GTX 970 has a possible serious hardware level memory bug

[shadowandlight]

http://techwaynews.com/2015/01/23/gtx-970-found-to-have-a-serious-memory-allocation-bug/

[Dadjitsu]

I have a pair of Asus GTX 970 Strix in SLI, I have been using for around 4 months now and never had a problem, my 3 x Monitor setup is 6feet by 2feet, I use 4800x900 display and I 5 box and get the 62 fps that is set up in the IsBoxer wizard.

[MiRai]

I agree with several posters over on Anandtech and personally think it's a bunch of BS or just an issue in the drivers that was overlooked. I find it hard to believe that every single review site didn't catch this "bug" when benchmarking the GPUs, but some random person did? Wat? Even if it was a hardware-level bug, does anyone expect nVidia to recall all of the 970s at this point? Hiiiighly unlikely, so they'll just play it off or try to mask the "issue" with a new driver.

When it comes to a major claim like this, you (everyone) need to look at actual discussions that are being had and not believe everything news sites have to say since most are just looking for page hits. The thread that I've been following which deals with this supposed problem actually starts at post 89 on page 4 (http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2416150&page=4) since the first three and a half pages are some random person claiming that the GTX 970 is not a 256-bit GPU and their "proof" was ridiculous. -__-

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Oh man, my brain aches from just reading a few pages of some of those forums "discussing" the issue. Might as well discuss it in Barrens General chat.

[Dadjitsu]

I checked the Asus site, it clearly states it is a 256 card, I ran GPU-z and it reports the card as 256, with a bandwidth of 224 , where this 206 number comes from .... I don't seem to be able to find

[MiRai]

I checked the Asus site, it clearly states it is a 256 card, I ran GPU-z and it reports the card as 256, with a bandwidth of 224 , where this 206 number comes from .... I don't seem to be able to find
I don't know what you're referring to when you say "where this 206 number comes from," but that's why I said to ignore the first 3.5 pages of the thread I linked because it's an entirely separate topic which was quickly debunked -- The mods of that forum didn't split the topic for some reason and it's confusing if you start from the beginning.

Apparently, the new (and ridiculous) claim is that the GTX 970 (and only the 970) has an issue with its video RAM and any part of it after ~3.3GB is accessed at a incredibly crippled speed which is affecting performance, and people are coming to this conclusion by using a program written by someone named Nai. From what I've read, the glaring problems are:



This is not any sort of official benchmark from any actual company
No one knows who this Nai person is -- He's just some random guy apparently
Most people seem to not know exactly what the benchmark tests, and it might only be testing CUDA performance which has nothing to do with gaming
Supposedly the benchmark should be run on a headless system to ensure that the VRAM reads ZERO at the beginning of the test or else it affects the performance of the benchmark, but most people are not running the benchmark on a headless system, and therefore getting an incorrect result
Not a single review site, across all of the numerous tests they would have done, found anything remotely similar to what is being claimed, and those review site tests actually include... you know... games

But I'll be honest, I haven't been following all of this incredibly close because... I don't believe it to be an actual issue and I don't really care all that much. :)

---------------------------------

EDIT: nVidia just released their statement earlier today about what's up:

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

As expected, there's no issue.

[Dadjitsu]

That guy Nai was claiming the the 970 GPU's were 206 and not 256

Thanks for the heads up on Nvidia, I did think it was all a load of hog wash, no way would they release a card that was not thoroughly tested

[rfarris]

Dammit! I *was* planning on running a headless system! ;)

[shadowandlight]

http://www.techpowerup.com/209339/gtx-970-memory-drama-plot-thickens-nvidia-has-to-revise-specs.html

[Ughmahedhurtz]

1406

Maybe I'm jaded.

[JohnGabriel]

So all the benchmarks are still true, they just lied on the packaging to get you to buy it.

[MiRai]

We didn't need a second thread on this, so I've merged this one with the other.


So all the benchmarks are still true
It would seem so.


they just lied on the packaging to get you to buy it.
Whether they intentionally lied or not... no one will ever know.

I meant to link a four page in depth update from Anandtech from the other day, but forgot:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8935/geforce-gtx-970-correcting-the-specs-exploring-memory-allocation

[shadowandlight]

i smell a class action lawsuit

970 when you go from 3.4GB usage to 4.0GB usage

http://youtu.be/Mvre3zjOu2g

[MiRai]

970 when you go from 3.4GB usage to 4.0GB usage

http://youtu.be/Mvre3zjOu2g
I really hate to sound like an nVidia fanboy at this point because I seem to be defending them without question, but that video shows exactly what happens to any GPU which is pushed beyond it's VRAM limit, and any multiboxer can experience this exact behavior if they pushed their settings too high when running so many game clients, and my main issue with the video is that there is zero indication of what their VRAM usage was before and after the setting change.

I just find it odd that there are plenty of GTX 970 owners who claim that they are not having any issues, and those that swear that they are having issues, are also having a difficult time producing any actual proof with consistent measurements. I actually stopped reading any threads about this two days ago because the claims I kept reading were just so wild and out there, but if there was an actual problem and people expect to have a case, then they're going to need some consistent results (e.g. not random YouTube videos w/o any hardware specs or monitoring software) that show a problem, and not the fact that nVidia messed up some release specs on paper.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I just find it odd that there are plenty of GTX 970 owners who claim that they are not having any issues, and those that swear that they are having issues, are also having a difficult time producing any actual proof with consistent measurements. I actually stopped reading any threads about this two days ago because the claims I kept reading were just so wild and out there, but if there was an actual problem and people expect to have a case, then they're going to need some consistent results (e.g. not random YouTube videos w/o any hardware specs or monitoring software) that show a problem, and not the fact that nVidia messed up some release specs on paper.
There's some rule I'm sure about the likelihood of claims on the interwebs being supported by scientific-method-based evidence being inversely proportional to the popularity of the product.

[MiRai]

AMD has been doing a bit of marketing since this fiasco has occurred:

https://twitter.com/amd_roy/status/560462075193880576


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQAtwFFa2QY

[Ughmahedhurtz]

spZJrsssPA0

[MiRai]

Yeah, I thought that video was pretty good. This also showed up a few days ago on different sites - http://bursor.com/investigations/nvidia/