Should I RMA my GTX 970?

[U6b36ef]

Dear TH folks, please can I have your opinion on this?

My 970 hit RAM-gate while playing Shadow of Mordor. It clocked down because of the slow RAM, and when affected was unplayable. other games soon may start to hit RAM-gate too. I am worried Serious Sam 4 will, because The Talos principle uses 3.3GB. Crysis 3 used up to 3.3GB.

I did not know of RAM-gate when I got the card as I have had it some time. Otherwise I doubt I would have bought the 970.

Secondly, I noticed the card makes a screechy noise when the frame rate gets too high. I discovered this recently because I read that v-sync causes input lag. I tried turning off v-sync and my frame rates shot up e.g. when in pause menus on games.

I do not know if it is coil whine. I searched for coil whine on youtube. I wrote to Asus and they told me if I don't think it's coil whine I should return it.

Having said that some people return their cards even with coil whine. However I can stop mine making a noise by using v-sync, whatever the cause is.

Anyway I contacted the retailer that sold me the card and they offered me a return. Please do you think I should return it and maybe buy a GTX 980. I do not want another 970 that suffers RAM-gate for sure.

I can't make up my mind if I am being mean. I have had the card almost exactly a year, and can just return it in warranty. What do people think please.

I am not sure.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Go up to the 980 , avoid the limits.

 

[WildCard999]

If you can get a full refund then I would do that and replace it with the R9 390 8gb. You won't need to worry about hitting the max RAM (at least not at 1080P) and the card performs about the same. If you want to stick with Nvidia then I would wait until Nvidia releases Pascal Q2 2016 per rumors. If you need a new card now and can afford it then I would go with the GTX 980 ti since it outperforms the GTX 980 sigificantly for the additional $150 (give or take).

 

[13thmonkey]

If you've got the option do it, go for 980/980ti. You've had a free card for a year, you lucky lucky person.

 

[dudeman509]

Sounds like coil whine, and most 970s, no matter the manufacturer, will do that if FPS are left uncapped.

I've gotten very close to the 3.5 limit on mine, but haven't had any issues with games yet (I haven't played those, though).

 

[U6b36ef]

@ Blackbird yeah I mean how is it fair that we all got short changed over the 970. I bet that is why they made the 970 cheap compared with the 980 and the 780.

@Wildcard999 I think I would go with 980 because the 980 Ti is actually a whole £150 more expensive in the UK. That's about $226 USD. It's a really steep budget decision.

I had not heard about next gen cards. I just looked up Pascal Q2 2016. it's 16nm architecture. That's quite a change from 28nm of Maxwell. The next gen cards will be great probably. The next gen 980 equivalent will probably have 2500 cuda cores. It will possibly the new high speed RAM that I have read is coming.

To be honest though it's not about me getting an upgrade. I just do not want the 970 crashing my games. Or making irritating noise when I get high frame rates.

@ 13thmonkey, thank you. However I am feeling pretty bad about it. I would like the 980 and the 980 Ti is tempting. On 1080p and only sometimes using 1440p DSR, a 980Ti would last for quite a long time. The cost though!

 

[U6b36ef]

Sounds like coil whine, and most 970s, no matter the manufacturer, will do that if FPS are left uncapped.

I've gotten very close to the 3.5 limit on mine, but haven't had any issues with games yet (I haven't played those, though).

Thanks. I am not sure if it's coil whine. When I searched it on youtube it occurred at all speeds of frame rate, and varied in pitch and volume. Whereas mine seems mostly constant pitch, and only at high frame rates.

The RAM-gate thing is really frightening. Try Shadow of Mordor with the HD content pack, max settings, and 1440p. The most RAM usage I saw was 4072MB of 4096MB; using GPU-Z to monitor max usage.

If the 970 messed with the 2016 crop of games I'd be annoyed. There are some great titles coming like Doom 4 and Serious Sam 4.

 

[17seconds]

I would exchange for the GTX 980. With that, a couple thoughts:
- You can use Adaptive VSync to eliminate input lag and coil whine. Never use plain VSync, ever.
- Shadow of Mordor, particularly with mods, is an outlier. Most games are not going to use that much VRAM, or even threaten that 3.5 GB limit.

 

[U6b36ef]

I would exchange for the GTX 980. With that, a couple thoughts:
- You can use Adaptive VSync to eliminate input lag and coil whine. Never use plain VSync, ever.
- Shadow of Mordor, particularly with mods, is an outlier. Most games are not going to use that much VRAM, or even threaten that 3.5 GB limit.

Hmm, everyone so far thinks, 'go for the upgrade'.

About games not getting close to 3.5GB. I think they are doing. The Talos principle uses 3.3GB. Crysis 3 used up to 3.3GB. Serious Sam 4 uses the same engine as The Talos Principle, and I will be buying that.

I have to think long term though. If I buy a GTX 980 I would expect to keep it for maybe three years. I have owned the 970 for a year and already had one game go bad and come close to two or three others. If I were keeping the 970 I would expect to keep it for at least another year, and probably two years. Definitely all through 2016. What I mean is, next gen games will probably be more RAM-demanding, and the 970 will stumble with the RAM.

I didn't know Adaptive v-sync did not incur input lag. I am googling for that now. People seem to grumble about adaptive vs.

 

[17seconds]

That's the whole point behind Adaptive VSync, to reduce input lag. HardOCP has a good article on it.

 

[U6b36ef]

That's the whole point behind Adaptive VSync, to reduce input lag. HardOCP has a good article on it.

OK. Thank you. Got it. http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/04/16/nvidia_adaptive_vsync_technology_review/#.VmCSXx0nyUk

I actually used adaptive v-sync because I noticed it doesn't lock the frame rate. Like normal v-sync might make the game run at constant 30 fps when the frame rate gets lower.

Anyway now I know how adaptive vs works after reading that page on it. However it works by turning off vsync when the frame rate drops under 60 fps, which is not ideal really. Never mind then.

 

[dudeman509]

TBH, if you're close to your RAM cap, I might just go for the R9 390 - it's more well-suited to 1440p anyway. Beyond that, 980ti. I only game at 1080p and have no intention of buying a new monitor for a while.

 

[U6b36ef]

TBH, if you're close to your RAM cap, I might just go for the R9 390 - it's more well-suited to 1440p anyway. Beyond that, 980ti. I only game at 1080p and have no intention of buying a new monitor for a while.

Yeah I mean Shadow Of Mordor was a mess when RAM-gate cut in. I was plying anything from 35-40fps upwards to 60 fps cap. It was a solid picture even down a t35-40 fps. Then suddenly I was seeing 21-24fps and the picture was juddery. It was worse than normal at that frame rate too. It was very choppy.

I genuinely expect more games to do it before too long. The bad aspect is that I didn't want to spend as much as a GTX 980. The 970 was a bargain, or so we thought.

I intend to stick with Nvidia though. I like DSR and the Maxwell's are power efficient.

 

[13thmonkey]

with the recent price drops you may be able to get a 980 for not much more than you paid for your 970.

 

[U6b36ef]

Yeh I mean I paid £300 for my 970. Whereas the 980 is £400. In terms of percentage performance increase it's about OK. In terms of did I want to spend £400, then, no I didn't. I thought £300 for the 970 was expensive but worth it because of the power usage, performance, vs cost.

The 980 Ti lists at about £550, which is silly expensive. Admittedly the performance is equally relative to the price, so bang for buck it's still value.

I think you folks have convinced it's the thing to do by returning the 970 though. I was pretty upset when Shadow of Mordor stumbled on RAM-gate. Slow-down lasted either quite a while or was fairly short lived. For some reason when it happened once I minimised it, and when restored it came back up OK. That didn't happen all the time and might not have had anything to do with minimising.

If Serious Sam 4 did that, I would be pretty devastated. (The Serious engine for SS4 is the same as for The Talos Principle which gets very close to 3.5GB. It may in fact go over 3.5 as I have not finished it yet.)

I just played Serious Sam 3 for the eighth time and I sill love it. There is still replay value in it, and I look forward to playing it again. For my tastes you just can't beat a straight play style shooter. I am very much looking forward to the similar style Doom 4. (Having said that I loved Borderlands 2, which was RPG.)

 

[U6b36ef]

Oh well, I sent my 970 back today. I felt a mixture of, "Oh no, what have I done?", and 'relief'. I think the relief is that in the back of my mind I always knew the 970 could let me down.

I have to choose a new card now. I think I will buy the Asus GTX 980, even though my last card was an Asus GTX 970. I am a little worried that it may have the screechy noise at high frame rates again. People seem to think it was coil whine. However many manufacturer's cards suffer that. If it wasn't coil whine then the new card won't have screechy noise.

The 980 Ti is just not really in my budget. It's such a shame that the 970 was problematic. It was easily the right price. However I do think that Nvidia knew of the RAM-gate issue with the 970. If it did not suffer RAM gate, I think it would have been a £400 card and not a £300 card.

 

[U6b36ef]

Update. I just placed order for Asus GTX 980.

I looked at the 980 Ti, but am restricted in two ways. The larger models like the Asus and Gigabyte won't fit in my Fractal Design Arc midi R2. The amazing 980 Ti from MSI will fit though, however it's a whole £156 more than the Asus GTX 980. While I can afford it, I think it's more than I plan on spending.

Bang for buck the 980 Ti is probably on par with the 980 now according to this website. It says, "GTX 980 Ti is 20-30% faster than GTX 980 and it costs $150 more.". ((Well in my case it's £150 more.)) http://segmentnext.com/2015/06/09/nvidia-gtx-980-ti-vs-gtx-980-is-it-a-worthy-upgrade/

Since the performance is about 30% more and the price is about 35% more, the GTX 980 looks OK to me. I just hope now, that I will be able to max DOOM 4 on the GTX 980.

Thank you everyone for your moral support. I did feel mean doing the RMA since I had the 970 for so long and had so much fun.

Believe it or not, one other issue I had with the Asus GTX 970 was it used to stutter terribly in some games. When the frame rate dropped under 60 fps some games were very choppy. I narrowed it down to the early edition BIOS and updated it. It helped a lot doing that.

 

[U6b36ef]

Sounds like coil whine, and most 970s, no matter the manufacturer, will do that if FPS are left uncapped.

I've gotten very close to the 3.5 limit on mine, but haven't had any issues with games yet (I haven't played those, though).

My new GTX 980 is here but I wanted to let you know this. The way GTX 970 can reach and pass the 3.5GB limit without always slowing down. I was running Shadow of Mordor with it regularly and constantly over 3.5GB. I think what the RAM buffer does is load up plenty of data. Then when you do something it accesses some of that loaded data. I guess it depends which direction you turn in etc.

If I had e.g 3.8GB vRAM used and it suddenly slowed down. I guess it means it was utilising some data specifically from the slow RAM. Whereas before it might still have 3.8GB loaded into vRAM but only been using some data from the fast block.

 

[13thmonkey]

Sounds like coil whine, and most 970s, no matter the manufacturer, will do that if FPS are left uncapped.

I've gotten very close to the 3.5 limit on mine, but haven't had any issues with games yet (I haven't played those, though).

My new GTX 980 is here but I wanted to let you know this. The way GTX 970 can reach and pass the 3.5GB limit without always slowing down. I was running Shadow of Mordor with it regularly and constantly over 3.5GB. I think what the RAM buffer does is load up plenty of data. Then when you do something it accesses some of that loaded data. I guess it depends which direction you turn in etc.

If I had e.g 3.8GB vRAM used and it suddenly slowed down. I guess it means it was utilising some data specifically from the slow RAM. Whereas before it might still have 3.8GB loaded into vRAM but only been using some data from the fast block.

Are you trying to say how to get around the 3.5 fast vram limit? I'm interested, but you don't seem to say anything

 

[U6b36ef]

However when I look down the list of answers, how am I possibly to choose best answer. Everyone has been great and offered good advice. However I think the conclusion is that I was lucky and got a refund.

I think if there were a moral to this story, it's this. Get a refund and buy a card without RAM-gate. Therefor I am going to choose an answer which reflects this. There are many so I am going to have to pull a long straw for one of the answers. (Sorry SR-71 Blackbird I wanted it to be your straight to the point in bold letters. Ace!)

 

[U6b36ef]

Sounds like coil whine, and most 970s, no matter the manufacturer, will do that if FPS are left uncapped.

I've gotten very close to the 3.5 limit on mine, but haven't had any issues with games yet (I haven't played those, though).

My new GTX 980 is here but I wanted to let you know this. The way GTX 970 can reach and pass the 3.5GB limit without always slowing down. I was running Shadow of Mordor with it regularly and constantly over 3.5GB. I think what the RAM buffer does is load up plenty of data. Then when you do something it accesses some of that loaded data. I guess it depends which direction you turn in etc.

If I had e.g 3.8GB vRAM used and it suddenly slowed down. I guess it means it was utilising some data specifically from the slow RAM. Whereas before it might still have 3.8GB loaded into vRAM but only been using some data from the fast block.

Are you trying to say how to get around the 3.5 fast vram limit? I'm interested, but you don't seem to say anything

No there's no way around it. I don't know how else to explain it. My idea is only my theory.

Say you have 4GB data loaded up into vRAM. You may actively only be using 3GB of data. It's only when you do something or go in a direction in the game, that access data stored in the slow vRAM. I think that is only time RAM-gate affects gaming.

It's the only way that I can explain why I can have over 3.5GB vRAM loaded up. Then suffer from RAM-gate at intermittent stages.

By the way I chose you answer in post four as best answer. Where you said go for the 980 or 980 Ti, and that luck was with me. However the thread has chosen the answer you gave just five minutes ago and marked that best answer. I have no idea how that happened.

 

[17seconds]

You should re-select your Best Answer.

 

[U6b36ef]

You should re-select your Best Answer.

Thank you. Done it.

Thank you everyone. I genuinely felt rotten returning the GTX 970 but it was letting me down. I was figuring, "Well it was cheap etc". However it wasn't working right was it.

I thought the card manufacturers should have issued a BIOS which shut off the last 0.5GB. I am sure the cards would run smoother. I mean there are people running Shadow of Mordor with 2GB cards and running it with HD Content enabled. I don't know what settings they are using though.

Anyway I still have my GTX 980 in its box. I didn't unpack it yet. I think I am going to wait until the retailer issues the 970 refund. Playing safe. Although I doubt it will back-fire on me.

 

[U6b36ef]

Well my refund for the GTX 970 has come through. Therefor I can feely install my GTX980. Fingers crossed it's not a faulty one.

My first GTX 970 was faulty. It made the computer lock up intermittently on desktop. A bit like the problem with many mid range 400-600 series cards. It was short lived locking up though. Not like the 400-600 card's issue that needed a hard reboot. ....Anyway that first GTX 970 was returned and I was issues the second GTX 970 which I kept for ages.

I suggest other people might try getting a return on their 970, if they are affected by RAM-gate. If not now it will likely happen in the future. It is soul destroying when it does. Shadow of Mordor was the culprit for me.

However I saw very high usage of RAM with Crysis 3 and The Talos Principle as mentioned above. What was striking about this was that other people told my video RAM usage was potentially too high. I saw max 3.3 GB or RAM use with Crysis 3. Whereas it reported only to use about 2.7GB in 1440p. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPlCIUh_Tp0&hd=1 Discussion here. http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2526691/vram-games-ultra.html

Someone on that thread actually called my GTX 970 faulty for using so much RAM.

Added to all of this my GTX 970 suffered terrible stuttering when I bought it. http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2622870/nvidia-drs-causing-stuttering.html

The solution was to update the video card BIOS.

 

[13thmonkey]

who'd you buy from? did you buy it before or after the ramgate story broke?