970 memory allocation issue revisited

hehe, supposed to get some on Wednesday and Thursday here

Been about 5 years since we got a decent snowfall

Anyway, me /out

 

Who said it was "fine", it seems pretty damn locked at 3.5GB. The drivers seem pretty stingy on when it allows it to access that last half a gig. Watch Dogs with no mods, no MSAA, was hovering at around 3580MB in the last area I was in. That's almost exactly 3.5GB. Yet if I turn on anything that uses more memory, it won't allow access to any more RAM because the performance hit would likely be more.

A side-grade while saving $77 is pretty nice since it comes with the main prize being the satisfaction of knowing I don't own a piece of hardware that's a lie. The only question is if I want to go through the hassle of making a trip, an exchange, reinstalling drivers/adjusting settings, finding the max OC, and possibly stressing my PSU more... and waiting 6 months for a mail in rebate.

 

65 degrees here bro. You know what they say, "Meenwhile in Florida."

 

I`m seeing forecasts of up to 3 feet so it aint that bad.

 

meanwhile in California it's 65

 

and again, the extra 0.5gb will make a difference how exaclty? even at 4k, the difference between a 970 and 290x is less than a frame. http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_970_SLI/17.html

not to mention that once you overclock both, the 970 will overtake the 290x, seeing as it's a far better overclocker.

 

Snow here in a few days /offotbed Slaapze mensen

 

As someone with a GALAX GTX 970 EXOC Black Edition (what a mouthfull...). I done a little bit of my own testing with FC4 tonight, what I noticed really was that if I didn't go above 4GB of VRAM usage the game ran fine (as well as FC4 does anyway) and if I did turn up the settings where the 4GB wasn't enough my FPS tanked into the single digits.

Going from 4k res to 1440 doubled FPS if all the other settings remained the same. In other words VRAM usage dropped from over 4GB to right around 3.8GB and my FPS doubled although it was still in the mid 20s so not really playable, but there were no major "hitches" or "dips" and it was a pretty consistent 24-26FPS. Dropping the settings from 4xTXAA to SMAA gave me FPS in the mid-upper 40s with another substantial drop in VRAM usage.

Besides when's the last time Nvidia released a x70 part without some kind of controversy? Yet here we are again...personally I feel like this more a problem with the PC gamer community not managing expectations more than it is a fault with Nvidia.

Anyway, I got the performance I paid for, It's still the better card than what the "other guys" have available at this price point and it doesn't perform worse today than when I got it three weeks ago. If Nvidia or Galax want to offer something or w/e I'd probably take it but I don't expect anything given how well the card performs regardless.

 

That's a strawman argument if I've ever heard one. At 4K it's obviously limited by GPU resources far before RAM becomes an issue.

Even if performance was identical or even better a lie is a lie, false advertisement is false advertisement.

 

just saying
a couple of questions come to my mind.
it seems that we now know the 970 is OS Dependant to access the last 512mbs
what os do you run ,any mods to the os?

and has anyone tested with win 10 to see if it will use the 3 memory pools in order ?

 

How do frametimes matter when the game is unplayable at those settings regardless?


-EDIT-



I firmly believe the GTX 970 is hitting a GPU horsepower wall long before the 3.5/4GB memory issue becomes relevant. I'm still running Win7 and yet had no trouble using every last mb of VRAM available and regardless of "frametimes" less than 30FPS isn't playable period. Dropping the visual settings down to something more reasonable delivered a perfectly playable experience even beyond the 3.5GB "limit" (at the final settings I was using about 3650mb of VRAM) and the game ran smooth.

 

Windows 7 64. No mods to the OS, it's fully updated.

 

your boss disagrees...

 

Wow, after reading the 3rd update on the original story, Nvidia really dropped the ball on this, and I hope there will be some legal action against them.

I'm just tired of companies getting away with false advertising, or releasing half finished products, and then we the people have to just live with it. Regardless how well the card runs, as Hilbert stated:

"Nvidia messed up badly here .. no doubt about it. The ROP/L2 cache count was goofed up and slipped through the mazes and ended up in their reviewers guides and spec sheets, and really ... they should have called this a 3.5 GB card with an extra layer of L3 cache memory or something. Right now Nvidia is in full damage control, however I will stick to my recommendations, the GeForce GTX 970 is still a card we like very much in the up-to 2560x1440 (WHQD) domain, but it probably should have been called a 3.5 GB product with an added 512MB L3 cache."

 

he also said it's still a fine card and he still recommends it. and like you said, companies get away with false advertising all the time, what makes you think this will be different?

 

Hey man, hows that 4gb 680 doing I sold you?

 

Update 3
Messed the Specs? nV? I dont think so
Im waiting for my R380X, and im happy with Radeon GPU's Always.

 

New user here but wanted to thank the users here for informed analysis and comments