970 GTX disable slower memory

[Udgnim]

I am pretty sure the nvidia drivers deal with the extra .5G differently, you don't need to manually disable it. I have yet to see a review of games where anything can be proved about it slowing down the card - it's just a lot of fanboy hype fanned by lovers of the red camp so far.

the GTX 970 memory issue was first brought up by GTX 970 owners on Nvidia's forums

the reason why GTX 970 users noticed it is because they actually play games and push edge cases (ie significant Skyrim modding) where the 3.5GB RAM limitation gets exposed

the reason why reviewers didn't notice it is because they use benchmarks that aren't VRAM intensive until AA + resolution gets ramped up

during all the GTX 970 memory hoopla on the Nvidia forums, someone released a tool that showed 3.5GB of the VRAM ran 7 times as fast as the last 512MB

most GTX 970 users may not experience or notice the memory issue, but it is an issue Nvidia has acknowledged

 

[exar333]

MSI Afterburner shows real-time memory usage with the OSD feature...

This is what I use. Handles your OC and logs temp, TDP, mem usage, etc. all to a nice log file.

 

[Dribble]

You're giving the red camp too much credit. It was disruptive enough for me to return my 970 and I blame only the green camp for that.

I have one so I too have an interest. The only proper review of the issue I ever saw said it didn't make any difference at all in real gaming. Places like [H] who always go for max playable at super high res and aa never had any issues, and they would have torn into Nvidia if they had found there was a real problem.

Anyway as far as op is concerned his problem is highly unlikely to be caused by that last .5G of memory.

 

[ViviTheMage]

Unlikely, but another thing I can rule it quick now...just need a chance to play and recreate the issue.

 

[Rvenger]

If I hear one more post regarding the word fanboy on any team you will get an infraction/vacation immediately. Enough of the nonsense talk. Help the OP or get out of the thread.


Rvenger

Anandtech Super Moderator

 

[flexy]

And to repeat...if there WAS a way to disable this bit of memory it would still not result in any advantage - less video ram obviously would be worse than 3.5Gb fast and 0.5 slow ram. So or so you would run into some troubles should a game require about 4GB video memory. (Which, thankfully, and from my experiences now is likely only to happen say with heavily modded games with ultra-high textures and very high resolution and PROBABLY not with the majority of current games. For example, I am playing BF4 at ultra plus I use 160% resolution scale ---> 1680/1080....which uses about 3GB from what I see.)

 

[ViviTheMage]

If I hear one more post regarding the word fanboy on any team you will get an infraction/vacation immediately. Enough of the nonsense talk. Help the OP or get out of the thread.


Rvenger

Anandtech Super Moderator

I am already good, you can lock it up if needed.

 

[AnandThenMan]

And to repeat...if there WAS a way to disable this bit of memory it would still not result in any advantage - less video ram obviously would be worse than 3.5Gb fast and 0.5 slow ram.

I've already explained why this is not the case.