Nvidia Faces Class Action Suit Over Under-performing GTX 970

[Steven Bogos]

Nvidia Faces Class Action Suit Over Under-performing GTX 970

PC gaming is serious business.

If you've been keeping an eye on the PC enthusiast market, you may have heard of the woes surrounding Nvidia's GTX 970 graphics card. To give you the short and skinny of it, Nvidia claimed the 970 had 4GB of on-board video RAM, but users have found that only 3.5GB of that RAM runs at full capacity, with the remaining 500MB running up to 80 percent slower than it's supposed to. The controversy was so widespread that competitor AMD even chipped in to land some sick burns [https://twitter.com/AMDGaming/status/569197745707327489] on its rival. Now, it looks like the PC enthusiasts are ready to move away from just complaining and actually do something, filing a class action suit against the graphics card giant for "false advertising."

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for Northern California, names Nvidia and Giga-Byte Technology as defendents. It states that the performance of the card is not as advertised, and the 500MB of poorly optimized memory can cause images to stutter on a high resolution screen and some games to perform poorly.

Neither Nvidia nor Giga-Byte would comment on the lawsuit, but last month, Nvidia acknowledged that the GTX 970 uses a different memory subsystem design than its higher-end GTX 980, although it claimed the difference has a negligible impact on performance. It also said that it did initially make an error [http://www.pcworld.com/article/2875740/nvidia-explains-geforce-gtx-970s-memory-performance-issues-admits-error-in-specs.html] with the card's specifications.

Elsewhere, unhappy gamers are bombarding Nvidia's official forms [https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/803518/geforce-900-series/gtx-970-3-5gb-vram-issue/1/] for requests for refunds.

I feel like Nvidia is definitely at fault here, and the easiest way to head off this problem before it gets too out-of-hand is to simply offer a no-questions-asked refund to anyone who bought the card, and is unhappy with its performance.

Source: PC World [http://www.pcworld.com/article/2887234/nvidia-hit-with-false-advertising-suit-over-gtx-970-performance.html]

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[viranimus]

Thats OK, because that just means the next series of drivers will require you to give up your legal right to engage Nvidia in class action law suit. So problem will be "solved" soon enough.

 

[Rozalia1]

The solution is simple... carry on as normal, no point changing when you're on top like that after all. The lawsuit is a quibble and Nvidia if not already safe will certainly be in the future.

 

[mad825]

I don't know what's going to be worse, Nvida trying to put a lid on this PR disaster or the bureaucrats trying and acting like they understand the jargon.

Thats OK, because that just means the next series of drivers will require you to give up your legal right to engage Nvidia in class action law suit. So problem will be "solved" soon enough.

Expect that it violates EU law.

 

[alphamalet]

Is there widespread dissatisfaction with the 970? I haven't been keeping up, but I've read a few articles a little while ago that were touting the card as the best bang for your buck on the market. I'll be sticking with my 770 until the next batch of cards come out, but I was under the impression that people were generally happy with the 970.

 

[V da Mighty Taco]

Not gonna lie, I still have full interest in picking one of these up at some point. Even 3.5GB Video RAM is absolutely phenominal compared to what I'm used to, and the price point is much more in reach than the 980. Unless there are bigger issues with the thing (like if the missing 500MB is causing issues even on games using less than the whole 3.5GB of VRAM) then I'll still likely want one when I can afford it.

 

[NickBrahz]

Is there widespread dissatisfaction with the 970? I haven't been keeping up, but I've read a few articles a little while ago that were touting the card as the best bang for your buck on the market. I'll be sticking with my 770 until the next batch of cards come out, but I was under the impression that people were generally happy with the 970.

I own a 970 myself, and yes its worked perfectly for my needs, but its more the principle of the thing, say you ordered a pizza, and they only gave you 6/8 slices, now lets say that after you ate 4/8 slices you were full, it would be like saying its ok because you wouldn't have eaten those extra 2 slices anyway, and i and a lot of people are unhappy with the blatant lies, if it was listed as a 3.5GB card i wouldn't care one bit because i would have got what i paid for but now they have ruined all the trust i and a lot of others have had in them so i will not be buying a Nvidia product in the future unless i get some sort of reasonable compensation, all my cards that i have ever owned have been Nvidia but when this one is ready to be upgraded it will not be to a new Nvidia card.

 

[Asuterisuku]

I feel like this is a case of manufacturers using 4 GB when windows reads everything in GiB... Not really a lie, but Windows reporting with the wrong measurement system. It's been the same for HDDs forever....

 

[mad825]

say you ordered a pizza, and they only gave you 6/8 slices, now lets say that after you ate 4/8 slices you were full, it would be like saying its ok because you wouldn't have eaten those extra 2 slices anyway, and i and a lot of people are unhappy with the blatant lies.

Seriously, why a food analogy? It doesn't even make sense.

Let's say it takes a car to reach 90MpH in 7.5 sec and when the car reaches 75Mph, it will start stalling. However in this case, it will take 8.3 sec to reach 90MPH despite it being advertised as 90MpH in 7.5 sec.

 

[kajinking]

Was actually considering upgrading to one of these but I may just skip it if this is true. Anyone here know of a good replacement for 2 GTX 580's sli for under $300?

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Not the first time nVidia knowingly ship faulty products. A few years back (back during the dark times known as Vista) the video cards they released were defective, the excess heat caused the soldering to fail and the chips would pop off the boards (not literally). They denied and denied it, they only admitted fault after about 2 years when the warranties had conveniently expired. I have never bought nVidia since then, and I am not surprised another of their products is in trouble.

 

[J Tyran]

Good, selling a card that's boldly advertised as having 4GB of VRAM but actually having 3.5+0.5 with application support and reduced performance isn't on.

Was actually considering upgrading to one of these but I may just skip it if this is true. Anyone here know of a good replacement for 2 GTX 580's sli for under $300?

Its still a very, very good card and if you by it and know exactly what you're going to get and are fine with it there isn't a problem.
The card still outperforms many others in its price bracket and the VRAM is only an issue playing games beyond HD (4K and multi-extra wide monitors in particular) with massively resource intensive features running like AA that downscales resolution, general downscaling or MSAA or beyond HD texture packs.

I have seen people having to run two games to run it out of VRAM and make it use the extra 500MB

I feel like this is a case of manufacturers using 4 GB when windows reads everything in GiB... Not really a lie, but Windows reporting with the wrong measurement system. It's been the same for HDDs forever....

No its the way the card architecture works, 970s are basically the same as the 980s. They are just binned as 970s because fewer sections of the chip are "active" after the manufacturing process, due to some new technology instead of just fitting a certain amount of VRAM and calling it a day Nvidia can add extra memory controllers and memory to "deactivated" sections of the chip.

(oversimplified explanation is oversimplified)

They used cheaper memory as a kind of buffer for the frame buffer to prevent a total drop off in performance once all the VRAM was used, the extra 500MB is still many times faster than the GPU resorting to system memory once all the VRAM is used...

In Theory...

The problem is most if not all games can actually use it so they just read 3.5GBs, the other problem is Nvidia marketed it and sold it as a 4GB card which it technically is it also technically isn't. I don't know if I buy the story about a disconnect between the marketing and engineering departments, either way its bullshit how they sold a product as being something it wasn't

 

[Albino Boo]

I don't know what's going to be worse, Nvida trying to put a lid on this PR disaster or the bureaucrats trying and acting like they understand the jargon.

Thats OK, because that just means the next series of drivers will require you to give up your legal right to engage Nvidia in class action law suit. So problem will be "solved" soon enough.

Expect that it violates EU law.

Apart from the small but rather important point class action law suits do not exist in the EU.

 

[DoPo]

I feel like this is a case of manufacturers using 4 GB when windows reads everything in GiB...

That's not the case - literally the last 500MB (512, to be more precise) of the card have reduced performance, it's nothing to do with the measures. It's well documented all over the place

The last memory controller has its corresponding L2 cache disabled, hence it has to share the connection to the previous to last one which reduces the bandwidth. Here is the article where I got the diagram from [http://techreport.com/review/27724/nvidia-the-geforce-gtx-970-works-exactly-as-intended].

Was actually considering upgrading to one of these but I may just skip it if this is true. Anyone here know of a good replacement for 2 GTX 580's sli for under $300?

Its still a very, very good card and if you by it and know exactly what you're going to get and are fine with it there isn't a problem.

I completely agree - I'm really happy with mine. I never experienced issues with the VRAM and it plays everything really well. Well, the only issue, really, is screen tearing in some games due to how many frames per second the card churns out - I can hit 200 in some. Of course, Vsync and/or frame limiting fixes it but still.

 

[Dogstile]

I don't know what's going to be worse, Nvida trying to put a lid on this PR disaster or the bureaucrats trying and acting like they understand the jargon.

Thats OK, because that just means the next series of drivers will require you to give up your legal right to engage Nvidia in class action law suit. So problem will be "solved" soon enough.

Expect that it violates EU law.

Apart from the small but rather important point class action law suits do not exist in the EU.

They're gaining ground actually, but they're in the infant stages. It'd be dumb to rely on them, but when they come about in the EU i'd expect that you couldn't sign away any chance of getting your money back.

 

[the.chad]

Have the cards actually come down in price since this was brought to light?

 

[Albino Boo]

I don't know what's going to be worse, Nvida trying to put a lid on this PR disaster or the bureaucrats trying and acting like they understand the jargon.

Thats OK, because that just means the next series of drivers will require you to give up your legal right to engage Nvidia in class action law suit. So problem will be "solved" soon enough.

Expect that it violates EU law.

Apart from the small but rather important point class action law suits do not exist in the EU.

They're gaining ground actually, but they're in the infant stages. It'd be dumb to rely on them, but when they come about in the EU i'd expect that you couldn't sign away any chance of getting your money back.

Fundamentally there is no EU jurisdiction that allows class actions in the same way as the US. The only similar things in the EU either are actions taken by an association that can demonstrate that its acting in the interest of parties or limited to only named individuals. Sometimes both stipulations apply. The speculative nature of many US class action suits has caused many jurisdictions not copy the US model but to limit the scope so much that they cannot be described as class actions in the US context

The last memory controller has its corresponding L2 cache disabled, hence it has to share the connection to the previous to last one which reduces the bandwidth. Here is the article where I got the diagram from [http://techreport.com/review/27724/nvidia-the-geforce-gtx-970-works-exactly-as-intended].

Thanks for that article, I was wondering what the real story was behind the noise. Reading between the lines the GTX 970 is designed to a price point and having that extra L2 cache working would cost more. I tend to belive the cockup theory about the PR team not getting the right specs.

 

[Gizmo1990]

Ok. I have a 970 and can honestly say I did not notice. I have not encountered any performance issues and I have been running everything I play with everything on full. That being said I am really bad at noticing these things so for all I know I have had issues.

At the end of the day I don't really give a shit. Still miles better than any other graphics card I have had before and it is more than enough for me. However I can see why people are upset about this and if Nvidia cannot fix this with software patches then they should refund people as it simply dosen't do what they said it does.

 

[R.K. Meades]

I ponied up for GTX 980s in my latest build. Feels good man.

Not gonna lie, I still have full interest in picking one of these up at some point. Even 3.5GB Video RAM is absolutely phenominal compared to what I'm used to, and the price point is much more in reach than the 980. Unless there are bigger issues with the thing (like if the missing 500MB is causing issues even on games using less than the whole 3.5GB of VRAM) then I'll still likely want one when I can afford it.

If you are set on the 970, I would personally recommend going for a more compact model. Recently, I surprised one of my associates with her first dedicated gaming rig-- a nice mATX build with two ASUS DirectCU Minis. They run cooler than Gigabyte's offering, and have higher clock speeds.