Why hasnt Nvidia made a Gtx 970 8gb version?

[funboy6942]

I mean AmD did it with the 290x, wouldnt it of been smart on Nvidia's part since the 970 has the whole 3.5gb thing going on to up it to 8gb and release that to the consumer and sell a ton of them that way?

im just saying.....

 

[ShintaiDK]

By 6GB you mean 8GB?

I just dont think they saw a reason for it they could monetize on. You can find 8GB in gaming laptops tho.

 

[jpiniero]

The 3.5 GB thing was put in there for a reason, because they knew it would hurt the longevity of the card. If they felt pressured to do so they could have released a new model but that never happened.

 

[Azix]

there was an architectural reason why they couldn't do better, at least they chose that route for the 970 chips. probably it would still only be able to use 3.5GB properly even with 8GB total

 

[ShintaiDK]

It would be 7GB+1GB with 8GB.

 

[futurefields]

Or just make the full 4gb full speed. It would be a killer SLI card.

 

[kondziowy]

Nvidia doesn't future proof their cards lately. They are designed to run for 1,5-2 years and then you are left with no driver performance improvements, to little VRAM, and not able to run newest Gameworks features like VXAO in Kepler, or e.g. Hairworks in the first weeks of Witcher 3 release until the petition from users worked and playable framerates were activated. Pathetic. And after 2 years you have to buy another GPU therefore increase the company stock price.

You can also buy Radeon, just stand aside, get the same performance now, and watch it overtake price point competitor one by one over time. It's sometimes a bumpy road, and you get worse frametime consistency, but it always gets better via driver updates eventually.

 

[thesmokingman]

I mean AmD did it with the 290x, wouldnt it of been smart on Nvidia's part since the 970 has the whole 3.5gb thing going on to up it to 8gb and release that to the consumer and sell a ton of them that way?

im just saying.....

Did you really expect a solid longterm product from them?

 

[digitaldurandal]

Nvidia doesn't future proof their cards lately. They are designed to run for 1,5-2 years and then you are left with no driver performance improvements, to little VRAM, and not able to run newest Gameworks features like VXAO in Kepler, or e.g. Hairworks in the first weeks of Witcher 3 release until the petition from users worked and playable framerates were activated. Pathetic. And after 2 years you have to buy another GPU therefore increase the company stock price.

You can also buy Radeon, just stand beside, get the same performance now, and watch it overtake price point competitor one by one over time. It's sometimes a bumpy road, and you get worse frimetime consistency, but it always gets better via driver updates eventually.

There is poop on both sides of the fence..

I don't think that they made the decision for the purpose of intentionally crippling the card. Also, even though I was pretty surprised at the announcement, there has not been really huge performance issues from it. I personally would not buy one because we don't know how much drivers are keeping the performance of the card in line, but my guess is the decision was made with regards to cost/profit on the card itself.

I am not sure that it having 512mb more of full speed RAM would make any real difference in longevity. And I would posit that the reason we see gaps between older and newer products in Nvidia is partially due to architectural changes. Where as GCN has just been evolved on from the AMD camp. So currently we are seeing a benefit of this in that drivers for the 390x also help the 7970.

However as anyone will tell you, AMD is not without their driver flaws. Only recently have they fixed the issue that Karlitos and other 3 monitor users had for over 6 months.

On topic:

I don't think the card benefits from 8 GB of RAM. What game does it have the horsepower but not the VRAM for? If you are going to fork out money for more GB, why not grab a 980ti or 390x. However, even those cards run out of steam at 4k where 8GB is a concern.

I don't think we have a card out with the horsepower to warrant 8GB unless you include SLI and Crossfire setups. Even then it isn't great.

290x 8gb vs 4gb

http://www.tweaktown.com/tweakipedia/68/amd-radeon-r9-290x-4gb-vs-8gb-4k-maxed-settings/index.html

Would you pay for more VRAM for that? Personally I would pocket that money and wait until a card comes out that can handle it.

 

[kondziowy]

When 7970 released, also nobody but AMD thought 3GB will be anything but usefull. Heck, 2GB was overkill. 8GB cards will enter lower price points with Polaris/Pascal, and it didn't took developers long to max out 980Ti 6GB Vram in Rise of th Tomb Raider. 5 months? And that was only with 3 cards (390 390x 980Ti) that were a niche in the market.

 

[Silverforce11]

The difference between 3.5GB and 4GB, you can actually play Rise of the Tomb Raider with maxed graphics/textures without stutter at 1080p.

970 can't do it.

https://youtu.be/Vu0MWxQtAfU?t=8m15s

^ That's just the start, one of the least intensive level.

Worse levels here: https://youtu.be/Gki0dV2kcqM?t=2m11s

 

[tweakboy]

Why not they get funded by sister..

 

[Zodiark1593]

Nvidia doesn't future proof their cards lately. They are designed to run for 1,5-2 years and then you are left with no driver performance improvements, to little VRAM, and not able to run newest Gameworks features like VXAO in Kepler, or e.g. Hairworks in the first weeks of Witcher 3 release until the petition from users worked and playable framerates were activated. Pathetic. And after 2 years you have to buy another GPU therefore increase the company stock price.

You can also buy Radeon, just stand aside, get the same performance now, and watch it overtake price point competitor one by one over time. It's sometimes a bumpy road, and you get worse frametime consistency, but it always gets better via driver updates eventually.

So what you're saying is that both GPU manufacturers are crappy in their own ways? At least, that's what I've observed.

Also, a GTX 970 with an 8 GB board would most probably have 7 GB full speed (3.5 x 2), which would still be pretty sweet.

 

[Atreidin]

They could market a 7GB model called something like "Lucky 7" with a cool looking gambling theme on the heatsink/fan. Though I doubt they would since it would draw more attention to the weird memory configuration.

 

[Zodiark1593]

They could market a 7GB model called something like "Lucky 7" with a cool looking gambling theme on the heatsink/fan. Though I doubt they would since it would draw more attention to the weird memory configuration.

You'd probably be right. Marketing really screwed up royally here.

Engineer: Umm, while there is 4 GB physically on board, only 3.5 is at full speed.
Marketing: 4 GB physically on board you say?

 

[happy medium]

Simple answer, the gtx970 is not strong enough to use 5gb of vram let alone 8gb. If you turn the settings up high enough to use 5gb of memory,your fps would be under 30 in most cases.
It would be a waste just like the 390 with 8gb of memory. That much memory is good for sli/crossfire.

 

[SPBHM]

970 with 8GB would be quite nice to compete with the 390.

 

[kondziowy]

So what you're saying is that both GPU manufacturers are crappy in their own ways? At least, that's what I've observed.

Yes, but I find AMD crappy in less places, and that was a reason for Nvidia rant in my post. At least in the last few months and going forward if Nvidia doesn't change.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Engineer: Umm, while there is 4 GB physically on board, only 3.5 is at full speed.
Marketing: 4 GB physically on board you say?

 

[Head1985]

The difference between 3.5GB and 4GB, you can actually play Rise of the Tomb Raider with maxed graphics/textures without stutter at 1080p.

970 can't do it.

https://youtu.be/Vu0MWxQtAfU?t=8m15s

^ That's just the start, one of the least intensive level.

Worse levels here: https://youtu.be/Gki0dV2kcqM?t=2m11s

Wrong
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fxr8qnSg0o

 

[Azix]

Wrong
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fxr8qnSg0o

not necessarily. The GPU isn't putting out as much fps. Maybe swapping system RAM isn't slow enough to affect it. He has ddr4 3000mhz. If he was putting out much higher frames there would probably be more noticeable dips

 

[Head1985]

Nope..With GTX 970 1500/8000 game runs at 50-60fps with no problems.
You just need win 10 with WDDM 2.0 and 16GB fast DDR4 ram and GTX970 is fine...

Btw that is mine video.I have both GTX670 and 970.

 

[xorbe]

This is an easy question, there is no 6GB / 8GB GTX 970, because they want you to pay for 6GB 980 Ti or 12GB Titan X.

 

[NTMBK]

You misspelled "4GB".