All you nvidia 970 users might want to read this

[Kitlope]

Just a heads up, seems there's a bit of a memory issue with the 970's.

For a week or two now in our forums there have been allegations that users of the GeForce GTX 970 have a darn hard time addressing and filling the last 10% of their graphics memory. The 4 GB card seems to run into issues addressing the last 400 to 600 MB of memory, which is significant.

Two weeks ago when I tested this myself to try and replicate it, some games halted at 3.5 GB while others like COD fill the 4 GB completely. These reports have been ongoing for a while now, then got dismissed. However a a new small tool helps us to indicate and verify a thing or two, and there really is something going on with that last chunk of memory for the GeForce GTX 970 and its memory usage. We have to concur the findings, there is a problem that the 970 shows, and the 980 doesn't.

Meanwhile an Nvidia representative here at the Guru3D forums already stated that "they are looking into it". The tool we are talking about to verify a thing or two was made by a German programmer under the name Nai, he has made a small program that benchmarks vram performance and we can see the 970 memory utilizing around the 3.3GB, while the GTX 980 does not show such behavior:

More of the story and link to the test to see if you're affected.

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/does-the-geforce-gtx-970-have-a-memory-allocation-bug.html

 

[little P]

I'm not going to lie some of that article may as well have been written in wingdings

From what I can fathom Nvidia is saying this is a non-issue as the last .5 is used only when a program calls for it? Or am I reading that wrong.

 

[Kitlope]

No, I think I read that too. I don't think it's an issue for the average gamer... but then again regardless you should get 100% of what you pay for.

Maybe it can be fixed via some firmware, drivers or something.

 

[Shilka]

Here's an nvidia statement about the problem:

“The GeForce GTX 970 is equipped with 4GB of dedicated graphics memory. However the 970 has a different configuration of SMs than the 980, and fewer crossbar resources to the memory system. To optimally manage memory traffic in this configuration, we segment graphics memory into a 3.5GB section and a 0.5GB section. The GPU has higher priority access to the 3.5GB section. When a game needs less than 3.5GB of video memory per draw command then it will only access the first partition, and 3rd party applications that measure memory usage will report 3.5GB of memory in use on GTX 970, but may report more for GTX 980 if there is more memory used by other commands. When a game requires more than 3.5GB of memory then we use both segments.
The best way to test that is to look at game performance. Compare a GTX 980 to a 970 on a game that uses less than 3.5GB. Then turn up the settings so the game needs more than 3.5GB and compare 980 and 970 performance again.
Here’s an example of some performance data:

	GTX980	GTX970
Shadows of Mordor
<3.5GB setting = 2688x1512 Very High	72fps	60fps
>3.5GB setting = 3456x1944	55fps (-24%)	45fps (-25%)
Battlefield 4
<3.5GB setting = 3840x2160 2xMSAA	36fps	30fps
>3.5GB setting = 3840x2160 135% res	19fps (-47%)	15fps (-50%)
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
<3.5GB setting = 3840x2160 FSMAA T2x, Supersampling off	82fps	71fps
>3.5GB setting = 3840x2160 FSMAA T2x, Supersampling on	48fps (-41%)	40fps (-44%)

On GTX 980, Shadows of Mordor drops about 24% on GTX 980 and 25% on GTX 970, a 1% difference. On Battlefield 4, the drop is 47% on GTX 980 and 50% on GTX 970, a 3% difference. On CoD: AW, the drop is 41% on GTX 980 and 44% on GTX 970, a 3% difference. As you can see, there is very little change in the performance of the GTX 970 relative to GTX 980 on these games when it is using the 0.5GB segment.”


Nvidia is currently working on a driver update to improve performance when the card is using over 3.5 GB VRam.

 

[SLASH47]

My friend bought two gigabite 970's from micro center. They are gonna give him credit for both cards. He is gonna upgrade to one 980.

 

[Wapwap]

I was going for a 970, but i'm glad I haven't bought anything yet. Just going to see how this plays out.

It might not be an issue right now since most games won't use such a high amount of memory, but you might run into trouble running future games. Kinda strange the 980 seems to have the problem as well. I thought they initially said the 980 wasn't experiencing this issue.

 

[little P]

There is no problem. It's all a storm in a teacup and a website trying to get hits imo.

All it means (from my understanding) is it doesn;t use the full memory until it needs to. Simple as that. When a program requires the full juice the card obliges.

It states that on the article under the "edits".

Slash - why did your friend go for two 970's when he could have just gone for a 980 in the first place with that budget? Just curious