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

[tg2708]

This is quite funny, 91 people voted no and 39 are undecided. So in other words its okay if you are scammed or fooled into believing that a product is marketed as something it never was?

 

[R0H1T]

Is that your way of admitting that you dont really know either? I guess we are in the same boat on different ends then.

Except when you recall the sequence of events it should be easy to deduce what happened, also the specs given to (review) sites & on their own site were wrong at that time ~ http://www.anandtech.com/show/8935/geforce-gtx-970-correcting-the-specs-exploring-memory-allocation

Nvidia launches GTX 970 (reviews paint it in a godly light) -> someone at guru3d hints that there is something wrong with the bandwidth, people start digging into it further -> some discover that performance falls of a cliff when VRAM allocation exceed 3.5GB -> review sites start looking into this, Nvidia sends out an APB -> sites get to the bottom of this, have egg on their face -> Nvidia finally admits to the wrong specs, JHH says "Oops, we had an inter departmental miscommunication" & it won't happen again, as if!

You really think they got the number of ROPS, L2 cache, VRAM partition (aside from the fact that the driver was aggressively trying to hide the slower 512MB VRAM) & all that wrong? If it hadn't been discovered Nvidia would have never revealed the true specs & without the fake specs the 970 wouldn't have been a smashing success. Surely you can do 2+2 :\

 

[poofyhairguy]

And even that has been virtually iradicated via driver improvements.

How do those driver improvements carry over to a Directx 12 era where the driver matters less?

How long do these drivers improvements stay in place now that the 1070 is being sold?

You act like the problem was fixed when in reality it was a temporary bandaid at best.

 

[Creig]

I will spend only one breath on you.
I would not defend a liar. But I would need proof of a lie here and not just some engineer/driverteam/marketing department error.
Thats the problem.
It could be a lie. It could be a error. We know Nvidia said it was a miscommunication in house. What can be said for those who want Nvidia hung without truly knowing what happ..... sorry. Out of breath.

So you'll have us believe that not one of the 10,000 Nvidia employees happened to notice that every single GTX970 review out there that showed the ROPs and L2 cache was incorrect? FOR FOUR AND A HALF MONTHS?

Sorry, but I'm not quite that gullible.

 

[f2bnp]

I think you've hit a new low. Why are you defending this illegal move by nvidia? People were sold a product that was not what it claimed to be. This is 100% true.

Taking a look at his signature might give you some hints. :whiste:

What is shocking is that I've seen this sort of behavior elsewhere too, I guess people don't care if they get scammed.

 

[IllogicalGlory]

The amount of misleading they've been up to with this design is increasing incrementally. With the 570, it was advertised as 1.28GB, 320-bit bus, then the 660 Ti was 192-bit "2GB" and finally we get the 970 "256-bit" "4GB".

 

[WelshBloke]

Ravenous.

He's right though. If you misrepresent your product it's your fault. It really doesn't matter who knew or didn't in Nvidia.

 

[YBS1]

Did performance decline after it was discovered that the specs were incorrect? You know, because Quantum physics says things change when they are observed and all.
The ONLY thing Nvidia should be held accountable for is the performance hit one gets when accessing that last 512MB of memory. And even that has been virtually iradicated via driver improvements.
You guys are just too rabid.
Romans in an ancient coliseum. Bring on the lions and such.

Ok, how about this..... Did they state 4GB of memory? Yes, and they delivered 4GB of memory. However they also stated memory speeds and bandwidth. The card could not provide those specs while using 4GB of memory. Flat out false advertising, not simply deceptive advertising. Had they billed it as a 3.5GB card with half a gig of "extra" memory on board, no harm, no foul. They could have called it a memory overrun "feature", that would be deceptive but not false. It's cute though, you acting like this could have possibly just been a marketing screw up instead of a blatant attempt to mislead people....lol. You really do earn your free GPUs. Shoot, I'd probably throw myself under the bus for free Titans every year too, good show man.

 

[jackstar7]

I will say that Keys is typically more evenhanded about things, but I guess this is where some kind of ego connection to the company is causing him to be a little more defensive.

He just tried to impugn the character of the judge in the case... that's reaching.

 

[Face2Face]

How do those driver improvements carry over to a Directx 12 era where the driver matters less?

How long do these drivers improvements stay in place now that the 1070 is being sold?

You act like the problem was fixed when in reality it was a temporary bandaid at best.

All good questions. My take is since the GTX 970 is one of NVIDIA's most popular cards, I would think they would continue to alleviate the memory issue with drivers fixes for quite some time. Obviously GTX 970 owners are rather unhappy (lawsuit), so it wouldn't make sense to further damage their brand reputation by neglecting users with the 3.5GB issue. If they drop all support in less from a year from now, then shame of them, as the GTX 970 still performs quite well in today's games and I think still has some fight left in it.

 

[thilanliyan]

I will spend only one breath on you.
I would not defend a liar. But I would need proof of a lie here and not just some engineer/driverteam/marketing department error.
Thats the problem.
It could be a lie. It could be a error. We know Nvidia said it was a miscommunication in house. What can be said for those who want Nvidia hung without truly knowing what happ..... sorry. Out of breath.

It COULD have been a miscommunication, but as soon an any engineer that worked on the card saw the advertised specs (and why wouldn't see it?), they should have immediately told the marketing dept that it is wrong. So either the engineering side decided to keep quiet, or marketing were informed and decided to keep quiet. There is NO way that no one at nVidia realized the mistake until it was pointed out to them.

My guess is that IF it was a mistake, they realized the mistake, but all the marketing material, boxes, etc were already made and so decided to sell anyway. Either way, they shouldn't have sold them if they were trying to be correct, but that gets in the way of making money.

 

[poofyhairguy]

All good questions. My take is since the GTX 970 is one of NVIDIA's most popular cards, I would think they would continue to alleviate the memory issue with drivers fixes for quite some time.

The only issue with that logic is recently Nvidia admitted most of their user base is on Kepler and yet they let those cards fall off the map performance-wise.

Until we are shown otherwise the Nvidia we know would look at the massive number of 970 owners as an opportunity to make them 1060, 1070 or 1170 owners.

Obviously GTX 970 owners are rather unhappy (lawsuit), so it wouldn't make sense to further damage their brand reputation by neglecting users with the 3.5GB issue.

Nvidia's brand is invincible. Gameworks, 3.5GB ram, and async lies should have "damaged" the brand but they didn't.

Its kinda like the hot girl who is crazy but you ignore she is crazy because she is hot. Nvidia is greedy but they have the fastest cards so everyone ignores it.

If they drop all support in less from a year from now, then shame of them, as the GTX 970 still performs quite well in today's games and I think still has some fight left in it.

I agree, especially for 1080p gamers. I hope Nvidia treats them differently than Kepler owners, but I didn't want to bet on that with my own rig.

 

[Grooveriding]

Once the ability to claim the money comes up, let everyone and anyone who has a 970 know and encourage them to make the claim. They approach these like MIR, assuming most people won't take advantage of it. Yes it will be a hassle with having to dig up your old receipt and fill out some form, but it's worth it if it can be done on a mass scale, because it will hit nvidia's pocketbook harder.

They sold a lot of 970s. If each and every person with a 970 made the $30 claim, it would be a good sized amount of cash. I'm sure between tech/game forums, reddit, twitter and facebook that a lot of people can be made aware of it. $30 is peanuts, it should have been at least $50, but even just 100,000 claims would be $3,000,000 out of their pocket along with whatever it costs in administration of processing and issuing out all those payments.

 

[krumme]

As i recall rs have showed several times gnc 1 aka 7970 5 years old ages better than 2 years old 970 maxwell !! Its just not falling off a cliff like kepler.

 

[tential]

So you'll have us believe that not one of the 10,000 Nvidia employees happened to notice that every single GTX970 review out there that showed the ROPs and L2 cache was incorrect? FOR FOUR AND A HALF MONTHS?

Sorry, but I'm not quite that gullible.

What proof do you have that Nvidia employees are looking through review sites?

What proof do you have that Nvidia employees who did see reviews have an understanding of gpu architectures?

 

[tential]

Did performance decline after it was discovered that the specs were incorrect? You know, because Quantum physics says things change when they are observed and all.
The ONLY thing Nvidia should be held accountable for is the performance hit one gets when accessing that last 512MB of memory. And even that has been virtually iradicated via driver improvements.
You guys are just too rabid.
Romans in an ancient coliseum. Bring on the lions and such.

My take is different. The card has 4gb of VRAM. Segmented or it's still there.

The card didn't have the rops, or whatever else it was supposed to have. Unless a person purchased based on that specification (a small handful of people) they really got what they thought they were getting.

The people hurt by this misinformation are mostly forum users and tech spec geeks.

Nvidia lied, I just highly doubt the truth would have changed things more than a couple of percent. The main reasons the gtx 970 did well are all still there.

This thread is bumped up just for people to gloat that Nvidia has to pay out the don't care at all about the fact that I'd be willing to be that the majority of people who get this payout would have still bought the card at the same price if the real specs were there and detailed. People wanted the performance not the tech specs

 

[poofyhairguy]

I'd be willing to be that the majority of people who get this payout would have still bought the card at the same price if the real specs were there and detailed. People wanted the performance not the tech specs

Single card users? Sure.

SLI users? No way. People who jumped on 970 SLI because of the value of it got hosed on this RAM deal. I bet many would have avoided that setup if they knew.

 

[tg2708]

My take is different. The card has 4gb of VRAM. Segmented or it's still there.

The card didn't have the rops, or whatever else it was supposed to have. Unless a person purchased based on that specification (a small handful of people) they really got what they thought they were getting.

The people hurt by this misinformation are mostly forum users and tech spec geeks.

Nvidia lied, I just highly doubt the truth would have changed things more than a couple of percent. The main reasons the gtx 970 did well are all still there.

This thread is bumped up just for people to gloat that Nvidia has to pay out the don't care at all about the fact that I'd be willing to be that the majority of people who get this payout would have still bought the card at the same price if the real specs were there and detailed. People wanted the performance not the tech specs

So why lie if they knew the consequences based on your logic would have been non existent? If people would have bought it anyways it makes little to no sense in hiding its actual specs. So to me and possible others they were somewhat aware that a backlash could have ensued and it did, whether it was from a vocal community or review sites. Bringing up how many they sold is irrelevant to this topic because the product was sold based on a lie.

 

[AnandThenMan]

What proof do you have that Nvidia employees are looking through review sites?

What proof do you have that Nvidia employees who did see reviews have an understanding of gpu architectures?

Of course they read reviews, and what are the employees experts in baking wedding cakes they know nothing about graphics? The amount of reaching going on here is absurd. Also it doesn't make a lick of difference if Nvidia knowingly published the wrong specs or not.

 

[iiiankiii]

What proof do you have that Nvidia employees are looking through review sites?

What proof do you have that Nvidia employees who did see reviews have an understanding of gpu architectures?

lol. Please. This is a civil matter, not a criminal matter. Beyond a reasonable doubt don't mean jack squat in a civil case. You just need a "preponderance of evidence". Your FUD ain't going to work in this situation. Only an idiot would side with Nvidia in this matter. It doesn't matter if they intentional lied and/or are just plain incompetent, false advertising is false advertising. Nivida lose either way.

 

[tg2708]

What proof do you have that Nvidia employees are looking through review sites?

What proof do you have that Nvidia employees who did see reviews have an understanding of gpu architectures?

One would think that if a person that works for a company that was mostly built on the making of gpu's has some understanding of the different architectures. Better yet put it this way whether they knew nothing about it, it would have been in their best interest to notify the gpu department of any issue brought about by the public if they came across any on the web.

 

[Silverforce11]

Did performance decline after it was discovered that the specs were incorrect?

Yes it did. At the time, for SLI users because they could push texture mods and higher resolution.

Over time came games that push past the 3.5GB limit even at 1080p. 970 are notorious for stuttering with Rise of the Tomb Raider, a game that NV sponsored. NV recommends to lower texture settings. But cards with REAL 4GB don't need to. R290X 4GB runs max textures fine at 1080p.

Mirror's Edge anyone? Another NV sponsored game where they expose the flaw of the 970.

You would think, they knew the weakness of the 970, when they sponsor major games, they wouldn't be causing it to run gimped... but wait... it's already old and therefore obsolete, so it doesn't matter. Go buy the new 1070.

Yet here you are, still defending it. They accepted the deal, they are compensating. Instead of saying the obvious like "false advertisement is unacceptable"... you are making excuses for NV. :/

 

[poofyhairguy]

Over time came games that push past the 3.5GB limit even at 1080p. 970 are notorious for stuttering with Rise of the Tomb Raider, a game that NV sponsored. NV recommends to lower texture settings. But cards with REAL 4GB don't need to. R290X 4GB runs max textures fine at 1080p.



Mirror's Edge anyone? Another NV sponsored game where they expose the flaw of the 970.



You would think, they knew the weakness of the 970, when they sponsor major games, they wouldn't be causing it to run gimped... but wait... it's already old and therefore obsolete, so it doesn't matter. Go buy the new 1070.

Bravo! Great point!

 

[Silverforce11]

Bravo! Great point!

They did the same thing prior but nobody noticed or talked about. Some of NV's earlier GameWorks titles blocked out cards with 2GB from maxing textures even at 1080p. Classic example, the first Watch Dogs, Kepler 660Ti, 670 and 680 2GB could not run Ultra textures. My 7950 3GB could and runs it smooth.

So too could the GTX 780 3GB.

Is it a coincidence when Pascal 1070 and 1080 release that the new NV sponsored Mirror's Edge comes out saying they need 8GB (but NOT 6GB of the 980Ti!) for maxing the game? Not at all, NV even advertised that fact on their blog. It's a "Pascal inspired" setting.

Some of the games that Kepler run worse in were in fact NV sponsored titles.

But you can't sue them for planned obsolescence, right?

 

[crisium]

Far Cry 4 was in fact the first, so you are correct.