thor220 :
More pages are spent on the whine then the actual performance of the card. It's an issue that's already been addressed, tom's really didn't have to dedicate so much to such a small issue.
Comparatively, at least it doesn't reduce performance like the last 0.5 GB on the 970, and I don't remember tom's being on Nvidia's case about that much more serious issue.
Nv's case was DESIGNED to operate this way and it barely drops compared to 980 in the same exact settings/games. NV does a great job of masking the .5GB being slower than the rest. Their other options were worse than leaving it in and spending the R&D to mask it (better for customers, which is what anandtech etc explained they did it for users!). OTOH, AMD's card is not supposed to do this, as such we have RMA info etc. An article like this tells people, hey, if you HEAR it you don't have to LIVE with it. Anandtech was silent. Toms did their job here, which is to report stuff like this. All sites reported the .5GB too, which as shown by many sites, they can't seem to prove any issues exist (anandtech still looking...LOL).
I'm not quite sure why people whined about the .5GB, they were nice enough to leave it, AND optimize to avoid issues (which costs money) to give customers as much as possible. I guess they should have just dropped it in your opinion and made a 3GB card? Clearly AMD lied or didn't know about the size of the problem of their own product here, and that is a problem. Nvidia's scores don't change due to a spec sheet, so perf is not a problem. No benchmark changed after us knowing a sheet of paper had incorrect info on it.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8935/geforce-gtx-970-correcting-the-specs-exploring-memory-allocation/4
Would you rather have more expensive 970's? Or less ram and going to memory off the card sooner? I'd rather have NV include it and try to keep me from main memory as best they can. I'd also rather have them do this to keep yields up so my prices are down as best as possible. You seem to be confused about WHAT actually happened and that it benefited US and them. Also note they've been doing this for multiple gens (660/600ti etc), so it's not surprising people are STILL trying to find a place 970 hurts on this issue. They are pretty good at putting less used info into that 512MB.
From page 2:
"As for why NVIDIA is using such a configuration here, the crux of the matter is money and yields. Without the ability to partially disable a ROP/MC partition, NVIDIA would either have to spec a card to use a fully enabled partition – essentially reducing yields for that card and driving up costs – or disable the entire partition and lose all of the benefits of the additional ROPs, memory, and the memory controller."
From page 4:
"At its heart the GTX 970’s configuration is a compromise between GPU yields, card prices, and memory capacity. The easiest argument to make in that regard is that it should have shipped with a full 64 ROP configuration and skipped all of these complexities entirely. But on the whole and looking at the options for configurations without this additional complexity, a 3GB/48 ROP GTX 970 would have been underspeced, and with so much of the GTX 970’s success story being NVIDIA’s ability to launch the card at $329 I’m not sure if the other option is much better. At least on paper this looks like the best compromise NVIDIA could make."
I'll take perf and lower prices to go please, as the other option for any business would NOT be to drop yields. They would choose to screw us instead on perf as it's economically smart yield wise. What they did was the best option here. This type of tech didn't hurt the 660ti either (great card for the money!).
Sorry, AMD screwed up (again, 290x too), get used to it, they are broke due to selling cards/chips for too low a price (or including games when they shouldn't) and forgetting their CORE products (CPU/GPU) while going APU, Console etc. That is the price you pay for ignoring your core stuff and getting distracted which is why NV said VERBALLY they passed on consoles, it would take R&D from core stuff. AMD's R&D has dropped for 4yrs. This is expected, funky drivers expected, muffed launches expected and more to come no doubt as they are getting squeezed more and more. What is amazing to me is people are still calling for low prices from AMD when they have lost 6 BILLION in 12 years.
It's like welfare people (see Greece, & 50mil American's getting help from govt when few REALLY need it) thinking the govt can just keep giving them checks for life magically. NO, that leads to a 18 TRILLION dollar debt, and a growing at 2B+ per day. At some point AMD needs to charge more to make money (or sell to someone who can fund FIXING AMD), just like these people need to go back to work before we go bankrupt.
The simple math of spending more than you take in FOREVER ends in destruction, whether it's a country, or a company. AMD made their biggest mistake paying 3.5X the price for ATI than they should have paid, and made it worse by (among other things) NOT making ZEN 5yrs ago and instead opting to do console R&D. I like low prices too, don't get me wrong, but I don't want a DEAD AMD to get them. I will gladly pay an extra $50-$100 to either side for a higher end model for them to continue R&D. Even Nvidia, who has made much smarter management decisions has NOT made in 8yrs what they made in 2007! AMD is killing BOTH sides by always aiming so low. If you take away payments of 266mil a year to NV from Intel, they aren't making even 1/2 of 2007 profits at Nvidia...Nobody should complain about pricing when NEITHER side is doing great in profits and AMD is literally LOSING money.
Again, though, toms did their job here...Yell at AMD for letting this get out the door, not toms for reporting it. There was less to do on the .5GB because it changed nothing. Here they had to discover what actually was happening and if it was in RETAIL cards still. They couldn't do that with a sample, and it was worth investigating with vids showing up with the noise (see wccftech vids on pump/coil whine) sent from customers buying cards. That is not performing like AMD said (fixed AMD claimed in production) in the reviews. That is different than .5GB on paper issue right? No benchmark changed after the paper info. An RMA in that situation wouldn't change buying options either. In this case it will get rid of the whine that isn't supposed to be in there according to AMD. Correct? A 4 page article on the memory at anandtech...LOL. Same as NV story here right? Though anandtech did a 4 pager because they are an AMD portal site...LOL. Not because anything changed in performance.
"But so far with this new information we have been unable to break the GTX 970"
"To that end in the short amount of time we’ve had to work on this article we have also been working on cooking up potential corner cases for the GTX 970 and have so far come up empty, though we’re by no means done."
As anandtech says in the article above, it's tough to find a game that just cracks 3.5GB without going over 4GB which would affect all other cards as well...LOL. On top of that, NV is actively working on masking it too in software, so let me know when you find a CORNER case that fits inside 3.5-4GB that NV hasn't dealt with yet. Customers are NOT affected from Nvidia's paper info, but AMD customers ARE affected by the whining noises. Correct?
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-geforce-gtx-970-specifications,28464.html
Toms did a pretty extensive page on NV, but again, it should have only been a few lines...LOL. Specs were wrong, but perf the same, move along, but nothing wrong with taking more to explain HOW crossbar tech etc actually works I guess. Not true for AMD here though, we're talking RMA due to noise. There was nothing to gain from Nvidia to explain a spec sheet that would inevitably be found out (PR nightmare ensued, so toms, anandtech etc all said it would be stupid to do that and they are not that dumb) and much to lose. I'm sure AMD didn't do this on purpose either, but NOT spot checking stuff is low R&D at work. Trust, but verify happens when you have the funds.
In the end toms got it right anyway (much like anandtech after 4 pages of bloviating on it):
"But to us the price/performance ratio trumps everything else, and that is no different today than it has been since the GeForce GTX 970 was released."
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