GeForce GTX 970 Design Flaw Caps Video Memory Usage to 3.3 GB: Report

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Tank

Overkill Specialist
It may be the most popular performance-segment graphics card of the season, and offer unreal levels of performance for its $329.99 price, but the GeForce GTX 970 suffers from a design flaw, according to an investigation by power-users. GPU memory benchmarks run on GeForce GTX 970 show that the GPU is not able to address the last 700 MB of its 4 GB of memory.

The "GTX 970 memory bug," as it's now being called on tech forums, is being attributed to user-reports of micro-stutter noticed on GTX 970 setups, in VRAM-intensive gaming scenarios. The GeForce GTX 980, on the other hand, isn't showing signs of this bug, the card is able to address its entire 4 GB. When flooded with posts about the investigation on OCN, a forum moderator on the official NVIDIA forums responded: "we are still looking into this and will have an update as soon as possible
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http://www.techpowerup.com/209205/g...caps-video-memory-usage-to-3-3-gb-report.html

dafuq?
 
That's pretty bleak.

Also smells like a cover up to make a deadline. Don't see them overlooking something like this during testing.

Pretty sure they will be able to fix it with a firmware update though.

Blazzok said:
Already posted about it over here: http://mygaming.co.za/forum/showthread.php/347-Thread-of-PC-Woes-Troubles-Problems-Issues?p=1037833&viewfull=1#post1037833 :)
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Weird place to post it tbh - that's a troubleshooting thread where news will get buried before anyone affected reads it.
 
Was planning on getting one at the end of the month, but will rather give it another month or two until the issue is sorted.
 
I have to say Nvidia's whole response is a bit concerning. They pretty much don't give a shit lol
This isn't something that'll change though, it seems to point to a hardware configuration so no driver can fix it.
 
Well here's nVidia explanation.

The GeForce GTX 970 is equipped with 4GB of dedicated graphics memory. However the 970 has a different configuration of SMs than the 980, and fewer crossbar resources to the memory system. To optimally manage memory traffic in this configuration, we segment graphics memory into a 3.5GB section and a 0.5GB section. The GPU has higher priority access to the 3.5GB section. When a game needs less than 3.5GB of video memory per draw command then it will only access the first partition, and 3rd party applications that measure memory usage will report 3.5GB of memory in use on GTX 970, but may report more for GTX 980 if there is more memory used by other commands. When a game requires more than 3.5GB of memory then we use both segments.
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http://www.techspot.com/news/59509-geforce-gtx-970-memory-allocation-issue-explained.html

We will have to wait for third party's to run tests to confirm whether there actually is an issue or not.
 
Wyzak said:
Making a mountain out of a mole-hill

http://www.lazygamer.net/general-news/nvidia-responds-to-gtx-970-memory-issue/

The performance difference between the 970 (which is totally broken) and the 980 (which isn't broken at all) is between 1% and 3% when comparing above 3.5GB memory usage to below 3.5GB. That is negligible.

My 970 is running like a beast and devouring everything I throw it's way.
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Yeah I also just saw this. If the performance difference between the two cards really is that small, it won't matter. Hopefully further testing by sites/companies who are not Nvidia agree with this small performance difference. (please, please agree :cry:)
 
Wyzak said:
Because the users will have the actual facts, and not just speculation... :rolleyes:
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Of course but there is actual useful data in that thread from people that know what they're talking about and not just people that believe all the shit that they read.
 
So on paper we did not get the card that was advertised to us and I'm not sure how I feel about that. On the other hand I'm never going to play games at 1440p so I doubt I would reach the 3.5GB frame buffer any time soon and what I've got is still one of the fastest chips on the market.
 
The Joker said:
Yeah very good read that.
Still feel that Nvidia responded like complete idiots and only when they were backed into a corner did they try and do anything about it.
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I agree that they could have responded better initially, or at least mentioned that the memory configuration was different initially. That would have softened the blow of this revelation - at least they could have said: "Yes, the specs weren't correct and that was a mistake, but we did say that there was a different memory config".

All in all though, it seems that it was a necessary sacrifice to get the power out of the card at the price point that it currently is at now.
 
StaggerLee said:
Here is an in-depth, technical article that provides a relatively objective view of this whole situation. It is a bit long but worth the read:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8935/geforce-gtx-970-correcting-the-specs-exploring-memory-allocation
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Nice article, thanks for the link.

Isengard said:
So on paper we did not get the card that was advertised to us and I'm not sure how I feel about that. On the other hand I'm never going to play games at 1440p so I doubt I would reach the 3.5GB frame buffer any time soon and what I've got is still one of the fastest chips on the market.
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Yesh. I game at 1080p, so I doubt that I will run into any VRAM issues soon (if ever), however this has still left a somewhat sour taste in my mouth. Like the article states, if it was an honest mistake that slipped through the cracks, I suppose I can understand. However people who bought this card for gaming at higher resolutions will definitely not be happy, no matter if this was accidental or intentional.

Will be interesting to see what the course of action from Nvidia will be now, if any.
When I first saw this problem, I immediately went to Wootware's site to have a look at the GTX980's, wondering if I should return my 970 and go for the 980, but the 980 is just a bit too expensive for me; I really don't want to spend R4000 more to upgrade.
 
Blazzok said:
Yesh. I game at 1080p, so I doubt that I will run into any VRAM issues soon (if ever), however this has still left a somewhat sour taste in my mouth. Like the article states, if it was an honest mistake that slipped through the cracks, I suppose I can understand. However people who bought this card for gaming at higher resolutions will definitely not be happy, no matter if this was accidental or intentional.
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I'm in the same boat as you. I chose the 970 because of it's epic performance at 1080p etc resolution. It's performance at UHD was never going to be enough to really make it a worthwhile card.

That aside, I find it peculiar that this "issue" was only picked up so late. Why didn't the early reviewers notice the performance drop at high resolutions relative to the 980 if it really is such a big issue?
 
Wyzak said:
I'm in the same boat as you. I chose the 970 because of it's epic performance at 1080p etc resolution. It's performance at UHD was never going to be enough to really make it a worthwhile card.

That aside, I find it peculiar that this "issue" was only picked up so late. Why didn't the early reviewers notice the performance drop at high resolutions relative to the 980 if it really is such a big issue?
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I just went and had a look at some reviews for both cards (980 and 970) where they tested them both at the same settings and with the same games, and tested the cards at 1080p as well as 4K. In all cases, the performance drop for both cards were mostly similar, so this might be why they did not pick it up. Perhaps they just never maxed out the VRAM on the 970? At 4K resolution though, I'm not sure how they didn't manage it.

Going from 1080p to 4K in BF4, the FPS drop for the 980 is ~50%, and for the 970 is ~53%.
Thief is ~41% and ~43%.
Far Cry 3 is ~48% and ~47%.

Not saying it's conclusive, but that is just what I am seeing on the review sites, that the performance drop is usually about the same for both cards.
 
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