If games truly don't need access to the last .5GB (and they seem to not in most cases if there's patches there) and all the parent does is game (which is what I

If games truly don't need access to the last .5GB (and they seem to not in most cases if there's patches there) and all the parent does is game (which is what I do on my 970) then why would it even matter if the last .5GB is slow, or that the card wasn't being "pushed hard enough"? It's a gaming card, and using it for gaming seems to be working just fine, in my anecdotal experience at least. Gaming benchmarks have also been great for the card. Just because not everyone writes CUDA applications that need access to all 4GB does not mean that people are using it wrong, or that they should mind that the last .5GB is slow. If it works for others' use then that's great for them.