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Although Nvidia Corp. still have not made any decisions about how to handle the situation with GeForce GTX 970 graphics cards and their incorrect specifications, a number of graphics cards suppliers now accept returns of such adapters, at least, in the U.K. and Germany.
In the recent weeks it was discovered and then confirmed that Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 graphics card cannot use more than 3.5GB of its onboard memory at full speed and that it features lower amount of raster operations pipelines (ROPs) (56 instead of 64) than Nvidia initially advertised as well as cut-down L2 cache. As a result, a lot of end-users got so disappointed that decided to return their graphics adapters. Unfortunately, Nvidia officially has not made any announcements regarding returns or compensations to owners of the GeForce GTX 970, which is why at present all the returns are handled by retailers and graphics cards suppliers.
Overclockers UK and Caseking.de – two leading European online stores from the U.K. and Germany – said that they would accept all GeForce GTX 970 graphics cards from all suppliers back if certain customers are unhappy. The window for returning a GeForce GTX 970 is between now and end of February.
Andrew “Gibbo” Gibson, purchasing manager at Overclockers UK, said that multiple graphics cards makers decided to support OcUK in terms of accepting returns. In particular, EVGA, Inno3D, KFA2 (formerly Galax), MicroStar International, Palit Microsystems and Zotac have officially confirmed plans to take the graphics cards back. Asustek Computer has not formally confirmed the intention, but the company has supported returns in the past. Gigabyte Technology does not support returns of GeForce GTX 970 graphics adapters, but could change its mind eventually.
Nvidia and Gigabyte did not comment on the news-story.
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KitGuru Says: Nvidia’s partners have sold hundreds of thousands of GeForce GTX 970 graphics cards in the recent months. If one third of the GeForce GTX 970 owners decide to return their adapters, this will clearly hurt manufacturers financially. To avoid such problems (remember that companies like EVGA, Inno3D, KFA2 and Palit exclusively sell Nvidia GeForce graphics adapters), Nvidia will need to settle with the end-users. Unfortunately, so far Nvidia has not made any statements on the matter.
Yes, what nVidia has done was a huge pile of crap but why return it? What’s in for you? pay more for a 980? So give nVidia more Money? Or get a 290X for little less? The Performance won’t be better for most of the titles, it runs hotter and mostly louder and think about the new 3XX-series which is coming soon (hopefully). I mean when you bought a 970, did you bought it because it had 64 ROPs? I don’t want to defend nVidia but if the Card performs like advertised (I mean Benchmarks and ingame tests) I don’t see any Problems.
The problem is, for people playing at 1440p or even 4K in SLI, reaching the last 0.5GB means a big drop in performance. Of course this doesn’t concern most buyers since they play at 1080p and games are nowhere near using 4GB at that resolution and by the time they do you’ll need an upgrade anyway. However, this whole thing has been hurting Nvidia’s image (and now the crippling bus of the GTX 960 and the G-Sync controversy) and bringing back the cards means hurting their sales; I guess you could consider it some sort of punishment by the consumers.
Because two 970 would surely be enough for playing in 4k, also with the prices of 4k panels i don’t really understand why would anyone spend so much on a display but try and save some money on GPUs instead of spending the few extra bucks to ensure that there will be enough performance to run it.
I agree with you on the performance side. But if we let this one slide, we open the door for more horrible situations.
I’m sorry, but this time nvidia has gone too far. Everything would be fine if they didn’t lied indeed. But they did. They lied. This is a grave insult to all of us.
I’m running 970 SLI and honestly, if I listened to the garbage people are posting about how performance drops off a cliff when you go over 3.5GB then I’d rip them out and send them back to OCUK from whence they came.
But performance doesn’t suffer in the way people like you are telling others that it does. So they are staying right where they are and I’ll go on enjoying the likes of BF4, FC4, Crysis 3 and numerous other titles at 4K resolution on high/very high/ultra settings, regularly using 3.7 to 3.8GB of VRAM @ 50-60fps until something better comes along for a similar amount of money.
This whole thing has been blown out of all proportion by a bunch of spoilt nerds who quite frankly haven’t got a clue what they’re angry about.
Was that a lame attempt for a comeback?
Don’t push your views onto other and flame them for not doing things the way u would have…
When the news of this broke a few days ago all of the GTX970 owners suddenly for less performance than before. One moment they were getting as-expected performance, the next their cards totally crippled.
Oh, wait, no performance is exactly the same.
I’ll keep my eye on OCUK for some B-Grade cards going cheap.
Hmmm….NVidia should really be supporting their customers if they want to remain respected on any level. I’m keeping my 970, it still performs the same as before all of this came up, I only game 1080p on my living room tv so 4k means nothing to me, I know there is 4gb of memory on the card, .5gb is slower than the 3.5gb when accessed, of course the rops amount is also an issue but either way it still performs the way it does. Not AMD or an NVidia fan but I just like performance the way I want it. AMD came out with 280x which apparently was a 7970 with different firmware? These companies don’t really care that much about their customers as with all businesses their purpose is to make money. I don’t blame people for bringing this up to be honest, it looks like false advertising, and good on those companies who are accepting returns, at least on some level it shows they have respect for the customers. I’m still keeping my 970, it hasn’t suddenly dropped in performance because of this issue 😉
Honestly, what I see when I see all this controversy and people returning their cards is a chance for some people to get an upgrade for a significantly lowered price. Yeah sure, it might not run as advertised, but for someone who’s still running a GTX 560, this might be an easy upgrade.
That being said, i’m running a GTX 770 OC 4gb…
Nvidia rebadges their gpu also.. infact they started this.. and it’s no secret the customer is able to research this a find it out. Now about 4gbs vs 3.5 and less ROPS from advertise is way different. Either way if you like getting ****ed by a company and taking it just like they expected you to.. good for you!! Not all of us go that way.
There is no way in hell your getting 50-60FPS@4K not even Jayz2Cents gets that with his 3 980’s in SLI and a 5960X with 16GB [email protected] try to defend Nvidia but your talking out your ass unless your play L.O.L or Hearthstone
There is no way in hell your getting 50-60FPS@4K not even Jayz2Cents gets that with his 3 980’s in SLI and a 5960X with 16GB [email protected] try to defend Nvidia but your talking out your ass unless your play L.O.L or Hearthstone
Actually i can get 50 – 60 fps in most titles in 4k with my 2 gtx 780s. Now can i max everything out at 4k no but there really isn’t a reason too 4k looks better then 1080p maxed. 1080p just runs better because the games are not made in 4k so there is actually a hindrance in performance. Like when i play dying light etc. the performance on my cpu actually degrades in 4k oppose to 1080p. Once companies actually start making games in 4k it will be more accessible to the average gamer.
This is a pretty fair comment. You might consider returning your card to make a point to Nvidia about not letting them get away with lying – I probably would – but that’s a heck of a lot of effort just to make a point. If you’re gaming at 1080p you won’t notice the 3.5+GB issue for a little while.
The problem is that you don’t notice it in most situations, and that’s why it hasn’t come out before this. But the situations that you do notice it are the most demanding ones, so that means the newest games, and the most demanding scenarios. When you’ve spent that much on a card you really don’t want a glass ceiling that limits your card in terms of how long it will last before you need to upgrade and in terms of playing the best games. You want to be able to max out games without worrying whether it uses 3.4 or 3.6 GB. So yes, performance is the same as it always was, and it’s pretty much what was expected and advertised in 95% of situations, but those particular 5% of situations are the *most important 5%*, and might be 50% in a few years.
….quietly closes case and looks other direction….
mfw when i have 560 still….
“Either way if you like getting ****ed by a company and taking it just like they expected you to.. good for you!! Not all of us go that way.”
No need to flame dude. He said that nVidia should be supporting their customers (presumably he means refunds or compensation of some kind) and he also said he games at 1080p – so he is hardly getting “****ed”.
Nvidia should slash the price of all 970 iterations by $50 to account for the 1/8 of the card that is essentially unusable.
There are people with 2 running in SLI to play 4k games posting benchmarks of them getting 50FPS in games, no issue, using over 3.5GB.
It’s still a non-issue for many. NVidia’s statements are true (lol) in that performance doens’t decrease. That Nai benchmark does indeed check every segment of RAM, but it doesn’t simulate a Direct3D game environment where memory id managed differently.
Point I was trying to make is that they have clearly messed up big time in regards to advertising, not performance. They obviously don’t care but again, I have no complaints about the cards performance which is why I bought it in the first place hence not bothering to return it. It’s down to the individual which route they take, keep it or return it, I just know what I’m doing. Of course, wrong is wrong, can’t dispute that, more power to those who return their cards. Would be appropriate to compensate 970 owners too with something, a partial refund, game bundles etc. I am curious as to what their next move will be.
It’s more than that. Even when the average framerate doesn’t show a significant drop above what it should (and benches conflict on this), it’s the massive microstutter you get when you start accessing that final 0.5GB. That would be very frustrating for games hovering on the 3.4-6GB line. In a way, using consistently more than 3.5GB would be better than that.
That problem is not just vapor and marketing miss management it downgrades a bit your system as a whole. It is becoming obvious from many testings and proofs from users that the .5GB is taken from your main system ram. Nvidia is pumping your system and costumers don’t know it.
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/808066/geforce-900-series/gtx-970-prefers-system-ram-over-video-ram-3-5gb-vram-1gb-sram-/
y no news for LEADTEK users?
I just bought that card yesterday,nvidia better settle this
Did you know how this peculiar problem got noticed at all in the first place? Try to think that for a bit, you can think right?
Yes. I also don’t think it’s as pronounced as you are all making out 🙂
http://www.overclock.net/t/1535502/gtx-970s-can-only-use-3-5gb-of-4gb-vram-issue
Yeah it’s just a 171 page long, 139K view thread. A fart in the wind.
GO NVIDIA
Like the 4th posts shows someone with SLI running what looks like 3 monitors saying he gets decent framerates over 3800MB.
I have been having issues with mine from the start and i was trying to track it down. The thing that didn’t occur during my troubleshooting was that Nvidia had purposefully gimped my card.
There is a specific micro stutter that’s annoying but there’s also a freezing issue where the game will suddenly freeze for 1 or 2 seconds then carry on like nothing happened. It happens in games like Far Cry 4 and Dying Light. Open world games with loads of textures to load in.
Now i know what it is i can dial down the settings to mitigate it, but i didn’t buy this card to play at 1080p on medium settings. This is why many people are pissed. For months we’ve been assuming certain games are at fault, and they’re not really.
People with large amounts of system RAM and fast SSD’s don’t notice it as much. People with less RAM and mechanical HDD’s notice is severely.