GTX 970 VRAM/Specs issue

linkin

VIP Member
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StrangleHold

Moderator
Staff member
Yeah, that's kinda misleading. Like at the bottom, they had three ways to be honest, but decided not to be.
 

tylerjrb

Member
Lol like ninja has said that video on the lol thread is pretty accurate, funny video as well. im glad I didnt get them for 4k.
 
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kdfresh09

New Member
yeah, youwould think there should be a lawsuite. i think people just need to gather together if they want nvidia to do anything about it and make it right. i had been an nvidia guy for a decade, was about to buy the 970 for 1440p gaming. when i heard about the problem, i said hells no. the 960 wasnt strong enough ro have enough vram for 1440p, 2 of them woudl still only have 2gb vram, and the 980 is out of my price range, so i decided to go AMD for the 1st time as my MAIN card out of 10 years. went with the powercolor pcs+ r9 290x...shoudl do the same or better at 1440p than teh 970 anyways, and was only $280 after rebate
 

ScottALot

Active Member
Well class action lawsuits have to be started somewhere... someone's just got to be outraged enough to actually do it.

From what I've heard, though, nVidia's working on drivers to work around the issue a bit more.

The actual situation is that the card has 4GB of vRAM, but 3.5GB is a primary, full-speed segment of RAM, while the 512MB remaining is a secondary and slower set.

Even the average high-res gamer won't run into issues, though... I mean sure, it's a really shoddy move my nVidia, but it's not so huge there needs to be a whole following behind it. nVidia will have learned their lesson through the huge social outburst.

Linky: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2876...r-update-for-memory-performance-concerns.html
 

ninjabubbles3

Active Member
Well class action lawsuits have to be started somewhere... someone's just got to be outraged enough to actually do it.

From what I've heard, though, nVidia's working on drivers to work around the issue a bit more.

The actual situation is that the card has 4GB of vRAM, but 3.5GB is a primary, full-speed segment of RAM, while the 512MB remaining is a secondary and slower set.

Even the average high-res gamer won't run into issues, though... I mean sure, it's a really shoddy move my nVidia, but it's not so huge there needs to be a whole following behind it. nVidia will have learned their lesson through the huge social outburst.

Linky: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2876...r-update-for-memory-performance-concerns.html

Nvidia said after that that their would be no update
 

kdfresh09

New Member
yeah, a driver wont fix a hardware issue. went and got a amd r9 290x by power color instead of going nvidia. they lost me this time around, and after 10 years. certain games will tap our 3.5gb and 4gb at 1440p, which is what i game on. so, a 970 was out of the question, with its gimped up vram. shadow of mordor, crysis 3 and cod advanced warfare all use up the 4gb buffer with AA turned up at 1440p, so im glad i get to use all my 4gb at its rated speed, instead of the gtx 970.
 

Renzore101

Member
I purchased a 970 and I am very happy with it thus far. Granted I am gaming at 1080, I assume it would be best in the future to change to a 980 perhaps? How would SLI 970s scale in 4k res gaming I wonder. In addition to that, from benchmarks that I have seen I notice no FPS difference between the 970 and reference cards. In most scenarios the card performs the same or better.
 
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linkin

VIP Member
From what I have read and heard, SLI 970's are more prone to the poor frametime issue than a single card.
 

Renzore101

Member
Do you have a specific source showing this to be true of SLI 970s? If this is the case I am assuming there is absolutely no reason one would want to use such a configuration in hopes of making the jump to 4k. Sucks for me! Also, how is the VRAM handled in an SLI configuration? Understand that this is my first build and I have never built an SLI rig before. If 1x 970 has an effective 3.5 GB of fast VRAM, I would assume that in an SLI config you would up the total available VRAM to 7GB? I'm sure it's not that simple, but please shed some light on this if you have a deeper understanding.
 
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Okedokey

Well-Known Member
Do you have a specific source showing this to be true of SLI 970s? If this is the case I am assuming there is absolutely no reason one would want to use such a configuration in hopes of making the jump to 4k. Sucks for me! Also, how is the VRAM handled in an SLI configuration? Understand that this is my first build and I have never built an SLI rig before. If 1x 970 has an effective 3.5 GB of fast VRAM, I would assume that in an SLI config you would up the total available VRAM to 7GB? I'm sure it's not that simple, but please shed some light on this if you have a deeper understanding.

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/Frame-Rating-GTX-970-Memory-Issued-Tested-SLI
 

Renzore101

Member

linkin

VIP Member
After reading that article I am essentially getting mixed results as to what to think of this whole situation. Yes the 3.5 GB VRAM limitation is a factor at 6k resolution within BF4 when pixel scaling. To me 50fps is very playable however, and according to this article SLI 970s still seem like a logical possibility to experience 4k gaming on some level.

Waiting 100-200ms for the next frame is not.

FPS does not take into account frametimes. Frametimes govern smoothness at any given FPS
 

Renzore101

Member
Waiting 100-200ms for the next frame is not.

FPS does not take into account frametimes. Frametimes govern smoothness at any given FPS
Prior to discovering this memory allocation issue I had never heard of frametimes. I am having a hard time understanding the difference to be honest. I can see however, according to the graphs, the frametime spikes are more common with the 970 in higher resolution applications.
 

linkin

VIP Member
Exactly, due the the VRAM configuration, which is a hardware issue and cannot be fixed by drivers. Frametimes are the time it takes to render each frame from the previous one. High frametimes cause stuttering even with a high framerate

Effectively, you can't use the cards' full memory capacity (which will be more likely in SLI / multi monitor usage) without suffering from frametime performance issues.
 

kdfresh09

New Member
more importantly to Renzore101...1 970 has 3.5gb vram. 2 970 in sli will still only have 3.5gb vram. vram does not stack in sli or crossfire configs
 

Renzore101

Member
Exactly, due the the VRAM configuration, which is a hardware issue and cannot be fixed by drivers. Frametimes are the time it takes to render each frame from the previous one. High frametimes cause stuttering even with a high framerate

Effectively, you can't use the cards' full memory capacity (which will be more likely in SLI / multi monitor usage) without suffering from frametime performance issues.

This leads me to wonder if I should consider any type of multi monitor configuration at all. At the present moment I really am only interested in 2 monitors max due to my desk arrangement. Currently my 970 is scaling most games to 2715 x 1527 DSR on 1 monitor with a native 1920 x 1080 res. Is the DSR scaling similar in it's demand on the hardware to, say, 2k res at 2048 × 1536 or is it handled differently on a hardware level. Would I be able to play on two monitors at 2k res decently while avoiding stuttering issues?
 
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