NVIDIA Maxwell Speculation Thread

Latest update from Guru3D:

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/does-the-geforce-gtx-970-have-a-memory-allocation-bug.html

 

If I find something is wrong with the product I support(and we distribute far, far more data/information than Nvidia), whether it is brought to my attention or I find it myself, it is on "us" to prove it isn't "our" fault.

 

You mean this version needs least assumptions? If they wanted to lie, shouldn't they try harder to succeed? Like hiding real specs in their own tools and hope that nobody involved will speak? And even then, why take such risks with a product that does not really need to look better?

 

Anandtech's article says both memory segments cant be read at once. Is it same for writes too? You dont want the slower segment accessed much, so writes may not be written at once too(unless it is a low priority or kinda access). So from their words, if 8KB needs to be written and slower segment is low priority, one of other fast segments will have to cary that work too. Means one of the MC / mem chips have to write twice(ie. 1KB x 8 write access, since cant access to slow segment 8 KB have to be written via 7 MC's)?

If so, may this explain why some 970 owners observe some swapping after 3.2-3.5 GB, even before all 4 GB is comsumed(ie. algo/infrastructure tries to allocate more VRAM, but since 3.5gb is hit and a hi priority read-write is needed, slower segment is blocked since it need a low priority access, so cant allocate more VRAM, starts swapping )?

 

Hanlon says: they be stupid.

 

Arun..I find it hard to believe that even Technical marketing missed it. If you think about it..this chip taped out sometime in April 2014. Are we expected to believe that right through testing, validation, product development, driver development, planning marketing..and through the course of meetings between the cross-functional teams between all the departments involved..that this never came up? This reeks of a cover up. If they had been open about it from the start..this would have been a non-issue. Heck..the press may have lauded the 970's performance even more if they knew how hobbled it was.

 

A problem with NVIDIA data or in my article? If it's the latter, go ahead and email me, please.

 

Too much sugar coating here. They didn't know? Damn sure they did. And they lied, nobody in a court would buy that "marketing team messed up", and we shouldn't either.

Time for the class action suit.

That said, my 970 is the best card I've had in a long time!

 

Why would Nvidia stage an elaborate coverup for such a non-issue? It's far more likely the marketing team just made a mistake. This is a minor second order issue - we're quibbling over a few percent memory capacity.

 

It seems fairly likely that NVIDIA's marketing team made a mistake, because lying about such a small detail would be stupid, but it's also pretty certain that someone noticed it afterwards. NVIDIA could have cleared things up but apparently decided not to, perhaps to avoid the embarrassment and associated hassle.

 

We've gone into extra-time pursuing this issue and trying to find tests to reveal whether or not it has major performance implications in the bracket between 3.5 and 4.0 GiBytes really used. It wasn't easy. If you indulge in this, take a look here.

 

Thanks for taking the time to do this. From what I understand you underclocked the GTX 980 to match the GTX 970's theoretical performance and compared the two in memory-constrained cases. Based on your results for Watch Dogs at 4K, the 970's reduced bandwidth beyond 3.5GB really does hurt quite a bit. Of course, even the 980 can't get playable framerates, so it's not ideal, but then again few games really require more than 3.5GB at playable framerates, at least for now.

 

I hope no one sues nVidia over this relatively little omission and causes them to mimic Apple or Qualcomm in their reluctance to disclose technical details.

 

I agree with you generally. However, I bet most articles about GPUs contain similar errors. GPUs are complicated, there's a lot of misunderstanding out there. The technical people that understand these issues are likely too busy making new GPUs to talk to marketing people. =)

 

If someone filing a suit is all it takes to break a commitment to openness, it wouldn't be much of a commitment. Winning such a suit would be more damaging, but this is a really arcane technical distinction in a marketing field with some seriously big whoppers. (GPU core counts anybody?)

Any such reluctance would have to be teased out of the general trend of increasing opacity that was underway or already established. Mobile/embedded components did not start with a culture of openness or good disclosure, and we see that vendors that make forays towards that realm tend to regress towards that mean (Intel's SDP, use of turbo clocks as headline clocks for chips facing off against tablet chips, AMD's sparse optimization information for Bobcat, limited disclosure of console APU details, and so on).
Nvidia's Denver architecture is sparse on details, although that may very well be a legacy of its Transmeta link.
In general, the PC-compatible desktop and server space transparency for architectural details and errata was something of an anomaly, and even that has slowly ratcheted up the level of obfuscation as time has gone on.

Perhaps a more close parallel here is the AMD's slowness to admit R600 did not have hardware UVD.

 

Ohh please, the number of ROPS is not complicate,.. every article cite the number of ROP of the GPU, even before they are released it is a major concern of the fake leak we get every week.. ( Do i need to cite the leaked or fake spec we have of the GM200, AMD Fidji etc ... ) the memory controller speed and the amount of memory is not complicate..

Ofc for the "Public" masses we only understand the smartphones buizness and what is 4G this will not speak much to them.. but since when a discussion of a forum about a new architecture have not count the Rop, memory controller speed and amount of Ram in their discussion..

Why do you think everyone or every fake leak is speaking about HBM memory when going after the 380-390X for AMD.

Technically, i got the feeling without this modification, the 970 will have end with only a 192bit bus and 3GB memory ( something similar to the mobile version ).. Nvidia seems have decided to go further and try keep the most bandwith possible, and basically, you end with a 224bit bus 3.5GB at full speed instead, who allow the use of 512Mb more and the last 32bit bus at a slower rate in some situation case... it can be used, it is not fast, it is only possible to use it under certain data condition. but it is here.

I dont think anyone should sue Nvidia, its more like a marketing failure decision, but well, now we will maybe put more attention about thoses technical question..

More seriously, we get a lot aimed technical questions thoses last years, who have been put in front of the masses, frametimes, smoothness in dual gpu-solution, frame display on the monitor, and we should not look at particular specifications the way they should be ?

a 56ROP gpu is not a 64ROPS gpu, it have less ROP and will be less capable in certain situation.

Hopefully we are not speaking about the GTX980 full chips and a problem, its only the cutted down version..

Is it a problem for the little brother ? ofc not, it is not made for have the capacitiy, the performance of his big brother ..

For the technical question of the 3.5GB fast memory and the " not much used"; slow 512MB left, well the partititon and allocation difference with the memory between the 970 and the 980, somewhere, even if it dont speak much to the public ( who look more at the average fps + price ), it should not do any difference, but the difference is there, and shorten this by, they are " the same in some different way" is a bit too easy.

I remember here, in this forum, peoples was a bit surprised to see that this gpu have the full ROP / MC setup , we have all gone over it, thinking Nvidia have decoupled them from the SM in a way or the other. And that we was miss information on the architecture.

We have, i have been completely dumb to believe it. If we had know, that the ROPs was not decoupled.. we will maybe have got the story differently and start ask us how it was possible for Nvidia to have keep the MC and DRAM fully available..

3Dilettante, you are right, but i remember lately some blog post of OpenGL guys, complaining about Nvidia who dont communicate at all since Kepler on their architectures and how it was begin to be really complicate to work with them, at contrario of AMD; where you have thousands of research on GCN who float on the net. ( How to do trigonometric inversion in GCN, how to do this, and that, how to faster this and that, etc etc ). This have even increase since they got the console design, as more develppers who was interested and work with the old "architecture" try now to understand the new possibilities offer to them.. Only follow some twitter account ( not made by guys of AMD ) is a real source of information about how GCN work, every week they post some find, some assumption, some codes, etc..

Dont get me wrong, for me this have no importance, it is not something who change my mind about the 970, its is a good gpu, performance wise, and it is not an hardware problem like if the gpu could die in the next minute...

It change only a bit the perspective i have about Nvidia communication and their leader team and not in a good way.. ( again ...... )

 

A class action suit here would be the epitome of ridiculousness. All you have to do is decide if you'd still buy the SKU with its measured price/performance if you'd known about it up front. How could anyone that bought it originally now say they wouldn't, with a straight face? It's an incredible discrete graphics card with excellent performance for the money and frankly we've never had it better.

They've handled it fairly farcically, but given the state of the technology press today they had few options other than the ridiculous diagram and the call with Jonah. I feel sorry for their technical marketing team, who were thrown right under the bus for no reason.

 

Completely agree..

In other way, if this story could put the brands like Nvidia, AMD; Intel,, all the IT brands coming back to reality, and stop communicate and do their buizness like if they was a smartphone vendor company, i will be really happy. ( I have not really any hope about this )

Because, Nvidia is here in cause, but this only the last story of a long long list since thoses last years and every IT company is concerned.

 

I disagree throughly.

 

About the class action question or how they have have handled all this story ?

Because lets be honest, with or without class action, Nvidia is now in a damage control slide for their image..

Maybe this was a misstake on the first time, but on the end, nobody have wanted correct it ( i absolutely dont believe that nobody have see it, Nvidia is not Apple lol )