Nvidia GTX 960

[Spikes]

You would need to ask NVidia why they lied about the specifications.  You do realize NVidia has admitted they lied about it?

Well, in their statement they don't really lie. It DOES have 4GB of VRAM and *unfortunately* they can market it as such. I've seen countless posts of "sue the company for false advertisement" etc but false advertisement didn't happen. If they wanted to be specific I suppose they could have advertised it as 3.5GB+512MB.

[BaldEagl]

NVidia claims they are working on a driver which will work to move off functions into that 512MB space and make the effort to not use that space for real time operations.  How successful that will be is yet to be seen.

NVidia's been pretty good about fixing problems with their products in the past.  I have confidence that if it's a real issue they'll sort it out.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

NVidia's been pretty good about fixing problems with their products in the past.  I have confidence that if it's a real issue they'll sort it out.

Nvidia has used a similar solution with the 660ti in the past and it made no major headlines then.

[Skuzzy]

Well, in their statement they don't really lie. It DOES have 4GB of VRAM and *unfortunately* they can market it as such. I've seen countless posts of "sue the company for false advertisement" etc but false advertisement didn't happen. If they wanted to be specific I suppose they could have advertised it as 3.5GB+512MB.

Actually, they lied about the number of ROPS (claimed 64, only has 56) as well as the size of of the level 2 cache (claimed 2MB, only has 1.7MB).

There's no logic in Nvidia intentionally crippling its products and then cheating in benchmarks.

Who said they intentionally cripple their products?  On the 970, they simply lied about the specifications.  Cheating in benchmarks is done by both ATI/AMD and NVidia.  It's all about getting a leg up on the competition.

Here are the facts, so far.

1)  Nvidia released the 970, and it was a good time for them as everything looked awesome.  Reviewers rejoiced.
2)  Performance complaints started pouring in.  Reviewers started looking harder at it.
3)  Suddenly, it was discovered the hardware did not match the specifications released for the product.
4)  NVidia finally admitted they were less than honest about the specifications for the card.

There is no conspiracy here.  The performance complaints were very real.  Now we know why they happen.  Avoid those situations and the card runs fine.

The manufacturer has admitted they did not disclose correct information about the hardware.  The manufacturer has acknowledged the performance issues and has stated they will work to correct them.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Actually, they lied about the number of ROPS (claimed 64, only has 56) as well as the size of of the level 2 cache (claimed 2MB, only has 1.7MB).

Who said they intentionally cripple their products?  On the 970, they simply lied about the specifications.  Cheating in benchmarks is done by both ATI/AMD and NVidia.  It's all about getting a leg up on the competition.

Here are the facts, so far.

1)  Nvidia released the 970, and it was a good time for them as everything looked awesome.  Reviewers rejoiced.
2)  Performance complaints started pouring in.  Reviewers started looking harder at it.
3)  Suddenly, it was discovered the hardware did not match the specifications released for the product.
4)  NVidia finally admitted they were less than honest about the specifications for the card.

There is no conspiracy here.  The performance complaints were very real.  Now we know why they happen.  Avoid those situations and the card runs fine.

The manufacturer has admitted they did not disclose correct information about the hardware.  The manufacturer has acknowledged the performance issues and has stated they will work to correct them.

I said so. The 970 is based on the same exact GM204 architecture like the 980. In order to make it slower and sell it cheaper, a couple of ROPs and 1 lane of L2 cache was cut. The L2 cache cut is the whole reason why the last 512Mb is slower because it shares cache and memory controller with the previous-to-last 512Mb memory block.

They very intentionally crippled 970 fully knowing what they did so they could make it artificially handicapped versus the 980. It was their full intention to make the cheap product slower and more limited in functionality. This doesn't change the fact that the heavy cut in MSRP makes the 970 awesome value for money. If it didn't have the feature cuts it would be just a 980 with a slower clock.

[Skuzzy]

No matter the price, if it does not fit the application, it is useless.  Within its now known limitations, it is a nice card.

[Rolex]

I'm going to get a new system. Do I want this card?

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I going to get a new system. Do I want this card?

If you plan to run super high resolutions you'll want the 980 or three probably. For regular full hd 970 works great.

[Gman]

I'll put some recorded video up from various games using Fraps and other means for recording in game FPS.  I'm one of those using the"high resolution" in games, I have the best 1440p gaming monitor you can buy, an ROG Swift, and I have a 4k Gsync Acer monitor on my other system.  I've ran games at 4k, but mostly use 1440p with both.

I have 2 eVga 970, the best/fastest 970s eVga released running SLI, and a 980 eVGA as well in the other system.  

I haven't ran into a lot of this tanking performance, running games like Alien Iso, Star Citizen, Rome Total war2, CoD, CS Go, pretty much every "new" game around, and the performance with the SLI 970 system has never dumped, and in fact usually has higher FPS than my 980 system in games with decent/newer SLI profiles.

I'm interested to see if I can force my 970s into a situation where the FPS radically drops - anyone know what games and situations these complaints are about?  Odds are I have the game, but googling hasn't given me a very accurate picture so far.  I have a lot of different games, a wide variety of simulations, FPS, RPG, and so on, and haven't noticed any real world massive drops in any of them, and that's running with all detail settings at full blast, Gsync enabled in both systems on both monitors, one IPS 4K and one 1440p and 144hz and not IPS.  Obviously there are some games where limits have been pushed to over 3.5 vram and the problem noticed, I just haven't seen it yet, and want to.

edit - It looks like Far Cry 4 and Assassins Creed are two guilty culprits, but I don't have either, and with everything maxed in Far Cry 3 I've not seen my fps tank on the 970sli system.  I do have Skyrim somewhere, and apparently there are issues with it and running up/over 3.5, so I'll give it a whirl and record it and see what happens, but I don't recall it doing anything strange and having massive fps drops when I tested it with the 970s when I first installed them.


I would agree about the 980 and 4k as Ripley said, it doesn't take a lot to squash my 980 with a few of the newer games in 4k, I wouldn't have believed that 980x2 or even 3 would be necessary, but if you truly want to game at 4k and have decent playable frame rates all the time, some of these newer games pretty much require it.  Sure looks good at 4k though.

This has been one of the better articles I've found so far - I really haven't found any limitations comparing my 970s vs my single 980, we play games side by side, one PC on our fiber the other on our cable connection, and it's pretty much been performance as expected with a good 25 different games.  Granted, we don't have Far Cry 4 or AC U, but like this article showed, maxing out on both a 1440p and 4k Gsync'd monitors, and switching them back and forth between systems a few times - nothing has really concerned me, at full detail with anti aliasing and anti/filtering maxed out in most games.  

http://www.pcper.com/news/Graphics-Cards/NVIDIA-Responds-GTX-970-35GB-Memory-Issue

I haven't found any situations in any game I've tried or tested so far that I've had to avoid in order to not have my 970 equipped system plummet in performance.  Max resolution with the 1440p monitor and max detail settings haven't crippled performance once for me yet, or even shown anything but much greater performance over previous 780 and 680 cards.  4k is another story, but our 980 gets smoked down into the 30s or even lower at my detail settings @4k with some games, so the same thing happening with the 970sli setup isn't surprising@4k.

[Chalenge]

I have no issues with 2x980s in SLI at 3240x1920. It certainly runs better than 5760x1080 (or 1200).

I play Insurgency, ARMA3, DCS World, COH2, ETS2, ESS, FS15, MP3, MLB 2K10, SEV3, TS15, Watchdogs, WiC, and Wolfenstein: TNO without problems.

We have one guy in our squad that has the stutter/lag/auger problem and he uses the 970, but I honestly do not think this is the cards' architecture in his case.

[Gman]

Well, I was able to replicate it in DOTA and a few other games with known issues.  It REALLY bogged down the FPS, out of knowhere it would plummet into the 20s once it hit the limit.

I wasn't too concerned about it, until I considered that who knows what the future year will bring - I usually upgrade every year, the vid cards at least, and everything else every 2 or 3 depending on what the tech and $ is doing so far as bang for the buck.  Most of the stuff I'm playing isn't affected, but some future stuff may be, as I got the SLI 970 set up to run the 4k monitor mostly, not the 1440p 144hz one.

So I called up Nvidia and my retailer I've used since the 90s, Mem Express which is a small chain of about 15 stores in Western Canada.  They both were very helpful, and issued me and RMA an hour ago to return both 970 cards for full refund including shipping.  I only wonder if nVidia is doing so with all their retailers?  I certainly have no complaints, so it looks like I'll be back to running 2 single 980s, or perhaps I'll get 2 980s to replace the 970s.  I'm just happy that they are stepping up to fix the issues.

[38ruk]

If your looking for bang for the buck the R290X is also a decent choice right now as AMD has cut the prices on them due to the 970's intro.... saw a couple for $300 bucks on newegg. They run a bit warmer and use more power than the 970 but are right in the ball park performance wise.

[captain1ma]

Im looking at the R9 290. even with the extra heat and power, my box is well ventilated and my 850w power supply is more then enough to handle it.
when I look at those benchmarks, I cant see an extra $250 for 2 or 3 more FPS.