GTX 970 4Gb or 8Gb (Due to Vram issues)

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NewGuy95

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Jul 9, 2014
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I was planning on buying a GTX 970 but due to the problem of it its 4 Gigs Vram i'm hesitating to do it now and might wait for the 8gigs variant.Will the 8Gb version encounter the same problem as its 4 Gb version.
Should I buy the GTX 970 4Gb or wait for the 8Gb version
 
Solution
rdc85
may be i should says design weakness than flaws.. 😀

Anyways it's no denial that 970 is still a great card...
nvidia is still trying to counter the weakness, and who knows they may find some "perfect" solution..

about SLI, not going to argue more..
since it may depends of the games, resolution, is nvidia successful limiting the vram, etc..

just for me, waiting till this become more clearer than jumping the gun and bought 2 card and got let down in the end..
just go with one first and see how it goes later..

just take it as advise either u take it or ignore it 😀...
going to bed now...
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That really depends in what resolution you're playing at. I would actually skip it right now and just get the 980. Lot's of coil whine on the great majority of them and now this wonderful report of stuttering when using more than 3.5gb vram.
 
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yes 8 gb will useless IMO..

from 4 GB 970 can only effective access to 3.5 GB same thing will happen with 8GB.. (IMO)
It's a design flaw/weakness so nothing much can be done

Now NVI using driver to limit game or apps to only using 3.5 GB max so it will run optimal,
but we don't know how long this will last..
(since from I read quite hard to keep all apps to don't access the last 512 MB "slower" ram)
 
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I was looking in getting a G1 970 myself in a couple of days, just stumbled on this post and what you say would make sense. A lot of reports of stuttering issues in FC4 with this card, i'm wondering if the card as you say has been the problem all a long. Ubi has updated FC4 with patches so it might be just a band-aid for something more sinister, hinting memory leaks, whether its the game, the card or both.

Do you have any links on this issue? would be greatly appreciated. Your word alone is concerning so i think i'll wait but would like to see anyway if there's talk of this else where. I'll google myself too.

So why doesn't the 980 have this problem?

 
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They could basically disconnect the path physically to the ram portion that don't have the working mc..
(last 512mb)

But they opt out that since 3.5 GB card harder to sell than 4 GB ones...
Not know what their strategy with 8/7 GB ones
 
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U can go to article at anand or pc prespective or search nvidia press release..
980 have full spec/hardware where 970 have one crippled memory controller..

basically (AFAIK)
imagine u have system with 8 ssd each 512mb
7 ssd connect sata3 controler and last 1 ssd connected to sata1
so when the system will try to use the sata3 ssd first (via driver algorithm) but if somehow
7 sata3 ssd is full and have to use the last sata1 ssd..
u will felt the lagging, shuttering, etc

This more prone to people that has windows page file on slow hdd and not so much on ssd one
since after 970 fills the 3.5 GB ram and filling the last 512mb ram, it will dump the data on windows page file
and try to use it..

u can see in some people try to benchmark/test it, there a huge increase in page file
after 970 hit/above 3.5 GB barrier..
 
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As long as the driver algorithm can cope with the game/apps demand and make sure it only use up to 3.5 GB memory (vram)
then no impact or what so ever..

but when it cannot (some people intentionally do that to test) u can feels some effect (lagging, shuttering, i heard)

This back to how good the nvidia driver division to improve the algorithm to cope with new game or apps that may use more than 3.5 GB vram..

btw
Since I'm not nvidia engineer take this with grain & salt..
(btw nvidia said this is marketing "miss communication")
 
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Anyone has any experience with the R9 290 and R9 290X performance wise how does it compare to the GTX970 (including the GPU temps)
My experience with my sapphire 7870 xt is that it runs quite hot around 80 degrees celcius but with good performance thats why I was interested in The GTX 970 due to maxwell better efficiency.
 
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Hmm well then they should have sold the 970 with only 3GB vram, better less and not use it then need it and lag to the shit house. They say 3.5GB would be hard to sell, just sell it with 3GB then, as does the 780ti. Makes more sense to me, would make 970 cheaper while still being attractive for users with lesser psus.

The 970 was going into another pc, think i'll go with the 780TI instead.

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/253211-far-cry-4-gpu-benchmarks/

FC4 Ultra is using it seems 3.9GB no wonder people are having problems in that game. Even if slightly off, i guess it would be well in to the pagefile by then.

 
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The 970 architecture can actually use 3.5 GB, don't know any impact it will with 3 GB..

having large and speedy page file helps to some extend,
so different setup/ring/people may have different experience in this matters
 
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And regarding the 970 architecture can actually use 3.5 GB, thats fine to a point. But i imagine we cant exactly limit the application to only use that amount unless we cripple the graphics settings our selves. Eventually it will run out and what happens, happens i guess.

An SSD or Ramdisk probably would come in handy i agree.

Still, Nvidia should have been honest and capped the card at 3.5GB and sold it as that. Besides being a few hundred dollars cheaper than the 980, the honesty would probably have created more sales. Now, as this issue is being made more aware, their sales will hurt comparing if they were honest.
 
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Where does it say that it will use the page file after 3.5Gb? I havent seen anything suggesting that?

Just that the remaining 0.5gb chip cannot be accessed at the same time as the 3.5gb segment due to the disabled (making it mostly useless).

That said, nvidia have made it so the 0.5gb chip can be used for lower priority information that the GPU may need, textures etc. The frame buffer wouldnt be stored in there.

Its much more likely it would have to access data from the system ram when the 3.5gb gets full.
 
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FC4 has a lot of stuttering issues going on with the 970. I believe the update Ubi gave was to address the amount of info pumped into Vram and since this game is the first so far to take advantage of almost 4GB Vram (even if not optimised) would be first to show the 970's fault.
 
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I have used the 295x2 and 970's in sli at 1440p. They perform almost identical in most games. Tomb Raider was faster for AMD but still both set ups averaged over 100fps. Idtech 5 games like wolfenstein and played better with invida which has always been the case.

The 970's use way less power and stay under 75c while the 295x2 ran at 65c. An aftermarket air cooled card should probably run 80c and a reference cooler with be 95c. I will say that although the gpu temp was 65c and stable the 295x2 dumped a substantial amount of heat into the room.

You can't go wrong with either the 290x or the 970 in my opinion. The review benchmarks of the 970 didn't change overnight so it still seems like a solid performer. Nvidia's response seems to that it is performing the way they designed it so I doubt they change anything about the design.

 
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About page file, u can try read it at OCN forum.....

they have 1000+ post about this matters and they are some of people that first brings up this issue...
(and i just happen to following it from day 2 or 3, it peek my interest..)

btw it may be true or not we don't know. right now only source we got is nvidia PR release and forum post by user that have the problem..
I was hopping tom's will digging this maters but looks like it wouldn't happen soon..

edit: about "limiting" apps only use 3.5 from 4.. well nvidia find a way somehow.. this also what started this when people start seeing their vram use stays at max 3.5 Gb..

and rarely break that barrier, and some sli user report problem when the cards actually break it..

how they do it, don't know (i'm not nvidia engineer).. is the problem true?
cannot tells, what i know is now nvidia admit something was wrong with 970,
something people overlooked at first...
 
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As far as the 970 specs issue that just surfaced, don't let that deter you at all. Most sites have corrected the ROPS and L2 cache specs. The Memory segments might be an issue, but I think that really needs to be proven out more in real game scenarios. In synthetic testing the .5GB in the 2nd segment does show 1/7th the speed of the 1st segment, but there really is no solid proof it will negatively effect games that use more then 3.5GB VRAM. Time will tell. Regardless, even so the price tag of a 970 is well worth the performance it gives you.

I am sure we will see the major review sites test the crap out of this with games that utilize more than 3.5GBs of VRAM.
 
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