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NVIDIA GTX 970 Specifications Corrected, Memory Pools Explained
Vigile writes Over the weekend NVIDIA sent out its first official response to the claims of hampered performance on the GTX 970 and a potential lack of access to 1/8th of the on-board memory. Today NVIDIA has clarified the situation again, this time with some important changes to the specifications of the GPU. First, the ROP count and L2 cache capacity of the GTX 970 were incorrectly reported at launch (last September). The GTX 970 has 52 ROPs and 1792 KB of L2 cache compared to the GTX 980 that has 64 ROPs and 2048 KB of L2 cache; previously both GPUs claimed to have identical specs. Because of this change, one of the 32-bit memory channels is accessed differently, forcing NVIDIA to create 3.5GB and 0.5GB pools of memory to improve overall performance for the majority of use cases. The smaller, 500MB pool operates at 1/7th the speed of the 3.5GB pool and thus will lower total graphics system performance by 4-6% when added into the memory system. That occurs when games request MORE than 3.5GB of memory allocation though, which happens only in extreme cases and combinations of resolution and anti-aliasing. Still, the jury is out on whether NVIDIA has answered enough questions to temper the fire from consumers.
Right, right?
Ah you can't tell, but I'm not able to hold a straight face.
You pay for an airdrop containing the extra ROPS and Cache. It's contested, though, so you may or may not get it.
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
Consumers are fine. The only benchmark that matters to a normal consumer is "How fast does it run my games?" and the answer for the 970 is "Extremely damn fast." It offers performance quite near the 980, for most games so fast that your monitor's refresh rate is the limit, and does so at half the cost. It is an extremely good buy, and I say this as someone who bought a 980 (because I always want the highest end toy).
Some people on forums are trying to make hay about this because they like to whine, but if you STFU and load up a game the thing is just great. While I agree companies need to keep their specs correct, the idea that this is some massive consumer issue is silly. The spec heads on forums are being outraged because they like to do that, regular consumers are playing their games happily, amazed at how much power $340 gets you these days.
A particular high performance car has a premium 8 cylinder engine and 32 valves at 400 hp. They also sell a non-premium version which is also 8 cylinders but only 30 valves and makes 350 hp but is a lot cheaper. The difference is that one cylinder is missing two valves which lowers its maximum power compared to the premium version. The engine's computer correctly controls the engine to compensate for the one weird cylinder, but someone in the marketing department sold the car as having 32 valves when it only had 30. The 350 hp figure is accurate, but some people complain because if they reprogram the engine control chip to force the one 2-valve cylinder to run at the same conditions as the other 4-valve cylinders, the car only makes 300 hp. But in all normal circumstances the car performs as advertised, only it was initially sold with incorrect details as to how the engine was put together to make it nearly as fast for much cheaper than the premium version.
This coward has just clearly demonstrated that there is in fact such a thing as a dumb question.