Class Action Lawsuit against Nvidia and Gigabyte for the 970

[Chimaera]

I saw this today on my news feed and it made me kind of scratch my head. I don't have a 970, so I haven't been affected by this, but I can see this possibly being a bit of a black eye for Nvidia if the court decides to accept the lawsuit.  What do you guys think about this? Valid lawsuit or people trying to make a fast buck?

 

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

[azza1991]

I've got an Asus GTX 970 and i seriously dont know that all the nonsense is about, 3.5GB that works at full speed and 500mb that works at a lower speed because of an engineering fault, thats it. No biggie. Still has 4GB that CAN be used. 

 

FC4, AC:U, BF4, BF:HL all work on ultra settings @1080p with no problems for me. Further more the serious problems of performance drops seem to be hard to replicate and i suspect it only happens on cheaper cards with cheap RAM modules. 

 

Yeah it was a bit of a PR mess up though ill give you that. 

[CODENAME: レイブン]

WOW....people trying to make a fast buck. Sep 18, 2014 is when the card came out, now they want to do file a class act lawsuit?.   Just LOL

[Zepheris]

I've got an Asus GTX 970 and i seriously dont know that all the nonsense is about, 3.5GB that works at full speed and 500mb that works at a lower speed because of an engineering fault, thats it. No biggie. Still has 4GB that CAN be used. 

 

FC4, AC:U, BF4, BF:HL all work on ultra settings @1080p with no problems for me. Further more the serious problems of performance drops seem to be hard to replicate and i suspect it only happens on cheaper cards with cheap RAM modules. 

 

Yeah it was a bit of a PR mess up though ill give you that. 

 

 

It's a pain if you play 1440p or above but not a disaster. But I think it's just silly with "I sue you for anything" over there

[Nevermore]

even if you notice it or not you were still lied to...it's like buying a 6pack and the last 2 were  90%water.. you might not care because you could only drink two... but at some point you might have needed the last two

 

azza1991 I highly doubt that you played AC:U on max with no problems or you just didn't notice them and none of the other games you played are new engines some of them are 3~years old 

 

that said usually the only ones to benefit for a class action lawsuit are the lawyers XD

every "guy" get maybe 10$ and the lawyers 300000$ 

But i'm still glad something was done it's dangerous to let companies get away with anything shady as it will just continue to do so and other will adopt the practice  

[Chimaera]

I love Nvidia and have ever only owned one ATI/AMD card ever in my life. I highly doubt I would ever change my mind on that barring some kind of huge breakthrough that AMD was able to pull off that Nvidia just couldn't match. I am more concerned about the negative repercussions for Nvidia worldwide if they end up having to pay out because a jury (notice they want a jury trial) is probably going to be ignorant of the facts of technology and if the jury awards damages, it sets a legal precedent.

[Nevermore]

back in the day Intel has evidently fabricated benchmarks for their Pentium 4 and 15 years later they paid 15$ to the Pentium 4 users

so it's nothing new... and people think they will get a lot of money but at the end of the days it's the lawyers who  gets the big bucks 

 

AMD is usually the best price to performance but the 970 took that place with it's 4GB of ram

 

Nvidia makes amazing cards and no one can deny that.. their pricing is usually bad but thats because there not much competition out there and at the end of the day companies are out to make money

 

and both companies has done shady things

[Minted]

Nerd rage strikes again.... Give them an inch and they will take a mile.... Never happy and always looking for something to get all angry at.

 

The industry is a double edged sword, you can make a lot of money from people who will throw thousands to buy, well not a lot but at the same time will make your life a living hell when they get an excuse, and they will find an excuse.

 

Just look at REC with CIG, it wouldn't surprise me at all if some have already thought about suing them as the game isn't EXACTLY how they want it to be.

 

But yeh it sounds like some just want their money back so they can have say 6 months of free gaming and now upgrade to something better.

[Ricko13]

I just got an ASUS 970 and loving every minute of it, my first NVidia card and I can see why folks love them over "the other white meat".

 

This RAM-Gate bullshit really is just a bunch of min-maxing monkey nerds that can't get their last slithering frame per second, that their game loads an extra 10 seconds or they can't have ALL THE SUPER SHADERS 4.5XXXXL loaded in the game...

 

True Story. May contain peanuts.

[Nevermore]

Nerd rage strikes again.... Give them an inch and they will take a mile.... Never happy and always looking for something to get all angry at.

 

The industry is a double edged sword, you can make a lot of money from people who will throw thousands to buy, well not a lot but at the same time will make your life a living hell when they get an excuse, and they will find an excuse.

 

Just look at REC with CIG, it wouldn't surprise me at all if some have already thought about suing them as the game isn't EXACTLY how they want it to be.

 

But yeh it sounds like some just want their money back so they can have say 6 months of free gaming and now upgrade to something better.

 

thats not the same at all ... they literally misrepresented their product  don't tell me that no one from the engineering team ever looks at the stats in advertising or followed their product on after release ?

the card is still a great card tho what people are complaining about is when the card uses all 4 gb some of the cards  crashed or slows down alot...

[Genesis]

Nvidia lied and didn't take appropriate action and instead waited for 3rd party professionals to find out and release the news.  

 

The bottom line is they lied.  That is something you can get sued for.  If anything this will lead to a more consumer friendly approach from all companies in the future.

[Juntau]

Did they truly misrepresent the product. It says 4 gig, it has 4 gig. Does it say anywhere that all 4 gig are usable? Probably not. The argument about 1440p may have some merit, but the card was not marketed for Ultra HD, so it all comes down to knowing what you are buying. At 1080p the card has stellar reviews so the card is functioning as it was designed.

 

It seems to me to be just another money grab by overpaid lawyers to put the big corporation in it's place. Like said above, this is nothing new.

[Rain2reign]

I've got an Asus GTX 970 and i seriously dont know that all the nonsense is about, 3.5GB that works at full speed and 500mb that works at a lower speed because of an engineering fault, thats it. No biggie. Still has 4GB that CAN be used. 

 

FC4, AC:U, BF4, BF:HL all work on ultra settings @1080p with no problems for me. Further more the serious problems of performance drops seem to be hard to replicate and i suspect it only happens on cheaper cards with cheap RAM modules. 

 

Yeah it was a bit of a PR mess up though ill give you that. 

 

For those that use 1080p resolution at max. will not be able to see/notice the difference! With the upcoming resolutions(monitor) with a resolution ABOVE 1080p in addition to games and programs that will be using more and more vram between now and at least 6-8 months. That 0.5GB will make a difference and faults will become more noticeable. Oh and the card does not use 4GB as is stated in your message. The card uses 3.5GB at max, the 0.5GB is not "usable". From which the mentioned 0.5GB is not nearly as 'optimized'/properly working in comparison to the architecture of a 0.5GB (unit) from the actually working and available 3.5GB. Also apart from the memory issue, Nvidia GTX970 also doesn't have the amount of (less than stated) rops(render output unit) as it should have.

 

Not to mention, in some countries in which that law suite is being "eye-hawked". This mess with miss informing, communications failure or just simply not stating what it's meant to be. Is and will be punishable (by their respective) law(s).

[p...]

This lawsuit seems pointless. Even if nVdia loses there's no reason to think that the company losing a few mil will result in some Epiphany. As long as people keep buying PC hardware without asking questions, tech companies will keep tossing unfinished hardware onto the market.

EDIT: I am referring to the industry a whole, not just nVidia.

[Sparkie]

Nvidia lied and didn't take appropriate action and instead waited for 3rd party professionals to find out and release the news.  

 

The bottom line is they lied.  That is something you can get sued for.  If anything this will lead to a more consumer friendly approach from all companies in the future.

I seriously doubt it will lead to anything more than higher priced cards in the future!  In case you all haven't noticed a company will NEVER foot the bill!  They will merely pass it on to the consumer in form of higher prices from the point it cost them on out!

 

Sparkie

The Dragon

[azza1991]

azza1991 I highly doubt that you played AC:U on max with no problems or you just didn't notice them and none of the other games you played are new engines some of them are 3~years old 

 

@Nevermore Well my card is OC'd past the ASUS factory OC and its 'only' on 1080p i'll admit that but it is running on the "ultra" pre-set in game, however i use Nvidia's TAXX for AA and HBAO+ for AO (very little difference really). I don't see why a GTX 970 shouldn't run it even on stock.  

 

For those that use 1080p resolution at max. will not be able to see/notice the difference! With the upcoming resolutions(monitor) with a resolution ABOVE 1080p in addition to games and programs that will be using more and more vram between now and at least 6-8 months. That 0.5GB will make a difference and faults will become more noticeable. Oh and the card does not use 4GB as is stated in your message. The card uses 3.5GB at max, the 0.5GB is not "usable". From which the mentioned 0.5GB is not nearly as 'optimized'/properly working in comparison to the architecture of a 0.5GB (unit) from the actually working and available 3.5GB. Also apart from the memory issue, Nvidia GTX970 also doesn't have the amount of (less than stated) rops(render output unit) as it should have.

 

@rain2reign I agree with the larger risk of problems with 1080p+ gaming, and i did have to watch what settings i was using in Shadow of mordor, but that was a notoriously VRAM heavy game.  EDIT: and has been optimised some what since release

 

However i don't know where you got you're info from about the 500mb not being "usable", most good review sites state that its just a large reduction of memory bandwidth (150gb/s down to as low as 20gb/s) after 3.3GB of VRAM is used. Unless I've misunderstood something here?

[Rain2reign]

However i don't know where you got you're info from about the 500mb not being "usable", most good review sites state that its just a large reduction of memory bandwidth (150gb/s down to as low as 20gb/s) after 3.3GB of VRAM is used. Unless I've misunderstood something here?

 

I might not have used the right words, but what i meant was to say was that the mentioned 0.5GB would not have made a big difference in that aspect as it was not optimized as the remaining 3.5GB.

 

More like it was glued to it afterwards to give it more public attention..

 

Edit: found this on Anandtech, what the specs were and corrected to.

 

What should have been/was promised:

4GB GDDR5, 7.0 Gbps, 256-bit, 224GB/s

 

What you received instead (roughly estimated):

• 4GB GDDR5 total memory
• 0-3,5GB: 7.0 Gbps, 224-bit*, 196GB/s**
• 3,5-4,0GB: 3.5 Gbps, 32-bit*, 28GB/s**
• * peak bus width 256-bit, ** peak bandwidth 224 GB/s

[GeraldEvans]

Did they truly misrepresent the product. It says 4 gig, it has 4 gig. Does it say anywhere that all 4 gig are usable? Probably not. The argument about 1440p may have some merit, but the card was not marketed for Ultra HD, so it all comes down to knowing what you are buying. At 1080p the card has stellar reviews so the card is functioning as it was designed.

It is implied that all 4Gb are usable. Otherwise that V6 under the hood is just there for weight over the front axle since it only operates as a V4.

As for higher resolutions:

EVGA

Super-Smooth and Stutter-Free

GeForce GTX 970 cards support tear-free, super-fast NVIDIA G-Sync monitor display technology, including 4K. Together, these technologies provide the most immersive and competitive gaming experiences possible.

[Irres]

I have a 970m in my laptop does this impact me?

I would hope not.

[Rain2reign]

@Irres, as far as i am informed, it only concerns the GTX 970 (without the M; not laptop model). Someone may correct me, if i am mistaken here.

[Genesis]

This lawsuit seems pointless. Even if nVdia loses there's no reason to think that the company losing a few mil will result in some Epiphany. As long as people keep buying PC hardware without asking questions, tech companies will keep tossing unfinished hardware onto the market.

EDIT: I am referring to the industry a whole, not just nVidia.

You mean the shareholders will lose money.  Passing the buck in nvidias case would just lose more consumers to the competition.

 

 

What nvidia did was shady as fuck.  No amount of mental gymnastics can defend that.  I can imagine the horrors if this started to become normal practice.

 

 

Off topic:

Between this and patent trolling samsung, I've got to question nvidias sanity to self preservation.

 

Some facts about Samsung:

• Didn't start the lawsuit war

• Worlds largest manufacturer of LCD displays

• Worlds largest manufacturer of smart phones

• 2nd largest company in the world making semiconductors.

• Samsung became the largest producer of memory chips in the world in 1992, and is the world's second-largest chipmaker after Intel.

[p...]

I can imagine the horrors if this started to become normal practice.

Are you saying that you think this isn't normal practice in the tech industry?

[GeraldEvans]

(^Cynic - accurate though)

[Pagan-Tempest]

Fortunately, this won't be affecting me as I plan (at least at this point) to be playing SC on my HDTV in 1080p. (I purchased an EVGA 970 a few days ago.)

 

And, frankly, I doubt anyone who plans on running the PU on three or more monitors (or in 4K) on very high plus settings will be using the current generation of hardware unless they plan on running quad 980's or something similar. 

 

Still, this is quite the shady way to do business. 

[Pagan-Tempest]

Actually...

 

I had a little chat with myself about "principles," and...

 

I'm returning the card for a full refund to Amazon, and I'm replacing it with an XFX R9 290X Black Edition card. The only way to vote on this issue is with your wallet after all!