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

[Rhezuss]

@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.

Emphasis mine: How many people do you think would have bought the card on release if they knew the real specs as we know them today, even when considering the great performance of the card?

I bought this card to future proof my build (2 years), exactly what I did when I bought my i7-3770K.

But like I said, i'm playing @ 1080p so the mem allocation/ROPs/L2C is not really an issue for me right now and it might even not be in a year but it's still shady advertising from a reknown company and I don't like to endorse that.

 

[Magic Carpet]

@Rhezuss

I fully understand your decision behind that buy. If I needed a new card with latest tech around or under $400, I may have got one myself.

Nvidia did what it did, of course, you may be pissed, dissatisfied and offended. Well, there are legal ways to address this matter too. At the end of the day, you still need a card (I suppose) and you can a) change to a different card (store credit), b) have your money back or c) keep it. Just take one

 

[Rhezuss]

@Rhezuss

I fully understand your decision behind that buy. If I needed a new card with latest tech around or under $400, I may have got one myself.

Nvidia did what it did, of course, you may be pissed, dissatisfied and offended. Well, there are legal ways to address this matter too. At the end of the day, you still need a card (I suppose) and you can a) change to a different card and b) have your money back c) keep it. Just make one

Hahah yeah I a aware of the choices I have and being in favor of the simplest solution i'll keep the card. It serves it's purpose...but the 380X will be tempting

 

[Magic Carpet]

Hahah yeah I a aware of the choices I have and being in favor of the simplest solution i'll keep the card. It serves it's purpose...but the 380X will be tempting

Your spoiled for choice, that's the problem

I know that some places are doing exchanges/refunds until the end of this month. There is still time.

 

[ocre]

Hahah yeah I a aware of the choices I have and being in favor of the simplest solution i'll keep the card. It serves it's purpose...but the 380X will be tempting

I went thru the hassle of exchanging and ended up with a 980 only to find out that the 970 performance wasn't bad at all. I can tell you, your not gonna get much better than the 970 right now. In the end you will just be out a card, time, and possibly money to gain very little after all the hassle.

I think your plan to keep it while eyeballing the 380x is your best bet. The other options are a lot of hassle for no real improvement. This situation you are in may make you angry but I can tell you, after moving to a 980 there isn't a whole lot of performance over the 970 right now.

Getting a real upgrade like the 380x would be all the sweeter. Vote with your wallet later and you will feel like you are really getting somewhere. Instead of a lot of hassle and time wasted just to obtain a side grade.

 

[garagisti]

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

Reviewers had received a note from Nvidia where the original specs the card was sold under were mentioned. What really disappointed me, was how they were more than inclined to give Nvidia a free pass. Surely, Nvidia didn't even feel anything on their knuckles. On the other hand, they gave such hell to AMD, about reference coolers, or drivers. Sometimes one has to wonder if these people have a moral compass, or...

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.

You should criticise reviewers for not being harsh enough when this became public. They're supposedly the voice of the community.

 

[Paul98]

I went thru the hassle of exchanging and ended up with a 980 only to find out that the 970 performance wasn't bad at all. I can tell you, your not gonna get much better than the 970 right now. In the end you will just be out a card, time, and possibly money to gain very little after all the hassle.

I think your plan to keep it while eyeballing the 380x is your best bet. The other options are a lot of hassle for no real improvement. This situation you are in may make you angry but I can tell you, after moving to a 980 there isn't a whole lot of performance over the 970 right now.

Getting a real upgrade like the 380x would be all the sweeter. Vote with your wallet later and you will feel like you are really getting somewhere. Instead of a lot of hassle and time wasted just to obtain a side grade.

Why did you expect anything else unless you were going over 3.5 gb of vram? the 980 will just be usable at higher settings longer.

Even with the new info on the 970, it's still a better deal than the 980.

The problem is that it became an even worse deal than the 290 or 290x. As both would give you the same performance but for cheaper,and much cheaper than a 980.

 

[3DVagabond]

@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.

That doesn't change that he was lied to. And why is it wrong to expect what you were promised?

 

[SteveGrabowski]

@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.

I expected what all the review sites made it out to be, a 4GB barely cut down 980 that Nvidia priced so cheaply to try to destroy AMD for high end buyers, coming in $50 cheaper than an R9 290 at the time. Oh well, at least the 970 vs 980 is way less a compromise than the 770 vs 780 was. Nvidia is lucky I bought from newegg instead of Best Buy, as if it was the latter I would have driven there and returned the card for a full refund.

 

[superxero044]

Dear ####,

Thank you for contacting GIGABYTE about your complaint. We are aware of your concerns and currently working with NVIDIA. NVIDIA has confirmed that the performance of the GTX-970 GPU is not affected. The 4GB of RAM is fully accessible, however, accessed differently. Please review the following link that has been updated with detailed information regarding the issue.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-geforce-gtx-970-specifications,28464.html

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphi...Full-Memory-Structure-and-Limitations-GTX-970

If you are not satisfied after reading the full information, please provide your phone number, original purchase invoice, serial number, and address for reference. We will notify you once a process is put in place to help GIGABYTE customers that are not completely satisfied with the product because of these concerns.



Sincerely,
​
Tech Support
GIGABYTE

This is my response from Gigabyte.

 

[garagisti]

This is my response from Gigabyte.

Wow... in short, "unless we really need to, we won't."

Sorry to hear that, but forgive me if you mentioned this already, why can't you return it to your retailer?

 

[garagisti]

I went thru the hassle of exchanging and ended up with a 980 only to find out that the 970 performance wasn't bad at all. I can tell you, your not gonna get much better than the 970 right now. In the end you will just be out a card, time, and possibly money to gain very little after all the hassle.

I think your plan to keep it while eyeballing the 380x is your best bet. The other options are a lot of hassle for no real improvement. This situation you are in may make you angry but I can tell you, after moving to a 980 there isn't a whole lot of performance over the 970 right now.

Getting a real upgrade like the 380x would be all the sweeter. Vote with your wallet later and you will feel like you are really getting somewhere. Instead of a lot of hassle and time wasted just to obtain a side grade.

You should have gone with 2 290s. Sure, CF doesn't work in some games, and Gameworks is a bother alright. Then again, where CF works, you would have performance that your 980 just can't achieve.

 

[superxero044]

Wow... in short, "unless we really need to, we won't."

Sorry to hear that, but forgive me if you mentioned this already, why can't you return it to your retailer?

Newegg hasn't given me anything but canned responses. Honestly I don't really plan on buying hardware from them in the future and just going w/ Amazon even if its a little more expensive.

Please be advised that your request pertaining to ###has been submitted to our internal department for review. Due to the nature of the issue, be advised that this process can take up to 3-7 business days, and the results will be sent to the email address listed on your account.

 

[007ELmO]

Agreed superxero, newegg is canning me too. I'm going to call them tomorrow and ask the status. They don't want to open the flood gates for returns if Nvidia isn't helping them, who knows how much money they think they might have to give back to consumers if they publicize they're accepting returns. Hell they probably read this forum.

 

[taltamir]

I stopped using newegg years ago. they used to have amazing service and amazing prices.
They switched to milking their brand name years ago

 

[garagisti]

Newegg hasn't given me anything but canned responses. Honestly I don't really plan on buying hardware from them in the future and just going w/ Amazon even if its a little more expensive.

It is a shame, as most of my purchases are on Newegg... although the last system based on FM2+ was purchased from Amazon. I think i will also make it a point to not get stuff from Newegg. Then again, something which is very important to me, is that Newegg doesn't give into patent trolls. We all know of the shopping cart patent most sizeable etailers in US were being threatened with. I'm a wee bit torn...

 

[garagisti]

Agreed superxero, newegg is canning me too. I'm going to call them tomorrow and ask the status. They don't want to open the flood gates for returns if Nvidia isn't helping them, who knows how much money they think they might have to give back to consumers if they publicize they're accepting returns. Hell they probably read this forum.

That is indeed at the heart of the problem. Nvidia apparently is going to have no choice in matter of returns owing to false advertisements in euro-zone. Never you mind what some here/ elsewhere may say, but that is how it will go down if enough people complain. Heck there's one Italian site advertising 970 as a 3.5gb + .5gb card which has been posted here. In the US though, they can kick and paddle, and Nvidia's doing just that. Retailers are going to be out a metric tonne of money and then some, just like HP and others were before.

While i agree that it is not a nice place to be, as an owner of hardware, but as was described earlier, Amazon accepting return was also YMMV unless you were within one of the various return periods. Personally, Amazon has been at times a bit of a let down, and they've failed to price match more than once for me on more than one thing. It's a mixed experience i guess, and i think we should all direct our anger at the chip manufacturer responsible for this debacle than the retailer, who's mind:
- not making the said chips
- didn't prepare advertisements, or review
- didn't prepare the boxes we buy stuff in.

Yes, in some countries that doesn't matter and they will still be required to accept returns, but in turn those retailers are also protected by the same law. Unfortunately, in a lot of countries we are all at the tender mercies of Nvidia, and they know it, their lawyers know it more certainly.

 

[007ELmO]

True, they're stuck in a bad spot. But they better start fighting Nvidia unless they want to lose some customers, but maybe losing some of us doesn't affect their bottom line - but I'd hope to think they think we're worth more as a retained customer than whatever profit they made on a $350 video card.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Agreed superxero, newegg is canning me too. I'm going to call them tomorrow and ask the status. They don't want to open the flood gates for returns if Nvidia isn't helping them, who knows how much money they think they might have to give back to consumers if they publicize they're accepting returns. Hell they probably read this forum.

I don't blame newegg. Why should they take a huge hit because Nvidia was deceiving people? Nvidia obviously isn't taking the cards back from newegg like they would for broken ones Nvidia can later sell as refurbs. I'm not going to judge newegg for something that's all about Nvidia's shady advertising. I love newegg. Their prices are great, their selection is top notch, my parts work when I get them, they're usually at my doorstep within 3 days of my order even though I'm halfway across the country, and so on, so no way I'm leaving them just because they won't carry water for Nvidia.

 

[UaVaj]

I went thru the hassle of exchanging and ended up with a 980 only to find out that the 970 performance wasn't bad at all. I can tell you, your not gonna get much better than the 970 right now. In the end you will just be out a card, time, and possibly money to gain very little after all the hassle.

:thumbsup::thumbsup:

 

[wand3r3r]

Originally Posted by ocre
I went thru the hassle of exchanging and ended up with a 980 only to find out that the 970 performance wasn't bad at all. I can tell you, your not gonna get much better than the 970 right now. In the end you will just be out a card, time, and possibly money to gain very little after all the hassle.

:thumbsup::thumbsup:

That is not true and is only relevant for one of the alternatives (probably the worse choice in that situation imo).

The obvious elephant in the room, 970 -> 980 = basically imperceptible. Why not go 970 -> 290 and pocket ~$100? It would be a small downgrade, but hardly noticeable.

Another alternative, go 290 crossfire for the price of the 980. It would be a huge upgrade from the 980.

The 290's are so cheap and quite close in performance, going for a 980 is an odd choice. Even a 290x is almost half the price.

There would be a lot to gain from switching if the buyer is brand agnostic. Either financially, or in performance.

 

[garagisti]

That is not true and is only relevant for one of the alternatives (probably the worse choice in that situation imo).

The obvious elephant in the room, 970 -> 980 = basically imperceptible. Why not go 970 -> 290 and pocket ~$100? It would be a small downgrade, but hardly noticeable.

Another alternative, go 290 crossfire for the price of the 980. It would be a huge upgrade from the 980.

The 290's are so cheap and quite close in performance, going for a 980 is an odd choice. Even a 290x is almost half the price.

There would be a lot to gain from switching if the buyer is brand agnostic. Either financially, or in performance.

The problem as far as I can diagnose is that you suffer the affliction of common sense.

 

[garagisti]

True, they're stuck in a bad spot. But they better start fighting Nvidia unless they want to lose some customers, but maybe losing some of us doesn't affect their bottom line - but I'd hope to think they think we're worth more as a retained customer than whatever profit they made on a $350 video card.

You don't know if they're, or not fighting Nvidia. However, what we do know is who did the pooch. If you're so miffed, then certainly vote against the manufacturer of the faulty chip when you purchase any relevant product(s). Again, I will agree that some of their policies may not be in line with amazon, but the trade off is variety and good prices. In this case, it is not even cut and dry, but very much is a case of ymmv, so i would find it hard to punish them.

This was the first Nvidia product that I recommended in some years. I think i did so even here before this became a known issue. However, now I wouldn't recommend their products again, unless it is very, very unavoidable. We all should vote with our wallets, cause they care about their's, which in turn is fattened by contributions from us.

 

[waffleironhead]

Being journalistic does Anandtech have any plans to run the same tests on the GTX 980m?

Word on the street is that this card is also gimped - yet these journo's don't exactly seem to be jumping at the chance to test Nvidia...

Unless they already have, or someone gives them, a unit with a 980m; I doubt they will run any tests.
They were too cheap to pick up one of those dual nvidia gpus to test when nvidia didn't send out review samples. That seems to be the limit of their testing these days. If they don't get free samples, they don't test it.

 

[tential]

That is not true and is only relevant for one of the alternatives (probably the worse choice in that situation imo).

The obvious elephant in the room, 970 -> 980 = basically imperceptible. Why not go 970 -> 290 and pocket ~$100? It would be a small downgrade, but hardly noticeable.

Another alternative, go 290 crossfire for the price of the 980. It would be a huge upgrade from the 980.

The 290's are so cheap and quite close in performance, going for a 980 is an odd choice. Even a 290x is almost half the price.

There would be a lot to gain from switching if the buyer is brand agnostic. Either financially, or in performance.

He traded his card in at best buy and couldn't use the credit to a R9 290/x because there wasn't one available in a nearby radius to him. Pretty sure he said it was full line of Nvidia, and only the bottom tier cards from AMD available at the bestbuys near him.

So it was GTX 980, or drop down massively in performance.