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    Nvidia CEO on 970 - Says segmented memory is "a good design"

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    GeekMarty

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    NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun had this to say on their blog.

    Hey everyone,

    Some of you are disappointed that we didn’t clearly describe the segmented memory of GeForce GTX 970 when we launched it. I can see why, so let me address it.

    We invented a new memory architecture in Maxwell. This new capability was created so that reduced-configurations of Maxwell can have a larger framebuffer – i.e., so that GTX 970 is not limited to 3GB, and can have an additional 1GB.

    GTX 970 is a 4GB card. However, the upper 512MB of the additional 1GB is segmented and has reduced bandwidth. This is a good design because we were able to add an additional 1GB for GTX 970 and our software engineers can keep less frequently used data in the 512MB segment.

    Unfortunately, we failed to communicate this internally to our marketing team, and externally to reviewers at launch.

    Since then, Jonah Alben, our senior vice president of hardware engineering, provided a technical description of the design, which was captured well by several editors. Here’s one example from The Tech Report.

    Instead of being excited that we invented a way to increase memory of the GTX 970 from 3GB to 4GB, some were disappointed that we didn’t better describe the segmented nature of the architecture for that last 1GB of memory.

    This is understandable. But, let me be clear: Our only intention was to create the best GPU for you. We wanted GTX 970 to have 4GB of memory, as games are using more memory than ever.

    The 4GB of memory on GTX 970 is used and useful to achieve the performance you are enjoying. And as ever, our engineers will continue to enhance game performance that you can regularly download using GeForce Experience.

    This new feature of Maxwell should have been clearly detailed from the beginning.

    We won’t let this happen again. We’ll do a better job next time.

    Jen-Hsun

    Yeah, you just talk your way out of this mess...

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    Justin258

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    Please, expand on what you mean, what you want to discuss, what you mean exactly by "this mess", etc. You've re-posted a blog with a bit of vague snark at the end, that's all.

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    Scrawnto

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    I'm not sure what all the hubbub is about. That sounds like an acceptable compromise to squeeze in some extra RAM to me.

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    teaoverlord

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    Has anyone actually had any performance problems with this? I know it slows down in synthetic test but it seems like all of the actual game benchmarks aren't affected.

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    Corevi

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    #5  Edited By Corevi

    Don't see how it's a mess in any way. 3.5GB of Vram is still great at the 970s price.

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    Jesus_Phish

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    #6  Edited By Jesus_Phish

    @scrawnto: If you end up spanning into that extra ram though, you run into problems. Imagine having a super car that could go 240mph and a runway long enough to drive it on to hit that speed, but when you got past 210mph suddenly the thing started stuttering and jerking.

    I don't really mind "this mess". If they end up lowering the price of the card over it I'll be happy to pick it up. The games I play won't hit the limits of this card for a long time because I'm not playing at resolutions higher than 1080p.

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    wrecks

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    #7  Edited By wrecks

    I <3 My 970.

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    GeekMarty

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    #8  Edited By GeekMarty
    @teaoverlord said:

    Has anyone actually had any performance problems with this? I know it slows down in synthetic test but it seems like all of the actual game benchmarks aren't affected.

    You are mostly correct, but in games which actually utilize 4 gigs you will experience small hiccups.

    But honestly, that is beside the point. The point is, also referring to @believer258 here (I just wanted to provide the link originally, but felt like the blog post deserved a snarky comment), that they straight up lied about having this design. People have been sold the wrong product on purpose (and it's not cheap either).

    And after this has been found out, Nvidia went silent on the matter. This CEO's comment belittles their customers. Are you ok with that?

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    joshwent

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    #9  Edited By joshwent

    Yeah, this seems like a bunch of vague sneering from armchair "experts" complaining about the choices made by highly skilled and knowledgeable engineers. "It says it's 4 gig but it's really 3.5!", is an easy argument to make when you have no idea what you're talking about.

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    chaser324

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    #10 chaser324  Moderator

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