970's having performance issues using 4GB Vram - Nvidia investigating

[Ayahuasca]

I've spoken to the place that rhymes with van just to see if they would offer me a return and they have done, even offered me a slightly cheaper upgrade to a 980.

Decisions, decisions.

 

[Bigbud]

Gibbo

Dear customer,

Thank you for your patience regarding the recent GTX 970 complaint, GIGABYTE is still working with NVIDIA regarding this matter. But we do understand this may be a lengthy process, GIGABTYE has decided to offer a paid upgrade program for customers who are interested in moving up to the GTX 980.

The two model we are offering for the upgrade options are GV-N980G1 GAMING-4GD and GV-N980WF3OC-4GD. For customers who are interested in the upgrades, please provide a copy of the original purchase invoice, serial number, shipping information and the model you are interested. Once we received the information we will reply back with a price difference and how to proceed with the upgrade.

Thank you for choosing GIGABYTE.

Are you looking to upgrade through Gigabyte ? could you let us know what costs the quote ?

I'm still on the fence about returning my G1 970, as Gibbo has kindly given us till the end of the month I thought I'd let the dust settle first.

I really wanted to go sli and have already upgraded my psu and case ready to go but adding a 2nd 970 worries me :/ I maybe ok thou as I'm pushing for 144hz before eye candy.

That said id be interested in a gigabyte step up program if it worked out less than retail, if not they can do one and I'll go with EVGA or an overclockers brand

 

[pdaboy]

@Gibbo Are you expecting to have many b grade 970's up for sale soon?

 

[Gibbo]

@Gibbo Are you expecting to have many b grade 970's up for sale soon?

Not particular, maybe a few but the prices will be inline with B-grade regular prices, 970 is still worth every penny, what else comes close to it for the price really.

So people who think they were gonna be sold of at crazy prices were dreaming.

 

[Legend]

I can't help but feel demand for the 970 will cool somewhat in the coming months, especially if the prices rise. It may be the only choice for some with small PSU's and cases though.

 

[Andy__C]

Well I had issues at 1080p and 1440p in SLI, much less prominent on a single card but that will change as vram usage increases in games despite turning down settings.

At 1080p on a g-sync monitor I would stick with one 970, I would suspect that by the time it starts to struggle with games two 970’s will be the same, although for different reasons.

As for drivers, on the whole their drivers have been poor at best recently, although I would expect them to improve the issue, while never being able to truly fix it.

Cheers Payne, interesting insight. So, I am struggling to get my head around this a little.... It's just the stuttering that occurs on SLI 970's that doesn't on a single?

How about general FPS? Is SLI giving you much higher FPS over a single in the non-recent games so would benefit a higher htz monitor?



I am trying to work out in my mind whether the SLI performance is due to this VRAM speed issue, whether it just doesn't suit the 970 or whether this is just a driver/profile thing that will be fixed with age.


And finally, do I buy a 2nd Galax black infinite, prob with a waterblock, or am I making a huge waste of money and am better plowing it into another option.

980 seems a waste for 1080, and I don't want to go to a 2 series AMD on the brink of the 3 series being released and having a gsync monitor.

 

[Legend]

Cheers Payne, interesting insight. So, I am struggling to get my head around this a little.... It's just the stuttering that occurs on SLI 970's that doesn't on a single?

How about general FPS? Is SLI giving you much higher FPS over a single in the non-recent games so would benefit a higher htz monitor?

I am a bit puzzled by this myself, but I was under the impression, and this may be wrong, that with SLI you've got a fair bit of GPU grunt there, so the cards are quite happy to consume up to 4GB, and it's within that 3.5-4 range that the stuttering seems to occur. With a single card, I guess you're not able to utilise all that RAM so easily, but it's certainly possible with everything cranked up to 11, or poorly optimised RAM hungry games.

Benchmarks clearly show you get higher FPS with SLI, I don't see how it would be possible not to... after all, it was universally accepted a few weeks ago that 970 SLI was an amazing set-up. Now it's suddenly plagued with problems? Something not right there. I recognise some people WERE suffering issues with stuttering before, unclear what was going on... and in most of those situations it would seem that was because they were within that 3.5-4GB range, but no one knew about how the card had been engineered, so it was put down to driver issues etc. Must be said though, if you're using MORE than 4GB (as some games will demand), it's not a faulty card that's the issue.

The way I see it, you just need to stay below 3.5GB usage, and all is good. What I don't know is if that's made considerably more difficult with SLI, to the point that it renders a second card pointless, so you're better off with one? I'm not sure. Someone smarter than me can clarify I'm sure.

 

[james.miller]

I'm seeing stuttering on a single card but for different reasons - it's where the card is clocking down in low usage situations. I've not seen it in modern games because they psuh the gpu hard enough but older games its really quite annoying. Nothing like what we've seen in SLi but annoying nonetheless.

hmm.

 

[Legend]

I'm seeing stuttering on a single card but for different reasons - it's where the card is clocking down in low usage situations. I've not seen it in modern games because they psuh the gpu hard enough but older games its really quite annoying. Nothing like what we've seen in SLi but annoying nonetheless.

hmm.

What card do you have? That's odd. Never seen that on mine. Shouldn't do that should it?

 

[james.miller]

infinity black. It's not something i've noticed till now. GTA IV for example is terrible and not its-a-bad-port terrible, it's more it-wasnt-like-this-when-i-last-played-it terrible.

I need to investigate more but dont have the time right now. I'll try locking the clocks, if i can, see if that does anything.

 

[Bonjour]

...

The way I see it, you just need to stay below 3.5GB usage, and all is good. What I don't know is if that's made considerably more difficult with SLI, to the point that it renders a second card pointless, so you're better off with one? I'm not sure. Someone smarter than me can clarify I'm sure.

I believe the thinking is that with a single card you're more likely to run out of GPU grunt before the 3.5GB VRAM limit becomes an issue. With SLI'd 970s, you've got a load of GPU horsepower, capable of running ultra high res and textures, that's going to be scuppered once you go over the 3.5GB threshold.

 

[PayneUK]

@Andy_C

Ok I am struggling not write an essay, re-written it several times. I also apologize if I’ve repeated myself from my previous post.

On the whole on most games the FPS increase with 970 SLI was excellent, which is why I was so pleased with them initially, and in most of the instances where it wasn’t that was mainly down to poor driver support or non-existant SLI profiles. (Dragon age I’m looking at you)

Raw FPS is not the issue with these cards; it’s how their memory works over that 3.5gb threshold and with two 970’s you are easily pushing out enough ‘grunt’ to enable games to use that. That is when you would find games reporting 100 fps, only to feel like it was 10 with stutters and pauses.

Essentially this; if you’re not the sort who upgrades their hardware every release then I feel two 970’s are a poor investment, the short term gains could easily turn into long term hassle as more and more games will push that line of vram regardless of how low you turn the settings.

I feel that while NVidia may be able to improve the issue they will never be able to truly fix it. I suspect that towards the end of 2015 the settings you have to play at on a single 970 will be very similar to that of a SLI setup, but for very different reasons.

 

[PayneUK]

I believe the thinking is that with a single card you're more likely to run out of GPU grunt before the 3.5GB VRAM limit becomes an issue. With SLI'd 970s, you've got a load of GPU horsepower, capable of running ultra high res and textures, that's going to be scuppered once you go over the 3.5GB threshold.

Or this.

With one card for £300 your getting a very good GPU for 1080p with a reasonably short shelf life for high settings.

At £600 for two, unless you want to see 120 fps instead of 70 fps, your getting exactly the same.

 

[Reektan]

Oh god - I've got into a great situation now.

Sent my 970's back (Cheers Gibbo) and bought a new 980. Job done. OCUK received my 2 cards today and performed a refund to the original card (Amazon MasterCard). Amazon transferred all these cards to MBNA months ago and I subsequently cancelled it around 2 months ago. I then get an Amazon Payments email advising one of the cards has been refunded.

Called OCUK to explain but the chap said ' the refund is all green ' so there isn't much they can do.

Not entirely sure who I'm meant to talk to now.

Other than that - the 980 is really nice but I have £500 odd floating around in the ether.

 

[Legend]

Raw FPS is not the issue with these cards; it’s how their memory works over that 3.5gb threshold and with two 970’s you are easily pushing out enough ‘grunt’ to enable games to use that. That is when you would find games reporting 100 fps, only to feel like it was 10 with stutters and pauses.

I agree from all I've read this sums up the problem. Coming from a single 970 that I haven't pushed to the limit yet, I understand the theory but have not yet seen it in practice. I was always set on SLI but from what I'm reading, at my resolution (1440p), I'd only be asking for trouble once that 3.5GB threshold was reached, which is clearly going to happen more often with two cards than just one... only worsening as more demanding games are released. I guess it's almost the reverse of the 290X 8GB argument, in that one of those cards is mostly pointless because you will run out of GPU grunt before you utilise all the VRAM, so you need x2 of them in order to get the most out of it.

 

[Harlequin]

Oh god - I've got into a great situation now.

Sent my 970's back (Cheers Gibbo) and bought a new 980. Job done. OCUK received my 2 cards today and performed a refund to the original card (Amazon MasterCard). Amazon transferred all these cards to MBNA months ago and I subsequently cancelled it around 2 months ago. I then get an Amazon Payments email advising one of the cards has been refunded.

Called OCUK to explain but the chap said ' the refund is all green ' so there isn't much they can do.

Not entirely sure who I'm meant to talk to now.

Other than that - the 980 is really nice but I have £500 odd floating around in the ether.

problem is , under consumer law OCUK would have to refund the card it was paid on or offer store credit. if you asked for a refund then they are obliged to refund the method of payment.

you`ll need to contact your card issuer on how to proceed

 

[Andy__C]

@Andy_C

Ok I am struggling not write an essay, re-written it several times. I also apologize if I’ve repeated myself from my previous post.

On the whole on most games the FPS increase with 970 SLI was excellent, which is why I was so pleased with them initially, and in most of the instances where it wasn’t that was mainly down to poor driver support or non-existant SLI profiles. (Dragon age I’m looking at you)

Raw FPS is not the issue with these cards; it’s how their memory works over that 3.5gb threshold and with two 970’s you are easily pushing out enough ‘grunt’ to enable games to use that. That is when you would find games reporting 100 fps, only to feel like it was 10 with stutters and pauses.

Essentially this; if you’re not the sort who upgrades their hardware every release then I feel two 970’s are a poor investment, the short term gains could easily turn into long term hassle as more and more games will push that line of vram regardless of how low you turn the settings.

I feel that while NVidia may be able to improve the issue they will never be able to truly fix it. I suspect that towards the end of 2015 the settings you have to play at on a single 970 will be very similar to that of a SLI setup, but for very different reasons.

No that's great, cheers! I'm far more clear now..... and the entire issue makes a bit more sense.

Basically, the vram capability was not matched to the GPU horsepower for higher ram using tasks and so causes a bottleneck. Not quite affecting FPS, but general output.


That's pretty much made my mind up about not going SLI then.


Much appreciated for taking the time to explain it in a way I get.

 

[PayneUK]

No that's great, cheers! I'm far more clear now..... and the entire issue makes a bit more sense.

Basically, the vram capability was not matched to the GPU horsepower for higher ram using tasks and so causes a bottleneck. Not quite affecting FPS, but general output.


That's pretty much made my mind up about not going SLI then.


Much appreciated for taking the time to explain it in a way I get.

No Problem, and after re-reading my post I'm amazed anyone understood it at all, after all the editing its barely English! even Daniel Jackson would struggle so well done

For your setup a single 970 should serve you very well, keep the £300 you were going to spend on a second card and hide it in a sock somewhere and once the time comes, sell the 970, combine the money and buy a monster card!

 

[BoozerDawg]

Just want to make sure this is right, OcUK taking £20 off the refund if the game voucher that came with the cards was used ?

 

[Gibbo]

Just want to make sure this is right, OcUK taking £20 off the refund if the game voucher that came with the cards was used ?

Should be £10 max if you have used a game, not £20 !