GTX 970 3.5 GB problem

[shagrat]

Like a car with 5 gears. You never drove on the highway yet, so no need to be concerned about the 5th gear being possibly borked... unless you think what might happen if you ever take the highway?

[KaspeR32]

Like a car with 5 gears. You never drove on the highway yet, so no need to be concerned about the 5th gear being possibly borked... unless you think what might happen if you ever take the highway?

 

In this case, the car was already tested on the highway. :music_whistling:

[shagrat]

Tested yes, with 80 miles per hour, for 2 minutes, now what might happen if you go 120mph for 3 hours with a gear that is already found to be faulty is up to you.

I'm not saying it has to be bad, but first tests that pushed the 970 into that area showed more than just a "few" fps dropped...

 

The major concern for me is, what if I find out it is a real issue after all?

[karambiatos]

its not about the whole

 

"its still a good card"

 

Its about false advertisement, heck if you bought a device that said, it poops out gold, but instead it only pooped out silver, it'd still be pretty amazing, it just wouldn't be the thing you bought.

 

Like i said before, if they get away with this, expect even worse things in the future, all hidden away behind a nice wall of "BUT ITS STILL GOOD".

[KLR Rico]

Except it does poop gold. They said it has 4gb ram, and guess what... It does.

[karambiatos]

Except it does poop gold. They said it has 4gb ram, and guess what... It does.

it does in a really convoluted way that can't be accessed at the same time, however its not 256bit, and its not 64ROPs, which is the problem

[KLR Rico]

The RAM bus is still 256 bits wide... The ROP count was corrected by the time I bought my 970, so personally I don't care. However, I don't think I'd care anyways. If it had only 3 ROPs and still performed as well, does it matter? I buy a card for overall performance, and price to performance in particular, not to brag about how many cuda cores I have.

[karambiatos]

its not 256 bits wide, since it can either use the 224bit or 32bit so one part might as well be sand paper.

 

to me it probably wont make a difference, but seeing as its not whats on the box, im just not going to buy nvidia again, even if nvidia collectively kissed my feet.

Edited February 4, 2015 by karambiatos

[KLR Rico]

Well have fun with your overpriced and underperforming card, I'll stick with my incorrectly spec'd yet superior card. :D

[emg]

 

 

 

:lol: And I'm glad the internet is moving away from the Untergang meme videos, was getting a bit old in the tooth.

Edit: actually, scratch that...

 

Edited February 4, 2015 by emg

[KLR Rico]

I dunno, those still crack me up every time. Here's another. ;)

[karambiatos]

Well have fun with your overpriced and underperforming card, I'll stick with my incorrectly spec'd yet superior card. :D

superior at 22GB/s transfer rates.

 

 

you do that.

[remon]

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

 

:rolleyes:

 

That is the most biased thing I've ever seen. I wouldn't use it in as a real comparison in a conversation if I were you. Unless you want to be laughed at.

[KLR Rico]

Who cares how fast it moves data around internally? Putting pixels on the screen is the only thing that matters.

 

As far as the benchmarks, let me know when you find a card with better price/performance.

 

I took an unbiased approach going into my recent GPU purchase and by all accounts the 970 is the best bang for the buck, even in its "crippled" state.

[shagrat]

I just upgraded from a 770 with 4GB... basically I just save a little power consumption, get some fps more in DCS, and when go for a larger 4k screen it might happen the 3.5GB vRAM are not enough (the reason why I bought a 4GB card). So if the performance gain is hampered by the limited RAM then I could simply have saved 350 EUR for the "next" Gen card with 8GB vRAM... simple like that. Would I have known before I would have stuck to my 770.

Edit: ... and I have a coil whine now, the 770 didn't have. Not much but noticeable. Yippieyay!

Edited February 4, 2015 by shagrat

[zaelu]

OK, I did a bit of test today after my system got back to its senses...

 

I have these settings:

 

 

And in game for 1920x180 I have:

 

 

and after flying around Krasnodar in Mig21 I got these numbers:

 

 

and for 3840x2160 (4x DSR) with these settings:

 

 

I got these numbers

 

 

a screenshot from that flight above Krasnodar

 

 

Yes the card is almost maxed up in DSR 4X but although I have the terrain textures, the buildings and high.lua moded the card still doesn't uses more than 3.5GB. The mission was not empty. It was a multiplayer mission online with several AI flights and ground troops and also many objects on Krasnodar airfield.

 

I don't know.... maybe with even more Antialiasing and later with DCSW with some more shaders to "eat" more... maybe... but for now... only the raise in temperature is what doesn't comforts me :)

Edited February 4, 2015 by zaelu

[GregP]

IMHO anyone who buys a 4GB card with the intention of running it at 4k is going to be dissapointed. If the 512 MB makes that much of a difference to you, then you probably had unrealistic expectations in the first place.

 

... except if that person intends to buy TWO 4GB cards, as I mentioned above, in which case, they're going to be one happy DCS'er. :)

[KLR Rico]

I just deleted my post because I give up, but I guess I'll point out that SLI doesn't double RAM, in that case 4 + 4 = 4

[emg]

SLI/crossfire breaks the basic rules of math.

[GregP]

I just deleted my post because I give up, but I guess I'll point out that SLI doesn't double RAM, in that case 4 + 4 = 4

 

I should've been clearer in what I meant above: not that SLI'd 970s will double your VRAM, but that your overall performance in DCS will vastly increase, making 4k absolutely playable. 40-80 FPS in DCS at 4K -- that's more than adequate in my book. The fact that going SLI bumped my framerate by 50-80% I think proves that VRAM was not the limiting factor at 4K.

[Witchking]

OK, I did a bit of test today after my system got back to its senses...

 

I have these settings:

 

 

And in game for 1920x180 I have:

 

 

and after flying around Krasnodar in Mig21 I got these numbers:

 

 

and for 3840x2160 (4x DSR) with these settings:

 

 

I got these numbers

 

 

a screenshot from that flight above Krasnodar

 

 

Yes the card is almost maxed up in DSR 4X but although I have the terrain textures, the buildings and high.lua moded the card still doesn't uses more than 3.5GB. The mission was not empty. It was a multiplayer mission online with several AI flights and ground troops and also many objects on Krasnodar airfield.

 

I don't know.... maybe with even more Antialiasing and later with DCSW with some more shaders to "eat" more... maybe... but for now... only the raise in temperature is what doesn't comforts me :)

 

Holy crap! your 970 only hits max of 57C during 1080p gaming? My 980 hits 70C and this is in a cold basement at room temp of 20.5C or lower.

[zaelu]

Part of it is the Gigabyte coolers for VGA. Big and silent. You can see in 1080 is just go to 34%.

 

Also my CPU cooler has no fan on it (true is a Thermaltake Sonic Tower that I bought some many years ago and I had to adapt it's locking mechanism to LGA 1150). At some point neither my power source had any fan. I used to remove them with half of the source case (very unsafe but...). I like silent and cool PC so I put a big 25cm fan on the side of the PC extracting air from the case (the cheapest case too). The fan has no obstruction, no dust protection, no cat protection, nothing. My idea is to extract warm air from the case and not push new colder air inside over the warm one and hope they get along. I remove the warm one and the cold one will find is way in.

[Witchking]

Part of it is the Gigabyte coolers for VGA. Big and silent. You can see in 1080 is just go to 34%.

 

Also my CPU cooler has no fan on it (true is a Thermaltake Sonic Tower that I bought some many years ago and I had to adapt it's locking mechanism to LGA 1150). At some point neither my power source had any fan. I used to remove them with half of the source case (very unsafe but...). I like silent and cool PC so I put a big 25cm fan on the side of the PC extracting air from the case (the cheapest case too). The fan has no obstruction, no dust protection, no cat protection, nothing. My idea is to extract warm air from the case and not push new colder air inside over the warm one and hope they get along. I remove the warm one and the cold one will find is way in.

 

ya...but I have the windforce 3x cooler for my gigabyte 980. It still hits 70+ high temps. My cpu is cooled by corsair h60 which keeps it to lower than 50C.

[zaelu]

If is not the more powerful chip that runs hotter then it must be the case. What case do you use?

[Witchking]

If is not the more powerful chip that runs hotter then it must be the case. What case do you use?

 

I use a NZXT S340. There are two fans running in the case and a separate fan for the CPU/radiator.

http://www.nzxt.com/product/detail/151