Nvidia Hit with False Advertising Suit over GTX 970 Performance

[artivix]

Gaming enthusiasts have been griping for months that Nvidia's GeForce GTX 970 graphics chip doesn't operate up to snuff, and now someone has taken the company to court over it.

Nvidia was hit with a class action lawsuit Thursday that claims it misled customers about the capabilities of the GTX 970, which was released in September.

Nvidia markets the chip as having 4GB of performance-boosting video RAM, but some users have complained the chip falters after using 3.5GB of that allocation.

The lawsuit says the remaining half gigabyte runs 80 percent slower than it's supposed to. That can cause images to stutter on a high resolution screen and some games to perform poorly, the suit says.

It was filed in the U.S. District Court for Northern California and names as defendants Nvidia and Giga-Byte Technology, which sells the GTX 970 in graphics cards.

Nvidia declined to comment on the lawsuit Friday and Giga-Byte couldn't immediately be reached.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2887...dvertising-suit-over-gtx-970-performance.html

ANDREW OSTROWSKI, individuallyand on behalf of all others similarly situated, Plaintiff,
v.
NVIDIA CORPORATION andGIGABYTE GLOBAL BUSINESSCORPORATION D/B/A GIGA-BYTETECHNOLOGY CO. LTD.,​

Class Action Lawsuit copy on Scribd with initial four counts of false advertising --

http://www.scribd.com/doc/256406451/Nvidia-lawsuit-over-GTX-970


Many people are saying that most litigation is for money, but in this case the information obtained by subpoena from Nvidia will answer a lot of questions that many people have.

Some questions like who are the executives, managers and directors who knew the exact specs of the product?

After a large number of complaints about the GTX 970 (SLI) performance in a number of games started a number of weeks after release, who were the people in tech support that handled the complaints and what were their communications with upper level managers and executives?

It is known that Nvidia has a well funded technical marketing team that helped conduct and promote tests like FCAT on competitor products and pushes any significant findings to tech and news websites. What role did this team play or not play in testing the GTX 970 in order to ascertain its strengths and weaknesses in comparison with competitor products and what information was shared with people inside and outside of Nvidia regarding the capabilities of the GTX 970?

 

[stockwiz]

They do deserve it. There's no way they didn't know they were adding 500MB of slow memory into the card and probably did it purposely as a way of 'planned obsolescence" so that as games started hitting the 3.5GB mark in memory usage people would be forced to upgrade. Companies need to be held accountable for their dishonestly even if most of the money goes to the lawyers. Yes the card is good, but no it's no excuse for dishonest marketing and tactics such as this, and then their quiet response instead of admitting they were wrong. Had they admitted they were wrong and accepted refunds more money would have went back to the customer, us.. now they spend a much of money in legal fees and if they lose, we might get back 20 bucks as a settlement after legal fees and they are still out the money. Way to satisfy the customer.

 

[Plimogz]

Not planned obsolescence, I don't think. More like hitting the box-front bulletpoints: "4GB VRAM, like 980, 290(x)!" The craziest part is that 970 was every bit fast enough and priced well enough that had it simply been a 3.5GB card from the outset, no one would have much faulted it.

The more difficult call, IMO, is the ROP/L2$ issue; miss-communication, deception or incompetence? hard to say for sure.

 

[chubbyfatazn]

Why just Gigabyte? Is there something that precludes them from going after all AIBs?

 

[DarkKnightDude]

They lied to consumers, end of story. Don't get me wrong, I'd probably get a 970 for its fantastic performance, but they shouldn't have lied.

Maybe Gigabyte is an easier target.

 

[Hitman928]

I doubt we'll get any information, it will be settled out of court and none of the information listed in the op will probably ever see the light of day.

 

[Rvenger]

Gigabyte has more problems than just graphics cards. Their motherboards lately have been pretty bad.

 

[ocre]

I am glad there is a lawsuit but i think that it should have focused on all the specs, not just the sole claim that the gimped ram hurt gamers performance.

I mean, performance is one thing but there other ways being misled could hurt a PC geek.

See, i believe that there are plenty of PC enthusiast that buy HW based on specs. People can say all day long that no one buys on ROPS but these numbers can mean something. People would buy intel P4 chips based on the actual ghz number, even if the performance was way worse than an AMD counterpart. But it wasnt just the rated speed, remember now, Intel was advertizing cache just as well. And people would repeat this stuff, even if they didnt know what it meant. They would buy these things because they felt like it was something special.

When you sue, it has to be because someone was hurt or there was damages. Just saying the memory made their games slower, thats not really gonna be easy to prove. You would need an nvidia card with the 970 cuda cores but not segmented ram to try to prove it.

I think the betrayal and duped feeling could have been damaging to the enthusiast that buys based on specs alone. Then we have the incovience of returning the cards and the time without their favorite past time, gaming. All these things can add more to the damages.

I think nvidia should have to face this but focusing on memory segmentation and claiming it caused lower frame rates, well its gonna be a difficult case to prove.

Especially now that nvidia is probably putting their most talented driver minds on the task. Already users see an improvement in memory allocation and real improvements in games. Nvidia was already thinking about the legal issues they may be facing when they had pete backtrack his statement that they were working on a driver to improve the 970 memory issue. The changed their stance and a driver came out just a week or 2 later. This driver didnt say anything about improving 970 memory management but it did improve not only the the avoiding >3.5gb but also stuttering out in a lot of games.

But, i am sure nvidia is not done. And now they know they are getting sued, they have time to keep improving this. If we were having debates about how little or how much the gimped ram hurt performance on a tech forum before the new drivers, good luck proving in the courts that this issue is profound enough that people need payed money.....especially after nvidia has much more time to further improve things, months and months down the road.

I just think that there should have been a broader case brought against nvidia. Perhaps there will be several more law firms going at them, idk. This one may not get very far. I figure they just expect nvidia to pay out and not fight it. I dont think nvidia will pay any settlement and will happily to court.

Regardless, I had a gtx 970 and i like money!!!!!!

So where do i sign up?

 

[Silverforce11]

Regardless, I had a gtx 970 and i like money!!!!!!

So where do i sign up?

You'll probably get 50 cents in 10 years time.

Not really about money, just holding these companies accountable when they lie blatantly to the consumers.

 

[AnandThenMan]

I am glad there is a lawsuit but i think that it should have focused on all the specs, not just the sole claim that the gimped ram hurt gamers performance.

I took a quick look at the claim it's all in there not just the memory issue. On GigaByte only being named if the case proceeds others will no doubt be added.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I approve.

I've owned many nvidia cards, including a GTX 680 as my current card. If I needed a new card today I'd probably get a 980 since single-card performance, heat and noise matter to me more than frames-per-$.

But I feel nvidia deserves to be punished for "allegedly" lying to consumers and reviewers about the specs of the 970. They apparently did not learn their lesson about being honest after bumpgate, so maybe another big payout will convince them that hiding problems is not the right approach.

 

[raghu78]

This lawsuit is well justified. Nvidia will have a tough time arguing the facts. The reviewer guide clearly misrepresented the product specs. Customers bought clearly based on the specs and reviews. The performance effects of the memory segmentation was found by users on their own when playing games which hit more than 3.5 GB (especially in SLI where the GPU power was there but the VRAM was causing the problems) and finally the CUDA program which tested bandwidth per memory partition revealed the discrepancy.

Nvidia revealed the truth about the memory segmentation, the missing ROPs / L2 only when they were forced to. They had 4 months to come clean but they did not. Its easy to prove this is a case of wilful misrepresentation of facts. Anyway the fact that this issue went to court is a slap on the face to Nvidia to not take the consumer for a fool. But knowing Nvidia they haven't changed a bit from ths bumpgate fiasco. They are arrogant, do not take responsibility for their mistakes (even in this case they did not come out with the correct specs on their own before consumers found out problems and raised questions) and feign innocence. The lawyers are going to have a field day and Nvidia has lost more than gained in the bargain over the long run.

 

[Subyman]

Curious to see where this goes. I don't expect much compensation will come from it, but at least it may shed some light on what went on in corporate. IMO ROPs is more important than the 500MB. They may be able to wiggle out of the 4GB ->3.5+0.5 issue, but they can't do anything about straight up lying about the ROP count.

 

[BFG10K]

As others have said, it's not really about the money, but more about getting answers and accountability.

 

[3DVagabond]

I approve.

I've owned many nvidia cards, including a GTX 680 as my current card. If I needed a new card today I'd probably get a 980 since single-card performance, heat and noise matter to me more than frames-per-$.

But I feel nvidia deserves to be punished for "allegedly" lying to consumers and reviewers about the specs of the 970. They apparently did not learn their lesson about being honest after bumpgate, so maybe another big payout will convince them that hiding problems is not the right approach.

The best way to punish them is not to buy their product. By buying a 980 you are simply letting them past the cost of said punishment on to you.

 

[gdansk]

I'm not keen on this. Almost a waste of everyone's time and money. Maybe it's necessary for Nvidia to learn the lesson? But I suspect the backlash alone was enough.

 

[chubbyfatazn]

But I suspect the backlash alone was enough.

I doubt it. There's always gonna be enough fanboys and people who buy NV just because it's NV, even if we ignore the fact the 980 still sits at the top as far as single-card performance is concerned.

Them disabling ocing on mobile parts, claiming that that ability was due to a bug, and then doubling back and re-enabling it as a "feature" doesn't really sit well with me. Hell they even did that *after* the 970 memory segmentation thing was "discovered."

 

[frozentundra123456]

I'm not keen on this. Almost a waste of everyone's time and money. Maybe it's necessary for Nvidia to learn the lesson? But I suspect the backlash alone was enough.

i agree. Too bad there just cant be a penalty declared by a govt agency or something. I agree the marketing was innacurate, but the main beneficiaries of this will likely be the attorneys. Maybe it was useful as a deterrent, but by the time any benefit filters down to the consumer i think it will be negligible.

 

[Headfoot]

I doubt we'll get any information, it will be settled out of court and none of the information listed in the op will probably ever see the light of day.

This.

If anything secret comes up in discovery they wont hesitate to settle it out rather than disclose technical details

 

[Headfoot]

I'm not keen on this. Almost a waste of everyone's time and money. Maybe it's necessary for Nvidia to learn the lesson? But I suspect the backlash alone was enough.

Apparently not, because they didn't do anything about it for customers who bought 970s and wanted to return them...

 

[imaheadcase]

So stupid. Anyone who got upset with this is kidding themselves thinking its a issue.

 

[imaheadcase]

Apparently not, because they didn't do anything about it for customers who bought 970s and wanted to return them...

Which was hardly anyone at all.

 

[Subyman]

Apparently not, because they didn't do anything about it for customers who bought 970s and wanted to return them...

I agree. Nvidia buried their head on this one. Most people won't care about it when the next GTX series comes out and the performance is nice. At the very least, news of the progress of the class action lawsuit will keep the issue in the headlines for the next few years.

 

[ocre]

I took a quick look at the claim it's all in there not just the memory issue. On GigaByte only being named if the case proceeds others will no doubt be added.

That's good then. I haven't had time to look it over. I think if your gonna sue, bring in all in.

You'll probably get 50 cents in 10 years time.

Not really about money, just holding these companies accountable when they lie blatantly to the consumers.

I am serious about signing up. Even if its a dollar

 

[Leyawiin]

So are they going to sue them for the GTX 660 Ti, GTX 660, GTX 560 SE, GTX 555, GTX 460 V2 and GTX 550 Ti as well? They've been doing this with memory allocation for some time. I suppose the leg they have to stand on (in the lawsuit) is that with those cards NV gave the specs as 192 bit, so when you see it paired with 1GB or 2GB of VRAM you know its not synchronous. With the GTX 970 its advertised as 256 bit.