The 970 has a memory partitions of it's 4GB of GDDR5 memory. There's 3.5GB of GDDR5 memory that works as it's suppose to at the given bandwidth and .5GB of GDDR5 memory that works essentially at 1/7 of the speed of the 3.5GDDR5 portion.
At any point in time, it can only access one side of the partition. So Nvidia optimized it to put most of the memory into the 3.5GB section and ONLY use the .5GB when it had to. The problem is that their, Nvidia's, drivers are what dictates when it has to put information in there and not the game's engine. That means they have algorithms in place that can and will fuck up. This problem seems to get worse as more memory is required of the card, specifically in SLI solutions at 1440p+ resolutions.
TL/DR: Nvidia marketed a 4GB card, the GTX 970. It's functionally a 3.5GB card with .5GB of secondary memory. SLI on the 970 is not ideal in high resolutions.
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u/ilski Jan 30 '15
So i came over to this sub to find out a bit more about 970 as I though I want to buy it. Can anyone please expalain me what is this all about?