Stop! Don't Buy That Video Card Yet.

[chknwing]

If you are pc gamer such as myself you may not know yet but the Geforce 970 cards are flawed.  Stay away from them if you plan on playing any game over 1080p.  Nvidia gave consumers the wrong specs on the card and only now the information is coming to light after gamers are experiencing issues.  Theres alot of mumbo jumbo but the jist of it is, if you play a game that wants to use over 3.5gb of memory, the game is going to take a severe performance hit.  This happens more so on games run at resolutions higher than 1080p. Nvidia marketed the game as a true 4gb card but its not its 3.5gb + 500mb.  that 500mb has a much lower bandwidth than the other memory which results in stutter in the game.

 

 

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/nvidia-admits-to-error-in-gtx-970-specs-and-memory/1100-6424915/

 

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/NVIDIA-Discloses-Full-Memory-Structure-and-Limitations-GTX-970

 

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/803518/geforce-900-series/gtx-970-3-5gb-vram-issue/

 

 

[NavyPF4L]

That's funny. I play in 1440p with a gtx 970 and have no such issues. Anything from Arma 2 , Arma 3, DayZ Standalone, BF4, H1Z1, Far Cry 4. So yeah... Smooth as butter here.

[NavyPF4L]

However. I shall be looking into this further and possibly upgrading to the 980 by bitching a lot.

[NavyPF4L]

Okay after doing a bit more research on the issue. "Sever performance hit" is not accurate as well as anything over 1080p for that matter. In fact you won't see any hits at 1440p and below and if you do we are talking one to 2 frames. Not significant by any means.

 

Yes. The specs aren't quite what was advertised in the beginning HOWEVER the reviews and all of the benchmarks that did come out with it still stand and they are nothing short of outstanding and the best "bang" for the buck. Also to note and I am curious as to what will happen because at this point it will be all speculation until released but Nvidia is hot and heavy working on a driver update specifically on this to boost performance and to make the card properly use the other .5 gig of data on the card. Which could end up being really good... OR it could end up just being a mere update to get programs to register the extra ram.  We shall see.

 

With saying all of that. It is still any outstanding card especially in the price range of being $200 less then the gtx 980 while performing at 80% of what the 980 can do.. Also its great for overclocking which gets you closer to the same performance for large amount less out of your wallet.

 

Am I happy with my 970's? Absolutely as I own a total of 3. 2 in my desktop and one in my laptop. Would I take advantage of a free upgrade if it ends up being offered at the end of this? Well no poo why not? Am I heart broken and is it absolutely needed. Not even in the slightest.

[C47]

Yea I have a 970 (factory overclocked) and haven't had any issues yet. I also play in 1440P and games range from Battlefield 4, Far Cry 4, Dota 2, FIFA 15 & NBA 2K15 (both heavily modded), as well as Dragon Age Inquisition and Skyrim (also heavily modded). Haven't even had a slight hiccup yet. 

[Eazy-E]

I am still rocking SLI 3gb 660ti's @ 1080p and have yet to run into a new game yet that I can't run at max setting. Not worried about anything over 60fps since I use vertical sync on most games.

[CarolinaCoolin]

http://youtu.be/spZJrsssPA0