Nvidia GTX 970 3.5GB Memory Allocation Issue

<p>Nvidia&&num;8217&semi;s second top tier graphics card the &&num;8220&semi;GTX 970&&num;8221&semi; at first glance would be the GPU of choice for all gamers &&num;8220&semi;hardcore or casual&&num;8221&semi; but unfortunately has a weird secret that Nvidia didn&&num;8217&semi;t reveal until now&period;&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>However to further understand what the issue is I need to explain a little bit about the GPU itself&period; Both the GTX 970 and GTX 980 have 4GB VRAM &lpar;Video Ram&rpar;&comma; some users over the past few weeks have been reporting weird or horrible performance while the GPU is using higher than 3&period;5GB&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>This seems to occur because Nvidia and all their wisdom decided that they would add the 3&period;5GB as one memory pool and then add a second memory pool of 500MB&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>It seems like there is some communication issues between the two which causes this issue&comma; on top of this memory configuration some games only read the 3&period;5GB pool of Ram&period; An example of this would be Sleeping Dogs and Middle-Earth&colon; Shadow of Mordor but the latter seems to have fixed that quite recently&period; Essentially the issue is when trying to use above 3&period;5GB VRAM the GPU starts to chug in performance&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Nvidia commented on the issue&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&&num;8220&semi;The GeForce GTX 970 is equipped with 4GB of dedicated graphics memory&period; However the 970 has a different configuration of SMs than the 980&comma; and fewer crossbar resources to the memory system&period; To optimally manage memory traffic in this configuration&comma; we segment graphics memory into a 3&period;5GB section and a 0&period;5GB section&period; The GPU has higher priority access to the 3&period;5GB section&period; When a game needs less than 3&period;5GB of video memory per draw command then it will only access the first partition&comma; and 3rd party applications that measure memory usage will report 3&period;5GB of memory in use on GTX 970&comma; but may report more for GTX 980 if there is more memory used by other commands&period; When a game requires more than 3&period;5GB of memory then we use both segments&&num;8221&semi;&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&&num;8220&semi;We understand there have been some questions about how the GTX 970 will perform when it accesses the 0&period;5GB memory segment&period; The best way to test that is to look at game performance&period; Compare a GTX 980 to a 970 on a game that uses less than 3&period;5GB&period; Then turn up the settings so the game needs more than 3&period;5GB and compare 980 and 970 performance again&&num;8221&semi;&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>The following graph is benchmark results using less than 3&period;5GB and above 3&period;5GB&comma; graph sourced from <a href&equals;"http&colon;&sol;&sol;www&period;pcper&period;com&sol;news&sol;Graphics-Cards&sol;NVIDIA-Responds-GTX-970-35GB-Memory-Issue" target&equals;"&lowbar;blank" rel&equals;"noopener noreferrer">PCPer<&sol;a>&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p><a href&equals;"https&colon;&sol;&sol;cdn&period;bagogames&period;com&sol;wp-content&sol;uploads&sol;2015&sol;01&sol;05041541&sol;data&period;png"><img class&equals;"alignnone size-full wp-image-71820" src&equals;"https&colon;&sol;&sol;cdn&period;bagogames&period;com&sol;wp-content&sol;uploads&sol;2015&sol;01&sol;05041541&sol;data&period;png" alt&equals;"data" width&equals;"639" height&equals;"311" &sol;><&sol;a><&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&&num;8220&semi;On GTX 980&comma; Shadows of Mordor drops about 24&percnt; on GTX 980 and 25&percnt; on GTX 970&comma; a 1&percnt; difference&period; On Battlefield 4&comma; the drop is 47&percnt; on GTX 980 and 50&percnt; on GTX 970&comma; a 3&percnt; difference&period; On CoD&colon; AW&comma; the drop is 41&percnt; on GTX 980 and 44&percnt; on GTX 970&comma; a 3&percnt; difference&period; As you can see&comma; there is very little change in the performance of the GTX 970 relative to GTX 980 on these games when it is using the 0&period;5GB segment&&num;8221&semi;&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>I wont pretend I fully understand the issue from the component perspective but maybe these other sources can&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Sources&colon; <a href&equals;"http&colon;&sol;&sol;www&period;pcper&period;com&sol;news&sol;Graphics-Cards&sol;NVIDIA-Responds-GTX-970-35GB-Memory-Issue" target&equals;"&lowbar;blank" rel&equals;"noopener noreferrer">PCPer<&sol;a>&comma; <a href&equals;"http&colon;&sol;&sol;www&period;anandtech&period;com&sol;show&sol;8935&sol;geforce-gtx-970-correcting-the-specs-exploring-memory-allocation" target&equals;"&lowbar;blank" rel&equals;"noopener noreferrer">anandtech<&sol;a> and <a href&equals;"http&colon;&sol;&sol;www&period;maximumpc&period;com&sol;gamers&lowbar;petition&lowbar;geforce&lowbar;gtx&lowbar;970&lowbar;refund&lowbar;over&lowbar;error&lowbar;specs&lowbar;2015" target&equals;"&lowbar;blank" rel&equals;"noopener noreferrer">MaximumPC<&sol;a><&sol;p>&NewLine;