970 memory allocation issue revisited

Discussion in 'Videocards - NVIDIA GeForce' started by alanm, Jan 23, 2015.

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  1. palvo23

    palvo23 Guest

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    Could you educate me?

    Could you masters of hardware educate me?

    So Nai's benchmark is flawed, and GTX970 has no issue allocating 4G VRAM if needed, just that the GPU-Z and Afterburner readings are wrong due to architecture?

    And if any stutter, it's simply because 970 lacks the power to process that much VRAM information?

    Did I understand this thread correctly?

    I'd appreciate any enlightenment from you guys.
     
  2. mR Yellow

    mR Yellow Ancient Guru

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    Even though it might be flawed I think it revealed some issues.
    They are valid issues.
     
  3. bo3bber

    bo3bber Guest

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    Yeah, dude, I did skim the previous pages, and I did not see ANY examples that were not 970 or 980. I seriously thought that adding an older card for comparison would actually help the conversation, but apparently not.
     
  4. HeavyHemi

    HeavyHemi Guest

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    Actually, I did my TITAN, there's 780 and 780TI...so yes, older GPU's have been done.
     

  5. JohnLai

    JohnLai Guest

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    According to PC Perspective :

    UPDATE 1/26/15 @ 12:10am ET: I now have a lot more information on the technical details of the architecture that cause this issue and more information from NVIDIA to explain it. I spoke with SVP of GPU Engineering Jonah Alben on Sunday night to really dive into the quesitons everyone had. Expect an update here on this page at 10am PT / 1pm ET or so. Bookmark and check back!

    http://www.pcper.com/news/Graphics-Cards/NVIDIA-Responds-GTX-970-35GB-Memory-Issue
     
  6. WoenK

    WoenK Active Member

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    That car anology is the best thing I read in this whole thread so far :D
    Yes it is like buying a five seater and finding out that the seat in the middle is slightly smaller than the other seats and does not have a window.
    Everybody would buy the 5 seater even if they know that they will propably very rarely use that 5th seat and if they do, they would not mind about the window either.

    What I really find somehow amusing is, that Nvidia admitted there might be a problem after that flawed benchmark popped up. They must have their own benchmarking tools for things like that and they should have noticed that it is a an issue with CUDA and nothing else and is not even noticeable for the normal user.
    Even though I do not like Nvidia, because they have a tendency to behave like bullies and have a history of cutting "corners" without caring too much for quality (http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1004378/why-nvidia-chips-defective) in order to get a product out, this "error" could have been avoided by denying it until there was really a solid proof.
    I am a realist, I do not want too many people to buy AMD because competiotn is strongly needed and I want to buy my cards as cheap as possible. Admitting bad "news" like the memory "feature" (aka "we had to recycle those chips that were not fit for a 980s even though they were not 100% fit for 4GB but only 99,9%") is an epic fail, somebody very dumb at Nvidia will surely lose his job.
    Was really looking forward to upgrade my card when the 3xx AMDs come out, but seems I will have to wait until the market has corrected itself again and AMD will start dropping prices.
     
  7. bo3bber

    bo3bber Guest

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    OK, fair enough. I thought the drop off with Aero-on was an interesting tidbit, but I deleted my post anyway.
     
  8. NAMEk

    NAMEk Guest

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    It's huge discussion going on how it'll perform without 0,5GB, while the main reason not to buy is lying on the specifications. Misinformation.
     
  9. Spets

    Spets Guest

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    Misinformation? The card can use more than 3.5GB





     
  10. FDisk

    FDisk Guest

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  11. mR Yellow

    mR Yellow Ancient Guru

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  12. FDisk

    FDisk Guest

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    Just makes sense.
     
  13. Final8ty

    Final8ty Master Guru

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    Noticed that the 980 would use 4GB but the 970 would not go over 3.5GB.

    It depends on the game if going over 3.5 is an issue or not.
     
  14. WoenK

    WoenK Active Member

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    What makes sense ? The segementation does not cause any problems except in very rare situations running specialised programs and not games and even there the "problem" is neglectable.
    Also it does not make sense that the program will try to use 4GB if they are available, they use the memory according to the settings, if you run out of VRAM it starts swapping to normal RAM which will lead to stuttering (and if you run out of that, it starts swapping to disk).
    I even doubt the more than 3,5 GB VRAM are available at all, the games would need to kill the OS video completely in order to have all VRAM, which would result in some immense lag when ALT-TABbing. Most games even run in a windowed fullscreen and allways have some VRAM for the OS already taken.

    There is no problem, everything is working as intended and neither the 980 nor the 970 are cards that run in 4k smoothly with all bells and whistles enabled (http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/nvidia_geforce_gtx_970_and_980_reference_review,23.html)
     
  15. mR Yellow

    mR Yellow Ancient Guru

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    The 970 owners want to believe it's correct.
    The fact is Nvidia intentionally left out the information. Showing they had something to hide.
     

  16. Monchis

    Monchis Guest

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    In that second video one can see the argument, it just gets stuck @3580mb... and to make it use more vram you need to push it really hard. In other words, under normal circumstances or some unknown parameter determined by nvidia, it behaves like a 3.5gb card, not like a 4gb one.

    Scenarios where that method can underperform or undeliver, I can think of games with dynamic texture cachés or games with texture mods for example, skyrim which was a pain in the ass for lots of gtx660 users:

     
  17. Hilbert Hagedoorn

    Hilbert Hagedoorn Don Vito Corleone Staff Member

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    I've briefly spoken with NV this morning. I've compiled and submitted a QA for Nvidia to get some better answers. Doing my best to get answer from the SVP of GPU Engineering late afternoon (CET).
     
  18. mR Yellow

    mR Yellow Ancient Guru

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    Thanks Hilbert. Hope you get an honest response from Nvidia.
    I guess their PR department must be working overtime today.
     
  19. JohnLai

    JohnLai Guest

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    This is great news.

    Can add several questions to the list? :nerd:

    1) Under what situation the remaining 0.5gb will be used? Texture heavy situation? Higher resolution? (Will it be coded through driver? Is it application specific?)

    To rephrase, I would like to know how the driver decide when to use the 0.5gb portion.

    2) There are speculation that both portions have different bandwidth. If this is true, what is the bandwidth of the 0.5gb segment?

    3) Nvidia mentioned some application may not be able to detect the 0.5GB. How will this affect game developer?
     
  20. rflair

    rflair Don Coleus Staff Member

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    Well I hope this issue is laid to rest soon, it is kind of mind numbing reading some of the trivial responses, it was bad here but good lord Nvidias own forums are ridiculous right now.
     
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