I told you a while back to start a thread asking from help. Maybe we can help you diagnose your problems?
I'm not running dual monitors now (not since all this started.) Not all the cards I'm blaming on this issue, as I mentioned some went back for fans issues (one doa too,) and the MSI 970 went back for coil whine so never got to test it much. AS I mentioned some where game issues, and I think some are the 3.5GVRAM limit due to my res, but I still get it at lower resolutions and mem usage so don't know for sure. I have stock settings for the cpu, and have tried it on a GB board, and another computer too with the same results with these cards. I'll try a mild oc though and see if it helps, as I've nto tried that with the cpu, only the gpu/s. Thanks. NVidia has blamed the drivers, but as I mentioned, not gotten back to me since. When I called all I got was its at the T2 level and I'll have to wait...
This is a satisfaction thread, so am still going to add my 2c worth about that as well. NVidia is not in my good books right now due to their lack of support.
Even at stock clocks you have to raise cpu-sa and vdroop with 16gb+ and/or fast ram over 1866. Try max vdroop and 1.1v for cpu-sa and work from there. Also I game at 1600p and heavy hitters like SoM and gta maxing out ram usage at 4gb with no issues so i don't think its problem to go over 3.5gb. Edit- Kinda hurts that board doesn't have the auxiliary power connection to help out with feeding multiple cards.
You've listed like 8 different problems with multiple cards from a handful of board partners, and you're putting it on NVIDIA to sort out what is actually happening vs. what you think is happening. There is nothing they can reasonably do with the laundry list of stuff you posted here a few weeks back. If you had serious issues with a card (any card), you should have simply returned it to the seller and gotten a refund, or a credit so you could pick up a different product. That goes for the tenth unit with issues just like the first unit with issues. Not returning the hardware and then bitching about it endlessly is just you throwing a temper tantrum, or trolling.
Ok, I will try that thank you. I'll start a new thread like was suggested and see what else people suggest. I was stating the experiences I've had since the 9xx cards came out. The latest issue is the stuttering and mild banding. It has gotten better with drivers. NVidia has blamed the stuttering and banding on the drivers, but said nothing but wait since (December of last year!) Sorry, I don't mean to sound like I'm trolling or even bitching, but NVidia needs to support what they provide (and we bought.) If I knew I'd not get support at all as what is happening now, I would have bought elsewhere (AMD) originally. The reason I've tried so many cards as said, is various issues yes, but most and all the recent ones have exhibited this stuttering issue. Also as I said, the companies and NVidia originally were blaming the cards, until NVidia started blaming the drivers and cards, but I have told them I won't swap in new cards now as we have tried so many as well... I'll start a new thread on this to try and organize it better and not clutter up this thread so much...
Issue I have with it is that it doesn't provide minimum 60fps for 1440p with newer titles when using Ultra settings, so going to switch it out. The card served me well at high settings though, didn't experience stuttering issues with new games at ultra either, just lower fps. Most probably going for a GTX980Ti.
While trying to replicate issues other had on the GeForce forums when pushing the card beyond 3.5GB, we kind of came to the conclusion that the GTX970's 2nd memory partition is very sensitive to system memory clock speeds and timings. Minimum 2000Mhz or ultra low timings at lower speeds makes the card render flawless. As I recall, there was even a guy running an SLI setup with an AMD CPU, he didn't have any stuttering issues either. There where also a few that got their issue fixed by tweaking their motherboards BIOS, seems like some boards don't switch to PCI-E Gen3, are to aggressive with power savings etc. And as always, Intel drivers should be up to date with IRST as the exception, some newer 13.6.x versions have performance issues which also affects gaming.
I think it's more complex than so, the 500MB partition is still fast compared to system ram, so must be something when those 500MB are used, somehow slower system memory affects transfers to that partition, did not see any full explanation to it though. But as NVidia stated, the second partition is used when a game demands 3.5GB+, no details regarding the slowdowns though. I think they got as surprised as some customers, since they can't test the card in all possible setups, and like most hardware enthusiast sites they probably also use some PC's with specs from the top shelf. Hence why neither reviewers managed to replicate the stuttering in SOM @ Ultra, they could see some frame-rate spike, but nothing major. Still doesn't explain why NVidia keeps the details in the dark, damage is done, so details would only shed some light on it.
