COD: Advanced Warfare and Closing Thoughts
Just like I saw last week with the GTX 970 cards running in SLI, I did not see the cards extend past the 3.65GB usage mark. Meanwhile, the GTX 980s shot up to 3.9GB and even 4.0GB usage without much work.
As users expected, once you add in a second card to each of these platforms the "Ultra" settings frame rates pull into the playable realm, hovering around the 50 FPS mark. But how do the two configurations compare in user experience?
Looking at just the average frame rates, estimated by the 50th percentile on the left side of this graph, the pair of GTX 980s in SLI are only 1-2 FPS faster than the two GTX 970s!
But there is a lot more going on than just the average frame rate as this frame times graph, can demonstrate. The dark green and blue bars representing the longer frame times of the "Ultra" preset both show a lot of spikes and variance, though the GTX 970 SLI results show more of it – anywhere the dark green is not "hiding" the blue behind it.
The graph measuring frame variance actually doesn't show as much of a gap here between the GTX 980 SLI and GTX 970 SLI configurations as I expected. I can assure you that the gaming experience of the 970s was substantially lower than that of the GTX 980 cards. There was noticeable hitching and doing a smooth pan around a central location was much nearly impossible on the lower cost cards. The GTX 980 SLI setup produced a much better overall result, more in-line with the average frame rates being reported.
Closing Thoughts
Compared to last week's article that looked at the GeForce GTX 970 in a single GPU configuration, the SLI results show more variance differences between NVIDIA's top two flagship products. In a vacuum, this wouldn't mean much – we expected there to be more complications and frame to frame variance when looking at multi-GPU configurations. That has always been the case regardless of how well tuned NVIDIA or AMD drivers get.
But under the light of the recent memory issues surrounding the GeForce GTX 970 we have to look at things a bit differently. Yes the GTX 970 has fewer shader cores and runs at slightly lower clocks than the GTX 980, but would we expect to see similar levels of frame rate consistency between it and the GTX 980 in these games, at these settings when running paired up in SLI? My initial inclination would be yes.
So the question sits before us: does the ROP count / L2 cache size difference that was revealed last week by NVIDIA account for the frame variance differences between the GTX 970 and the GTX 980 cards in SLI? More than likely: yes. And that may end the discussion for many of you but consider this last point. The largest difference in variance on BF4, the primary example of this showing up for me in data, was run at 3840×2160 and 150% pixel scaling. That is essentially running BF4 at 6K!
The Call of Duty Advanced Warfare results occurred at 2560×1440, a much more reasonable resolution. In that case the data didn't show a gap in experience between the GTX 970 SLI and GTX 980 SLI configurations, but my time playing it certainly did. The GTX 970 SLI setup result in more hitches and frame rate drops than the GTX 980 cards but again, we were pushing every setting to its absolute maximum, even going as far as enabling 2x supersampling.
My takeaway from today's testing is that users with or looking at an SLI setup of GeForce GTX 970 cards appear to be more likely to run into cases where the memory pools of 3.5GB and 0.5GB will matter. Because you are able to reach higher playable frame rates with two GTX 970s than just a single one, stretching out and increasing image quality settings is more common. If you are that type of gamer, looking to stretch the boundaries what settings are playable, then it is worth a warning about the differences between the GTX 970 and the GTX 980.
For the others out there, the GeForce GTX 970 remains in the same performance window it was at prior to this memory issue and specification revelation. For $329 it offers a tremendous level of performance, some amazing capabilities courtesy of the Maxwell GPU and runs incredibly efficient at the same time.
AMD is aware of this debate as well and it should surprise no one to see the Radeon R9 290X sitting at $299 after rebates from several add-in card partners. Let the GPU wars continue!
Nobody cares about the .5…
Nobody cares about the .5… Just the basement lemmings, busy jumping on the wagon.
99.9% will not run into an issue and will be upgrading in 1-2 years anyway.
Arguing over this topic is a waste of time and makes most of you look like pretentious children looking to argue.
Go play a game! Not like your having any issues, if you even have this card in the first place
I’m running two G1 970s on my
I’m running two G1 970s on my old SB 2600k rig. I’d intended to upgrade my system to Haswell E/DDR4 this winter after bioses matured and ram prices fell, but when one of my 570s in SLI died, I replaced it with my first 970 in November, based completely on published reviews, thinking, perhaps, it could be incorporated into my new build. Singly the 970 bested my 570s together in my usual benchmarks, and it overclocked well. My wife then encouraged me to get another for Christmas, so I did, intending to bench and OC the cards, working out the bugs, then install them in my new system later this year. While I have no particular gripe with their performance in my SB machine with my older games, I have a huge gripe with Nvidia for their screw-up.
I’d planned to build my new rig to last at least 3 years, and put the money in these two GPUs with that in mind (over $800 w/ tax for a pair G1s at Microcenter). Well, now that investment seems wasted. Had I kept just one 970 in this obsolescent machine to eke out another 6 months till Broadwell Ks arrived, that would have been an expensive, but tolerable investment, and would have kept this SB system current enough to give away. Now, however, having invested so much of my alloted cash into the video component, I’ll have to delay my new rig to save more money or build it with GPUs lacking the longevity of the rest of its components. This is very unsatisfying. Instead of a of a near-peak rig that will take me nearly to the end of the decade, I’ll probably install gimped GPUs that will need to be replaced during its lifetime and send my old SB machine to the graveyard. . .
I don’t blame Microcenter, Gigabyte, or the reviewers, I assign the blame squarely with Nvidia for putting profit before performance–promising the latter while reaping the former–and myself for thinking that this performance/price ratio was a little too good to be true.
Nvidia’s success in putting
Nvidia’s success in putting so much performance into such quiet and efficient cards with much less memory bandwidth etc is well known.
One question comes to me every time this is mentioned at the latest Maxwell review.. What could Nvidia achieve if they took the shackles off, upped the memory to 6 or 8GB and increased memory interface from 265 to 384 or 512bit, using the hardware/firmware advances that made the 970/980 so fast/efficient?
I suspect 2015 will be VERY interesting.. I was ready to buy a 980 until I pondered this and the probable 4k single card performance.
Bring on the GTX990 !
Typo of course, 256 not 265.
Typo of course, 256 not 265.
Performance being the same as
Performance being the same as it was from the beginning is irrelevant. Performance not suffering except in extremely rare circumstances is also irrelevant. Lying is lying. Nvidia lied. Even worse, they knew the specs were a lie and chose to say or do nothing about until they were forced to admit it. So, again, lying is lying. And it is wrong. If you excuse or try to diminish that fact then don’t be surprised and don’t complain in the future when you are being lied to more and more frequently.
I changed my pair of GTX 970
I changed my pair of GTX 970 used for SLI.
The Reason ? They STUTTER LIKE HELL. There is NO WAY to play anything that makes use ( or try to ) of the slower 512MB’s segment.
Single GPU uses above 3.5GB’s of VRAM ( In a different way, but the card uses ).
SLI CAN’T go further 3.5GB’s mark, only using DSR or resources alike it.
So, this review is CRAP, you just say that the GTX 970 SLI performs worse than GTX 980 SLI, but you DON’T Mention the stutter. Why ? You can’t lose your nVidia contracts ?
I Doubt you tested during hours like you said.
I Single run using Shadow Of Mordor in Ultra Settings will BREAK the GTX 970 SLI.
So the real information is: GTX 970 SLI IS BROKEN ABOVE 3.5GB’s VRAM usage.
I’ve upgraded my pair to two GTX 980, and guess what !?!?!? NO MORE STUTTERS in SLI AT ALL.
Magic ?
I was expecting a HONESTLY review … Not a paid one trying to “hide” the real deal with these BROKEN cards in SLI. SAD.
This user did a cool tests ( Usefull ones ) reporting the same experience I HAD:
http://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/2tuqd4/i_benchmarked_gtx_970s_in_sli_at_1440p_and_above/
No more craps from nVidia and their “paid” reviewers.
Sorry for my English, not my native language.
https://forums.geforce.com/de
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/820753/geforce-900-series/gtx-970-sli-/1/
@ Ryan Shrout – another
@ Ryan Shrout – another excellent article. Thank you for the great breakdown of this contraversial performance issue. IMHO, the arrival of the GTX980Ti will help eliminate my particular decision with regards to which video card to buy. My bet is to buy the GTX980s once they drop in price after the GTX980Ti is released. I can already see all those like-new used GTX980s on sale in the Amazon marketplace. For me, it’s a win-win situation and I don’t have to pay the full “drive off the lot” price. I sit here patiently waiting for that day 😀
Wow The 970 and 980 are very
Wow The 970 and 980 are very close in SLI! I would say forget about SLI for the 980! Regardless of Nvidia being scumbags on the V-Ram, The 970 is still a very good performing GPU compared to it’s bigger brother the 980. And the price still makes it the High End GPU of choice. I think I might SLI mine now.
Eh yo yo! Yeah Yo! Like yo
Eh yo yo! Yeah Yo! Like yo and eh I uh ahh izza you know what I am sayin yo? yeha! So like yo I am like a badazz gamer yo! Yeah! I got everything! I already got a classified 980 Ti yo because I like party with like the owner of Nvidia yo! Yeah! And yo I gots like 20 for free yo! Yeah!
So in other words a single
So in other words a single 970 is fine, But it’s a waste of money to SLI them. My last (650 Ti) Nvidia card had no SLI option, So it kinda pisses me off that that I pay out the wazoo for a 970, and still no sensible SLI option. I should have stayed with my R9 270 until the price of the R9 390’s went down!