Scarlet-Tech

jmike00

Scarlet-Tech
If you think EVGA is so bad while they are helping their customers in this situation, why are you here? People demanded they be allowed to step up, EVGA said OK. People demanded a refund, EVGA said OK. People come in here complaining about both, and no one cares.

I'm curious where the info on the refunds comes from? When I called and inquired about my options, refunds weren't one of them. I then submitted an online support ticket and again just a step up was all that was offered. The only thing I was told I could get refunded were the 970 Backplates if I decided to step up to the 980 but that came with a 15% restock fee.
 
Just for fun this evening I put my 2 670 4GB in and though there was a sizeable(though playable) fps loss, Unity didn't cough spit and stutter at all when using max VRAM. Nice and smooth, no chop just much lower fps.

If you are outside of 30 days, they have helped people step up. Within, they have helped people. Even more. You have to understand that while you are frustrated, you are only one person. There are many many more reacting the same way. Cooler heads prevail.

Which vendor did you purchase from, or did you go EVGA direct?

A couple of other companies aren't even accepting cards back at all. There is no step up option or anything. It's unfortunate for those frustrated, but they are saying "this is nvidia specifications and the card functions how NVidia intended."

I am outside of my refund window from Newegg so that's not an option for me. I also apologize if it seems I'm bashing EVGA because they are the only company offering assistance which is great because they aren't obliged to at all.

I've been very satisfied with EVGA so far with my 970. They allowed me to step up from the SC to the newer SSC which was great! So far things have been good at 1440p and I even begun to make plans to buy a second 970 so I could play on MAX settings for the next 2-3 years. I like to crank the eye candy up as high as I can.
 
Then VRAM gate happened.
 
To my understanding, it is now considered unwise to SLI 970s due to being much more likely to max out VRAM. This can cause issues, for example: youtu.be / cW35LVhN9ac
That guy is playing at 4K, but is still using an SLI setup like I was initially pursuing.
 
So I feel uncertain now. I know one 970 won't be sufficient to play max settings @ 1440p 60hz (I'm barely riding the line on modern titles NOT maxed), but I know buying two isn't a smart decision due to the VRAM issue. While it's great that EVGA is offering people step-ups to the 980, I can't justify giving Nvidia more money because they made a big mistake. That's basically telling them, "Well, it's okay if you misinform your customers as long as your more expensive units are to spec". I also feel bad demanding EVGA for a refund because this isn't their fault and they've been great to me so far. I don't even think I can ask newegg for a refund since I did the stepup and now have a different SKU.
 
So what can I do? I guess for now I'll just roll with one and probably Ebay it in the future. I'll also give AMD cards a better look as well, though admittedly I've always been an Nvidia guy. Not anymore.

Scarlet-Tech
IE: you didn't know there was an issue for 4 months until someone else pointed it out, then there still isn't an issue.

 
Yes, you can get a refund. Amazon is currently giving full refunds for items purchased all the way back to November. Newegg is also giving full refunds if you have the original box. If you do not, you are on a 3-7 day wait period.
 
Instead of just rushing to shut down a user, consider promoting helpful conversation. EVGA Reps have been amazing throughout all of this however. It's great to see them supporting their userbase.

I like my 980, glad I didn't buy the 970... Little did we know... The 980 only really utilizes half the cuda cores!!! 

Scarlet-Tech
I wasn't meaning to shut anyone down. Most people that are suddenly having the issues, are only having them after trying to push their gpu to have it. Many weren't experiencing any problems prior to this post or the one on NVidia.

The ones that had it before, I can fully understand their frustration and I am happy to hear that Amazon and EVGA both are helping, as well as Newegg and some other dealers.

Like Scarlett said, many had 0 problems prior to the issue being uncovered. Unless they upgraded to 4k, they still aren't and are just grabbing pitchforks because they can. That is a terrible thing to those of us that do have a legitimate problem because it's affecting such a small % that it's hard to distinguish who actually has the issue and who doesn't.
 
Thankfully EVGA is providing some assistance in the matter by providing a solution to those that were out of the 90 day step up window. Gigabyte is telling customers they are waiting on an official announcement before moving forward while MSI and ASUS aren't doing anything except copy/pasting Nvidia's initial response. Amazon is handling refunds no questions asked which is typical Amazon and you'd think I would have learned by now to order strictly from them. I've seen some people say they've had Newegg give them store credit as a refund but many have said NewEgg has told them they aren't going to do anything until Nvidia releases an official statement, which is what they told me on 2 separate occasions. You have to pay attention to the details for the reports of refunds, most that I've seen aren't US based and are in countries with much stricter consumer protection laws.
 
I've been pretty vocal about the whole ordeal and I'll explain in full because I've had quite a few PMs on other forums saying I'm not having the issue or it was dumb to buy a 970 with 4k intentions. We bought 4 EVGA 970s(3 SCs, 1 stock ACX 2) in late Dec early Jan. One of the SCs was for my Dad's and my Uncle's PC I keep upstairs because they live just down from me don't have high speed internet(I'm the last house with DSL on my road) and love World of Tanks. Dad thought he'd contribute to the build(s) so he ordered a standard 970 however my uncle and I had already ordered the 3 SCs. Rather than return the standard one Dad said just put it in my HTPC which was great because I was going to transplant my 670s into it but I was sketchy if the PSU could handle it. The other 2 SCs were destined to my new Desktop that I had been saving for and piecing together since Fall. When I ultimately decided on the 970 SLI setup it was between a 980 Classified and 2 970s. I've owned 8800GTS, GTX 260s, GTX 460s and GTX 670 4GB all in 2-way SLI and couldn't have been happier. Much like the 670s, the 970s were so close to the 980s in performance and the benchmarks from guru3d showed a noticeable gap between 980 vs 970 SLI(970 SLI was 25fps higher in Metro:LL@1440p). Knowing I planned on 4k gaming, the clear option for the money was the 970s.
 
Both the upstairs PC and the HTPC run at 1080 and the 970 is borderline overkill on those machines. The performance is smoking and I have yet to find a game from my steam library that can make the card even begin to show signs it's doing all it can. I'm completely happy with both of those cards and intend to keep them because they exceed my expectations.
 
The SLI setup is a completely different ballgame. I have stated before that there were a few reports of stutter back all the way in October. I've also said that like many, I just assumed it was driver/developer issues and at some point it would be resolved. There's been plenty of kinks in the drivers when new cards/games are released and I had no evidence to think otherwise.
 
Naturally running at 4k greatly increased the VRAM usage and that's where the problems in games that love VRAM start. A guy on the Nvidia forums created a nice graph comparison showing a comparison between a 980 at near Max VRAM and a 970 at near max VRAM. You could clearly see the stutter in the 970 graph. Single card vs single card I would completely expect there to be a performance decrease on the 970 in that scenario but I would expect that to show up in a significant FPS loss, not stutter. Just last night I swapped in my 670s to see what the result would be and as expected the fps loss was substantial but the 670s even at a lower frame rate were stutter free. Call me weird but I would expect my 970s to perform better than my 670s in identical situations.
 
I'm also not an idiot in thinking that I should be able to max all settings in games and maintain a solid fps and BF4 is a good example. I can run max settings@4k and crawl along at a snail's pace between 20-30 fps depending on the AA level. Luckily at 4k AA is one of the least important things to enable and with it being one of the largest resource hogs, disabling AA alone nearly doubles my FPS. So there is a ability to run newer, demanding games at near max settings. Unfortunately with consoles having 8gb of VRAM to work with, many AAA titles aren't being properly optimized for PC and thus love VRAM. Some think Windows 10 will be the savior of this with Microsoft promoting cross play between platforms so devs might be encouraged to ensure an optimal experience, but some also think it's the doorway to even more games being ported to PC lazily. I'm in the latter group because of DA:I. We've come to expect this from Ubisoft but not from Bioware. The games I have issues with are Unity, FC4 and DA:I. I've read these issues also show up in Watchdogs, Shadow of Morder and according to some, Dying Light is the worst of all of them.
 
I do feel that Nvidia, maybe unintentionally, deceived us. Not about the ROPs and L2 Cache because those figures are irrelevant. I can see a miscommunication like that happening though I can't see not correcting it for 4 months and only acknowledging it after it was revealed, surely ONE engineer at Nvidia read at least one endorsed review that published specs, right? The last two paragraphs on the first page of the anandtech article mention that they noticed something off with the VRAM and should have caught the issue. If Nvidia had fully disclosed the memory architecture would more of the reviewers uncovered the performance hit that occurs in those situations? How many would have done additional testing solely on memory usage? Like I said previously, the stuttering issue wasn't new, it was reported on multiple sites including here. If the memory design had been disclosed would we have had an explanation  to the cause early on and know it wasn't possible to fix through drivers? All I know is knowing now what I knew then my purchase would have been completely different.
 
You can run THIS article through google translate and get some more detailed info that US based reviewers haven't done and apparently it's being reported that the guy that does ENB has uncovered even more issues but that's not confirmed because I can't find a translatable article from him (he's russian).
 
Again though, thanks EVGA for doing what most aren't.

Squall_Rinoa86

NordicJedi

Hattab
i am reading geforce forum
 
Gigabyte has just released new bios update for all gtx 970's

Those BIOSes have been out for over a week now, since before anyone noticed the variation in memory bandwidth.  They improve monitor compatibility, but cannot do anything to change the physical design of the cards.  One person posted in the GeForce forums that it made a large impact on his framerates; however, I don't believe anyone else is able to replicate those results.  

Does EVGA plan on releasing a new Bio's any time soon for the 970's?

I personally wouldn't know.  Likewise, I wouldn't know if EVGA is or is not working on a BIOS update either, unless Jacob or another member of the Product or Support team posts here on the forum.  Remember, we're all just volunteer moderators here, and I guarantee you that we know less than most people think we do about these sorts of things.
 
I only mentioned the Gigabyte BIOSes, as it seems people are just regurgitating one person's claims on the GeForce forums, when the BIOSes neither make the claims of performance improvements nor were released in such a manner that suggested Gigabyte magically had these BIOSes available to its customers at the time of "vramgate" (let alone, probably worked on and tested weeks before release).  That can all be determined by just a few minutes of Googling.

Brightmist
They should really print the newer 970 boxes with 3.5 GB sign on them. The card prefers system RAM over VRAM when it reaches 3.5 GB on most games.

That is a flat out lie and you should feel bad for saying it.

I have never had a problem with EVGA and if that puts a brown nose sticker on my avatar so be it. I have had a few RMA's that EVGA was very quick on trouble shooting and replacing over the years.
 
Having 2 kids and a wife my care free days of being able to buy and upgrade at whim are long long past. I can only look in envy at those here who have the twin 980's or titans :)
 
But I AM a gamer. So my wife loves me enough to forgive me when I splurge here and there to keep my PC rig fairly new. Mech Warrior Online, the up coming Witcher 3,  GTA 5.......
 
So after my ramble I want to say thanks EVGA for the step up program. Esp for working with those of us who where outside the 90 day window. I myself still have 14 days as I bought my 970 back in November. It will set me back an additional 220 after shipping and taxes to get the 980 gtx.  But having the OPTION and a company willing to step up makes it easier and knowing at least I am getting a better product that can last me a couple years if not more.
 
So again, Thanks EVGA for supporting us.
 
 

ty_ger07
The truth is that going from 28-150 (variable) GB/sec to 28 (fixed) GB/sec to 16 (system RAM) GB/sec, doesn't make much sense. ;)

The truth is 3.5 GB @ fullspeed + System RAM nets you better overall performance since the GPU can only access both 3.5 + 0.5 portion at the lowest speed and this causes a plethora of issues. Please research a bit more on the subject and take Nvidia's explanations with a grain of salt.

TChittenden II
 
What? The 3.5GB bandwidth is not tied to the .5GB portion bandwith. They are separate memory pools, which is why the last chunk of memory is slower. They are completely independent of each other bandwidth wise.

No they're not. You're limited to the lowest speed when you're trying to access both simultaneously.

I feel you're not capable of understanding the technical articles.

I was one of those lucky souls that could step up from a 770 SC to a 970 FTW.  The 970 issue will not be an issue today, but as texture resolutions, tesselations, and polygon counts go up, the demand for the texture memory will certainly get higher.  So I appealed to the customer service at EVGA and they are allowing me to Step-Up from my Step-Up!  (Many thanks)  Yes the price difference results in $180 (with shipping) more.  But I think my mind will be at ease with what is (and still is) the best card out there right now.  I don't have the time to tinker with card settings and make tweaks all day.

malikona

Mikael_Wartooth

Scarlet-Tech
First, the issue you are talking is..........

What would a 970 specifically have to do with you wanting to go to SLI 980 setup?

Your question is way too vague for any answer.

Because obviously the 970's are having issues utilizing the full 4GB of VRAM. I bought a card that was advertised as something it's not. If this was known from the start I would have just went with the 980 in the first place, but I bought a 970 knowing I was going to purchase a second one to SLI once my X99 build was done. My question is will EVGA refund the card since it had a design flaw if there are people that want to go to the 980? 

I also would have purchased two 980s instead of 970s if I had known about the VRAM issue. I built my PC specifically for 4K gaming, and I am VERY obviously running up against the frame buffer quite often, which the 'full' 4GB of the 980 would at least help out with (not to mention various other artifacts and graphical bugs that I'm now not sure whether to attribute to SLI, the nerfing/binning of the 970s, or what). I want to send my 970s back to EVGA and pay the full difference in cost for two 980s.

Then reach out to EVGA and see if they'll let you ''step-up'' if you're outside of the 90 days. They have been very accommodating for people with the 970's from what I've seen on the forums.

This thread is like a bad sci-fi movie. Can they ever kill this thing or will it take over the world? Who's writing the ending of this B-movie. Remember that the suspension of disbelief is a common occurrence for people who go to these kinds of films, so you can find a creative way to end it.

Howmaybesgo

Grey_Beard
I know I will get flamed, but this all seems like not a big deal to me. How many of you blast your ISP because you paid for a 25Mb pipe and are getting only 20Mb or less? Many things are this way. What about the car in which the sticker says it gets 40 MPG, but you get 35 MPG when you calculate it each time you fill up? The card performs as the card performs. Misrepresentation or not, I will gladly take a number of these open boxed items and build a nice rig with it. Thanks to all who have made this much bigger than it should be.

I actually do own a car that was mis-advertised concerning the MPGs.  I now receive a check every year in which its value is calculated depending on the mileage that is put on the car.  I also receive a faster internet connection than what is stated on my bill.
 
For you people saying it is a non-issue you couldn't be more incorrect.  Misrepresentation is ILLEGAL.  It is immoral.  Now is the time for Nvidia (and the companies who sell/ make Nvidia products) to step up to the plate and fix what they have done.  The bottom line is, 970 owners paid for a specific item, with certain specifications. Whether or not they are maxing the cards or experiencing issues is not of concern.  People wanted to spend their hard earned money on an item that they were lead to believe is more than what it ACTUALLY is.  For others to discount feelings of us that have been lied to blows me away.  

And the reason you bought that thing was because of the value proposition you felt you had at that moment. Well it seems that is still the case. The card's performance is the card's performance. That has not changed from your original determination. I guess now you will say I bought the card that had 62 or 64 ROPs or whatever like you actually knew what that was before this. Right. You bought a car from one a few companies that got caught misrepresenting the government calculation of the mileage, way different than this instance, way different. Unfortunately, in life the loud voice does not always prevail. Screaming from the top of the mountain is only screaming from the top of the mountain. "ILLEGAL", you make me laugh. Like you have never driven that car, in which you get a check each year, at 5 mph over the speed limit? That's illegal is it not? Never rolled through a stop sign? ILLEGAL, yes it is illegal.

EDIT: Since you are so moral, why do you not send extra money to your ISP because you are getting more than you paid for? Oh, I know, you deserve it, right?