mapesdhs
Distinguished
CraigN :
They may make a 980 Ti dual card, that has "12" GB of GDDR5, and by that I mean each GPU has access to 6, but SLI doesn't "stack" VRAM between GPUs (even on dual GPU cards), so you have two GPUs on one circuit board with access to only 6 GB of VRAM each for a total of 12. GPU 1 can't access the 6 GB belonging to GPU 2, though. (This is how it currently works even on the "12GB" Titan Z)
Indeed. Something that reeeeally annoyed me about the whole FUD relating to the 970's split RAM setup was the way so many were moaning so loudly about that, and yet nobody seems to care that both GPU makers get away with describing dual-GPU cards as having double the RAM (far worse practice IMO). It should not be allowed as it's completely misleading; such box packaging & PR directly implies the user's programs can access that much RAM, but they can't. As you say, the data is simply replicated to each card. A dual 980 Ti should still be described as being a 6GB card, or at the most, "2x6GB (6GB visible)". The fact that there's two lots of 6GB on the card is irrelevant, the card cannot behave as anything other than a config with just 6GB. AMD and NVIDIA have been doing this for years; I really don't get why site reviews don't call them out on it because it stinks. It's even worse when there's a complete contradiction between official specs for dual-GPU cards and at the same time one can get up-spec'd single-GPU cards, eg. the GTX 590 was marketed as a 3GB card (2x 1.5GB), but there was also the single 580 in numerous variants with a genuiner 3GB (I have loads of them), in which case SLI 580 3GB is obviously a lot more potent than a 590 where VRAM matters (certainly does for Crysis at crazy detail).
Also, QSV, I don't get the ACX hate. I have three 980 ACX 2.0 cards, I'm very happy with them, easily some of the quietest cards I own, and they oc very nicely (I have some pretty high spots atm on the Techpowerup Unigine Heaven top-10 list, and a few 3DMark records).
Ian.