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970 3.5GB 'Ramgate' - NVIDIA ordered to pay $30 to each owner

Dave2150

Dave2150

Dave2150

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According to TopClassAction website, NVIDIA has agreed to pay 30 USD to each buyer of GTX 970. Company will also cover additional attorneys’ fees, which are estimated at 1.3 million USD.

The overall settlement amount was not publicly disclosed within court papers, however Nvidia agreed to pay all consumers who purchased the GTX 970 graphics card and indicated there would not be a cap on the total amount it would pay consumers.

“The settlement is fair and reasonable and falls within the range of possible approval,” attorneys for the proposed Class said in the filing. “It is the product of extended arms-length negotiations between experienced attorneys familiar with the legal and factual issues of this case and all settlement class members are treated fairly under the terms of the settlement.”
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NVIDIA was accused of falsely advertising GM204-200 graphics card, which indeed had 4GB memory installed, but 0.5GB was separated from the main pipeline. This resulted in lower bandwidth when this particular memory pool was used. The lack of communication between marketing and engineering teams at NVIDIA caused a lot of controversy, as wrong specifications were advertised at NVIDIA’s own website and in GTX 970 reviewers guide. As a result, reviewers were also unaware that they were falsely reporting on wrong specifications. It was later discovered that GTX 970 also had less Raster Operating Units (ROPs) and less L2 cache (1.75MB not 2MB).

It is not clear how this settlement will affect buyers around the world. There no instruction on how to file a claim yet, but keep checking the link below.

http://videocardz.com/62720/nvidia-settles-class-action-lawsuit-over-geforce-gtx-970-controversy
 
Probably America only, but a class action suit would probably be easier in other parts of the world now given this ruling.
 
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Yet still many in here would argue all is AMD propaganda, carry on clapping at Nvidia for the "ground breaking" GTX970............... and still around here they promote it as a good card, better than AMD alternatives!
 
Panos said:
Yet still many in here would argue all is AMD propaganda, carry on clapping at Nvidia for the "ground breaking" GTX970............... and still around here they promote it as a good card, better than AMD alternatives!
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that's because it is a good card. it's easy for me to make a judgement, since I actually have one and ran it in 1440p for quite a while.
 
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The 970 is a good card, but it doesn't mean this was incredibly poor behaviour from Nvidia; 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. They have shown time and time again their corporate attitude of contempt for the consumer.
 
I had one and was a good 1080p card at it's time, but I did notice stuttering when using DSR for higher resolutions. Returned it courtesy of OcUK for a full refund after the segmented memory bus scam. Thankfully NVIDIA haven't tried that crap with the 1060 and 1070.

Would never recommend a new 970 over a 480/390 though, AMD are much better going forward (particularly if you keep your cards for ages) and have a history of cards getting faster over the years. AMD give such a big boost to their older cards in Vulkan. Previous architechture NVIDIA cards seem to regress in performance compared to AMD.
 
I didn't even know there was a lawsuit going on. Nvidia ignored the issue at the time which with hindsight may not have been a good idea. The cost now is much greater than it would have been if they had accepted their mistake and re-advertised the card correctly.

Serves them right after the contempt they showed towards their customers.
 
Usual suspects laughed it off and said it wouldn't happen.:p

In with the 'Twice as fast as TX' before we hear 'Overclockers Dream' damage control comments.:D

At the end of the day the 970 was still a fantastic card once they fine tuned the vram handicap.
 
I always thought it was a bit cheeky of ATI adding up the mem on their dual cards. I bet a lot of people bought 295x2s thinking with 8gig they could run 4k before they found out it was getting up to 4gig then running out.

Technically the card has got 8gigs so theyre not breaking any laws but it always felt a bit deceptive to me.
 
Griffildur said:
that's because it is a good card. it's easy for me to make a judgement, since I actually have one and ran it in 1440p for quite a while.
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I got a refund from OCuk after the 6 month (of pain and card swapping) wait for Nvidia's fix which never came. Stutter that made me feel dizzy and odd slow downs that would reduce FPS to single digits. It wasn't my system as my 290 / 980Ti do not suffer any issues.
 
I run mine at 1440, never had any trouble. Sometimes struggles to keep 60fps but the drops aren't jarring. So if I go down to the courthouse waving my 2nd hand Jetstream they should give me $30 right? What's that in pounds now? Threepence ha'penny?
 
It's the correct decision. I don't believe Nvidia intentionally misled people but that's altogether irrelevant to the fact that consumers were misinformed about what exactly it was they were buying.

Real world difference was negligible though, but the longevity of the card probably does suffer.
 
BluD said:
I always thought it was a bit cheeky of ATI adding up the mem on their dual cards. I bet a lot of people bought 295x2s thinking with 8gig they could run 4k before they found out it was getting up to 4gig then running out.

Technically the card has got 8gigs so theyre not breaking any laws but it always felt a bit deceptive to me.
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" Technically" nothing the dual cards physically have the stated ram. And just incase it escaped your notice nvidia also advertised dual GPU cards in the sameway.
 
Wrinkly said:
I got a refund from OCuk after the 6 month (of pain and card swapping) wait for Nvidia's fix which never came. Stutter that made me feel dizzy and odd slow downs that would reduce FPS to single digits. It wasn't my system as my 290 / 980Ti do not suffer any issues.
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maybe you had a bad card, I did not notice any stutter, you can see what system I have, just replace the 1080 I have now with the MSI 970 I had for a year and a half.

Ran a lot of games at 2560 x 1440 without any major issues and I like to turn things on :)
 
Griffildur said:
maybe you had a bad card, I did not notice any stutter, you can see what system I have, just replace the 1080 I have now with the MSI 970 I had for a year and a half.

Ran a lot of games at 2560 x 1440 without any major issues and I like to turn things on :)
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the thing is if you dont play a game that needs it you wont. i mostly play smite, got a 4k screen from overclockers delivered today, amazing looks but only 1gb VRAM usage.
now i would be fine with a 970(i have a 390) since i never really go over 2gb vram at 4k i need a more powerful gpu than i do quantities of vram.

but assuming your favorite game used 3.9gb vram and you played that game in your spare time everyday. hell maybe it made up 50% of your gaming time(AVA made 100% of mine for 1 year and 90% for 3 others) then you'll be mad, its not about the % of games affected for each person it's about the % of your time you should be enjoying.
 
shankly1985 said:
Good they deserve it.
Nvidia got off easy on this by the general gaming community. Madness how people can even defend nvidia about this.
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It was pretty much the only thing that stopped me buying a 970. The missing 0.5 gig vram really cheesed me off, sufficiently so not to buy, even when they hit the 2nd hand market.
 
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