Nvidia GeForce GTX 900 Series MegaThread: FAQ and Resources

[spellbinder2050]

A lot of people are missing the point. The card's original specs were not as advertised. usable vram at full bandwidth, ROPs, and L2 cache specs were inaccurate. People's buying decisions were based on the original specs. The performance of the card in benchmarks is irrelevant. Nvidia and all retailers should offer quick exchanges or refunds, period.

I personally bought this card with the 4 GB of vram in mind, and frankly, the whole situation makes me uncomfortable.

 

[Mousemonkey]

A lot of people are missing the point. The card's original specs were not as advertised. usable vram at full bandwidth, ROPs, and L2 cache specs were inaccurate. People's buying decisions were based on the original specs. The performance of the card in benchmarks is irrelevant. Nvidia and all retailers should offer quick exchanges or refunds, period.

I personally bought this card with the 4 GB of vram in mind, and frankly, the whole situation makes me uncomfortable.

Then perhaps you should give a bit more thought to what happens when a GPU is cut down because it doesn't make the grade. The 970 is what it is, if you wanted a 980 then you should have bought a 980 not one that is broken (because it's not a 980).

 

[wh3resmycar]

A lot of people are missing the point. The card's original specs were not as advertised. usable vram at full bandwidth, ROPs, and L2 cache specs were inaccurate. People's buying decisions were based on the original specs. The performance of the card in benchmarks is irrelevant. Nvidia and all retailers should offer quick exchanges or refunds, period.

I personally bought this card with the 4 GB of vram in mind, and frankly, the whole situation makes me uncomfortable.

well get a refund, buy a 290.

you get a free space heater too.

 

[questionslol]

only ones upset are the ones with the cards -- you just got what you paid for and that's all there is to it I said from day one the 970 was junk and Mousemonkey knows this cause he followes me around bashing

Dear god, I've said it before and i'll say it again. There is not a single thread that this guy has posted in where he doesn't come off ridiculously abrasive and arrogant. Actually, there are, but in those threads i cant understand what he's even saying anyway, so i guess one cant be too sure.

Honestly, even with the controversy surrounding the 970's, they are beast cards that eat nearly anything thrown at them. It's a non-issue tbh.

 

[happyballz]

A lot of people are missing the point. The card's original specs were not as advertised. usable vram at full bandwidth, ROPs, and L2 cache specs were inaccurate. People's buying decisions were based on the original specs. The performance of the card in benchmarks is irrelevant. Nvidia and all retailers should offer quick exchanges or refunds, period.

I personally bought this card with the 4 GB of vram in mind, and frankly, the whole situation makes me uncomfortable.

Then perhaps you should give a bit more thought to what happens when a GPU is cut down because it doesn't make the grade. The 970 is what it is, if you wanted a 980 then you should have bought a 980 not one that is broken (because it's not a 980).

Really? I would expected some better reasoning coming from a Tom's mod (or maybe not).

I don't have any illusions that I expect 970 to be as good as 980, provided that I know what exactly I am buying; and in this case it was a card with the same L2 cache, same amount of raster operation units, uniform memory speed, along with lower shader and texture units. Because you know... that is/was what was advertised. I do not have the pre-production samples or the equipment to check every detail and is thus left to mercy of reviewers and NVIDIA to hopefully(we can see how that worked) provide me with truthful specifications. I base my pick on published specifications, as well as benchmarks compared to the top dog performance versus price.

After what is provided above, you justifying their lies and deception are covered by it being a lower tier card that didn't meet it's binning for a 980? Are you serious? Just because I am buying a one-model lower card does not make it OK for them to walk all over their customers and lie about specifications. Very simple concept really.

And just to make it clear I bought a Gigabyte G1 970... with expectation of possible room for expansion of SLI'ing another when I get my 4k monitor. Now that plan is in limbo and possibly crushed thus making me lose even more money and time if I will need to find alternatives.

The main point is virtually everyone would be pissed if they bought a new car that was advertised with 4 matching wheels/tires but instead received 3 wheels out of 4 that were normal size and the 4th was a dinky-winky donuts-spare ... going by some of people's logic here it is still 4 wheels so everything is OK, but in reality not so much. First reason being that you PAID for 4 and got 3 and second that performance of the lesser wheel is no where near the other 3. Additionally, vehicle manufacturers have to pay when they lie about fuel mileage performance why shouldn't NVIDIA?

False advertising, especially when specifications is all you really got to go by is definitely not something I would treat lightly. Next time it could be you in the spot...paying for one thing and receiving lesser of a product in return. Want to be fooled and pay them a free bonus? As well as setting a precedent for letting them screw you and getting away scott-free... that is on you. I sure don't.

 

[Eggz]

Really? I would expected some better reasoning coming from a Tom's mod (or maybe not).

For someone named "Happyballz," your ballz sure seem upset. Also, a pro-tip: Talking smack on mods doesn't help you.

[Because of Nvidia's mistatement, my upgrade] plan is in limbo and possibly crushed thus making me lose even more money and time if I will need to find alternatives.

That's a perfectly reasonable reason for returning the card. Nvidia will probably let you. Call them if that's how you feel.

[V]ehicle manufacturers have to pay when they lie about fuel mileage performance why shouldn't NVIDIA?

Because mistatements on cars is a WAY bigger deal. Fuel is expensive, and other for other mistatements, people actually die!

Cars also cost about 100-times more than graphics cards ($200+ vs $20,000+), and the federal government regulates auto manufacturers. Try and establish the U.S. Department of Computer Gaming, and you'll have a short political career.

It was a mistake, but keep your life priorities in check. You'll live to play another game, whether it's on your 970 or another card you replace it with.

 

[questionslol]

Really? I would expected some better reasoning coming from a Tom's mod (or maybe not).

For someone named "Happyballz," your ballz sure seem upset. Also, a pro-tip: Talking smack on mods doesn't help you.

[Because of Nvidia's mistatement, my upgrade] plan is in limbo and possibly crushed thus making me lose even more money and time if I will need to find alternatives.

That's a perfectly reasonable reason for returning the card. Nvidia will probably let you. Call them if that's how you feel.

[V]ehicle manufacturers have to pay when they lie about fuel mileage performance why shouldn't NVIDIA?

Because mistatements on cars is a WAY bigger deal. Fuel is expensive, and other for other mistatements, people actually die!

Cars also cost about 100-times more than graphics cards ($200+ vs $20,000+), and the federal government regulates auto manufacturers. Try and establish the U.S. Department of Computer Gaming, and you'll have a short political career.

It was a mistake, but keep your life priorities in check. You'll live to play another game, whether it's on your 970 or another card you replace it with.

Honestly, could not have worded this any better. This is exactly how feel on the issue.

The fact that you're getting .5 less gb is not going to have any sort of adverse effect on your real life any time soon. Let's be honest here when we ask, has anyone really noticed? I sure haven't.

Would anyone have noticed if this ram-gate bs was ever uncovered. It's extremely unlikely, and truth be told, no one would have noticed the performance drops until it was actually time to legitimately replace their 970's anyway.

If you ask me, it's all about ego. People feel lied to, and to be fair, perhaps they were. But i think the real issue is that dudes feel like they're less adequate now because their systems are missing a whopping .5 gb of 'performance'.

 

[questionslol]

A lot of people are missing the point. The card's original specs were not as advertised. usable vram at full bandwidth, ROPs, and L2 cache specs were inaccurate. People's buying decisions were based on the original specs. The performance of the card in benchmarks is irrelevant. Nvidia and all retailers should offer quick exchanges or refunds, period.

I personally bought this card with the 4 GB of vram in mind, and frankly, the whole situation makes me uncomfortable.

Then perhaps you should give a bit more thought to what happens when a GPU is cut down because it doesn't make the grade. The 970 is what it is, if you wanted a 980 then you should have bought a 980 not one that is broken (because it's not a 980).

Really? I would expected some better reasoning coming from a Tom's mod (or maybe not).

I don't have any illusions that I expect 970 to be as good as 980, provided that I know what exactly I am buying; and in this case it was a card with the same L2 cache, same amount of raster operation units, uniform memory speed, along with lower shader and texture units. Because you know... that is/was what was advertised. I do not have the pre-production samples or the equipment to check every detail and is thus left to mercy of reviewers and NVIDIA to hopefully(we can see how that worked) provide me with truthful specifications. I base my pick on published specifications, as well as benchmarks compared to the top dog performance versus price.

After what is provided above, you justifying their lies and deception are covered by it being a lower tier card that didn't meet it's binning for a 980? Are you serious? Just because I am buying a one-model lower card does not make it OK for them to walk all over their customers and lie about specifications. Very simple concept really.

And just to make it clear I bought a Gigabyte G1 970... with expectation of possible room for expansion of SLI'ing another when I get my 4k monitor. Now that plan is in limbo and possibly crushed thus making me lose even more money and time if I will need to find alternatives.

The main point is virtually everyone would be pissed if they bought a new car that was advertised with 4 matching wheels/tires but instead received 3 wheels out of 4 that were normal size and the 4th was a dinky-winky donuts-spare ... going by some of people's logic here it is still 4 wheels so everything is OK, but in reality not so much. First reason being that you PAID for 4 and got 3 and second that performance of the lesser wheel is no where near the other 3. Additionally, vehicle manufacturers have to pay when they lie about fuel mileage performance why shouldn't NVIDIA?

False advertising, especially when specifications is all you really got to go by is definitely not something I would treat lightly. Next time it could be you in the spot...paying for one thing and receiving lesser of a product in return. Want to be fooled and pay them a free bonus? As well as setting a precedent for letting them screw you and getting away scott-free... that is on you. I sure don't.

sli'd 970's wouldn't give you what you're looking for @4k anyway, tbh.

 

[Mousemonkey]

A lot of people are missing the point. The card's original specs were not as advertised. usable vram at full bandwidth, ROPs, and L2 cache specs were inaccurate. People's buying decisions were based on the original specs. The performance of the card in benchmarks is irrelevant. Nvidia and all retailers should offer quick exchanges or refunds, period.

I personally bought this card with the 4 GB of vram in mind, and frankly, the whole situation makes me uncomfortable.

Then perhaps you should give a bit more thought to what happens when a GPU is cut down because it doesn't make the grade. The 970 is what it is, if you wanted a 980 then you should have bought a 980 not one that is broken (because it's not a 980).

Really? I would expected some better reasoning coming from a Tom's mod (or maybe not).

I don't have any illusions that I expect 970 to be as good as 980, provided that I know what exactly I am buying; and in this case it was a card with the same L2 cache, same amount of raster operation units, uniform memory speed, along with lower shader and texture units. Because you know... that is/was what was advertised. I do not have the pre-production samples or the equipment to check every detail and is thus left to mercy of reviewers and NVIDIA to hopefully(we can see how that worked) provide me with truthful specifications. I base my pick on published specifications, as well as benchmarks compared to the top dog performance versus price.

After what is provided above, you justifying their lies and deception are covered by it being a lower tier card that didn't meet it's binning for a 980? Are you serious? Just because I am buying a one-model lower card does not make it OK for them to walk all over their customers and lie about specifications. Very simple concept really.

And just to make it clear I bought a Gigabyte G1 970... with expectation of possible room for expansion of SLI'ing another when I get my 4k monitor. Now that plan is in limbo and possibly crushed thus making me lose even more money and time if I will need to find alternatives.

The main point is virtually everyone would be pissed if they bought a new car that was advertised with 4 matching wheels/tires but instead received 3 wheels out of 4 that were normal size and the 4th was a dinky-winky donuts-spare ... going by some of people's logic here it is still 4 wheels so everything is OK, but in reality not so much. First reason being that you PAID for 4 and got 3 and second that performance of the lesser wheel is no where near the other 3. Additionally, vehicle manufacturers have to pay when they lie about fuel mileage performance why shouldn't NVIDIA?

False advertising, especially when specifications is all you really got to go by is definitely not something I would treat lightly. Next time it could be you in the spot...paying for one thing and receiving lesser of a product in return. Want to be fooled and pay them a free bonus? As well as setting a precedent for letting them screw you and getting away scott-free... that is on you. I sure don't.

Glad I didn't live up to your expectations. Who the hell are you anyway? And why should I have to live up to your expectations?

 

[Titillating]

Keep it civil, folks. Personal attacks are unwarranted, and further incidents will be snuffed out aggressively.

Say what you will about complications down the road, but this whole fiasco has little to no immediate repercussions for the vast majority of people who purchased the 970, and it's unlikely to become an issue in the foreseeable future.

 

[hushinimi]

I'm sorry if this is off topic, but it's somehow related..

will the gtx 960 work on this motherboard?

http://www.asus.com/ph/Motherboards/P5G41TM_LX3/specifications/

it's quite old, an LGA 775.. I read somewhere that maxwell doesn't support old motherboards, is that true?

 

[Mousemonkey]

I'm sorry if this is off topic, but it's somehow related..

will the gtx 960 work on this motherboard?

http://www.asus.com/ph/Motherboards/P5G41TM_LX3/specifications/

it's quite old, an LGA 775.. I read somewhere that maxwell doesn't support old motherboards, is that true?

Probably not! :lol:

PCIe specifications are backwards compatible, I for instance am running a PCIe 3.0 card in an old 1.0a PCIe slot motherboard without issues (for the time being at least).

 

[Eggz]

I'm sorry if this is off topic, but it's somehow related..

will the gtx 960 work on this motherboard?

http://www.asus.com/ph/Motherboards/P5G41TM_LX3/specifications/

it's quite old, an LGA 775.. I read somewhere that maxwell doesn't support old motherboards, is that true?

It'll work. It has PCI-e, and that'll all you need.

The CPU might keep the card from going as fast as it can, but there's nothing you can do about that short of upgrading your CPU and motherboard.

 

[notea]

bit late but i got no issues with my asus strix gtx 970 in shadow of mordor at 3.6GB vram usage.. tha rams are samsung not hynix --- dunno if that helps

 

[hushinimi]

@Mousemonkey @Eggz , thank you! can't wait to get one for my other rig! I think the bottleneck wont be that noticeable

I saw this video on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F4OtPaiaOE and he is only using a core 2 duo but the fps is really great in my opinion I'm excited!

 

[crispykiller96]

Nvidia Graphics Card Forum Thread -- 900 Series Cards


Welcome to the Tom's Hardware Forum for Nvidia 900 Series Graphics Cards.

Within this thread, we will maintain an ongoing list and discussion for current GPUs for the moderate to high-end gaming system, links, benchmarks, specs, charts, multi-card configs, preferences, recommendations and rumors. As new data, information and content is made available, it will be added to the thread to allow on-going discussions and topics with the majority of the primary thread data being represented and updated on the first page's posts. Please feel free to update the thread curators with PM's with information to be added or contributed to this section.


Please note: This thread serves as a unified discussion and information thread reserved to Nvidia hardware. Absolute under NO circumstance will any 'AMD vs. Nvidia' baiting, flame war or other argumentative & disruptive posts be tolerated. This thread does not represent any bias for Tom's Hardware or anyone associated. This thread serves as a unified discussion and information thread reserved to Nvidia hardware. Any debate or discussion for comparison of competing hardware vendors of this nature (ex: AMD vs. Nvidia, ASUS vs. EVGA) must have citation in quotes as well as linked in the post for reference. Any post that does not contain this will be removed. Any post that is inflammatory and biased with intolerance or favoritism towards either vendor will be removed and applicable forum members will be subject to a warning, suspension or ban as outlined in the forum rules and terms of service. If there are any questions, please contact a forum moderator with details and a link to the page in question. The rules stated above are also in addition to any and all rules that govern the Tom's Hardware Forums.




Nvidia Official GTX 980 page
Nvidia Official GTX 970 page





Tom's Hardware -- Nvidia Graphics Cards -- 700 Series
Tom's Hardware -- Nvidia Graphics Cards -- Titan Series


Wikipedia Nvidia 900 Series

Officia Nvidia Driver page (interactive/selective)

Tom's Hardware Nvidia News

Tom's Hardware 2014 VGA Charts/Comparisons

Tom's Hardware Best Graphic Cards for the Money; Nov. 2014

SLI // CrossFire FAQs - by Maziar




Have content or information to be considered for addition to this page? Great! Contact a Moderator or one of the thread curators listed below and provide details, links or suggestions in a PM (private message), or simply click the envelope icon below the name/avatar on any post they have made.


rubix_1011

I have a question but don't see the need to make a new thread have the GTX 760 been discontinued I can't see it listed at my usual retailers anymore being replaced by the GTX 960 also what happened to the 800 series Thanks

Joe

 

[Eggz]

I have a question but don't see the need to make a new thread[. Ha]ve the GTX 760 been discontinued[?] I can't see it listed at my usual retailers anymore[,] being replaced by the GTX 960[. A]lso what happened to the 800 series[?] Thanks

Joe

Ha, the need to quote the original post here wasn't as pressing as punctuation. Anyway, yes the 960 is replacing the 760: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130932

Look on eBay if you want a 760.

The 800-series was for laptops only. http://www.geforce.com/hardware/notebook-gpus/geforce-gtx-880m

 

[crispykiller96]

I have a question but don't see the need to make a new thread[. Ha]ve the GTX 760 been discontinued[?] I can't see it listed at my usual retailers anymore[,] being replaced by the GTX 960[. A]lso what happened to the 800 series[?] Thanks

Joe

Ha, the need to quote the original post here wasn't as pressing as punctuation. Anyway, yes the 960 is replacing the 760: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130932

Look on eBay if you want a 760.

The 800-series was for laptops only. http://www.geforce.com/hardware/notebook-gpus/geforce-gtx-880m

Thanks for the info dude if the GTX 960 is newer better option I don't see the need to grab a 760 it did hold its ground for some time though will see how much money I have in the coming weeks and make a decision cheer

Joe

 

[rubix_1011]

+7 style points for Tanooki Mario

 

[Eggz]

+7 style points for Tanooki Mario

 

[amantes]

Did Gigabyte's ITX version of the GTX 960 go up in price?? Just until recently it was the cheapest version of the card. Then, last I looked at my local vendor, it had jumped in price by about 15 pounds. I checked on Scan.co.uk and even there it's now more expensive than some Palit and Gainward solutions. What's going on?

 

[king3pj]

I just ordered an EVGA 970 to replace my Radeon 7850. I just bought Far Cry 4 and having to turn the resolution down to 1600x900 and most of the settings to low or medium is what pushed me to upgrade. I can't wait until it gets here so I can turn the Resolution back up and crank most of the settings to ultra! This will be my first Nvida card.

 

[chrysalis]

2 things.

1 - its still a damn good card for its price. I am still happy with my 970.
2 - on the flipside people claiming 2gig is fine for 1080p seem stuck in a timewarp, in DA:I at 1050p (so not even 1080p) the game exceeds 3 gig of vram usage on my 970 in most areas of the game. Yes I Can reduce it by reducing texture quality but if I have to reduce texture quality then that to me means the card is not considered good for the job (e.g. the gtx960). The 970 still gives more performance per $ than the 980.

 

[amantes]

One week to March and still no news on the GTX 950. Is it even coming?

 

[Eggz]

One week to March and still no news on the GTX 950. Is it even coming?

This is the only available picture of the GTX 950 as of right now. In the future, it will probably look more like a graphics card, but for the time being, it remains a golden unicorn.