The reason I'm skittish is because modern developers are making sloppier ports every year, and every ounce of that 4GB would have been valuable going forward. Had I known this was a 3.5GB card, I'd have ponied up for a 980 or two. Looking ahead, I'm not optimistic my 970s will spank everything throughout 2015 like I'd expect a new generation for a year. Great discussion here, everybody!
I'll say this on the matter. The specs listed were not the correct specs that were shipped, so people thought they were buying that higher memory bandwidth. The card performs awesome, and I love mine so far after having it for 2 days so I couldn't imagine returning it unless it breaks. But I can understand the frustration over this. They've got a right to return the card if they want without being judged because of it now.
I understand why people are somewhat mad. Wrong specs and all but oi that card is still awesome Changing to 290x is like changing to same card with more wattage with +-5% performance. Well if you save some money with that then it is understandable but else lol.
Apparently Jimm's does allow returning the card and swapping it to something else. I don't really get it why anyone would like to do that though. 980 costs way more and the other alternatives hardly make sense. I don't know how 290X would compare to GTX 970 at 1,5 GHz but the 290 that I had was definitely slower (let alone the heat and noise...) even when overclocked.
at stock 290 and 970 trade blows but then again 970 oc's way way better. As I said the difference between 970 and 290x will be almost nothing since the oc potential is way higher on 970 just the way it is but you wouldn't really lose anything either if you get some money in the trade.
I see the price and want two 290x in crossfire but then I think about the missing nvidia stuff....... damn you nvidia. forcing me to pay for added effects in games.:bang:
Vram is important. Difference between 3.5gb and 4GB in games like Dying Light can mean stutter fest vs smooth gameplay. But yeah, if i had 970 i would be happy. Card is efficient, great performance stock and overclocked. No need to send perfectly fine card back.
I've noticed that an GTX 970 only requires an minimum of an 500 watt minimum power supply while an ATI R9 290x requires an staggering 750 watt minimum power supply, that's 250 watts more than an GTX 970. That being said, I do use an Corsair 750 watt modular power supply on my rig which probably in real world gaming is more than enough.
NVidia isn't going to lower prices because of this screw up. They don't actually see it as a screw up at all.
When I got my 290 cards I got the best speed for my money and it still the same today. Nvidea just wasn't in the running but the way they talk you would think different.
Man people are that butt hurt over the Vram thing on the 970? I would not let that sway someone from purchasing a faster card all around that can OC much higher than anything AMD atm. Not to mention a way better architecture. For new readers involved. I am no fan-boy... I have owned... MSI HD 7970 CF Sapphire HD 5870 HIS HD 4870 X2 Power Color HD 3870 CF
Problem is trust. How do you trust a company that's lied to you about the specifications of a product?
i did not know this since i only have used nvidia since.. like the all-in-wonder days.. 1999-2000? but wow. reference cards run at 94 degrees! to be fair, the powercolor runs at 63 under load which is about the same as my 980 posideon under (air) load so there's not that much of a difference. the 290x does use 100 more watts though.
First time posting, but just want to say Guru3d has been one of my go to sites since moving to PC a couple of years ago, and has been very informative when making decisions about my hardware!This includes the two 970's I purchased! I'm in the minority, as I do have two cards, and I am keeping an eye out for a 4K monitor this year. Therefore the whole memory allocation could have an impact on performance. Nevertheless, the cards are great, and would not consider returning them even with improved offers elsewhere, as they do what I want them to do. If things do get a bit choppy I'll just turn down some settings (do you really need 4x AA at 4K anyway??). What I will be concerned about is if Nvidia drop the price of the card as a result of this, and revising of the advertised specs. If they decide to do that, then I'll expect some form of compensation to a similar amount to reflect that, as it also affects the resale value when I upgrade. But I'm not going to jump on the bandwagon, use this as some excuse to ditch the cards and wait out newer cards as some sort of cheap upgrade method. Satisfied with the product, that's all it really comes down to!
I don't even think a 970 performs as well as 2 * 7950s. If you account for all other things including the power draw then you might have something but in raw performance I think XFire 7950 will beat a single 970 pretty handily where crossfire is working
As a owner of a uhd monitor and (previously) 970 SLI, I think I can drop some input on this. The problem with 970s at 4k for me was frame times, and some games just were not playable for me at 60fps. The stuttering really was annoying. However, not that many games had it. As for the 4x AA, in most cases you can forget that. At 4k you're lucky if you can manage any antialiasing at all(of course, only after you've maxed out everything else) And by the way, why would anyone have to compensate you anything for a product that you've bought, and been using all this time? The only way I see you getting anything for them is if you return the cards and claim a refund.
http://www.3dmark.com/fs/3940495?_ga=1.65279470.1179897749.1420096233 No better than http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/2169160
