Nvidia Hit with False Advertising Suit over GTX 970 Performance

[Meghan54]

I guess it depends on if you can consider a product review a form of advertising or not.

I guess it would depend upon how samples of a reviewed product are obtained for said review/testing.

If a product is purchased at retail then tested/reviewed and the test/review is written up and posted for public consumption, like a test/review at AT.etc., then it wouldn't be advertising.

BUT.....if a company actively solicits a test of its product, sends out free samples to test with review packs w/info, etc., that's advertising.

And I think it's especially true that it's advertising when the target audience of the product (gamers, high end enthusiasts, and the like) specifically seek out these tests/reviews and will base a large part of their buying decision upon said review(s).

Of course it's advertising. And the real proof is shown by the product using "Recommended by Anandtech" or "Tom's Value Award" or "JonnyGuru Recommended" or such verbiage on the product's boxes and links to reviews from the mfgr.'s own website, touting how wonderful it is.

 

[Pandamonia]

The lawsuit is not ridiculous and if you want the reasons read the lawsuit and the reasons listed. The reasons listed may not affect you and most likely most 970 owners, but those reasons have affected a percentage of users who have no recourse other than legal. Now are those reasons valid? That is most likely for a jury to decide as I think the lawsuit will go to trial if not settled. I'm not a lawyer, but in my opinion there is reason enough for Nvidia to be on the losing end for false advertising around the line of questioning of "would you have bought the 970 if memory was properly represented as 3.5GB full speed and 512MB 1/8 speed?"

Im sorry but this suit is exactly that! "ridiculous"

What you fail to realise is that America is a laughing stock of the world when it comes to law suits. With ambulance chasing lawyers and and a culture of everyone suing everyone for everything. On a international forum you are not going to get much sympathy. These class action suits are the laughing stock of every news/technology blog and comment section.

Because your legislators are all on the take with a lobbying system which corrupts the laws in favour of big enterprise and no oversight worth a damn with any teeth the only recourse you have are these class action suits.

When you all get a $5 refund in damages you will look back and think "wasnt worth the hassle"

Sadly the UK is getting this way too but thankfully not as bad as the US. If you want to see some common sense download a show called "Judge Rinder" which is based off your own version of a courtroom small claims show.

I can just imagine his response if he ever heard this claim go to court (chuckles to myself)

People need a big dose of common sense here as it sounds like im listening to one of those shows where the claimant says hes owed £10,000 because someone hurt his feelings...

 

[kevinsbane]

I call BS.

you would not have bought the 980 no matter what the specs said on the 970.

I actually considered it. Why that might be relevant is lost to me though. I didn't buy a GTX 980. I was not thinking "I can save money vs the GTX 980". I was thinking "I can save money by not buying."

People who buy flagship buy flagship no matter what. Generally the rest will buy the more economical GPU based on price and not specs.

Even at 20% less performance the card is still good value vs the 980 which means you would have bought it anyway.

A 980 buyer would be sitting back now thinking to himself.. this is why i dont cut corners.

Is this post just a post to congratulate yourself on buying a GTX 980 rather than a GTX 970? I fail to see the relevance to the quoted post of mine.

Yes i do.

Its pretty simple.

Some people buy the best and the rest buy the rest.

A 970 buyer only had one thing on his mind when he pulled the trigger and that was saving money vs the 980.

There is NO other reason to buy a 970.

How about... upgrade itch? You know what... forget it. I don't want to waste much more time arguing with you on what I would or would not have done. You are obviously proud of your purchase, which is good for you. However, I don't need someone on the internet telling me what I would or would not have done, second-guessing why I bought the card in the first place and labeling me with motives I didn't have.

I read the reviews I looked at the specs. The specs helped tip me over the edge. I bought the card. It was discovered that Nvidia chose to advertise misleading specifications. I chose to have that remedied by a full refund. That's it.

Why would any knowledgeable PC user buy parts based on specs rather than actual measured performance? Are there really people that go to reviews, read just the spec comparison charts at the beginning and skip all the benchmarks, and then make their buying decision? That's your own fault.

You know the term "future-proofing"? It's thrown around a lot. Guess what, when one does that - that's also buying based on specs. It should be obvious that "buying for the future" is, by definition, not based on measured performance. How about buying a card to play a game that'll be released 6 months down the road? I submit that it is sheer lunacy not to consider the specs and the prospective future use of a card (or cpu, or whatever) when making a purchase. Otherwise, you can end up buying a 2 core CPU because the benchmarks didn't show a difference... in 2007 at least. Or going Windows 7 Home Premium because, at the time, you didn't need more than 16GB of ram, even though you were thinking about doing serious video editing and virtual machines... 2 years down the road.

I mean, why buy a 4GB GTX 680 vs a 2GB GTX 680? Or a 6GB 780Ti vs a 3GB 780Ti? None of the reviews showed a difference (at the time of the reviews...)!

 

[S.H.O.D.A.N.]

What you fail to realise is that America is a laughing stock of the world when it comes to law suits.

So because frivolous litigation happens in the US, this particular lawsuit is ridiculous? Even though it's clearly based on intentional breach of trust between the company and it's customer base?

Holy Batman logic.

 

[Subyman]

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/...action-lawsuit-over-graphics-card-ram-issues/

That is why the lawsuit is good for consumers. More websites will report the issue.

 

[2is]

Im sorry but this suit is exactly that! "ridiculous"

What you fail to realise is that America is a laughing stock of the world when it comes to law suits. With ambulance chasing lawyers and and a culture of everyone suing everyone for everything. On a international forum you are not going to get much sympathy. These class action suits are the laughing stock of every news/technology blog and comment section.

Because your legislators are all on the take with a lobbying system which corrupts the laws in favour of big enterprise and no oversight worth a damn with any teeth the only recourse you have are these class action suits.

When you all get a $5 refund in damages you will look back and think "wasnt worth the hassle"

Sadly the UK is getting this way too but thankfully not as bad as the US. If you want to see some common sense download a show called "Judge Rinder" which is based off your own version of a courtroom small claims show.

I can just imagine his response if he ever heard this claim go to court (chuckles to myself)

People need a big dose of common sense here as it sounds like im listening to one of those shows where the claimant says hes owed £10,000 because someone hurt his feelings...

Don't preach common sense unless you can practice it. Class action law suits have never been about large compensation to the folks involved. It's about leveraging heavy costs to the defendant, in the case NVidia.

Try and think for a minute.... This is where the common sense factor you were talking about comes into play...

What do you think has a better chance that NVidia won't pull a fast one again? Doing nothing, which is apparently what you're suggesting, or making them pay millions?

In addition to common sense, you seem to also lack a fundamental understanding of how the legal/court system works, at least over here in the states. This case doesn't need to go to court for it to work. Most cases don't go to court, they settle out of court. That doesn't mean it failed and NVidia got away clean. It means that both parties agreed on a mutually beneficial deal versus incurring the costs of going to litigation.

Honestly, all you've shown in your post is a lack of understanding in just about every area you decided to comment on. Common sense included.

 

[Timorous]

I guess it would depend upon how samples of a reviewed product are obtained for said review/testing.

If a product is purchased at retail then tested/reviewed and the test/review is written up and posted for public consumption, like a test/review at AT.etc., then it wouldn't be advertising.

BUT.....if a company actively solicits a test of its product, sends out free samples to test with review packs w/info, etc., that's advertising.

And I think it's especially true that it's advertising when the target audience of the product (gamers, high end enthusiasts, and the like) specifically seek out these tests/reviews and will base a large part of their buying decision upon said review(s).

Of course it's advertising. And the real proof is shown by the product using "Recommended by Anandtech" or "Tom's Value Award" or "JonnyGuru Recommended" or such verbiage on the product's boxes and links to reviews from the mfgr.'s own website, touting how wonderful it is.

Well if they can make a case for reviews being a form of advertising, which I would agree with to be honest, it does make their job easier. I still think the 4GB 256 bit spec is misleading though. The fact is they advertise the memory system on the 970 in the same way they do on the 980 yet we now know the 970 has an unusual implementation which has performance considerations that the paper spec would not have. That is clearly misleading as it makes people believe that aside from memory clockspeed the implementation on the 970 matches that of the 980.

 

[DiogoDX]

The 3.5GB + 500MB now officialy become a feature of the 970.:awe:

http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2015/02/24/gtx-970/

 

[AnandThenMan]

http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2015/02/24/gtx-970/

That is just downright painful to read.

 

[Pandamonia]

That is just downright painful to read.

The performance never changed.

It still performs exactly like the reviews say it does.

People would have looked at those reviews and said 10% less performance for 60% of the price??? ill take that...

How it gets to that performance is not relevant. People dont even understand the specs or how they affect FPS. Armchair engineers claim is has this effect or that effect.

I didnt sue AMD when my GPU was running 20% slower because of poor drivers and a year later they finally fixed it and gave me the full power...

 

[jackstar7]

The 3.5GB + 500MB now officialy become a feature of the 970.:awe:

http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2015/02/24/gtx-970/

There you have it. It was meant to be a 3GB card.

 

[Creig]

But, let me be clear: Our only intention was to create the best GPU for you. We wanted GTX 970 to have 4GB of memory, as games are using more memory than ever.

What's the point of physically having 4GB of memory on the card if the drivers aggressively attempt to keep memory usage at 3.5GB?

This new feature of Maxwell should have been clearly detailed from the beginning.

I'm not sure too many people would call the 970's segmented memory a "feature".

 

[Pandamonia]

It must really suck not to get a 980 GTX for the price of a 970 GTX.

Call the lawyers....

 

[garagisti]

The performance never changed.

It still performs exactly like the reviews say it does.

People would have looked at those reviews and said 10% less performance for 60% of the price??? ill take that...

How it gets to that performance is not relevant. People dont even understand the specs or how they affect FPS. Armchair engineers claim is has this effect or that effect.

I didnt sue AMD when my GPU was running 20% slower because of poor drivers and a year later they finally fixed it and gave me the full power...

If you are referring to the 79xx cards, well you are plain lying trying to defend the undefensible. 79xx were launched with specific clocks, AMD advertised it such, reviewers tested it like that. It could not have been more different.

 

[Pandamonia]

If you are referring to the 79xx cards, well you are plain lying trying to defend the undefensible. 79xx were launched with specific clocks, AMD advertised it such, reviewers tested it like that. It could not have been more different.

Except when i buy a product i expect it to work as advertised.

CF was and still is broken and i had driver problems for ever on games.

then one day 20% gain in FPS...

Now this is worse because they shipped a defective product and driver system and partially fixed it. I had to go Nvidia to get SLI since they couldnt fix CF on the 7970...

 

[garagisti]

Except when i buy a product i expect it to work as advertised.

CF was and still is broken and i had driver problems for ever on games.

then one day 20% gain in FPS...

Now this is worse because they shipped a defective product and driver system and partially fixed it. I had to go Nvidia to get SLI since they couldnt fix CF on the 7970...

Ahem, defect, or in this case software not working as intended, is not deception. It would be deception if AMD crippled its own cards. If you keep repeating what you say about AMD, whatever little credibility you have left (which is not much), will be gone soon enough. AMD launched the cards at a certain clock and voltage, as they were playing it safe, and later on did release Ghz edition of various cards as well, when it became apparent that they could do so. The only reason why they didn't before was possibly because they were most certainly worried about the process, and GCN was a new architecture as well so. CF is broken today in some games, but so is SLI. For what it is worth, CF works better than SLI when both work, so there.

 

[Pandamonia]

Ahem, defect, or in this case software not working as intended, is not deception. It would be deception if AMD crippled its own cards. If you keep repeating what you say about AMD, whatever little credibility you have left (which is not much), will be gone soon enough. AMD launched the cards at a certain clock and voltage, as they were playing it safe, and later on did release Ghz edition of various cards as well, when it became apparent that they could do so. The only reason why they didn't before was possibly because they were most certainly worried about the process, and GCN was a new architecture as well so. CF is broken today in some games, but so is SLI. For what it is worth, CF works better than SLI when both work, so there.

I dont really care about internet credability. I dont make my living off Youtube videos.

But since i have owned both Nvidia and AMD i can say that i was more fed up with defective CF on my 7970 than any other issue i have ever had with GPU's,

What should have been an easy upgrade turned in to me buying 2x780 GTX Lightnings because CF was completely broken.

SLI works great so far unless im playing steam early access games with no support.

PS. Im not talking about GHZ card im talking about the fact it launches with only 75% of its performance and about 12 months later they launch mature drivers with what it should have had on day one.

 

[kevinsbane]

Except when i buy a product i expect it to work as advertised.

So do I.

I expected the GTX 970 to work better than it actually does, based on Nvidia's advertisement.

 

[96Firebird]

So do I.

I expected the GTX 970 to work better than it actually does, based on Nvidia's advertisement.

How so?

 

[Pandamonia]

So do I.

I expected the GTX 970 to work better than it actually does, based on Nvidia's advertisement.

Im still waiting for those pills to work i got off my hotmail account but the gf says they aint working..

 

[caswow]

I dont really care about internet credability. I dont make my living off Youtube videos.

But since i have owned both Nvidia and AMD i can say that i was more fed up with defective CF on my 7970 than any other issue i have ever had with GPU's,

What should have been an easy upgrade turned in to me buying 2x780 GTX Lightnings because CF was completely broken.

SLI works great so far unless im playing steam early access games with no support.

PS. Im not talking about GHZ card im talking about the fact it launches with only 75% of its performance and about 12 months later they launch mature drivers with what it should have had on day one.

it took nvidia years to adress the cpu overhead. what about that?:awe: did you hate on threads too when they released their driver last year?

 

[garagisti]

I dont really care about internet credability. I dont make my living off Youtube videos.

But since i have owned both Nvidia and AMD i can say that i was more fed up with defective CF on my 7970 than any other issue i have ever had with GPU's,

What should have been an easy upgrade turned in to me buying 2x780 GTX Lightnings because CF was completely broken.

SLI works great so far unless im playing steam early access games with no support.

PS. Im not talking about GHZ card im talking about the fact it launches with only 75% of its performance and about 12 months later they launch mature drivers with what it should have had on day one.

LOL... again, you're caught plain lying and obfuscating facts. AMD launched cards at a certain speed, and reviews tested it at that. People who bought it, bought it based on those specifications and reviews. In case of Nvidia, they advertised certain specifications, and turns out that the actual specifications are indeed lower than advertised. Those two are quite different situations, and it seems you clearly want to muddy waters than have an honest discussion on a thread.

 

[kevinsbane]

Im still waiting for those pills to work i got off my hotmail account but the gf says they aint working..

"Except when i buy a product i expect it to work as advertised."

Those were your words, not mine.

How so?

I expected to get a 4GB, 256bit bus, 224GB/s card like was advertised. It doesn't act like a 4GB, 256bit bus, 224GB/s card ought to.

 

[waffleironhead]

I dont really care about internet credability. I dont make my living off Youtube videos.

But since i have owned both Nvidia and AMD i can say that i was more fed up with defective CF on my 7970 than any other issue i have ever had with GPU's,

What should have been an easy upgrade turned in to me buying 2x780 GTX Lightnings because CF was completely broken.

SLI works great so far unless im playing steam early access games with no support.

PS. Im not talking about GHZ card im talking about the fact it launches with only 75% of its performance and about 12 months later they launch mature drivers with what it should have had on day one.

So to summerize, amd increasing performance thru driver optimizations over time is bad?

 

[exar333]

Im sorry but this suit is exactly that! "ridiculous"

What you fail to realise is that America is a laughing stock of the world when it comes to law suits. With ambulance chasing lawyers and and a culture of everyone suing everyone for everything. On a international forum you are not going to get much sympathy. These class action suits are the laughing stock of every news/technology blog and comment section.

Because your legislators are all on the take with a lobbying system which corrupts the laws in favour of big enterprise and no oversight worth a damn with any teeth the only recourse you have are these class action suits.

When you all get a $5 refund in damages you will look back and think "wasnt worth the hassle"

Sadly the UK is getting this way too but thankfully not as bad as the US. If you want to see some common sense download a show called "Judge Rinder" which is based off your own version of a courtroom small claims show.

I can just imagine his response if he ever heard this claim go to court (chuckles to myself)

People need a big dose of common sense here as it sounds like im listening to one of those shows where the claimant says hes owed £10,000 because someone hurt his feelings...

I don't think you understand how class action lawsuits work. Joining is pretty easy and you pretty-much just need to fill out the form and wait for a result.

On the other hand, I don't dispute the point that the result is often low. I am personally a huge opponent of frivolous lawsuits, but most companies only listen to $$$. Honestly, I don't care where the money goes, but a judgment against NV that is sizeable hopefully will make them think twice before knowingly deceiving their consumers the next time around.