possibly but if so its still a stupid thing to say as its obviously going to confuse meaning.

...Which again makes no mention at all of crashes occuring as he stated several times.
Seems he's just trolling with no actual evidence. Probably just another rabid ATI fanboi.

Yeah I know. Its basicaily what I meant when I listed bitmaps.

The whole point of using mipmaps is as a strategy to reduce GPU memory/bandwidth usage. Consequently I don't think differentiating between bitmaps and mipmaps is actually relevant to the larger discussion here.

>> You people clearly have no idea what a frame buffer does.

They're probably the same people that also think buying/adding more ram speeds the processor up.

Space: Above and Beyond was for me by far the best. I could never wait for the next episode to air.
I still wish they'd bring it back and make some more.

The only graphics-related article posted yesterday that I'm seeing is about openCL on Linux.

Stop trying to change the subject. The issue here is graphics cards and your claims that the 970 is causing crashes. I say prove it.

>> I run three 30" 2650x1600s
Thats pretty much irrelevant. GPU ram isn't used that way at all. Its used to hold the 3D geometry, bitmaps, bump maps etc of assets and other processing data which is largely if not completely independent of screen resolution/no.of screens.

Do the math:
2560 x 1600 x 4 (4 bytes per pixel for 32 bit color) = 15.625 Mb * 3 monitors = screen buffer for 3 screens total size = 46.875 Mb.

Even triple buffering your total screen buffer requirement for all 3 monitors is less than 150Mb.

>> window stickers stating the base model has a 5.7L 525HP V8 engine....They discover it's only putting out 450HP

Not at all, Nvidia has never advertised it as having more performance than it actually has.

>> Less than happy about this.

Why? How does it adversely affect you in the real world? You're stil getting the same GPU performance you paid for right?

>> *Ever run RAM of two different speeds in a desktop? Wonder where those crashes are coming from?

No I'm not that stupid. And yours is a *terrible* analogy. You're not meant to mix different speed ram for your system. At least it says so in every motherboard manual I've ever read, which is a LOT in over 30 years of building my own PCs. If you do then you are not only operating outside the design parameters of the motherboard maker, but cluless about computers.
Also, GPU memory is functionally totally different than system memory. Fuirthermore unlike some idiot who mixes ram even though the manual says not to, this is a decision taken by the manufacturer and until you post credible links proving otherwise, I'm going to stick with the fact that it is well-tested and does NOT cause any failure in actual operation, just a performance decrease compared to the more expensive 980.

>> where it can and does cause repeated and repeatable crashes

I call bullshit. Please post credible references to people actually experiencing crashes while gaming as a result of this.

>> there are some people who do have cause to complain if they would have changed their purchasing decision based on having the correct information at the time of their purchase.

While I agree that nVidia should have got the published details correct, do you seriously think a customer exists that would not have bought this card had they knew the memory handling strategy was slightly different than published, even though the overall performance of the card was advertised correctly?

That would be as insane as basing a car purchasing decision entirely on the colour of plastic used for the radiator cap.

>> causing them to crash out

This is a blatantly misieading thing to say. The cards don't crash at all. The only thing that happens as a result of this is a properly handled decrease in real world performance compared to the 980.

Are you seriously trying to claim that the 970 _should_ have the same performance as the 980?

Good! Finally!
This is exactly what they should have been doing all along, instead of launching mass-spying programs on every citizen from the safety and anonymity of their office desks.