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

[Atreidin]

Nvidia lied and got caught. Hopefully this dings their wallet enough that they won't do it again.

No we have to spin the wheel of nonsense to find out what illogical excuse for outright lying will be used next.

The cycle will go over and over again through:
1.) Some other company lies so it's OK that Nvidia does it.
2.) Some percentage of their customers are apathetic about being lied to so that makes everything OK. In addition, one must add the baseless claim that everyone criticizing Nvidia is a biased AMD fan.
3.) Maybe there's a lot of incompetent people working at Nvidia who don't know the specs on their own products. Wait, that makes them sound like idiots. Let's try #1 again.

 

[Keysplayr]

This isn't a court of law. Common sense and logic work just fine here. Sorry.

Common sense tells me that you are trying to hard to convince people of something that you have no proof of.
Quite a few here are trying.

 

[boozzer]

Heh, best selling card of 2015. I'm sure offering two free games with it for several months had nothing to do with that. One of them being the very popular/anticipated Witcher 3. Nvidia bundled MGSV with the 960 as well. Certainly got me to buy in and take the risk.

Toss in the $30 lawsuit cash and the 970 will have cost me $200-260 depending on how you value the two free games (ultimately 4 free games for me due to the batman fiasco), at msrp or market value.

If Nvidia wants me to buy a 1070, maybe they should drop the price $50-100 and toss in a couple of free games. For me its shaping up to be exactly like the 560ti to 700 series upgrade debate all over again. I just couldn't justify the cost.

if 1070 drops down to 300$, I am sure 99% of us would instantly recommend it

 

[Jaskalas]

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.

I have to admit to thinking the... bandaid was more meaningful than it was.
Relying on special driver support, on a per game basis? Is a terrible idea. In retrospect I change my vote from undecided to yes.

Oddball VRAM sizes / speeds cannot be understated in their long term negative impact. We can see it in benchmarks today.

 

[taltamir]

got an email from newegg informing me about my gtx980 qualifying for this and saying they will contact me again when they have more specifics to finalize things.

Very proactive of newegg to inform me of this ruling and the funds i can get. Have other etailers done the same?

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.

I gotta agree with this. A per game driver fix is a temporary bandaid. Newer/older games won't get it, newer/older OS wont get it, and as new cards come out nobody will get such treatment anymore.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

got an email from newegg informing me about my gtx980 qualifying for this and saying they will contact me again when they have more specifics to finalize things.

Very proactive of newegg to inform me of this ruling and the funds i can get. Have other etailers done the same?

What? LOL I bought a 970 from newegg and they haven't sent me any email about it. And why would they email you about a 980?

 

[SteveGrabowski]

You know, because Quantum physics says things change when they are observed and all.

Man I got a warning when I used this line 27 pages back

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=37120020&postcount=264

 

[amenx]

Maybe a little dose of scale/perspective.. If I had bought a $40,000 vehicle and found its performance compromised due to false specs or advertising, pretty sure it would get a rise out of me (doubt it would be outrage) and compel me to seek redress. For something that cost me $330, and without any palpable performance penalties, kind of hard not to feel apathy. What I find funny is outrage over the apathy and the implied notion that due to this calamitous deception Nvidia has inflicted upon the hardware/gaming world, that war should be declared upon Nvidia and we sign a declaration to never buy their GPUs again.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I have to admit to thinking the... bandaid was more meaningful than it was.
Relying on special driver support, on a per game basis? Is a terrible idea.

Yup, and Nvidia admitted to doing it:

We are working on a driver update that will tune what’s allocated where in memory to further improve performance,” said the representative for Nvidia.

http://www.kitguru.net/components/g...force-gtx-970-performance-with-driver-update/

I know for certain there was a part of the Mordor game (with the Ultra HD textures) that stuttered for me at first on the 970 (and others reported it too but not on the 980). Today that stutter is gone because Nvidia did something special.

The problem is we have no clue what optimizations Nvidia did for the 970, so we don't know how much of its performance will fall off when it no longer gets the white glove treatment.

Personally I think it won't matter a ton because even 4GB of RAM is about to not be enough, I think Directx 12 will lead to a crazy bloating of RAM requirements. But the concept that the most popular card in Steam ever might age worse than even Kepler did is a bad thing for our entire INDUSTRY.

 

[Arachnotronic]

What? LOL I bought a 970 from newegg and they haven't sent me any email about it. And why would they email you about a 980?

Got emails from Newegg for my 980s as well as the 970 I bought.

 

[tential]

Got emails from Newegg for my 980s as well as the 970 I bought.

Why are people getting 980 emails?

New thread maybe?
"should I be compensated for the 970 because it forced me to get a 980! "

Great for the 980 buyers if they can get cash back. Can we call this a founder's rebate? /sarcasm.

Can anyone post their email for their 980 (details removed obviously)?

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Got emails from Newegg for my 980s as well as the 970 I bought.

I just the email from them an hour ago. I'm not sure why they're involved though.

 

[Eymar]

Why are people getting 980 emails?

New thread maybe?
"should I be compensated for the 970 because it forced me to get a 980! "

Great for the 980 buyers if they can get cash back. Can we call this a founder's rebate? /sarcasm.

Can anyone post their email for their 980 (details removed obviously)?

That's exactly why. I for one sold 3x titan's because I could resell them and get 3x 970s and get G-sync monitors because there were 3x SLI reviews that showed 970 to be faster than 3x Titans. Even with G-sync the 3x 970s were stutter fests compared to Titan setup (this was at release so maybe fixed with memory mapping drivers). Luckily Newegg allowed me return without restock fee, but guess what had to buy new videocards and bought 3x 980s (fixed stutter so happy at the time). I would never have bought the 980s if 970s were marketed as 3.5 GB.

 

[guskline]

I received two emails from Newegg. First for the GTX980 which I never purchased; purchased a GTX 980TI and second for a GTX 970 which I purchased and returned when PC Perspective blew the whistle on the 3.5G vs 4 G memory issue.

The OPs question is do I feel that I should be compensated by Nvidia for the GTX 970 incident. Well, Newegg credited me fully to return it (I bought a R9 290) so other than some aggravation I wasn't out much.

I did file a private complaint with the FTC concerning misleading advertising - not a true 4 G ram ALL running the same speed. Never heard back from them.

You might ask why I still buy Nvidia cards? I can't find an alternative as fast in single card mode.

Just don't want dual cards AND the "just wait for Vega" line is getting old.

 

[jackstar7]

Maybe a little dose of scale/perspective.. If I had bought a $40,000 vehicle and found its performance compromised due to false specs or advertising, pretty sure it would get a rise out of me (doubt it would be outrage) and compel me to seek redress. For something that cost me $330, and without any palpable performance penalties, kind of hard not to feel apathy. What I find funny is outrage over the apathy and the implied notion that due to this calamitous deception Nvidia has inflicted upon the hardware/gaming world, that war should be declared upon Nvidia and we sign a declaration to never buy their GPUs again.

This actually lacks perspective. Instead of understanding that other people do not share your financial context, you think others should share yours, which sees this as basically a non-issue as a few hundred bucks isn't a big deal to you. Awesome for you.

Some people save and try to get the best value they can for the rigs. The 970 appeared to be a solid value at release. But further testing showed its weaknesses over time (with new games/higher res) and so someone who thought they'd be good for a while might not have been, and either has had to live with that performance, or made moves to switch to another card potentially at further financial loss.

More sympathy for victims of this situation would not hurt anyone except shareholders in nV, and fanboys who cannot handle the ego hit of "their" team playing dirty.

 

[Ranulf]

I just the email from them an hour ago. I'm not sure why they're involved though.

Just checked my email, it came in at 215pm pst for me.

"Dear XXX,

We have been informed about a class action lawsuit settlement with NVIDIA regarding the GTX 970 graphics card. Newegg is currently awaiting details about the settlement claims process (instructions, website). Once we have this important information, we will send you a follow-up email with the specifics on how you can submit your claim.

If you have any questions regarding the information provided in this email, please don't hesitate to contact Newegg Customer Service through one of the convenient contact methods provided here.

Sincerely,
Your Newegg Customer Support Team"

 

[Keysplayr]

Man I got a warning when I used this line 27 pages back

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=37120020&postcount=264

I think it was maybe the last sentence that got you in hot water.

 

[MrK6]

Woot, show me the money!

 

[tg2708]

Like I've said, even if 1 employee knew and only 1 employee knew they still have to have the power to make things happen.

What's your evidence that an employee knew and further evidence that they attempted to fix the issue and we're shot down. If there was a paper trail, it should have been found during these legal proceedings unless you'd like to also suggest the proceedings were incompetent as well....

While I have no interest in going back and forth the bolded part makes no sense. And then again if a supposed fix was brought up why would nvidia shoot it down? Also they were found guilty in the case and so they had to have done something wrong and or malicious.

 

[96Firebird]

Also they were found guilty in the case...

They were not, it was settled.

 

[Nashemon]

Great! $30 that will go straight to AMD when I upgrade.

In reality, though, I don't upgrade that often, so in 3-5 years when I typically would, I may have forgotten all about this. Because to be honest, I've not had any issues with mine (though, I don't take deceptive advertising lightly), but that could easily change with gaming as we all know, and I suppose depending on how they handle the 970 specific drivers into the future, the memory (no pun intended) may linger, so there's a possibility this may be the first and last NVidia card I'll ever buy.

 

[Pantalaimon]

While I have no interest in going back and forth the bolded part makes no sense. And then again if a supposed fix was brought up why would nvidia shoot it down? Also they were found guilty in the case and so they had to have done something wrong and or malicious.

Actually I think this settlement does not mean that NVIDIA admit to any wrongdoing.

'Nvidia denied all allegations of wrongdoing, and both parties entered into the settlement and agreed upon the terms, believing them to be in the best interests of all parties involved.'

 

[R0H1T]

Actually I think this settlement does not mean that NVIDIA admit to any wrongdoing.

'Nvidia denied all allegations of wrongdoing, and both parties entered into the settlement and agreed upon the terms, believing them to be in the best interests of all parties involved.'

It's precisely why they've settled out of court, like Intel in 2008, because if this were to go trial they'd be bleeding millions of $ through their collective noses.

Let's see if anyone comes up with an excuse that they (Nvidia) were not guilty, hence settled the matter out of the goodness in their hearts. In the end lawyers won & consumers are getting chump change, the settlement ensures Nvidia can & will likely do this again later on, anyone still remember bumpgate D:

 

[Raduque]

So... what does this mean for 970s on the used market? :sneaky:

 

[Headfoot]

What nVidia intended is absolutely, 100% irrelevant. Deceptive trade practices in California is a strict liability tort. There are 2 elements: (1) the defendant engaged in unfair, deceptive, untrue or misleading advertising and (2) the plaintiff suffered injury in fact and lost money or property.

It does not matter what nVidia staff thought or intended.

It does matter whether 970 owners suffered injury in fact -- this is the real battleground.