- Aug 12, 2001
- 40,730
- 670
- 126
I posted this in the compensation thread but it's a separate topic.
People point out that the 970 works great for today's games, and that you have to work to trigger memory use above 3.5 GB that causes problems.
What if nvidia offers a driver or firmware update that lets you disable the slow 512 MB?
With that turned on, it becomes a 3.5 GB card.
Con: when the driver/firmware code works, the extra 512 MB might work well as a RAMdisk type high-speed cache for little used resources.
Pro:
it takes away uncertainty. The 970 becomes a normal 3.5 GB card. No driver or firmware tricks are needed to prevent memory access stalls.
There are no worries about future games accidentally using the "bad" 512 MB before they need to because nvidia stops writing game-specific fixups for the 970 into the drivers.
People point out that the 970 works great for today's games, and that you have to work to trigger memory use above 3.5 GB that causes problems.
What if nvidia offers a driver or firmware update that lets you disable the slow 512 MB?
With that turned on, it becomes a 3.5 GB card.
Con: when the driver/firmware code works, the extra 512 MB might work well as a RAMdisk type high-speed cache for little used resources.
Pro:
it takes away uncertainty. The 970 becomes a normal 3.5 GB card. No driver or firmware tricks are needed to prevent memory access stalls.
There are no worries about future games accidentally using the "bad" 512 MB before they need to because nvidia stops writing game-specific fixups for the 970 into the drivers.