970 is probably the best card I've bought. No issues whatsoever from a gaming standpoint and the games I have thrown at it (FC4, Crysis 3, Metro Redux, W-TNO, BL3, COD-AW). I have experienced stutter and hitching in FC4 by testing it over the 3.5gb limit (by applying MSAAx8 to it maxed out @ 1440p), but can any other single card run it smoothly maxed at that res with MSAAx8? Basically an artificial scenario for me, not gaming under realistic conditions. Anyway the poll above. Please do NOT vote in this thread without having a 970 in your stats!
was kinda thinking about 970sli as i have the upgrade bug atm , but i will just hang onto my cash and see how the memory allocation thing plays out , maybe go for a cpu and motherboard upgrade instead.
Hurrdurr, don't you ever grow up. The poll is probably not a good idea, though. But I do not feel well about these cards. They are the most problematic cards I've ever bought: First I bought an 970GTX from an unknown brand. It was overheating and I had to return it. Then I ended up with an EVGA and an MSI 970GTX. They can't work together in SLI. Then I ended up (after wasting a lot of time and money) with 2 x MSI 970GTX SLI. And SPECIFICALLY on these cards + the ASUS ROG Swift monitor stereoscopic 3D gaming doesn't work with SLI. I have been bug reporting this for months and it doesn't look like it's ever going to be fixed. And besides that the 3.5 vRAM issue has bothered me as well as I do game at 1440p and I am getting high frametime spikes when the games really need 4GB of vRAM. So I am quite displeased.
I was free in january and wanted to have a blast. But it turned out to be even more disappointing compared to all the happiness last year this month (yes I am a former miner). Its partly my fault I jumped the gun buying, even though I read about display output issues on Gigabyte cards, FLEX not working properly, MSI's fan bug, etc,etc, still played a gamble and got it just because I was sick of dealing with SLI. Conclusion a) Disappointed b) Got my fun out of the card with ACUnity and Wash_Dogs Too late for a refund, I guess I'll just sell it.
Tbh if 970s were not a downgrade to my cards I would buy 2 of them to see for myself. Although I doubt I would find anything wrong though.
If I was gaming regularly enough at the moment, or even played titles that would genuinely benefit from it, I'd be running a 970 right now. I've found very few credible sources that have genuine issues with the cards.
No issues so far. Not all that concerned about this because I game on a 1080 monitor with V-Sync on at all times. That means if I drop much below 60fps it chuggs, so I tune the settings and AA to keep frame rates up high. If you have to run a game like FarCry 4 at 1440 with 8xMSAA to see this issue, I should have no issues running it at 1080 with or 4x MSAA, or even 1620 downsample with FXAA. I'm going to install Farcry tonight and test it out. Also going to crank the settings up in Wolfenstein and see what happens.
Funny that the main 970 owners thread (1700+ posts) has little to no mention of the vram issue. And that 4+ months since its release and sales in the thousands, we only got to know about it in last couple weeks.. not from our personal experiences but from others who have seen mention of it in other forums.
Well, how many people are into running games in the low 30fps range? Seems like a realtively small percentage of the enthusiasts who would buy a new $300+ card. I would imagine it would take some time for enough of those people to experience the issue, ask about it online, and start comparing notes. Most of us are probably interested in keeping the frame rates as high as possible, and are not willing to sledgehammer a game with 8xMSAA just to say we "maxed it out".
One big organized troll fest spanning multiple forums started by the same people with the same screen names. Imo of course:3eyes:
I've just about had enough. So, from now on, if I see another comment involving VRAM that's clearly inflammatory, that's an infraction. You've demonstrated time and time again you are incapable of discussing this subject with respect and maturity.
If I didn't need my card, I'd loan it to you for a few days...lol Most of those complaining about it, all reference games that people have been complaining about since launch.... I really find it funny that people are using games that are known to be buggy as hell, to demonstrate an issue that's being caused by bugs in those same games on other cards. If you look at the games being tested, --TK-- appears to be right.... Also, if you look at how they respond to different testing methods that risk disproving their claim, it makes it quite clear he's spot-on..... People that have a valid claim, don't generally have an issue investing the claim as extensively as possible to find a solution. Only those determined to prove a potentially false claim, have such issues as they don't want to risk their claim being disproven. The people making the claims of an "issue", didn't want people with cards other than GTX970 or those that were unable to reproduce the claimed results involved in any form of testing. Initially, they bashed people who were unable to reproduce the claimed "issue".
Even after NVidia released a public statement, some are still trying to prove an "issue" exists. My only guess at this point is either they're being paid by AMD to do this, or they're butt-hurt that their cards can't handle 4K Ultra textures in some games due to bugs and think NVidia should give them a free upgrade to a GTX980.... Given their financial position....I'd bet against AMD paying them. AMD is having enough trouble paying their regular bills.