Lawsuit Filed Against Nvidia Over GTX 970 Specs Controversy

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BobRoberts363

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Specs are of no consequence??? What? The 900 series is a total fraud all the way around. Surely not worth an upgrade, I wouldn't even buy this if I were building one now. And I am btw. NO THANKS!!
 

leeb2013

Honorable


Why are you building a 900 series if you don't like it?
 
If this is a good lawsuit, then AMD should probably be pulled out onto the carpet for misleading consumers with those 290s and 290X's that don't hold their base clock rate when they heat up under normal operating conditions.
 

Gurg

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Mar 13, 2013
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My system is a 5820 overclocked to 4.2 on h100i, 16g ram and 2 MSI gaming 970s in SLI on overclocked setting. I'm getting stuttering playing Empire TW a 2009 game on ultra settings in large battles on a 1440 monitor. I've checked my temps and it isn't a temp issue.

Not only is there no future proofing with the 970s, overclocked and in sli they can't even play six year old games properly. Can I prove that this is caused by their fraudulent advertising of the specs--NO, but I sure wouldn't have squandered $800 on 970s if I knew there were issues and would have bought the 980 instead
 


This shows your ignorance of knowledge before criticizing. If data in the RAM is stored with 32 bits by hardware means it is impossible to have more than 4GB bytes RAM used. If a memory address is composed of 32 "1"s and "0"s then 4 billion is the maximum number of unique addresses. That is why addressing memory with a 64-digit address allows for a greater RAM capacity. The purpose of a 64-bit OS is not to force you to buy it to use more RAM and earn MS money, the purpose is to allow greater RAM capacity since technology moved ahead and also to allow the processing of 64-bit values within the processor which takes less cycles than calculating a 64-bit value in multiple cycles on a 32-bit CPU.
 

cleeve

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Dude, you are 100% right. +1.

I totally dropped the ball on that. As an editor I tend to cover something and look forward to the next thing, but after I wrote the news piece about the new specs revisiting the original review is the *first* thing I should have done. To be honest, it never even occurred to me until your post bought it to my attention.

Thanks for that. Fixed!

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-970-maxwell,3941.html
 

Staticisgood

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Oct 27, 2014
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I don't understand why we are being called NVidia haters when we purchased their product to begin with. If I was an NVidia hater I would have purchased AMD instead. I like NVidia, HOWEVER, I purchased the 970 to use every bit of the card.

A lot of other people not using the whole 4gb today (also are some of the ones telling us to stop whining, and have not used this card at its supposedly full potential), will be using the entirety of the card in the near future, or at least trying to, then realizing that when trying to play a new gen game or use current gen 4k (which is becoming the new standard for displays, including our everyday use phones) that the card advertised at 4gb can not handle running at 4gb. The fact that the specs were misrepresented stands. This card FAILS when you access more than 3.5gb.

I purchased this card over the 980 because it was $200 less AND in some cases can be OC'd to or close to a stock 980. I also purchased this card for the full 4GB, because as stated multiple times before me "You WILL, or eventually, WILL need 4gb of VRAM". Now this card, (which previous specs stated it could) can not handle some things out now, and even more to come in this year alone. My "future-proof" card is now useless. Stated in another comment somewhere "In most cases the 4gb cards run the same as 2gb cards". Sure, but you're only using 2gb? 2GB cards were the standard for the current gen gaming, and now years later, because technology advances you know, 4gb cards are the new standard for current gen gaming.

I apologize, I was trying to get some people to understand that even though you may not see a difference in performance now, you will when you try to use the 4gb you PAID for. This was unintentionally turned into a rant. For everyone stating that the specs do not matter and that the card still runs flawlessly regardless of the specs, you are wrong. I am upset with NVidia yes, but I am not a "hater". I do know that False Advertisement is illegal, and that a case against them is, in this sense justified.

I don't really care about the lawsuit in terms of a handout or lump sum of money, but getting an upgrade to the 980 for a fee would be fair. I'm not asking for a free upgrade, but I would send my card in with an x-amount of money for the 980.

I believe all NVidia would need to do to clear the air, is have the people who purchased the 970 from date of release to a reasonable time AFTER the new specs were released, sign up either for:

- A full refund with paid return
- an upgrade to the 980 for a reasonable, but discounted, price with paid return

I don't see a reason for any other option. This would appease everyone. The specs are out. If you don't like it, return it and purchase the card you want of any band with the specs that you do want.
OR
Send it back and pay a specified discounted amount for a 980.

Eventually, with the specs shown correctly, and customers with options, it will blow over and NVidia should have satisfied their customers. A class-action lawsuit IS justified, but at what cost? I'll take option 2 over ruining a good company who does make outstanding cards (when advertised correctly).
 
Plus you guys need to understand how the court thinks of it. To us and many people, we'll think "Oh what's .5GB vRAM and .125 L2 cache etc." but to the court they don't know what any of this stuff even is. So to them they look at it as a company posting some extreme rounding and false specs, the court is not looking at it in a technical aspect.
 

TNT27

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Court would have people actually educated on tech issues such as this to explain to them what it is.
 

neon neophyte

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turkey, it isnt "just" .5gb of ram. what it is, is below an industry standard. which is a HUGE problem when developers make games FOR an industry standard. we use standards for a reason. 4.5gb isnt going to do you any better in gaming when developers are making games FOR 4gb. the amount of ram a game uses isnt some random number. ie, anything... and i mean ANYTHING less than 4gb, the industry standard is HUGELY crippling. it may as well be 3gb... or 2gb... for that matter.
 

youcanDUit

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i love how people are defending a company from outright lying about a product. and the people go as far as DEFENDING nvidia. this is why quality is non-existent. how do you defend a company that blatantly lied about a product? how are performance charts specs for a graphics card? i expect more from people who get their news from this website. reading about people defending a company is just freaking sad and stupid. i just lost respect for people. sad day.
 

The_One_and_Only

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I don't believe for one second that this is a mistake. It should have just been a 3.5 card so it worked correctly the first time. It's not about if your happy with the performance. It's about not making <mod edit> up and actually telling the truth.
 


There is a difference between defending a company and deriding a frivolous lawsuit.
 

youcanDUit

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frivolous? what's frivolous about 2+2=5. I bought the 970 i didn't pay what for misleading marketing.
 


Is the performance of you 970 significantly different from what review benchmarks have posted? No?

Where was this ire when it was discovered both Nvidia and AMD had re-badged old graphics hardware as new graphics cards? Where was it when we found out AMD knew about the crossfire frame latency issues for quite some time and did nothing about it until Nvidia published fcats?

The class action lawsuit over the faulty Prius acceletator was justified. This is whiny.
 

neon neophyte

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Yes, the performance actually is. Benchmarks do not often reflect the ram discrepancy but upcoming games very well could. Fact is, 4gb is an industry standard and falling under that has huge implications.

 


Huge?....I don't mean to accuse you of hyperbole here, but......really?

Between the public shaming, the massive returns of 970 cards and the reduced likelihood of people buying nvidia in the future, justice is pretty close to served here. A class action lawsuit is ludicrous. It is pure first-world-problem frivolity and an absolute waste of the court system's time and taxpayer's money.
 

neon neophyte

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Yes, huge. When memory is fully tapped out, the drop off in performance is drastic.

When all the other cards have a 4gb standard, games will be designed FOR 4gb. Not 3.5gb. The gtx 970 is the *only* card with 3.5gb. It falls under the standard.

So yes, huge.
 

royalcrown

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I am not on the side of the performance argument as much as I am the lying.

56 ROPS is not 64 and never will be no matter how you slant it, specs that lie are specs that lie. With developers doing the optimizations themselves in DX 12 correct information will count more than in a long time.

Different hardware than stated is different and falls outside of the scope of "just a few fps, so stop bitchin'."

By the way, it's not just ROPS, that was the example that came to mind now. Yes, it has 4 gigs, so that isn't a lie, but there were other "discrepancies besides those if I remember correctly.

Imagine if some Xboxes or PS3 had more hardware or different specs as far as the main components, what kind of optimization problems might occur, glitches ?



 


Well, if you're going to double down on the hyperbole and ignore the main point that this is a waste of court resources, allow me to re-calibrate. When Exxon Valdez spilled oil along hundreds of miles of coastline, ruined the livelihood of thousands of people and did environmental damage that will take most of our lifetime to undo....that was huge. That deserved the class action lawsuit that was filed against Exxon.

Nvidia makes video cards, not seatbelts. People who bought a 970 are inconvenienced at worst. Return the card and go buy a 290X. The Justice system is stretched enough as it is trying to solve real problems.
 

Gurg

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The Exxon spill had almost zilch effect on me economically as well as ecologically and was basically irrelevant. In contrast the Nvidia lie means I've wasted $800 on two 970s that if I could exchange for a credit would be gone from my system ASAP. Without a credit I'm stuck with them for at least the next two or three years despite their poor stuttering gaming performance. The $800 lost plus another $1200 for replacements is too much to swallow for my budget.
 


No, it's an example of the kind of behavior class action lawsuits are meant to protect against.

FFS, do a little research before you get bent out of shape. Unless you have a gigabyte card, you can return them, and I'm betting Gigabyte will relent pretty soon. You're incovenienced. Suing someone over that is frivolousness at its purest.

http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/multiple-graphics-cards-vendors-accept-returns-of-geforce-gtx-970-adapters/
 

royalcrown

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Gurg, there may be hope for your SLI problems while keeping your 760's:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/microsoft-directx12-amd-nvidia,28606.html




 


Also, wow. I imagine most frivolous lawsuits are brought by people who would take the stance "It doesn't affect me so it's not important".
 
The troll that pointed out you can return almost all 970's because the individual card manufacturers, such as EVGA, are taking them back?

Helpfullness is trollish. I'll stop that immediately.

(Not everyone who disagrees with the majority is a troll)

As an aside, Nvidia is likely to catch a double backlash now. The companies that graciously began accepting 970 returns are actually going to be hurt by this, and may retaliate against Nvidia (maybe we'll see EVGA AMD cards!). If anyone has a basis to sue Nvidia it's those companies.
 
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