a power loss of four to six percent addition. The sober as well as obvious conclusion: Despite driver optimizations of the memory of the GeForce GTX 970 can not keep up with the uncircumcised four GB of GeForce GTX 980.

For users of the full HD resolution no problems are making at the time and in the future is expected to 2,560 × 1,440 and (1.600) should not be a hurdle in future titles. As of January 28, 2015, however, it is clear that the GeForce GTX 970 is used to get a problem with the memory as the GeForce GTX 980. If you want to play it safe with a fully-connected four gigabytes of fast GDDR5, which thus remains only the handle to more expensive GeForce GTX 980 or Radeon R9 290X AMD, which is the cost comparable as the GeForce GTX 970. When four gigabytes where with what settings are required, but there is no general answer.

§kynet · Jan 31, 2015

Papaj said:
/thread?

No, because the SLI problems were chalked up to either bugs, driver issues or whatever not a hardware limitation of the 970. Now that we know there is one, going forward this limitation is not going away and won't be fixed by any driver update. What we would see if the 970 was the cut down part Nvidia claimed it was for 3-4 months was a card that performed as the 980 but just overall slower.

Meeho · Jan 31, 2015

That "interview" video has over 1/4 million views in just two days. This is not a small problem.

Papaj · Jan 31, 2015

§kynet;1041398391 said:
No, because the SLI problems were chalked up to either bugs, driver issues or whatever not a hardware limitation of the 970. Now that we know there is one, going forward this limitation is not going away and won't be fixed by any driver update. What we would see if the 970 was the cut down part Nvidia claimed it was for 3-4 months was a card that performed as the 980 but just overall slower.

nVidia said the 0.5GB can be heuristically programmed to work more efficiently with the main section of 3.5GB...how does that not fall under the definition of (at minimum) potentially being alleviated by driver updates? The physical hardware hasn't changed since day one...just the people's understanding of the layout and allocation.

This whole thing sucks, I agree, but just because you get told your car has a (hypothetical) 500 HP engine and goes 0-60mph in 3.5 seconds just to find out it actually has one 400 HP gas engine and one 100 HP electric engine - but still goes 0-60mph in 3.5 seconds doesn't change a damn thing. Your car still goes 0-60 in 3.5 seconds and the gas mileage didn't change just because a magical 100 HP electric engine appeared out of thing air - it was always there. That 3.5+0.5GB split was always there and the card performs the way it does regardless - we just now have an explanation for any oddities not related to buggy SLi profiles and people pushing the cards way past their intended design trying to power obscene resolutions it probably shouldn't be used for anyway - all of which was mentioned by the [H] crew in their 970 SLi review previous to this revelation.

KickAssCop · Jan 31, 2015

It is a very real issue and I am facing it in games. I had to reduce draw distance in dying light to 50% for it to stop stuttering. In AW I had to disable caching of shadow maps which has fixed the game at the expense of times where the game now has shadows being rendered right in front of me which is annoying. Same issue with Mordor. Need to go back to high textures. Sort of missing the whole point of going from 3gb to 4gb cards.

§kynet · Jan 31, 2015

Papaj said:
nVidia said the 0.5GB can be heuristically programmed to work more efficiently with the main section of 3.5GB...how does that not fall under the definition of (at minimum) potentially being alleviated by driver updates? The physical hardware hasn't changed since day one...just the people's understanding of the layout and allocation.

Where did Nvidia say this? The one rep said there would be a driver update to better utilize the memory config then later retracted the comment. You're right the hardware has not changed, but what people bought is not what they were expecting. Not acceptable this is flat out bait and switch.

mw8t · Jan 31, 2015

Papaj said:
nVidia said the 0.5GB can be heuristically programmed to work more efficiently with the main section of 3.5GB...how does that not fall under the definition of (at minimum) potentially being alleviated by driver updates? The physical hardware hasn't changed since day one...just the people's understanding of the layout and allocation.

This whole thing sucks, I agree, but just because you get told your car has a (hypothetical) 500 HP engine and goes 0-60mph in 3.5 seconds just to find out it actually has one 400 HP gas engine and one 100 HP electric engine - but still goes 0-60mph in 3.5 seconds doesn't change a damn thing. Your car still goes 0-60 in 3.5 seconds and the gas mileage didn't change just because a magical 100 HP electric engine appeared out of thing air - it was always there. That 3.5+0.5GB split was always there and the card performs the way it does regardless - we just now have an explanation for any oddities not related to buggy SLi profiles and people pushing the cards way past their intended design trying to power obscene resolutions it probably shouldn't be used for anyway - all of which was mentioned by the [H] crew in their 970 SLi review previous to this revelation.

On the second-hand market though a 500HP engine is more desirable than a 400HP engine regardless of performance, that is people's perception. The same goes with a 4gb card versus a 3.5gb card.

Nvidia pulled a ++++'s trick by hiding this from their customers.

Papaj · Jan 31, 2015

KickAssCop said:
It is a very real issue and I am facing it in games. I had to reduce draw distance in dying light to 50% for it to stop stuttering. In AW I had to disable caching of shadow maps which has fixed the game at the expense of times where the game now has shadows being rendered right in front of me which is annoying. Same issue with Mordor. Need to go back to high textures. Sort of missing the whole point of going from 3gb to 4gb cards.

There will always be some minor stutter/hanging present unless your screen refresh is perfectly synced with your graphics card output. Have you tried running your monitor at a lower refresh rate (I notice its a 144Hz model) more in line with your generally framerate to see if the issue is as noticeable/persists? If everybody is going to bitch about [H] not redoing their review/evaluation how about we try to replicate the problem first ourselves or try to eliminate any non-standard "dummy" variables that could be affecting the perceived smoothness more than the lagging frame times.

Meeho · Jan 31, 2015

Papaj said:
This whole thing sucks, I agree, but just because you get told your car has a (hypothetical) 500 HP engine and goes 0-60mph in 3.5 seconds just to find out it actually has one 400 HP gas engine and one 100 HP electric engine - but still goes 0-60mph in 3.5 seconds doesn't change a damn thing. Your car still goes 0-60 in 3.5 seconds and the gas mileage didn't change just because a magical 100 HP electric engine appeared out of thing air - it was always there.

Not a very good analogy. Somewhat better if you add that the electric engine causes stalling and loss of acceleration once you go uphill.

That 3.5+0.5GB split was always there and the card performs the way it does regardless - we just now have an explanation for any oddities not related to buggy SLi profiles and people pushing the cards way past their intended design trying to power obscene resolutions it probably shouldn't be used for anyway - all of which was mentioned by the [H] crew in their 970 SLi review previous to this revelation.

No, it performs the way it has in those games and scenarios in which it was tested. For the rest, please refer couple of posts back for multiple examples that prove otherwise.

Papaj said:
There will always be some minor stutter/hanging present unless your screen refresh is perfectly synced with your graphics card output.

Desynced refresh causes tearing, not stuttering/hanging.

Papaj · Jan 31, 2015

§kynet;1041398434 said:
Where did Nvidia say this? The one rep said there would be a driver update to better utilize the memory config then later retracted the comment. You're right the hardware has not changed, but what people bought is not what they were expecting. Not acceptable this is flat out bait and switch.

mw8t said:
On the second-hand market though a 500HP engine is more desirable than a 400HP engine regardless of performance, that is people's perception. The same goes with a 4gb card versus a 3.5gb card.

Nvidia pulled a ++++'s trick by hiding this from their customers.

So follow #2a and 2b in my earlier post and get a chargeback/refund/hire a lawyer. No sense rehashing the same shit and speak with your wallet - no sense in saying the same thing for a dozen pages but not taking matters into your own hands.

Meeho · Jan 31, 2015

Papaj said:
This whole thing sucks, I agree, but just because you get told your car has a (hypothetical) 500 HP engine and goes 0-60mph in 3.5 seconds just to find out it actually has one 400 HP gas engine and one 100 HP electric engine - but still goes 0-60mph in 3.5 seconds doesn't change a damn thing.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/autos/2003-09-03-carbuyback_x.htm

Mazda is offering to buy back most of the 3,551 RX-8 rotary-engine sports cars sold since the July launch because engine power is as much as 5% less than advertised an important difference to sports car enthusiasts.

Mazda sent letters Aug. 22 to RX-8 purchasers saying it would pay full sticker price plus taxes and other fees even if they've run up thousands of miles on their cars. Those who tell Mazda they will keep their cars get free scheduled maintenance for the four-year, 50,000-mile warranty period, plus $500.

Brent_Justice · Jan 31, 2015

My personal belief is that NVIDIA truly just made a mistake and didn't inform their PR people properly. I do not think it was trying to deceive anyone. It could end up being a costly mistake for them, as the people have spoken and the current vibe is now one of mistrust, not good for any company.

In regards to our reviews specifically, I test for VRAM limitations in gaming, whether SLI or single-GPU by pushing games past the limit of what is playable, and doing apples-to-apples at settings that push VRAM usage. However, typically those scenarios are not "playable" in terms of performance anyway just because that's the limitation of the GPUs performance. In the case of 970 single and SLI I certainly did this.

Our conclusion was that at 4K you are better off going with 980 SLI. I stand by that statement then, and now. I do not think 970 SLI is powerful enough to enjoy 4K gaming, I said it then, and nothing has changed now. Also, people buying GTX 970's based off of our performance we have shown knew what they were buying, the playable performance was shown then and has not changed between then and now.

One can never fully predict how future games will perform. Specifications won't tell you how a future game may perform. Look how bad AC Unity turned out. We can only test each individual game as they happen and figure out which ones are VRAM heavy, and which ones are not. Not every new game demands more VRAM usage, some are smarter about it, and some are more effecient than others. There is no one overall sweeping conclusion for every future game to come being played on said GPU.

I personally think the GTX 970 is still a great performance to price ratio. If you aren't happy with it, there are alternatives, AMD GPU prices have dropped a bit and the 290/290X are appealing GPUs. We have more 290X reviews planned in fact, Hawaii isn't dead yet

mw8t · Jan 31, 2015

Papaj said:
So follow #2a and 2b in my earlier post and get a chargeback/refund/hire a lawyer. No sense rehashing the same shit and speak with your wallet - no sense in saying the same thing for a dozen pages but not taking matters into your own hands.

I'm not a 970 owner. Nor for the record have I ever owned an ATI/AMD card.

I'm just caling a spade a spade.

Papaj · Jan 31, 2015

Meeho said:
Not a very good analogy. Somewhat better if you add that the electric engine causes stalling and loss of acceleration once you go uphill.

No, it performs the way it has in those games and scenarios in which it was tested. For the rest, please refer couple of posts back for multiple examples that prove otherwise.

Desynced refresh causes tearing, not stuttering/hanging.

I'd like to see the electric motor design that causes that to happen - because that's a terrible motor to begin with. I work on AC and DC motors for a living, orientation matters only when you're talking about coupling to pumps and how that's going to affect seal leakage; it should have no bearing on the motors ability to rotate and drive something via rotary motion.

Do you really think that pushing those settings at 4K/surround resolutions in the games the [H] crew tested didn't push to the card's to 3.5GB+ of VRAM? If it didn't I'd be really curious to see just what ridiculous setting/mods people are using to do so - nd if they are what kind of terrible ass framerates they're getting and are considering "acceptable" to game at.

Tearing is the most notable effect of desynced refresh but stutter/frame hang up also occurs - otherwise Gsync would be a pointless technology but now we're getting off topic.

§kynet · Jan 31, 2015

Brent_Justice said:
My personal belief is that NVIDIA truly just made a mistake and didn't inform their PR people properly. I do not think it was trying to deceive anyone. It could end up being a costly mistake for them, as the people have spoken and the current vibe is now one of mistrust, not good for any company.

I don't find this credible. Would mean that for 3+ months every single person at Nvidia reading reviews didn't notice the error. So that means not a single engineer or someone with knowledge of the architecture read a single review, or if they did and tried to raise the issue they were ignored and the true specs were kept under wraps.

Our conclusion was that at 4K you are better off going with 980 SLI. I stand by that statement then, and now. I do not think 970 SLI is powerful enough to enjoy 4K gaming, I said it then, and nothing has changed now. Also, people buying GTX 970's based off of our performance we have shown knew what they were buying, the playable performance was shown then and has not changed between then and now.

In single card performance the 290x is about the same as 970, so when the 970 is unable to offer roughly the same experience in multi-GPU that raises questions. Again it cannot be stated more strongly, if the 970 had the hardware config Nvidia originally claimed then it would very likely be about on par with the 290x in multi-GPU. In fact this has been tested the 980 has been downclocked enough to bench the same as the 970, not a perfect scenario but when done the pseudo 970 does fine in SLI the glitching is not there.

I personally think the GTX 970 is still a great performance to price ratio. If you aren't happy with it, there are alternatives, AMD GPU prices have dropped a bit and the 290/290X are appealing GPUs. We have more 290X reviews planned in fact, Hawaii isn't dead yet

Alternatives for people that already bought the card are not so simple. And again I feel sorry for etailers and the AIBs they are going to be the ones taking it in the wallet. Nvidia says there is no problem the card is fine and performs as intended.

Meeho · Jan 31, 2015

Papaj said:
I'd like to see the electric motor design that causes that to happen - because that's a terrible motor to begin with. I work on AC and DC motors for a living, orientation matters only when you're talking about coupling to pumps and how that's going to affect seal leakage; it should have no bearing on the motors ability to rotate and drive something via rotary motion.

This one:

Do you really think that pushing those settings at 4K/surround resolutions in the games the [H] crew tested didn't push to the card's to 3.5GB+ of VRAM?

I do. Those were mostly old games.

If it didn't I'd be really curious to see just what ridiculous setting/mods people are using to do so - nd if they are what kind of terrible ass framerates they're getting and are considering "acceptable" to game at.

If you were honestly curious you would have read this very page. I've already pointed you to them: http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1041398385&postcount=225

xTrident · Jan 31, 2015

Papaj said:
nVidia said the 0.5GB can be heuristically programmed to work more efficiently with the main section of 3.5GB...how does that not fall under the definition of (at minimum) potentially being alleviated by driver updates? The physical hardware hasn't changed since day one...just the people's understanding of the layout and allocation.

This whole thing sucks, I agree, but just because you get told your car has a (hypothetical) 500 HP engine and goes 0-60mph in 3.5 seconds just to find out it actually has one 400 HP gas engine and one 100 HP electric engine - but still goes 0-60mph in 3.5 seconds doesn't change a damn thing. Your car still goes 0-60 in 3.5 seconds and the gas mileage didn't change just because a magical 100 HP electric engine appeared out of thing air - it was always there. That 3.5+0.5GB split was always there and the card performs the way it does regardless - we just now have an explanation for any oddities not related to buggy SLi profiles and people pushing the cards way past their intended design trying to power obscene resolutions it probably shouldn't be used for anyway - all of which was mentioned by the [H] crew in their 970 SLi review previous to this revelation.

Curious... The analogy you used for the 970 with the 500 HP split between two completely different power plants: Is that really the kind of comparison you see this as? If so, I'm guessing you used that analogy as a way to say the buyer "should" still be okay with their purchase because the car is still 500 HP and it's 0 - 60 speeds are X etc, etc... I actually see the exact opposite with that analogy. And depending on sales of that automobile etc... I see the outrage being on a much larger scale because the specifications weren't made clear. And something like a mix between a combustion engine and an electric motor to come with a total HP rating... Yeah, big deal, and I can't see a company simply saying our automobile has 500 HP and that's it - flying.

And thing is, even using your analogy with the car. Long term the electric motor could hinder the performance as much as it helps. Just as an example, stop for fuel and in ten minutes you're back on the road running at your full power rating with a combustion engine. (This is obviously excluding power loss to wear and tear and what not) Using an electric motor I doubt you're going to be fully charging that power plant in ten minutes. On a long trip, there's a good chance you'll have a loss of power. I understand this entire comparison was theoretical, and it's all very broad. But for theoretical purposes, just that example I used could be a very important part of the buyers decision.

And that's the problem with the 970. Here's a car with 500 HP, good to go right now (full of fuel and 100% charged). Here's a 970 performing great right now (a lot of current games and @ 1080p). But what about the long haul? What about into the future? Aside from the frame stuttering problems people are seeing now there's also this big future proof problem, i.e. the long road trip. I just simply don't understand a) why nVidia didn't make the VRAM splitting clear from the get go, or b) just make the card 3.5GB. I mean, did they really not expect this kind of response once it was figured out? Or didn't they think anyone would figure it out?

Papaj · Jan 31, 2015

Probably a little of both to be honest once they realized the mistake - side note unrelated to your thoughts (directed at another user) - really...dismissing the [H] crew's SLi performance review because they used 'old games' like Crysis 3, Tomb Raider, and BF4?

God damn those bastards for using games that actually function properly and aren't terrible fucking console ports with the most unoptimized pieces of shit for drivers and coding since the pre-21st century days where swapping graphics cards could be the difference between a 2 fps slideshow and a cool 30-60fps. Fuck those guys running sideways up a hill for not picking the most artificially demanding games and using those as 'quality' test pieces for their grand graphics card experiment conspiracies.

Let's demand the [H] crew start using the POS games like AC: Unity, Wolfenstein The New Order, or MechWarrior Online as valid points of testing for determining the real performance value of a graphics card

Have you tried playing with DX11 enabled in MWO? If you thought it was hard enough to get DX10 settings and performance to make sense try DX11, you eat a 50% performance hit just by turning it on. That's a perfect candidate to test a graphics card right there because that totally isn't an anomaly or shit tier programming/lazy game coding

If we held the game developers to a higher standard and stopped buying into their POS console ported PC titles with gimped graphics and unefficient/unoptimized coding 3.5GB would be enough to actually do some serious gaming on. Guild Wars 2 is a perfect example, that game can get demanding as a mother in the right situation and the graphical options actually do noticeably improve the visuals - yet I've never seen my 980 get pushed beyond 1.75GB of VRAM even in 150+ person WvW skirmishes with settings cranked to max and the system memory used by it is never more than 2-2.5GB. That's what a PC game should be coded like.

xTrident · Jan 31, 2015

Maybe I just needed someone to say it. But I bet you're right.

Oh, I also lol'd at your mention of Mechwarrior Online. I remember hearing some people having more problems turning the graphics down rather than up... quite possibly they programmed medium as high and vice versa.

§kynet · Jan 31, 2015

I counted 4 reviews (could be more) linked from Nvidia's own site that still have the wrong specs listed. You'd think Nvidia would actively pursue getting this corrected.

bpizzle1 · Feb 1, 2015

I just got done chatting with Amazon. I showed the rep several links with the details of the issue as well as pointed them to the most recent customer reviews. They issued a refund without much hesitation, and this was from a purchase from Oct. 2014. If you guys purchased from Amazon, you should be good to go if you really want to return the cards.

In the mean time, I am going to buy a MSI 290x Lightning, stick with a single card for a bit, and pocket the difference from my SLI setup. Whenever AMD releases their new cards, I will probably go ahead and sell the 290x and upgrade to the new card.

Papaj · Feb 1, 2015

xTrident said:
Maybe I just needed someone to say it. But I bet you're right.

Oh, I also lol'd at your mention of Mechwarrior Online. I remember hearing some people having more problems turning the graphics down rather than up... quite possibly they programmed medium as high and vice versa.

Yea, that game is a fucking mess code/engine wise. But seriously, we need to hold the game devs to this 'hive mind carrying pitchfork' standards nVidia is apparently being held to with this 970 debacle. Are the games they're giving us really "next-gen games"? Lets demand refunds and sue the shit out of them to. I buy way more games than I do video cards, it'd be more worth the time and effort.

Dahkoht · Feb 1, 2015

One question I wonder about and I think will be interesting to see is this,

Will Nvidia and it's vendors continue to sell the 970's with zero changes on the spec sheets on the box/description ?

You have places like Amazon in the US who are very good about if you can show something isn't as is described will do as others have noted and let you return the item often past the 30 days. More importantly you have the EU types of rules that make this much easier of a case , and even with possible penalties.

So do they keep selling as is spec wise and just have the situation drag on as long as they sell the 970's , or do they change say the description of the memory , or the memory bus to it's true measurement etc , and as a result really open up a can of worms with ones sold previously with higher numbers ?

Will be interesting to see what they do about the specs on the boxes and website in the future.

(also is Nvidia completely insulated as far as returns go ? As in if the EU has tons of 970's get returned along with US retailers who allow it , who eats it , the vendors like Asus/MSI/EVGA or do they have some recourse with Nvidia ? I would think at some point there will be some friction there also)

polonyc2 · Feb 1, 2015

bpizzle1 said:
I just got done chatting with Amazon. I showed the rep several links with the details of the issue as well as pointed them to the most recent customer reviews. They issued a refund without much hesitation, and this was from a purchase from Oct. 2014. If you guys purchased from Amazon, you should be good to go if you really want to return the cards.

In the mean time, I am going to buy a MSI 290x Lightning, stick with a single card for a bit, and pocket the difference from my SLI setup. Whenever AMD releases their new cards, I will probably go ahead and sell the 290x and upgrade to the new card.

thanks for the info...I knew Amazon would be hassle free...I really need to think hard about returning my Gigabyte 970...if the 980 was priced lower, Nvidia offered some sort of trade-up discount or offered some sort of restitution the decision would be easy

Deleted member 174368 · Feb 1, 2015

polonyc2 said:
thanks for the info...I knew Amazon would be hassle free...I really need to think hard about returning my Gigabyte 970...if the 980 was priced lower, Nvidia offered some sort of trade-up discount or offered some sort of restitution the decision would be easy

I highly doubt they would ever offer any sort of compensation for this issue as that would be admitting fault.

Petitioning for 970 Refund

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