News Nvidia GTX 970 memory mod boosts performance with 8GB VRAM upgrade

[Admin]

With performance boosts in certain games, the VRAM mod highlights a growing gap between GPU specs and game demands

Nvidia GTX 970 memory mod boosts performance with 8GB VRAM upgrade : Read more

 

[usertests]

Finally. This is the amount of VRAM everybody needs. 😉

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

"GPU manufacturers have been gimping performance for years by limiting VRAM"

Should be news to absolutely nobody.

 

[jlake3]

Hm. I'd be curious to know the settings they used in Unigine Superposition, as I have both a GTX 970 and a Quadro M4000 in my collection, which are both GM204 chips with 1664 CUDA cores. The M4000 has more VRAM and ROPs while the 970 has higher clocks and a higher TDP (with a stronger cooler), and in my experience, the GTX 970 performs better by just a bit less than what the clock difference would imply in not just Unigine but in everything else I tested... except in Superposition's "4k Optimized" preset, where the M4000 turned in a score but the 970 warned at launch that it did not have enough VRAM, so I didn't bother attempting a run.

The M4000's Superposition 4k Optimized score scaled up to the 970's clockspeed would be about on par with the RX 580 8gb, for reference.

 

[mac_angel]

Hm. I'd be curious to know the settings they used in Unigine Superposition, as I have both a GTX 970 and a Quadro M4000 in my collection, which are both GM204 chips with 1664 CUDA cores. The M4000 has more VRAM and ROPs while the 970 has higher clocks and a higher TDP (with a stronger cooler), and in my experience, the GTX 970 performs better by just a bit less than what the clock difference would imply in not just Unigine but in everything else I tested... except in Superposition's "4k Optimized" preset, where the M4000 turned in a score but the 970 warned at launch that it did not have enough VRAM, so I didn't bother attempting a run.

The M4000's Superposition 4k Optimized score scaled up to the 970's clockspeed would be about on par with the RX 580 8gb, for reference.

GTX 970 has faster memory, 224GB/s vs 192GB/s
GTX 970 has a lot faster clock speed, 1178MHz boost vs 773MHz. And remember, that's per CUDA core, so that difference is applied to 1664 CUDA cores.
Drivers probably have some differences, too.

As for my own comment. I think this is just more proof that NVidia purposely gimps their GPUs - planned obsolescence.

 

[FunSurfer]

But... was it really 8GB of VRAM or 7GB + 1GB slow VRAM? Why nobody bothered to ask THE question?

 

[jlake3]

GTX 970 has faster memory, 224GB/s vs 192GB/s
GTX 970 has a lot faster clock speed, 1178MHz boost vs 773MHz. And remember, that's per CUDA core, so that difference is applied to 1664 CUDA cores.
Drivers probably have some differences, too.

As for my own comment. I think this is just more proof that NVidia purposely gimps their GPUs - planned obsolescence.

I own both cards, and I've run both of them in Superposition on exactly the same hardware. I know experimentally what the performance delta is between the two of them when using less than the 970's 4gb VRAM limit. Theoretically; 1178MHz/773MHz = 1.53, so the GTX 970 should be a minimum of 53% faster, plus some additional benefit from faster memory... but in practice, it does worse than 53%:

(Superposition DirectX results)	M4000	GTX 970	Difference
720p low	13578	18966	37.85%
1080p med	5115	7532	47.25%
1080p extreme	1415	1991	40.71%
4k optimized	2278	Over VRAM	N/A

Using the M4000 as a proxy because I don't have an 8gb GTX 970, it's pretty hard to find situations that would occur naturally where the 970 is VRAM limited but (M4000's FPS x 1.53) would still be a good experience. That had me suspecting they were running some unreasonable settings that you would not normally encounter to get that doubling of benchmark scores... which digging into the sources, is exactly what they did. They cranked the settings to "8K Optimized", and scored 6.5FPS without the mod, and a still-unplayable 11.8FPS with.

It's interesting to see it built and tested and there's some edge cases where you see a benefit, but it's not a massive swing, and the linked video only seems to have seen a benefit in games that came out 8+ years after the card released and much less than a doubling. Nvidia has definitely made some really bad calls on their newer cards, but the case they intentionally under-VRAM'ed the 970 as part of a nefarious plot is weak.

But... was it really 8GB of VRAM or 7GB + 1GB slow VRAM? Why nobody bothered to ask THE question?

That's due to the memory bus design, not the chips, so this would have the same issue where the last 1/8th of the VRAM is slow. Doesn't look like they push the VRAM hard enough to encounter it in the videos the article links to.

 

[usertests]

But... was it really 8GB of VRAM or 7GB + 1GB slow VRAM? Why nobody bothered to ask THE question?

I think a previous article found it was 7GB + 1GB as @jlake3 stated. Obviously better to have than 3.5GB + 0.5GB though.

This mod was talked about in March, and yes, it's 7 GB + 1 GB:
https://videocardz.com/newz/geforce-gtx-970-gets-new-life-brazilian-modders-upgrade-memory-to-8gb

Brazilian Modders Upgrade NVidia Geforce GTX 970 To 8 GB Of VRAM

Although NVidia’s current disastrous RTX 50-series is getting all the attention right now, this wasn’t the first misstep by NVidia. Back in 2014 when NVidia released the GTX 970 users w…

hackaday.com

https://www.techpowerup.com/334585/brazilian-modders-give-8gb-memory-to-geforce-gtx-970

 

[das_stig]

1981 Bill Gates - 640KB is enough for anybody
2025 NV/AMD - 8GB is enough for anybody

Disclaimer,

Myth, BG never said this.
NV/AMD will also sell you the identical card, with a different name, with more ram, at an extortionate price, claiming massive performance improvements, while denying they are ripping off the customer.

 

[mac_angel]

I own both cards, and I've run both of them in Superposition on exactly the same hardware. I know experimentally what the performance delta is between the two of them when using less than the 970's 4gb VRAM limit. Theoretically; 1178MHz/773MHz = 1.53, so the GTX 970 should be a minimum of 53% faster, plus some additional benefit from faster memory... but in practice, it does worse than 53%:

(Superposition DirectX results)	M4000	GTX 970	Difference
720p low	13578	18966	37.85%
1080p med	5115	7532	47.25%
1080p extreme	1415	1991	40.71%
4k optimized	2278	Over VRAM	N/A

Using the M4000 as a proxy because I don't have an 8gb GTX 970, it's pretty hard to find situations that would occur naturally where the 970 is VRAM limited but (M4000's FPS x 1.53) would still be a good experience. That had me suspecting they were running some unreasonable settings that you would not normally encounter to get that doubling of benchmark scores... which digging into the sources, is exactly what they did. They cranked the settings to "8K Optimized", and scored 6.5FPS without the mod, and a still-unplayable 11.8FPS with.

It's interesting to see it built and tested and there's some edge cases where you see a benefit, but it's not a massive swing, and the linked video only seems to have seen a benefit in games that came out 8+ years after the card released and much less than a doubling. Nvidia has definitely made some really bad calls on their newer cards, but the case they intentionally under-VRAM'ed the 970 as part of a nefarious plot is weak.


That's due to the memory bus design, not the chips, so this would have the same issue where the last 1/8th of the VRAM is slow. Doesn't look like they push the VRAM hard enough to encounter it in the videos the article links to.

NVidia didn't make "bad calls", they do it on purpose. It's called "planned obsolescence". The 'dumb down' their cards for retail use, and put the bare minimum of VRAM in the cards that they can get away with. Not to save money, but so that the cards have no 'future proof' aspect. They can easily put 12 and 16GB in their entry cards and make them last longer for up coming games, but that's not what NVidia wants. They want consumers to have to keep buying another GPU every generation, or two at max. The only way to come close to 'future proofing' your GPU is buying their x090 series, and even that's limited with NVidia changing, editing, or adding new tech and features into their newer cards.