NVIDIA GTX 970 Design FLAW Lead to 3.5GB max vRAM usage

[nafu]

NVIDIA GTX 970 is known for BEST product of NVIDIA these days, and performance level incredible higher and perfectly suited to price/performance ratio. GTX 970 market at $325-$355 in international market. but a Power user while testing the Graphics card's vRAM usage find out that 970's VRAM usage is while gaming is lacking right after 3.5GB. the other 500mb is throttling and almost not in use. you can see the benchmark here

There are some advance user/Enthusiasts' reports on limitation in allocating the 4G and shows 3.3g or 3.5G is using up out of 4G. So ultimately 500-700mb vRAM is not using in games that are vRAM and memory bandwidth intensive like shadow of mordor, Battlefield 4 and Call of duty Advanced Warfare. that also are benched in testing process.

NVIDIA admitts the FLAW or vRAM usage/allocation limitation is there. Nvidia's Response on Geforce.com this issue mainly reported first on Lazygamer.net


Sources: lazygamer.net Pcper.com TPU

 

[CerebralTiger]

Nvidia thought it could get away with this, and it almost did. A lawsuit is in order.

 

[Shary Bhallu TC]

This was probably the reason why the 970s were so cheap. Well I hope Nvidia gets hit by a lawsuit. The card still works incredibly well for such a low priced card though, maxing almost every single game out there. This will hurt the people who were looking to play games at ~4K res. :/

A guy did some analysis (in-game) and found out that there is very minor stuttering when VRAM usage exceeds 3500MB (AKA into the final 500 MB of the card). Also this is most likely a hardware issue I am definitely gonna run into trouble when games in the future exceed 4 GB VRAM usage at the resolution I am used to playing.

 

[nafu]

yes, intertionally people do have know there rights and they can easily put them in court if they feel they get fraud by any cmpany. here NVIDIA admitts their fault on memory issue, 3.5Ghz was max usage by launch and they known to it. just hidden thing by NVIDIA. as almost similar thing happened before in fermi as well. but maxwell was different thing, they should have taken a good QC on it before launching in market.

The gaming effect is quite noticeable well, especially in 4K Gaming. where games required most of the available vRAM to run smooth. games like SOM/bF4 defiinitely affected by it.

 

[Owi Khan]

I am pretty sure some one from NOORA LEAGUE join Nvidia
That,y this thing is happened.

 

[nafu]

[MENTION=1519]Voodoo[/MENTION]

another Brief Testing analysis someone did for vRAM checking on NeoGaf used the MSI AB to show the result.

 

[Cerberus]

na kr yar [MENTION=21647]nafu[/MENTION]
maine ye order krna tha aj

 

[nafu]

na kr yar @nafu
maine ye order krna tha aj

1080p gaming doesn't effect hugely, as vRAM usage is hardly reached @ 3GB at that resolution. 4K gaming affected with it.

but still there is design issue, so you may wait for sometime untill NVIDIA resolve it.

 

[Cerberus]

there were some reports on 980 but its not affected
and some 970s with samsung memory are not affected as well

 

[Yasir Nadeem]

A Very Bad Move From Nvidia, A Very Bad Move Indeed .

 

[nafu]

980 aren't affected at all, as 980's SM(Shared Memory) configuration is different from 970's, the memory is segment in two portions 3.5g and 0.5g unfortunately 970 design just don't let used the other portion of 4GB vRAM............... as you can see the benchmark above i posted in my first post. 970 memory after 3.5g throttle badly even killed the performance of memory bandwidth outta nowhere. these will create high dips. while 980 is totally fine and consistent in performance without any single dip.

Samsung Memory bench are yet to reveal. if any.

 

[Owi Khan]

no need to worry for 1080P screens
and Nividia should solve this issue soon don,t u worry guys

who want to place order must go for it grab this beauty/beast

 

[Shary Bhallu TC]

Samsung memory is also affected I think.

 

[neox3d]

correct me but isn't the issue that the .5 gb vram on the second module is slow, rather than inaccessible?

 

[Shary Bhallu TC]

It's slow but something in the driver tries to not make that partition usable. If something requires 3.7 GB for example, there would be stuttering.

 

[Owi Khan]

Nvidia solve this issue very soon.
Cal,m down guys

 

[Shary Bhallu TC]

^ I doubt it. It seems like a driver issue. And the way Nvidia reacted (by showing 'average' performance instead of frametimes), I don't think it's gonna be solved anytime soon.

Nvidia's response was so poor. Average framerate tells us nothing about how bad the stuttering was in a game when more than 3.5 GB was used.

Edit:

Nvidia confirms that last 0.5 GB of the GTX970 is of low speed. Hope they get sued.

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphi...Full-Memory-Structure-and-Limitations-GTX-970

 

[RaPiD FiR3]

WTF is this :crying:

 

[Shary Bhallu TC]

Doesn't affect me 1080p <3

Lmao.

 

[nafu]

^ this is what 4K user's reaction these days. someone made this GiF so accurate.