Lawsuit Filed Against Nvidia Over GTX 970 Specs Controversy

[17seconds]

Guys, this is a civil discussion. There is no need to resort to name-calling.

 

[Gurg]

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.

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/

After reading this I did a search and some retailers are indeed giving full refunds on your 970 purchases, The Microcenter return associate that answered my phone call asking about a refund was well aware of this issue. I returned my two 970s purchased in Sept and Oct to Microcenter for a complete refund and purchased one 980 and will see how that works before buying another for SLI. Thank you for posting this even though it only dealt with Europe, the US retailers appear to be stepping up to the plate even though Nvidia isn't.

 

[somebodyspecial]

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.

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.

Almost correct. Nvidia doesn't make these cards (I know you probably know that, just info for the haters). Just the chip on them, unless I missed an actual Nvidia 970 retail box. Not sure how they could be sued for a box that says anything when they didn't make the card or the box it came in to begin with (they do actually make some workstation/hpc cards). They don't put the ram on the card either, or advertise that. It's not theirs to advertise. When NV sends a ref card to a review site it's just that people: A REFERENCE CARD and that particular card isn't sold at retail.

 

[somebodyspecial]

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.

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. return the card and go buy a 290X.

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.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8935/geforce-gtx-970-correcting-the-specs-exploring-memory-allocation
"To that end in the short amount of time we’ve had to work on this article we have also been working on cooking up potential corner cases for the GTX 970 and have so far come up empty, though we’re by no means done. Coming up with real (non-synthetic) gaming workloads that can utilize between 3.5GB and 4GB of VRAM while not running into a rendering performance wall is already a challenge, and all the more so when trying to find such workloads that actually demonstrate performance problems. This at first glance does seem to validate NVIDIA’s overall claims that performance is not significantly impacted by the memory segmentation, but we’re going to continue looking to see if that holds up. In the meantime NVIDIA seems very eager to find such corner cases as well, and if there are any they’d like to be able to identify what’s going on and tweak their heuristics to resolve them."

"But so far with this new information we have been unable to break the GTX 970, which means NVIDIA is likely on the right track and the GTX 970 should still be considered as great a card now as it was at launch."

"At least on paper this looks like the best compromise NVIDIA could make."
Note they are clear it's by design, and anantech thinks it works as perf shows. They've been using this tech for years (again as noted at anandtech), and as such have things worked out fairly well, or reviews would have shown something.

No comment from them since. I don't believe you're stuttering (at least not due to a corner case nobody seems to be able to show exists) They can't find situations yet and you can bet Anandtech is looking as AMD lovers Email them your corner case if you have one. Note anandtech explains why they do NOT think it was a lie (no way to hide it, eventually would be found out etc). Also note ALL 4 GB is there, just 512 is accessed slower, but as noted they can't find a place where you're not limited by something else already. It's also possible if they ever find one they could fix it as noted by anandtech. But you have to FIND that first.

Please provide a link to a website showing IN GAMES that you can land over 3.5 and >4GB and have an issue (the corner case).

http://techreport.com/news/27856/nvidia-ceo-on-gtx-970-controversy-we-wont-let-this-happen-again
As Jen says here, the 4GB IS USED:
"The 4GB of memory on GTX 970 is used and useful to achieve the performance you are enjoying."

As a poster on that article noted:
"GTX 970 performance before this was known : 70 fps in Game X

GTX 970 performance after this was known : 70 fps in Game X"

ROFL. Again, all the people who have this problem (that anandtech can't prove even can happen) should email anandtech their situation so they can prove it. The benchmarks so far have NOT changed. Please quit trying to waste my tax dollars on crap like this. Any claims of "future games might have a problem" is ridiculous. I can say that about anything and nobody claims all your games will run great in 10yrs...LOL. Also, SLI users are a very small percent of the public anyway.

http://techreport.com/news/27721/nvidia-admits-explains-geforce-gtx-970-memory-allocation-issue
shows how stupid this is at least so far.
"Like the ROP issue, this limitation is already baked into the GTX 970's measured performance. Perhaps folks will find some instances where the GTX 970's memory allocation limits affect performance more dramatically than in Nvidia's examples above. If so, maybe we should worry about this limitation. If not, well, then it's all kind of academic."

So far academic here too. Again, email your terrible problem to either site. I can't wait If your case is under 30fps anyway (making the game unplayable) it's kind of pointless. IE the BF4 situation they show where BOTH cards are below 19fps (980 OR 970 would SUCK here). Pointless. That's like saying AMD is faster at 500000x300000 at 1fps, than NV is at .5fps so this is a huge deal, their both running slide shows but wow AMD is faster...ROFL No that isn't a real res, but you get the point. According to techreport, you can go buy 980's and not much will change. They noted 1-3% more drop depending on game when it hits >3.5GB and ends up on the slow train for that last 512MB). Big deal.

 

[somebodyspecial]

http://techreport.com/review/27724/nvidia-the-geforce-gtx-970-works-exactly-as-intended
"both cards have 4GB of onboard RAM."
People need to get this crap straight. It doesn't have 3.5GB. Period. It has 4GB just like 980. How it is used is different, not that it isn't there at all. IT IS THERE. Read how it works, why etc and yet again another site saying drivers can fix a corner case.
"We thought this feature would make it a better product, and we think we achieved that goal."

Same as anandtech said, it's the best case they could do and it was designed this way to BETTER the product not make it worse. Based on perf, it works pretty well. Courts are not going to nail a company for a 1-3% more drop than a 980 makes in the same cases...LOL. I hope it's all thrown out before my price on my next card goes up and my tax dollars get wasted. It performs as advertised and tested. Even AMD's 290x/290 issues were not sue worthy, and it was far worse. Just a stupid mistake that hurts reputation even for them, not worth suing over. A suit against AMD in that case would bankrupt them.

 

[azzazel_99]

Quilciri exxon spilling oil was an accident so how is that lawsuit anymore rightful than the one against nvidia for INTENTIONALLY lying and trying to pull the wool over its customers eyes?

 

[quilciri]

Quilciri exxon spilling oil was an accident so how is that lawsuit anymore rightful than the one against nvidia for INTENTIONALLY lying and trying to pull the wool over its customers eyes?

The "accident" was caused by Exxon's intentional safety violations.

Exxon failed to supervise the master and provide a rested and sufficient crew for Exxon Valdez. The third mate failed to properly maneuver the vessel, possibly due to fatigue or excessive workload.

Exxon Shipping Company failed to properly maintain the Raytheon Collision Avoidance System (RAYCAS) radar, which, if functional, would have indicated to the third mate an impending collision with the Bligh Reef.

You could have googled this information in 30 seconds.

Regardless, the lawsuit against Nvidia is still an absolute waste of court resources.

 

[azzazel_99]

Maybe to you. there is plenty of <mod edit> the courts waste it's time on like bothering with marijuana which as we all see now is starting to get legalized because its a waste of time to criminalize it. This case if it's a waste is no more a waste of the tons of other <mod edit> te courts waste it's time on.

 

[quilciri]

Maybe to you. there is plenty of <mod edit> the courts waste it's time on like bothering with marijuana which as we all see now is starting to get legalized because its a waste of time to criminalize it. This case if it's a waste is no more a waste of the tons of other <mod edit> te courts waste it's time on.

Agreed. I'm opposed to the court wasting time on those issues as well.

 

[Gurg]

Any Nvidia fanboys that think this is all bogus, can purchase my or other returned 970s when they are remarketed and perhaps score a free game.

 

[Gurg]

Maybe to you. there is plenty of <mod edit> the courts waste it's time on like bothering with marijuana which as we all see now is starting to get legalized because its a waste of time to criminalize it. This case if it's a waste is no more a waste of the tons of other <mod edit> te courts waste it's time on.

Agreed. I'm opposed to the court wasting time on those issues as well.

95% of filed lawsuits settle pretrial so odds are slim that it will waste any court time.

 

[quilciri]

I can only hope However, even in pre trial, the prosecution and defense teams meet before a judge to file pre-trial motions.

Some pre-trials have taken years

 

[sykozis]

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.

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.

4GB of VRAM is not an industry standard. If it were, every graphics card produced would have 4GB. The GTX960 only has 2GB of VRAM. Reality is, NVidia could have equipped the card with a wide range of memory capacities.

The GTX970 does in fact have 4GB of VRAM physically installed on the card. The full 4GB is in fact usable. The card has a 3.5GB VRAM partition and a 0.5GB VRAM partition. Last I checked, 3.5GB+0.5GB = 4GB. So, that part of the claim here is false. The memory does not operate on a 256bit memory bus as NVidia continues to claim though. The memory bus also does not provide the 224GB/s bandwidth either. Just because the 0.5GB/s partition operates at a greatly reduced bandwidth, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Just means it's considerably slower.

 

[somebodyspecial]

Quilciri exxon spilling oil was an accident so how is that lawsuit anymore rightful than the one against nvidia for INTENTIONALLY lying and trying to pull the wool over its customers eyes?

Anandtech doesn't think they lied, and I don't see others thinking that either. It would be stupid (as anandtech said) because it is so easy to find it out. It was a left hand not knowing the right hand, and as anandtech/techreport says, much better way to go than to go 3GB etc. The way they chose was best for the user for $329.

You have no proof they INTENTIONALLY did anything. Let me know when they find a smoking gun email saying something like in the IRS case. Something like NV engineers saying "hide this in the specs and lie" to the marketing dept.

 

[youcanDUit]

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.

this is false advertisement. it can't do 4k even though on their website it says it's a 4k card. even if we're talking about just the memory issue 3.5GB it won't handle real 4k. but this isn't the case. this is about ALL of the specs of the card being misrepresented. they had a long time to fix it and they didn't. this isn't whining. it's just people being objective and not being fanboys. they messed up. they deserve what they get. they should be held to a higher standard. they are a multi-billion dollar corporation out to make revenue. they could care less if they sold this card or if they didn't, especially if it's a rebrand.

 

[youcanDUit]

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.

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. return the card and go buy a 290X.

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.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8935/geforce-gtx-970-correcting-the-specs-exploring-memory-allocation
"To that end in the short amount of time we’ve had to work on this article we have also been working on cooking up potential corner cases for the GTX 970 and have so far come up empty, though we’re by no means done. Coming up with real (non-synthetic) gaming workloads that can utilize between 3.5GB and 4GB of VRAM while not running into a rendering performance wall is already a challenge, and all the more so when trying to find such workloads that actually demonstrate performance problems. This at first glance does seem to validate NVIDIA’s overall claims that performance is not significantly impacted by the memory segmentation, but we’re going to continue looking to see if that holds up. In the meantime NVIDIA seems very eager to find such corner cases as well, and if there are any they’d like to be able to identify what’s going on and tweak their heuristics to resolve them."

"But so far with this new information we have been unable to break the GTX 970, which means NVIDIA is likely on the right track and the GTX 970 should still be considered as great a card now as it was at launch."

"At least on paper this looks like the best compromise NVIDIA could make."
Note they are clear it's by design, and anantech thinks it works as perf shows. They've been using this tech for years (again as noted at anandtech), and as such have things worked out fairly well, or reviews would have shown something.

No comment from them since. I don't believe you're stuttering (at least not due to a corner case nobody seems to be able to show exists) They can't find situations yet and you can bet Anandtech is looking as AMD lovers Email them your corner case if you have one. Note anandtech explains why they do NOT think it was a lie (no way to hide it, eventually would be found out etc). Also note ALL 4 GB is there, just 512 is accessed slower, but as noted they can't find a place where you're not limited by something else already. It's also possible if they ever find one they could fix it as noted by anandtech. But you have to FIND that first.

Please provide a link to a website showing IN GAMES that you can land over 3.5 and >4GB and have an issue (the corner case).

http://techreport.com/news/27856/nvidia-ceo-on-gtx-970-controversy-we-wont-let-this-happen-again
As Jen says here, the 4GB IS USED:
"The 4GB of memory on GTX 970 is used and useful to achieve the performance you are enjoying."

As a poster on that article noted:
"GTX 970 performance before this was known : 70 fps in Game X

GTX 970 performance after this was known : 70 fps in Game X"

ROFL. Again, all the people who have this problem (that anandtech can't prove even can happen) should email anandtech their situation so they can prove it. The benchmarks so far have NOT changed. Please quit trying to waste my tax dollars on crap like this. Any claims of "future games might have a problem" is ridiculous. I can say that about anything and nobody claims all your games will run great in 10yrs...LOL. Also, SLI users are a very small percent of the public anyway.

http://techreport.com/news/27721/nvidia-admits-explains-geforce-gtx-970-memory-allocation-issue
shows how stupid this is at least so far.
"Like the ROP issue, this limitation is already baked into the GTX 970's measured performance. Perhaps folks will find some instances where the GTX 970's memory allocation limits affect performance more dramatically than in Nvidia's examples above. If so, maybe we should worry about this limitation. If not, well, then it's all kind of academic."

So far academic here too. Again, email your terrible problem to either site. I can't wait If your case is under 30fps anyway (making the game unplayable) it's kind of pointless. IE the BF4 situation they show where BOTH cards are below 19fps (980 OR 970 would SUCK here). Pointless. That's like saying AMD is faster at 500000x300000 at 1fps, than NV is at .5fps so this is a huge deal, their both running slide shows but wow AMD is faster...ROFL No that isn't a real res, but you get the point. According to techreport, you can go buy 980's and not much will change. They noted 1-3% more drop depending on game when it hits >3.5GB and ends up on the slow train for that last 512MB). Big deal.

it's not about the performance. it's false advertisement.

 

[somebodyspecial]

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.

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. return the card and go buy a 290X.

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.

SNIPPED

it's not about the performance. it's false advertisement.

Last time I checked Nvidia doesn't sell 970's, therefore can't be advertising anything that anyone bought. Card makers maybe could be accused, but that remains to be seen if they can prove it in a court that NV can be held responsible for review specs etc or even then if it was intentional. Also the card can do 4K, I just wouldn't like how many settings I'd have to turn down to do it to hit 30fps in many games No different with an AMD card here either (single chip for either side). It takes two chips or dual cards or more to have a maxed out experience at 4K in all games today. If the card couldn't do 4K there would be no benchmarks out there with it doing it...LOL.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-970-maxwell,3941-8.html
Benchmarks right here on tom's starts there. That's 4K right? You can find 4K benchmarks in pretty much EVERY review of this card. What is "real 4K" to you? BF4 high detail preset at 4K not enough? That's just one example, though for me anything under 30fps min (26 in this case) I wouldn't play there. Thief on the same page 32fps min, normal preset. If it can't do 4K, how come there's not a blank there for this card (or any in the tests)? Because they all could do it When a card simply can't do it, there is NO BAR at all. You can keep reading the review if desired.

"Once again, we had to dial back the visual settings to keep things smooth, trading the very high detail preset for the normal detail preset. Still, it looks very impressive at 3840x2160."
Jeez...Are you calling tomshardware liars? All of the cards can do 4K to varying degree in this review (AMD or NV)...ROFL.

"When we increase resolution to 3840x2160, the GeForce GTX 970 falls behind the pack slightly where raw frame rates are concerned, but it maintains a playable pace and a relatively flat frame time variance. The same can not be said for the Radeon cards, which suffer from some judder at this high resolution."
Hmm, AMD false advertising too? By your standards both need to go to court? No, they both do 4K, just to varying degrees depending on the game. Get it? Whatever. I guess you don't read much.

One more reference for you:
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/198223-investigating-the-gtx-970-does-nvidias-penultimate-gpu-have-a-memory-problem
"The GTX 970, like a number of other GPUs from Nvidia (and, historically, a few from AMD) uses an asymmetric memory layout. What this means, in practice, is that the GPU has a faster access path to some of its main memory than others."

Both sides have done this multiple times. AMD never tells about this either AFAIK. Spec sheets being wrong don't affect the card. It was a mistake but that doesn't hurt benchmarks which DO sell the cards.

 

[azzazel_99]

Nvidia actually does sell their own video cards. That's where the reference 980 and 960's and 970's and so on come from. They ae nvidia designed cards with the reference cooler on it. So yes nvidia does make ANDY sell their own video cards not just the gpu.

 

[sykozis]

NVidia started selling their own cards in retail starting with the 400 series. They're just not as widely available as other brands because NVidia doesn't want to compete with eVGA, Gigabyte, MSI, Asus, etc.

 

[somebodyspecial]

Nvidia actually does sell their own video cards. That's where the reference 980 and 960's and 970's and so on come from. They ae nvidia designed cards with the reference cooler on it. So yes nvidia does make ANDY sell their own video cards not just the gpu.

Show me an Nvidia 980/970/960. They make workstation/server cards but NOT consumer gaming cards. Big difference. Do they make a reference card for others to copy? YES. I never said they didn't. But they don't sell NV retail cards AFAIK.

Please give a Link to an actual NVIDIA card for sale anywhere. Meaning with NO other label on it like these:
eVGA, Gigabyte, MSI, Asus, etc.

My comment was they are NOT for sale in 970 which is the card being discussed here.
"Last time I checked Nvidia doesn't sell 970's, therefore can't be advertising anything that anyone bought."

It is correct as stated. The only thing NV sells in their shop is tegra stuff and sli bridges. Pro/server stuff is a different story. But that isn't what I said. For this case we're talking a 970 card sold and made by NVIDIA. Not sure how the courts will see NV as misleading a consumer who can't buy an NV CARD. Maybe if EVGA, MSI etc sued NV, this would be different (NV did sell them on specs), but not a consumer. NV sold nothing to the end user here. NV isn't shipping thousands of reference cards to MSI etc for them to slap a label on. They don't manufacture cards for others in this case. Companies copy NV's ref design, but NV isn't making them for them.

 

[somebodyspecial]

NVidia started selling their own cards in retail starting with the 400 series. They're just not as widely available as other brands because NVidia doesn't want to compete with eVGA, Gigabyte, MSI, Asus, etc.

This suit is about 970's. But I'd be more than happy to click a link you can provide to ANY 900 series Nvidia card I can BUY if you can provide one. These are NOT available at all AFAIK at retail shops for end users (newegg, amazon etc). Who sells these? Link please. You say not WIDELY available; well that means you should be able to point me to a card I said didn't exist (970 specifically here, but heck any 900 series) that I can buy today.

 

[azzazel_99]

Where do you think the reference design cooler comes from? Its nvidia's design and usually best buy carries the nvidia oem cards. All the evga and msi and what not you see on newegg, amazon etc with the reference cooler those are nvidia's cards with evga/msi/zotac sticker slapped on it. It's nvidia's card and design.

 

[azzazel_99]

Oh and for the record I HAVE purchased nvidia cards. Here is the NVIDIA card at best buy.......the 970 you say they dont make. http://www.bestbuy.com/site/nvidia-geforce-gtx-970-4gb-gddr5-pci-express-3-0-graphics-card-silver-black/9855169.p?id=1219441201895&skuId=9855169

 

[azzazel_99]

Here is the 560ti directly from nvidia company. Not a third party like evga or msi.

http://www.amazon.com/NVIDIA-GTX-560-Ti-900-11040-2550-000/dp/B004VD1UX8

here is the 760

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/nvidia-geforce-gtx-760-2gb-gddr5-pci-express-graphics-card-black/2401016.p?id=1219072221808&skuId=2401016

Here is the 770 http://www.bestbuy.com/site/nvidia-geforce-gtx-770-2gb-gddr5-pci-express-3-0-graphics-card-black-silver/1826004.p?id=1219065626957&skuId=1826004

Here is the 980 http://www.bestbuy.com/site/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-4gb-gddr5-pci-express-3-0-graphics-card-silver-black/9855141.p?id=1219441205886&skuId=9855141

 

[youcanDUit]

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.

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. return the card and go buy a 290X.

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.

SNIPPED

it's not about the performance. it's false advertisement.

Last time I checked Nvidia doesn't sell 970's, therefore can't be advertising anything that anyone bought. Card makers maybe could be accused, but that remains to be seen if they can prove it in a court that NV can be held responsible for review specs etc or even then if it was intentional. Also the card can do 4K, I just wouldn't like how many settings I'd have to turn down to do it to hit 30fps in many games No different with an AMD card here either (single chip for either side). It takes two chips or dual cards or more to have a maxed out experience at 4K in all games today. If the card couldn't do 4K there would be no benchmarks out there with it doing it...LOL.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-970-maxwell,3941-8.html
Benchmarks right here on tom's starts there. That's 4K right? You can find 4K benchmarks in pretty much EVERY review of this card. What is "real 4K" to you? BF4 high detail preset at 4K not enough? That's just one example, though for me anything under 30fps min (26 in this case) I wouldn't play there. Thief on the same page 32fps min, normal preset. If it can't do 4K, how come there's not a blank there for this card (or any in the tests)? Because they all could do it When a card simply can't do it, there is NO BAR at all. You can keep reading the review if desired.

"Once again, we had to dial back the visual settings to keep things smooth, trading the very high detail preset for the normal detail preset. Still, it looks very impressive at 3840x2160."
Jeez...Are you calling tomshardware liars? All of the cards can do 4K to varying degree in this review (AMD or NV)...ROFL.

"When we increase resolution to 3840x2160, the GeForce GTX 970 falls behind the pack slightly where raw frame rates are concerned, but it maintains a playable pace and a relatively flat frame time variance. The same can not be said for the Radeon cards, which suffer from some judder at this high resolution."
Hmm, AMD false advertising too? By your standards both need to go to court? No, they both do 4K, just to varying degrees depending on the game. Get it? Whatever. I guess you don't read much.

One more reference for you:
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/198223-investigating-the-gtx-970-does-nvidias-penultimate-gpu-have-a-memory-problem
"The GTX 970, like a number of other GPUs from Nvidia (and, historically, a few from AMD) uses an asymmetric memory layout. What this means, in practice, is that the GPU has a faster access path to some of its main memory than others."

Both sides have done this multiple times. AMD never tells about this either AFAIK. Spec sheets being wrong don't affect the card. It was a mistake but that doesn't hurt benchmarks which DO sell the cards.

nvidia apologized. not gigabyte. not evga, not zotac or any other company but nvidia. even if it was a BS apology they still did it. it's their fault. also, anything from any website no matter what should be taken with a grain of salt and without any paperwork or legitimate testing is just hearsay. what monitor? what resolution? what games? what cables? what temperatures? what clock speeds? what cards? you can say what you want about performance. i can tell you the r9 290x sooper dooper edition ^3 is better than the GTX 980 X2 in every game EVER. and have some bs bars and people would believe me. this whole fiasco with nvidia is not about performance. it's about false advertisement. to card manufacturers, the media (this website and any other website/blog/youtube channel/ whatever), and the people. false advertisement is false advertisement. no matter how try to stack crap, it's still crap.