970 memory allocation issue revisited

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

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  1. stevevnicks

    stevevnicks Guest

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    hello MrBenB,

    im one of the still happy owners of two Gigabyte GTX970 G1's and would not return them, although could you explain or find out why it took so long to inform people of the spec's 4 months seems a bit to long for no one to notice and take the correct action at Nvidia ?

    edit : I should get more sleep the amount of edits I have to do lol
     
    Last edited: Jan 28, 2015
  2. Hilbert Hagedoorn

    Hilbert Hagedoorn Don Vito Corleone Staff Member

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    GPU-Z is database based, meaning the guys manually insert the specs into the application. It does not read out such registers from the GPU. Once the device ID is detected by GPU-Z it shows the specs as inserted as based on the reviewers guides and spec sheets.

    And yeah, the specs where incorrect
     
  3. morbias

    morbias Don TazeMeBro

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    I think the big question people want to know is whether they are entitled to refunds should they so want, and how they go about it.

    I realise there are different consumer laws in different parts of the world, but in general will Nvidia support their request if the vendor or AIB partner refuses?
     
  4. Netherwind

    Netherwind Ancient Guru

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    Thanks Ben, I really appreciate it. The 970 is a fantastic card, that's for sure.

    From what I've gathered in the thread over at the GeForce forum, people should first turn to their retailer and if that fails, PM Peter who promised he'd talk to them directly which is just about as far as you can go regarding customer service. Truly impressive!
     

  5. MrBenB

    MrBenB Guest

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    Hi Stevevnicks - I agree 4 months was a long time not to notice, all I can say is that we have a load of stuff to work on. The consumer PR & Marketing teams work across GeForce and SHIELD for example so, in this case, we simply missed it and we are sorry for that. It wasn't good enough and we're going to make sure it does not happen again.

    Thanks Hilbert for explaining GPU-Z's database back end, this is correct and it needs updating.

    Morbias - I understand this is an important issue and I don't have an answer I can give you right now for Europe but I'm working hard to get you some more info.
    For the US, as you guys have rightly linked back, some of my US colleagues have said they'll help with refunds as required.
     
  6. Vox94

    Vox94 Guest

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    can it be fixed with new Bios???

    Hi Mr Ben,

    quick questions:
    Could it be fixed with new bios enabling the disabled on purpose, SM and L2 units?
    Will such a bios be distributed by nvidia anytime soon?

    If the units has been disabled at the bios level, couldn't we simply re-flash it with gtx980 bios?
     
    Last edited: Jan 28, 2015
  7. Im2bad

    Im2bad Guest

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    It was already explained, at least why GPU-Z does it.

    The card information is entered in by hand, none of the shader/ROP/TMU info is picked up from the hardware itself.

    Edit: Welp, Hilbert beat me to it already.
     
  8. stevevnicks

    stevevnicks Guest

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    funny thing is to be fair, I cant help feeling Nvidia Missed out on an grate market opportunity for the card.
    if they had got the spec's right the first time around I believe it would of made the GTX970 look even more worthy, spec for spec it would (well does) make the rest of the competition look a bit over powered for what they do kind of thing.

    example : they have all these high spec's but don't do a lot with them.
     
    Last edited: Jan 28, 2015
  9. Agent-A01

    Agent-A01 Ancient Guru

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    Not likely able to enable them through the bios, they are probably laser cut.
     
  10. Loophole35

    Loophole35 Guest

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    No the "cut" units are not even connected to the GPU die just like the 670's. This isn't a case like the 6950's.
     

  11. Sergio

    Sergio Guest

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    Hi @MrBenB.

    Can you please tell us if there will be any bios updates for current 970 cards and also drivers? What you guys planning for solving this 970 issue? (like disabling last 512vram part function etc)

    Thanks.
     
  12. Vox94

    Vox94 Guest

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    Would be nice that Mr Ben would confirm/deny this... Since we have nvidia rep here.

    @MrBen,

    Could the disabled units be re-enabled via BIOS update, or, they are cut out physically on the chip?

    If the answer to above is NO,
    Could the offending SLOW 512 MB of RAM be PERMANENTLY DISABLED via BIOS?
     
    Last edited: Jan 28, 2015
  13. Pestul

    Pestul Active Member

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    Thanks MrBenB. I'm sure many of us who are concerned would upgrade to a GTX980 at a discounted price.

    As for the driver modifications, as long as NVidia is transparent in what alterations they have to make to improve memory performance on the GTX970, that would be satisfactory. I don't believe anyone wants to see corners cut in say reducing image quality to maintain near 3.5GB usage.
     
  14. Vox94

    Vox94 Guest

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    When I think about it, Have you noticed guys, that the most of the non-reference designs has no radiator coverage on some of the RAM IC's?

    - no need to cool extra broken slow RAM

    Looks like it was all planned along, and the companies like MSI, Gigabyte, Asus, were part of the plot. And they remained silent
     
  15. kinggavin

    kinggavin Guest

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    i have gtx 970 sli ichill airboss ultra i think 970 nvidia done great job with it its good value price low power and fast i run 970 sli 4k i get 4gb vram usage no problem at 1080p it stay under 3500 vram but wen u go higher res like 4k it kick in 4gb vram the specs they got it wrong ok every one make mistakes but the gtx 970 is not faulty and i dont think nvidia have done anything wrong and overall nvidia do fantastic job with there gpus
     

  16. Portuogral

    Portuogral Guest

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    Not only that but, I am also concerned with driver support over time. If is the driver that allocates the assets from each individual game into the 0,5GB partition, how long will it take for GTX 970 owners start to hit a memory wall?

    Thank you.
     
  17. HeavyHemi

    HeavyHemi Guest

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    The "Editor & Senior Moderator" btarunr, over at Techpowerup, says GPU-Z reads this value from the driver.
    "According to an Anandtech report, which cites that easy explanation from NVIDIA, the company was not truthful about specs of GTX 970, at launch. For example, the non-public document NVIDIA gave out to reviewers (which gives them detailed tech-specs), had clearly mentioned ROP count of the GTX 970 to be 64. Reviewers used that count in their reviews. TechPowerUp GPU-Z shows ROP count as reported by the driver, but it has no way of telling just how many of those "enabled" ROPs are "active." The media reviewing the card were hence led to believe that the GTX 970 was carved out by simply disabling three out of sixteen streaming multiprocessors (SMMs), the basic indivisible subunits of the GM204 chip, with no mention of other components like the ROP count, and L2 cache amount being changed from the GTX 980 (a full-fledged implementation of this silicon)."

    http://www.techpowerup.com/209339/g...nvidia-has-to-revise-specs.html?cp=2#comments

    edit: I also believed it was database driven from the device ID.
     
    Last edited: Jan 28, 2015
  18. Vox94

    Vox94 Guest

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    well, I think I will upgrade to gtx980...
    just for the peace of mind.
    I hate having broken thingies...
     
  19. Pestul

    Pestul Active Member

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    That's strange, as I really didn't think physical memory is addressed like that though. As in, I doubt there's one physical 512mb chunk where you could say this is the 'low bandwidth' chip. I think all the ram still works in unison.
     
  20. Chronodog

    Chronodog Guest

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    I don't want to sound immature, but this could easily qualify as one of the most entertaining posts here :)

    On topic: What can/will be done in regard to applications that may run into this "issue" due to the way they access the VRAM, bypassing driver optimizations and heuristics?
     
    Last edited: Jan 28, 2015
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