All through my gaming life there was one name I trusted above all else when it came to hardware. Being a primarily PC gamer meant that I've had to buy and replace hardware a lot over the years, and it was important to have someone you could trust. For the longest time that name was Nvidia (EN-VID-e-yah). Nvidia were like Senheiser sound equipment, or Volkswagen cars, you just knew you could trust them to be reliable. But over the course of the last week or so now I'm not so sure.
In the world of PC graphics there are only two names: Nvidia and AMD. Both make great cards and the differences come down to things like power consumption, noise, and drivers. Nvidia has often had an edge over AMD for their partnerships and abilities to put out new drivers faster, whereas AMD cards are often a bit beefier and have better shelf lives and cost a little bit less. At the end of the day is usually comes down to petty squabbling, and both companies do just fine.
Back in September Nvidia released it's consumer level line of 4g video cards, the 900 series. The two cards in the series were the powerful 980 and the affordable 970, with a 2g card called the 960 just released a few days ago. The promise of these cards was to deliver next generation graphics at an affordable price, with the 970 looking particularly attractive at only $400, considerably cheaper then the next available high end cards.
http://images.eurogamer.net/2013/articles/1/7/0/9/1/7/9/digitalfoundry-2014-nvidia-geforce-gtx-970-review-1411477399077.jpg
The MSI 970, my current card.
Predictably, these sold like hotcakes, with the 970 being the best selling graphics card several months in a row. People were ecstatic at the idea of an affordable 4g card and the benchmarks from major publications all looked really good. It was a good card, AMD had nothing that could compete, and it far out-performed other 4gig cards on the market.
Then this week happened.
Here's the condescend, very nontechnical version of the situation:
The Nvidia 970 was advertised as having 4 gigabytes of video memory, the memory used to process graphics in games.
A memory diagnostic revealed that, in actuality, the card has difficulty rendering past 3.5 gig of memory usage, with the last .5gig being considerably slower.
Nvidia explains that the card's memory is split into two parts, a 3.5g pool and a .5g pool due to how the card itself was manufactured and cut.
Nvidia then explains that they knew about this from the start and that the 4g branding was a "miscommunication between the engineering team and the marketing team" whatever that means.
AMD responds with this ad:
http://i.imgur.com/tyO1lby.png
Disclaimer: I cannot confirm or deny this is an actual AMD ad, however it was tweeted by the head of AMD marketing.
AMD also starts offering massive discounts on their competing R290x 4g cards for people returning their 970s.
Nvidia promises to release a driver update that will change how the card allocates it's memory usage, meaning that the .5g would only be used in extreme circumstances.
Nvida backtracks on that promise. No driver is coming.
http://i1-news.softpedia-static.com/images/news2/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-970-Can-t-Use-All-4-GB-of-Memory-470953-3.jpg
Memory usage of the 970 VS the 980. Note the sudden drop in usage for the 970.
Here's why I'm writing this, instead of my normal content: I have a 970, and more to the point, convinced two other people to buy 970's including someone who considered buying AMD's R290x card. Now I look like a bit of an idiot and I don't know if I can trust Nvidia ever again.
I'm not upset about the card. It performs far greater then my previous 650 2g card, and even though the infamous .5g is slow it's still considerably faster then any other card. The benchmarks that were released when the 970 came out are still correct, and it's a fairly beefy card. There are frame rate issues, but this only really concerns enthusiasts. The below video shows the 970 running against other 4gig cards and it keeps a consistent <30fps the whole time. Even on my own machine at home I'm able to run graphically intensive games like ARMA 3, Far Cry 4 or Metro: Last Light all at frame counts between 45-60fps.
I'm not upset at the card, it's a great card. What I'm upset about is the lying that Nvidia did, and the fact that the card I bought to last 5 years is now only going to last ~3 years at the most.
I'm upset that Nvidia keeps flip-flopping on the issue, refusing to give solid answers and not even promising a driver fix.
I'm upset that I saved a lot of money for this card and now they got my ass over a barrel because it still out-performs other cards in the same price range. The 980 card is, at the cheapest $600, and the AMD options are all between $600-$800 as well. It took me months to save the $450 for my 970 and there's nothing I can do to get rid of it, since it still performs better then the 4gig 770 card from Nvidia or the R290x card from AMD.
Lastly, I'm upset that I can never trust Nvida ever again. This is the worst part of all of this, and the fact that I now have to second guess every purchase I make is deeply upsetting. Let this be a lesson: never trust anyone, not even an old friend.
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