Jump to content

Nvidia cheated on the GTX 970... so how good is AMD for 3d?


Recommended Posts

Some of you might have read, that the 970 gtx is not living up to its advertised specs.

- only 3,5 Gb ram are usable with full speed (some people have problems in maya)

- only 56 rop units instead of 64

- only 1792 KByte L2 cache instead of 2048 KByte

- to get the transfer rate of 224 GByte per second (256 Bit) nvidia added the the speed of the slow 0,5 GByte ram part (32 Bit, 28 GByte/s) to the fast 3,5 GByte (224 Bit, 196 GByte/s). The card cannot really read from both parts simultanously, so that makes sense ;-)

 

I do not not know, why nvidia is flat out lying to its customers? But Linus Torvald does not seem to like nvidia and even apple is switching to amd. So how usable are AMD graphic cards for us?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Let's do a bit more research shall we?

 

http://techreport.com/review/27724/nvidia-the-geforce-gtx-970-works-exactly-as-intended

 

"To clear the air, Nvidia Senior VP of Hardware Engineering Jonah Alben spoke with us yesterday evening" .... "Alben frankly admitted to us that Nvidia "screwed up" in communicating the GTX 970's specifications in the reviewer's guide it supplied to the press."

 

Sounds like dirty lies to me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So technically the card does have access to 4GB total but it is only fully accessed when requirements exceed 3.5GB and at a performance cost of 1 to 3 percent vs the standard GM204 memory configuration.

 

The 970 is 40 percent less cost to the consumer than the 980.

 

So my take away from this is that we should see 1x 8 GB cards around the $1k mark soon.

Edited by beestee
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1000 would be excessive for 8GB 980 I think (if such version were to come, but it was supposed to), I would say 749 or something along those lines rather.

And the Titan "2" or whatever equivalent is cooking up is rumored to start higher than that at 1349/1449 dollars, but come with 12GB ram.

Edited by RyderSK
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Which are exactly the problems with Maya?

Who exactly "misses" the 4GB? Or, the 512MB that "run slower"?

The "only" comments for "missing" ROP & L2 cache are vs. the 980 which is 40% more expensive for 10% more performance?

 

Not so long ago, the 256bit Kepler GK104 was "incapable" of utilizing more than 2GB or VRam and everybody was disappointed (on paper, cause in reality the cards did their job). Now the 970 offers GTX Titan performance, and on my 1440p + 1080p setup doesn't seem to be memory starved under ANY circumstance.

 

And in 3DS Max 2015 happens to beach-slap the K4000 I had lying around...(i.e. double the performance). This is Specapc 3DS Max 2015 I am talking about. I hope I will be releasing some numbers soon. Too bad I don't have the Titan anymore, but I could not resist selling it for more than $1,000 - as I did :o - only to replace it with an equally good $340 card.

 

Yes, the AMD cards and especially the R9 290 is an amazing value. But that doesn't deduct the 970's value, as the 290s also have their share of issues, mainly the much higher TDP (for no additional performance) and the horrible stock coolers of most ref. cards - to name a few.

 

The only issue is that my Asus STRIX 970 has coil whine...to be more precise, it had no coil whine for a month or so, then it started coil whining (yes, I folded with the thing a couple of weeks, does deliver GTX Titan performance there too). Got the card returned to Amazon, and the replacement coil whines out of the box. Great? :mad:

 

Just a word of caution: my EVGA GTX Titan was coil whining occasionally after a few months of intense usage too. Yes, I was leaving the PC folding overnight / when I was off @ work, which should equate to some 18hr day / 5 days a week load @ 100%. No stability issues (the Titan was overclocked and water-cooled all its life on my hands too). Difference is, the o/ced Titan was pulling in eccess of 300W by itself, the STRIX doesn't do more than 150W ever. Benching with GPU @ 100% and a 4770K @ 4.5GHz (test rig) stressing 1-2 threads to 100%, will peak @ 230W for the whole system. (by comp, my 3930K @ 4.7ish and the clocked GTX Titan could pull >700W, although with full CPU util, around 450W @ similar loads).

 

I'm in crossroads. On one hand the card performs amazingly, with the massive cooler cooling it passively 95% of the time (yes, the fans don't even kick in), so some people suggested me returning it again for a 3rd STRIX, on the other hand I could go for the MSI Gaming, even tho it would lack the backplate (those 7GHz RAM modules do heat up a lot) and never stops spinning its fans. Oh, and the cooler shroud is cheesier / red-colored.

Edited by dtolios
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This whole deal simply underlines the fact of how people get consumed by hypes and forum-warrioring, even if it is about stuff they don't really understand. And this is universal ofc, it is not focused on PC hardware and whatnot.

 

People respond to "magical" claims, conspiracy theories and appeals to emotion way better (as in, more passionately in favor) than pragmatism.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...