Nvidia Faces Class Action Suit Over Under-performing GTX 970

[wizzy555]

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

No but to be honest there is little need, it was benchmarked and priced according to the performance, the benchmarks aren't wrong, but it is a case of false advertising on the technical specs.

It MAY ruin the card for GPU processing farms, but they were probably buying others anyway.

 

[laggyteabag]

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 am very satisfied with my GTX 970, and despite the whole 3.5GB RAM with 500MB of shit RAM controversy, it can still outperform AMD's top single card GPU, the R9 290X, in some games. That being said though, having bought a 4GB GPU, just for it to turn out that "4GB" doesn't actually mean 4GB, kinda sucks, but I don't think that it justifies the overwhelming hate the card now gets. It is still a great performance card, and it is still a great overclocker, and I wouldn't turn it in for a refund (hell, i'd actively recommend it), but I do support what these guys are trying to do with their lawsuit, because NVidia definitely screwed up.

 

[J Tyran]

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.

Everybody was happy, the tech reviewers were happy and the benchmarks were great, when they were out in the wild all the owners were happy and they got the performance they expected...

It was all gravy for about six months, until..

Some people noticed that within some games that can display the amount of VRAM a card has and some 3rd party software that displayed the amount currently in use that the card was only displaying or using 3.5GB, loads of different tech sites and small tech bloggers and YouTubers started torture tests on the card to basically force the symptoms of running out of VRAM (Frame rates crashing to single figures etc) earlier than the advertised 4GB. Nvidia got forced into an explanation, by then word had spread and people got pissed. Understandably so, its not overblown despite what some are saying. People didn't get the product they paid for and the consumer is right to be angry, even though most people will never have any issues with the card anyway.

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.

Its still a great card, the benchmarks prove it. Some of the measures different tech sites and bloggers are having to go to to "trigger" the issues with the frame buffer would start stressing chips like a 980, 780 range and R9 290-290X.

Running 21:9/4K/triple monitors with ultra settings, supersampling AA maxed and other in engine downscaling and every graphically intense feature on or maxed.

Its more of a case of being sold something under inaccurate pretenses, which is annoying and wrong and I agree with anyone demanding a refund or wanting to sue. I would have gone to trading standards here in the UK over this myself, but for people that are aware of the issue and know what they are getting its still a good card and good value.

Still the AMD response, dropping the price on their higher end cards again makes them an attractive at the moment too.

 

[major_chaos]

The funny thing here is that Nvida fucked with the wrong people. If this was affecting some budget card they might be a bit safer, but the only people affected by this are those running 4K/multimonitor i.e people with shitloads of disposable money. These are people who can afford to turn this into a fight if they don't think Nvida is doing enough.

 

[DoPo]

The funny thing here is that Nvida fucked with the wrong people. If this was affecting some budget card they might be a bit safer, but the only people affected by this are those running 4K/multimonitor i.e people with shitloads of disposable money.

Wouldn't those be the people who are most likely to have bought a GTX 980, though? I may be wrong here, but wasn't the 970 supposed to be for people who are bound by a budget rather than having "shitloads of money". At least that's why I got the card myself - it had good performance for the value and the 980 was too pricey to justify getting one. But I'm not after top tier, bleeding edge tech, either.

 

[wizzy555]

The funny thing here is that Nvida fucked with the wrong people. If this was affecting some budget card they might be a bit safer, but the only people affected by this are those running 4K/multimonitor i.e people with shitloads of disposable money.

Wouldn't those be the people who are most likely to have bought a GTX 980, though? I may be wrong here, but wasn't the 970 supposed to be for people who are bound by a budget rather than having "shitloads of money". At least that's why I got the card myself - it had good performance for the value and the 980 was too pricey to justify getting one. But I'm not after top tier, bleeding edge tech, either.

The 970 is for people who spend sensible amounts for money for good price/performance, the 980 is for people who spend stupid amounts of money and the 960 are for budgets.

That's my completely arbitrary and subjective interpretation.

 

[Strazdas]

Good. they need to be held accountable for directly lieing to costumers about the hardware they are selling.

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.

Thats a very quick way to get your TOS invalidated.

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.

The dissatisfaction came about when it was discovered that Nvidia put 512 of its 4GB of VRAM onto a very slow bus to save money, which meant that whenever someone starts utilizing above 3,5 GB of ram the slow ram kicks in and entire system waits for it to complete, thus hanging your performance. basically they lied about its performance and hardware specification and has made a card that works slow if you try to use it fully.

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.

a better analogy here would be:
the car reaches 75mph as advertised and once you try to reach the range between 90 and 75 it stalls and you end up moving at around 10mph, never reaching above 75, but in fact going BELLOW it if you try to go above.

 

[J Tyran]

The funny thing here is that Nvida fucked with the wrong people. If this was affecting some budget card they might be a bit safer, but the only people affected by this are those running 4K/multimonitor i.e people with shitloads of disposable money.

Wouldn't those be the people who are most likely to have bought a GTX 980, though? I may be wrong here, but wasn't the 970 supposed to be for people who are bound by a budget rather than having "shitloads of money". At least that's why I got the card myself - it had good performance for the value and the 980 was too pricey to justify getting one. But I'm not after top tier, bleeding edge tech, either.

The 970 is for people who spend sensible amounts for money for good price/performance, the 980 is for people who spend stupid amounts of money and the 960 are for budgets.

That's my completely arbitrary and subjective interpretation.

Well most of the people after a balance of price and performance are generally not interested in 4K, bleeding edge 21:9 monitors or triple monitor setups either. They have a superb 1920x1080 or a good 2560x1440 single panel and are not interested in spending 3/4s or more of the cost of their build on top of building the PC, you know because they are interested in price to performance.

 

[Zhukov]

[snip]

I have a question, and you seem to know what you're talking about.

I'm about to buy a PC with one of these GTX970 things in it.

So, despite being falsely advertised, it's still a good GPU, right? As in, people are pissed about the false claims (fair enough I guess), not the actual performance of the hardware, yeah?

 

[viranimus]

Good. they need to be held accountable for directly lieing to costumers about the hardware they are selling.

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.

Thats a very quick way to get your TOS invalidated.

Maybe so, but that did not stop AT&T, Steam, Sony, EA, Microsoft, Apple, Comcast, and literally hundreds of other corporations in a variety of media fields from doing exactly that based upon a supreme court ruling. So really I cannot fathom why Nvidia would be any different. Its not as if there is any sort of public outcry against having to abdicate legal rights for continued use of already purchased products or anything.

 

[kasperbbs]

I didn't buy it for 4GB's of ram, i bought it for the benchmarks that claimed that it was the best performer in the price range and so far i'm happy with my choice. Still it sucks that they lied, but even if i got my money back i'm not sure what else could i get right now. I imagine if i was running multiple monitors or trying to game on higher than 1080p resolutions i might be pissed.

 

[Strazdas]

Good. they need to be held accountable for directly lieing to costumers about the hardware they are selling.

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.

Thats a very quick way to get your TOS invalidated.

Maybe so, but that did not stop AT&T, Steam, Sony, EA, Microsoft, Apple, Comcast, and literally hundreds of other corporations in a variety of media fields from doing exactly that based upon a supreme court ruling. So really I cannot fathom why Nvidia would be any different. Its not as if there is any sort of public outcry against having to abdicate legal rights for continued use of already purchased products or anything.

The supreme court ruling sadly said that TOS is legally binding (which is limited to US and thier crazy only btw). It did not say it can circumvent current laws. and it never will, because otherwise you would sign a TOS to kill somone and legally murder people. thats not going to happen. TOS cannot circumvent laws. Laws allow CAS, thus TOS cannot circumvent CAS. They can have whatever they want in the TOS, its not a legal stopping point.

 

[J Tyran]

[snip]

I have a question, and you seem to know what you're talking about.

I'm about to buy a PC with one of these GTX970 things in it.

So, despite being falsely advertised, it's still a good GPU, right? As in, people are pissed about the false claims (fair enough I guess), not the actual performance of the hardware, yeah?

Yeah you have nothing to worry about unless you're intending to stress it almost as much as a higher end GPU on beyond HD resolutions, it was and still is among the best performing cards at that price point. It just doesn't perform as well under extreme frame buffer usage as a 4GB card should do, the truth is though under most circumstances demanding games rarely hit 2GB at 1080p and still comfortably fit within the cards 3.5GB at 1440p.

Maybe talk to your supplier about the issue though? See if you can leverage a slight price drop or get some freebies/extras thrown in? Could be worth a try.

 

[DoPo]

[snip]

I have a question, and you seem to know what you're talking about.

I'm about to buy a PC with one of these GTX970 things in it.

So, despite being falsely advertised, it's still a good GPU, right? As in, people are pissed about the false claims (fair enough I guess), not the actual performance of the hardware, yeah?

Are you running a bajillion screens at shitloads of pixels each? If so, maybe it's not for you.

As I said, I'm really happy with mine. I've got two screens but I only play one game at a time on them and "only" at 1080p, and I've never hit this issue. I literally finished playing Shadow of Mordor last night and it had all the graphics settings maxed out. No problem. It was really pretty, though

Overall, the VRAM is only a bottleneck when it comes to storing the frames rendered - so, in essence, when your video card renders frames, it places them on the "ready" pile. That's VRAM. And that's called "buffering". The bigger the frame is, the more space it requires, thus more VRAM. The more screens you have, the more frames are needed, as well. But I regularly have a video running on one screen and play something on the other.

The only problem you could have is with your PC case - the GTX 970 is actually quite long, so double check you have enough space. Saying that, my case and, as far as I'm aware, most mid-tower cases should be. My housemate did have to modify his case slightly though. With pliers. Only because the card needed just about a centimetre more space to enter (but there was enough space otherwise).

 

[wizzy555]

[snip]

I have a question, and you seem to know what you're talking about.

I'm about to buy a PC with one of these GTX970 things in it.

So, despite being falsely advertised, it's still a good GPU, right? As in, people are pissed about the false claims (fair enough I guess), not the actual performance of the hardware, yeah?

Yep that's pretty much what you should take away.

If you are very picky two other things to be concerned about:
1) Most versions of the card are very large and may have trouble with certain cases
2) Some models can "coil whine" (it makes a noise like a dying motor) in very harsh gaming or GPU processing situations, but in most games it isn't noticeable

 

[Kungfu_Teddybear]

I've not had performance problems with my 970, but I wish I knew about this before buying one.

 

[l0lwut]

I have been a very satisfied owner of a MSI GTX 970 for over six months now. It performs amazingly well for its price and aside from it getting a bit noisy when under stress I don't have any complaints. If I'd known about the memory handicap I would've probably still bought it for a similar price because the value is still one of the best I ever had.

Still, if you're an enthousiast for specs and really like maxing out your system I can see why this is your problem, or if you don't like false advertising (that I do believe was accidental in this case). It's still nVidia's fuckup so they do need to own up to it and offer refunds. I won't be taking one, however. The 970 is an awesome card. AMD making fun of this issue feels unearned, as they've been in the inferior position ever since the GTX 9-series came out.

 

[DTWolfwood]

I looked into this whole thing and realized it a big deal for peeps playing on 1440p only. So thats why i just bought a Gigabyte Windforce GTX970. Looking at the performance figures and price on a 1080p monitor, this is a non-issue.

HOWEVER, i'm glad people are calling their bullshit on this matter.

 

[direkiller]

[snip]

I have a question, and you seem to know what you're talking about.

I'm about to buy a PC with one of these GTX970 things in it.

So, despite being falsely advertised, it's still a good GPU, right? As in, people are pissed about the false claims (fair enough I guess), not the actual performance of the hardware, yeah?

It fails to deliver on 4k and up resolutions on dule screens. Something you would need an SLI to do anyway

If that is outside your scope then the card is fine.

 

[rgrekejin]

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.

I've had mine for three months, and I've been quite pleased with the performance as well. It's more than sufficient to play the latest releases with everything on ultra with the rest of my setup. I'm a little worried about how it'll fare with future games, VRAM requirements are just going up and up, but overall I like it a lot, and I don't think I'd consider returning it.

I'll still follow this lawsuit closely, though. If I can get a few bucks back as part of a settlement, I'll hardly say no.

Sorry for lack of link-to-post, my quote button seems to be broken.