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The GTX 970 has been an incredibly successful graphics card for Nvidia, it even went on to become the most popular GPU on the Steam Hardware Survey. However, its time in the sun has not been without controversy. The GTX 970 was sold as having 4GB of VRAM but eventually buyers learned that only 3.5GB of it was useable. This eventually led to a lawsuit, which has reportedly been settled this week.
According to TopClassAction, a website dedicated to following class-action lawsuits, Nvidia has agreed to settle the case and will pay back $30 (USD) to those involved in the suit and will also cover the attorney fees, which apparently amount to $1.3 million.
This particular lawsuit originated back in February 2015 and alleged that Nvidia has falsely advertised the GTX 970. This is due to the fact that it was pitched as a 4GB card, but it was later discovered that 500MB of the memory was separate from the main pipeline, effectively leaving most users with 3.5GB of VRAM.
According to the report, Nvidia still denies wrongdoing but entered a settlement agreement as the deal was seen as being in the best interest of all parties involved.
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KitGuru Says: There was a lot of uproar following the initial GTX 970 VRAM reports but it seemed to settle down over time. Now with this lawsuit settled, it looks like Nvidia can put the controversy to rest. Did any of you follow the GTX 970 VRAM controversy? Do you think Nvidia was in the wrong, or was it blown out of proportion?
100% glad they have had to pay out something. To market it identically when they knew that 0.5GB was unusable in the same way as the other 3.5GB or every other card out there was dishonest at best, fraud at worst.
Not that fond of Nvidia’s practices anyway, and this saga further reinforced this. This is why we need AMD to be competitive, Nvidia having no competitor would be disastrous.
Would of been better if they offered another triple A game out of your choice of 3.
It was blown way out of proportion. It’s been shown to not matter one bit under playable conditions. Probably 20,000 people got $30 each and the lawyers got $700,000. Of those 20,000, how many bought the card because they thought it had 4 GB of full speed memory, instead of 3.5 GB and 0.5 GB partitions? Probably less than 10%. The majority just saw an opportunity to get money and so joined. Most of the rest are paranoid people who get slighted easily. Whole lot of hubbub and over a million dollars misappropriated for less than 2,000 people to be renumerated for an honest and reasonable complaint. (Though the complaint is misguided. The card works exactly as it would without the partitioning for almost everyone, but the 2,000 buyers of the card presumably would honestly not have made the purchase if they knew about the partitioning at the time.)
its not only the 0.5GB ram but also they lied about the specs of the ROP units in the card when they sent it out to reviews they supposedly even sent different models. Due to the performance being like identical to a 980 (just slightly under clocked) and for $200 less they decided to cut out some ROP units (didn’t cost them any extra to include them it just made a $200 market difference). Because they cut out the ROPs it made them have to acess the ram differently then it normally did causing poor bandwidth in the last 500MB. Plus the card performed worse without the extra ROPS in general. So a combination of being lied to, switching specs, sending reviews different models then the ones they sold to the public all contributed to this and in the end it was all because they wanted to make a high end card people could spend extra money on for teirs in the market… amd used to do this when they made tripple core CPUS by cutting out an extra core and then selling it cheaper even though it cost the same to make as the quad core.
SO it looks like the attorney’s made out well by getting 1.3 million & the people suing get $30 bucks each and Nvidia still says & thinks it did no wrong in all of this. Lets see 3.5GB to be used as excepted & .5 used in a crippled fashion. Less ROP’s than advertised less L2 Cache but hey they did no wrong here…..right. I was going to get a couple 970’s before the memory & other features were revealed to be wrong I ended up getting 2 AMD cards instead. I am now trying to decide if I should trust Nvidia again because I am ready to upgrade again or just wait for AMD to release Vega based cards. I was rather looking forward to a couple Geforce 1080 Ti’s when released mind you.
NOT unusable but just slower. Also, It’s sooo disastrous… riiight. We’re just getting cards that are now double the performance as the last gen for the first time…
chances are they would of all been UBIshit games…….
“its not only the 0.5GB ram but also they lied about the specs of the ROP
units in the card when they sent it out to reviewers they supposedly
even sent different models.”
I have never heard anything about sending different cards out to reviewers. Can you find any verification of that? Because I think that’s nonsense.
“Due to the performance being like identical to a 980 (just slightly
under clocked) and for $200 less they decided to cut out some ROP units
(didn’t cost them any extra to include them it just made a $200 market
difference).”
OK, now I can see you’re just a conspiracy theorist. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s has 75% of the shaders. Both the 980 and 970 are mostly shader bound, not ROP or memory bound. Why would they waste the die space making all those shaders for the 980 that aren’t useful, anyway?
Your post is case and point for people causing hubbub over nothing.
*cough* 8gb card pretending to be a 4gb card and hoping no-one looks up its skirt *cough*. Its still happening all the time. I have a R9 290X all a R9 290 is is the same chip with 4 compute unites disabled. You aren’t telling anyone anything new. Manufacturers and companies are not your friend and when this bullshit blows over the next bullshit will roll in, it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that graphics cards are being shipped to reviewers with special OC software modes ena………oh damn have we done that one too?
only in VR Brandon Vega
No, in general.
What a bunch of crybabies, Nvidia should have told them to stick a cucumber up their asses. Maybe it’d help them loosen up.
It wasn’t false advertisement, it was 4GB and .5GB was usable it was simply slower. I used over 3.5 on mine all the time and it worked fine. The ppl lying through their teeth saying that the instant they went over 3.5 they started getting major issues were either lying through their teeth or had some other software/hardware issue (probably improper driver updates). Or trying to play a new title on Windows XP or some shit.
I just hope everyone that decided to join the class action gets nothing but DOA shit from now on because they are either incompetent owners or little wannabe frauds
Or an idiot that wanted a 970 to VR on because that’s the only setting that would actually make a difference. That would fall under incompetent.
VR
Im sorry to say but this whole “VR ready” slogan everyone is throwing around is just PR. The previous generation graphics card are also strong enough to do VR as well. The “VR ready” tag is just a way of advertising to you that the card is strong enough to do VR. The card is just as powerful in dealing with other applications
Woah look out guys we have a nvidia fanboy sympathizer over here. They flat out lied about their product, end of story. Just because what they lied about didnt have much of a real world impact doesnt take away from the fact that they lied and was not being up front with their product. It is flat out misrepresentation. Imagine its like buying a car, you are told that it will do 150mph but it really can only do 130mph, it should not affect you cause speed limits and all but it still does not do what its advertised to do
still has 4GIG of USEABLE RAM ..they didn;t like about that.
How ever the speed of the last 500mb is very questionable, but none the less very still useable,.. which users still had full access to all 4 gig of vram.
Lol but ALL Nvidia cards are like this so why not sue them for the mass majority…. It’s one reason why I do not buy them! If I buy 4Gb I want it!
Also they all get $30? Even more lols. What a waste of time for pennies.
Now someone needs to sue the Ubiliars and it’s a start in forcing companies to stop lying from the big companies.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8935/geforce-gtx-970-correcting-the-specs-exploring-memory-allocation
Not just 3.5 but also ROP count.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8935/geforce-gtx-970-correcting-the-specs-exploring-memory-allocation
Even if it a good card ,Why are you defending the company that just cheating on you ?
I think after reading this article I am more concerned about the $1.3 million in attorney fees, What a joke the world is coming to.
My question throughout this entire thing is, why was there no outcry about the GTX 660 which had the same issue? The GTX 660 was advertised and sold as a 2GB card with 192 bit bus I believe, except for some OEM cards with 1.5 or 3GB. That’s because on the 2GB cards, 500MB ran off a seperate 64 bit bus…and nobody seemed to care. I want my $120 settlement for that, as I bought 4 of those cards.
Exactly. GTX 980 here i use for low key 4k, I doubt there’s any VR headset that’ll put any more pressure on it than that
It will easily put more pressure than that. Without single pass rendering, 3D scene and lot of shaders (shadows and other expensive stuff) has to be computed twice in VR.
Add to that the fact that the images has to be rendered at x1.4 the intended resolution (since the “wrap” will decrease the image size) and you will easily find (AAA) games which will put more pressure on your gpu than “simple” 4k rendering.
Chances are they would all use more than 3.5GB ^^
OK, so AAA games not out yet will punish my GPU. Isn’t that a given? Looking at the stats VR res is almost half 4k. My most demanding game getting 50’C there’s plenty room for more
I’m talking about AAA games already out there (Project Cars, etc.)
That’s not true, it’d be like buying a car that is displayed as going 150MPH, and it goes 150MPH, but it won’t go 150MPH while towing a trailer full of shit.
If you made a claim about the ROP count which Demetris mentioned then THAT would have at least been a valid argument. The VRAM argument is just making shit up in attempt to make it sound like a bigger deal and get money back because people are greedy.
My first time seeing this, probably because it’s a lot less of an “issue” than the VRAM, I’d agree it’s wrong for them to try to advertise it as that unless it was just an advertising mistake. How fast did they fix that or did they not fix it until the VRAM prioritizing was released?
*Slow clap* Hats off to you.
Note the timing. NVidia waited until the newer graphics cards were out and selling well before settling the suit. The GTX 970 is now a lot cheaper due to the enforced rebate so more people will be buying the card (even if it is a generation behind). NVidia might actually make money from this if the card continues to sell well at the new lower cost. Suddenly the GTX 970 is back in the top ten of Amazon’s list at #5.
I think OJ Simpson paid more for his attorneys. To a $5 billion dollar a year company, this was a nuisance suit, nothing more.