Should you be compensated for the GTX 970 issues and spec changes?

[taltamir]

This is really clear cut.

If you buy 24 caret gold jewelery and later find out that the seller knowingly lied about it and its actually 22 caret gold, and the seller KNEW and lied anyways, then you are entitled to compensation no matter how beautiful the artwork is.

Would I still recommend people buy it under the new specs? Absolutely. It is a good deal. But that doesn't change the facts. You can't just go around lying to people about what you are selling them

 

[Ichigo]

This is really clear cut.

If you buy 24 caret gold jewelery and later find out that the seller knowingly lied about it and its actually 22 caret gold, and the seller KNEW and lied anyways, then you are entitled to compensation no matter how beautiful the artwork is.

Would I still recommend people buy it under the new specs? Absolutely. It is a good deal. But that doesn't change the facts. You can't just go around lying to people about what you are selling them

*shrug* The 22 carat jewellery looks the same today as it did when you bought it. This is a non-issue.

 

[taltamir]

*shrug* The 22 carat jewellery looks the same today as it did when you bought it. This is a non-issue.

Except it is worth significantly less money if you resell it, or pawn it, or melt it down for the gold.

Furthermore, the materials from which jewelry is made is a huge part of its appeal, as can be seen by the whole diamond industry where objectively inferior natural diamonds cost massively more than objectively superior artificial diamonds simply due to their rarity.

There is also the fact that the seller knowingly lied about the components, which makes this a scam and a crime.

 

[guskline]

I sent the GTX 970 back to Newegg for RMA credit. I'll let the Nvidia rep, Gigabyte rep and Newegg hash out the amount. I demanded full refund.

 

[96Firebird]

Let's see how many analogies we can come up with before this beaten horse is laid to rest!

 

[jackstar7]

Let's see how many analogies we can come up with before this beaten horse is laid to rest!

It's like steroids in baseball... somehow...

 

[SunnyD]

it seems only 3.5 gb is fully functional when in some games it's maxed out for some peeps.

Seems to me that the card can address all 4gb of memory. That's fully functional memory.

 

[lukart]

I wonder how long will take Nvidia to be forced by Europe to change all their packaging to 3.5GB

 

[Subyman]

Let's see how many analogies we can come up with before this beaten horse is laid to rest!

Its like you are buying a beaten horse to lay to rest, you lay it to rest but then you find out it hadn't been beaten yet. Compensation should be given.

 

[jackstar7]

Seems to me that the card can address all 4gb of memory. That's fully functional memory.

Then I think you are disagreeing about the meaning of "fully".

Functional? Sure. Fully functional... not quite.

 

[007ELmO]

I sent the GTX 970 back to Newegg for RMA credit. I'll let the Nvidia rep, Gigabyte rep and Newegg hash out the amount. I demanded full refund.

What is "RMA Credit"? Is that full credit?

I didn't open my cards so I demanded a full refund from NewEgg, they can resell it to someone else easily.

 

[Elfear]

It's like steroids in baseball... somehow...

Its like you are buying a beaten horse to lay to rest, you lay it to rest but then you find out it hadn't been beaten yet. Compensation should be given.

Glad to see that retailers are willing to help out the customer. Sucks buyers have to take time to contact the vendor, package up the card, and send it back but at least they're getting a full refund for the most part.

 

[superxero044]

Glad to see that retailers are willing to help out the customer. Sucks buyers have to take time to contact the vendor, package up the card, and send it back but at least they're getting a full refund for the most part.

This is the first person I've heard of getting a refund from Newegg. I contacted them last week and have yet to get a response. Many others have posted on here and other sites that they are still waiting for a response from Newegg as well.

 

[guskline]

What is "RMA Credit"? Is that full credit?

I didn't open my cards so I demanded a full refund from NewEgg, they can resell it to someone else easily.

Speak with a rep on the phone

 

[UaVaj]

Let's see how many analogies we can come up with before this beaten horse is laid to rest!

G1630 with HD2500 with 64MB
is pushing 1.4 fps
in unigine heaven 4.0
at 1920x1080p, dx11, ultra texture, extreme tessellation, msaa 8x.

bump up the vram from 64MB to 256MB via bios.
still at 1.4 fps.

bump up the vram to max (~4GB) via bios (dvmt mode).
still at 1.4 fps.

 

[DarkKnightDude]

My main problem about this whole situation is Nvidia lied and they failed to tell people about this. I'm also surprised various reviewers did not notice or report this at launch.

 

[Cerb]

My main problem about this whole situation is Nvidia lied and they failed to tell people about this. I'm also surprised various reviewers did not notice or report this at launch.

Most reviewers did not have enough information at launch for that.

 

[guskline]

Most reviewers did not have enough information at launch for that.

I agree. Nvidia's marketing department said 64 ROPs and 4G Vram. From what I read, NO ONE outside of Nvidia's engineering department ever disclosed the true ROPs and the method of memory allocation. The disclosure of this came @ last week from a senior Project engineer in his discussion with Ryan Shroud of PC Perspective.

Here's a link to the articles:
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphi...Full-Memory-Structure-and-Limitations-GTX-970

http://www.pcper.com/news/Graphics-Cards/NVIDIA-Responds-GTX-970-35GB-Memory-Issue

To criticize reviewers when this was only disclosed last week is a stretch.

 

[3DVagabond]

My main problem about this whole situation is Nvidia lied and they failed to tell people about this. I'm also surprised various reviewers did not notice or report this at launch.

Add to that their refusal to own up and sort out the people who were taken by this. Telling people that if they aren't happy buying a card with falsely represented specs to go bother the retailer and/or AIB. They didn't lie to people about the design of the product, nVidia did.

 

[Elixer]

To criticize reviewers when this was only disclosed last week is a stretch.

Only some 'reviewers' have come out after the Nvidia disclosure to say what went on, and even fewer of those have made any sort of extended testing besides Ryan Shroud, and a couple others.

While initially, some 'reviewers' DID spot some funny business going on, they didn't bother to look into this more.

So, kudos to the ones that went the extra mile to help people understand what went on, and a big thumbs down to the rest of them that pass this off as "no big deal" or "This is just a PR issue!".

 

[guskline]

Only some 'reviewers' have come out after the Nvidia disclosure to say what went on, and even fewer of those have made any sort of extended testing besides Ryan Shroud, and a couple others.

While initially, some 'reviewers' DID spot some funny business going on, they didn't bother to look into this more.

So, kudos to the ones that went the extra mile to help people understand what went on, and a big thumbs down to the rest of them that pass this off as "no big deal" or "This is just a PR issue!".

I agree with you now that the word is out. I guess my point was that even professional reviewers did not have the true info on the ROP difference OR the way the memory controller was altered per the info in the Shroud articles.

As to the no big deal, we all try to come up with some scenario to explain our frustration with the lack of candor concerning the memory allocation issue (the ROPs and L2Cache were flat out WRONG!). Here's my analogy, perhaps poor but so be it.

Some time ago, I think GM via Cadillac and others, had a V-8 which shut down certain cylinders during light load, to save on gas. They advertised it as a V8 BUT also told you how it saved the gas by shutting down certain cylinders during light load. They didn't just say V-8 with better gas mileage and "forget" to tell you about how they achieved this.

Yet now, Nvidia wants to claim 4G Vram and was silent about the memory allocation and controller for the last .5G of the 4G until called out on the carpet by a reviewer. How sad.

 

[007ELmO]

It's not just the reviewers, members in anandtech found out about the 4GB issue before it went rampant, you can see it in threads here.

 

[poohbear]

I wonder how long will take Nvidia to be forced by Europe to change all their packaging to 3.5GB

but its not 3.5gb, its 4gb. the 500mb extra is still there, which makes it 4gb. It's still MUCH faster than accessing system memory.

 

[Rhezuss]

Newegg asked me to send them pictures of the card, box, UPC code, etc. I'm still trying to decide if I keep it or return it...

I don't like the shady way Nvidia advertised the 970 and won't buy another product from them in the future. But I'm also pissed with all the wait time, assle, packaging and the rest I have to do to return the product and wait for a new card to come home. It's geek and impatient but I don't care and it is the way it is. It's my first Nvidia product in a long time (last one was the 9600GT) and i've been double-F'ed with this card so far...(EVGA ACX 2.0 cooler false advertising on models under the "FTW" and now this mem allocation, false ROPs/L2C counts fiasco)

On the other hand, the card still performs awesomely for me, as it did before the truth came out.

To keep things smiple I'm pretty sure i'll keep the card and enjoy it until the new AMD cards come out, sell the 970 for cheap and come back to them.

I can get people trying to play the "cool mature" card and say it's still 4gb of VRAM but we all know what the truth is. It's easy to manipulate numbers and charts to let them say what we want...

 

[Magic Carpet]

@Rhezuss

Unless you can upgrade to full-chip 980, or want 290/290x, then just keep the existing, gimped card. 3.5GB is still better than 2 or 3GB.

Obviously, 970 is a bigger compromise to 980, than what 670 was to 680. But the price clearly reflects that, I picked up my 670 for $420 2.5 years ago. 970 costs $350, so what did you expect? You get what you pay for. With the perf/dollar in mind, 290/290x is king. If you want the best, pay for the best. No shortcuts.

But you can still return the card and put money aside, for a better card in the future.