• Nvidia sued for false advertising
    75 replies, posted
[IMG]http://www.sweclockers.com/image/red/2015/01/26/Unnamed.jpg?t=articleFull&k=dc52941c[/IMG] [quote] Earlier this January a discovery was made; there was something fishy about the GTX 970. The GPU showed a deviating performance behaviour, and it turned out to be partly because of the last 500 Megabytes of the GPU's VRAM being significantly slower than the rest of the 3.5 Gigabytes. Shortly afterwards, Nvidia admitted that it had been a conscious choice to make it that way. Now the controversy gains a juridical aftermath, as a class action has been submitted to the court of the Northern District of California. "The Defendants engaged in a scheme to mislead consumers nationwide about the characteristics, qualities and benefits of the GTX 970 by stating that the GTX 970 provides a true 4GB of VRAM, 64 ROPs, and 2048 KB of L2 cache capacity, when in fact it does not." Nvidia, as well as their manufacturing partner Gigabyte are accused of false advertising, where the Taiwanese giant represent the manufacturing of the product. The requirement is for customers to obtain an appropriate sum of money in compensation. The lawsuit doesn't only mention the segmented memory, but also the fact that the graphics card's been sold with other incorrect specifications. A dossier sent to reviewers stated that the card contained 64 raster operations pipelines (ROPs), and 2MB of L2 Cache, when in reality it actually contains 56 ROPs and 1.75MB L2 cache. [/quote] Source: [URL]http://www.sweclockers.com/nyhet/20093-nvidia-och-gigabyte-stams-for-falsk-marknadsforing-av-geforce-gtx-970[/URL]
Good. Maybe now they won't blatantly lie about their cards anymore.
Good [editline]21st February 2015[/editline] However I doubt any 1 person will get a sizeable amount of cash out of it
[QUOTE=Maas;47186819]Good. Maybe now they won't blatantly lie about their cards anymore.[/QUOTE] Have they really done this more than once? And it also wasn't a lie, there is 4 gb of ram on the card. However the fact that they didn't tell anyone .5 gb of it is slower was bullshit.
[QUOTE=thrawn2787;47186942]Have they really done this more than once? And it also wasn't a lie, there is 4 gb of ram on the card. However the fact that they didn't tell anyone .5 gb of it is slower was bullshit.[/QUOTE] They did however lie about the number of ROPs.
[QUOTE=Karmah;47186821]I doubt any 1 person will get a sizeable amount of cash out of it[/QUOTE] The plaintiff and their lawyers will if they win, and that's about it. Hopefully it will reduce these mistakes in the future though...?
This will be a pretty huge payout considering the cost per unit of graphics cards. Might be up there with the intel CPU settlement a few years back.
Sad thing is, one of the main things this will cause is their next graphic cards become more expensive to help gain back the money they spent defending themselves and what they were sued for. I agree they did something wrong but ugh, suing is just stupid.
[QUOTE=Karmah;47186821]Good [editline]21st February 2015[/editline] However I doubt any 1 person will get a sizeable amount of cash out of it[/QUOTE] I just want a partial refund. I based my purchase on benchmarks, and having less ram doesn't retroactively change benchmarks. But that lying pisses me off. [editline]21st February 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=nuttyboffin;47187096]Sad thing is, one of the main things this will cause is their next graphic cards become more expensive to help gain back the money they spent defending themselves and what they were sued for. I agree they did something wrong but ugh, suing is just stupid.[/QUOTE] Don't want to lose money? Don't lie about your cards. If they jack up their prices, I bet AMD is going to have a good time between that and the PR shitstorm.
Good. Hopefully by summer when I buy one I'll get a price drop.
They were extremely forthcoming with information, apologized for the mistake made by their marketing department, and reached out to hardware experts in the industry to explain their proprietary architecture and show exactly how it works so nobody could be mislead. They also helped people get refunds or exchanges through the stores they purchased from. And this is the horrific, terrible, unforgivable act of false advertising they [i]inflicted[/i] upon innocent, unwitting consumers: [quote]A dossier sent to reviewers stated that the card contained 64 raster operations pipelines (ROPs), and 2MB of L2 Cache, when in reality it actually contains 56 ROPs and 1.75MB L2 cache.[/quote] Next time I hear someone on this forum bitch about how we live in a sue-happy culture I'm just going to shake my head. You sue when a person or company isn't willing to cooperate to make things right for the consumer. What the fuck more do people want from nVidia over this?
[QUOTE=catbarf;47187143]They were extremely forthcoming with information, apologized for the mistake made by their marketing department, and reached out to hardware experts in the industry to explain their proprietary architecture and show exactly how it works so nobody could be mislead. They also helped people get refunds or exchanges through the stores they purchased from. And this is the horrific, terrible, unforgivable act of false advertising they [i]inflicted[/i] upon innocent, unwitting consumers: Next time I hear someone on this forum bitch about how we live in a sue-happy culture I'm just going to shake my head. You sue when a person or company isn't willing to cooperate to make things right for the consumer. What the fuck more do people want from nVidia over this?[/QUOTE] oy vey cheaper cards maybe? ain't no one got 500 bucks for a 980 brother, sure as hell not getting a 970 after all this bullshit
[QUOTE=catbarf;47187143]They were extremely forthcoming with information, apologized for the mistake made by their marketing department, and reached out to hardware experts in the industry to explain their proprietary architecture and show exactly how it works so nobody could be mislead. They also helped people get refunds or exchanges through the stores they purchased from. And this is the horrific, terrible, unforgivable act of false advertising they [i]inflicted[/i] upon innocent, unwitting consumers: Next time I hear someone on this forum bitch about how we live in a sue-happy culture I'm just going to shake my head. You sue when a person or company isn't willing to cooperate to make things right for the consumer. What the fuck more do people want from nVidia over this?[/QUOTE] Because that's grossly marginalizing what they did.
I'm about to order a 970 today, should I still do it?
[QUOTE=Van-man;47187194]Because that's grossly marginalizing what they did.[/QUOTE] no it's not [editline]21st February 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=crazycory65;47187278]I'm about to order a 970 today, should I still do it?[/QUOTE] yes it's just as powerful as before you heard about this issue [editline]21st February 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=Showgun;47187191]oy vey cheaper cards maybe? ain't no one got 500 bucks for a 980 brother, sure as hell not getting a 970 after all this bullshit[/QUOTE] pretty sure all the people that bought that card had 500 bucks for it [editline]21st February 2015[/editline] asking for a partial refund for mis-advertising to consumers is total bs because for one no product pages for this card listed ROPS and cache. the only people potentially suing should be the reviewers; you still got the exact same benchmark results for viewing regardless of the information supplied to reviewers.
[QUOTE=.Lain;47187285] pretty sure all the people that bought that card had 500 bucks for it [/QUOTE] that's not what i meant and i'm pretty sure you knew that
i don't know what you mean. could you explain it to me because it's not making very much sense. nvidia having slightly larger profit margins (where you live) is not an issue you could possibly want to sue over
[QUOTE=.Lain;47187340]i don't know what you mean. could you explain it to me because it's not making very much sense. nvidia having slightly larger profit margins (where you live) is not an issue you could possibly want to sue over[/QUOTE] It's the way they achieved it combined with their marketing that does.
[QUOTE=Van-man;47187352]It's the way they achieved it combined with their marketing that does.[/QUOTE] with the 980 they did nothing out of the ordinary achieve that margin. last time i checked the 970 was very competitively priced versus the previous generation of cards.
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[QUOTE=catbarf;47187143]They were extremely forthcoming with information, apologized for the mistake made by their marketing department, and reached out to hardware experts in the industry to explain their proprietary architecture and show exactly how it works so nobody could be mislead. They also helped people get refunds or exchanges through the stores they purchased from. [/QUOTE] Yeah, [I]after[/I] people found out what they had done. This wasn't their marketing department's fault, it's pretty obvious that they thought nobody would notice it until such a long time had passed that it wouldn't be relevant anymore
[QUOTE=Atlascore;47187385]No. Save up a little more money and grab the 980 instead.[/QUOTE] why would you do that if you just wanted the power of a 970? the 980 is considerably more than the 970 for a relatively small boost in power. you can clock a decent 970 to have almost the same frame pushing capabilities as a stock 980
[QUOTE=.Lain;47187393]why would you do that if you just wanted the power of a 970? the 980 is considerably more than the 970 for a relatively small boost in power. [B]you can clock a decent 970 to have almost the same frame pushing capabilities as a stock 980[/B][/QUOTE] I fucking hate it when people say this because you can clock a 980 to make the gap the same, making that point pretty moot.
[QUOTE=Atlascore;47187385]No. Save up a little more money and grab the 980 instead.[/QUOTE] Or he could get an AMD Radeon 290X for about the same price as a 970 with better performance
[QUOTE=crazycory65;47187278]I'm about to order a 970 today, should I still do it?[/QUOTE] Look at the benchmarks; does the 970 perform very well in its price range? (The answer's yes) If you want to not get it on principle, then get an AMD card, or drop the extra cash on the 980, but otherwise, the 970's an excellent card for the price.
[QUOTE=Levelog;47187463]I fucking hate it when people say this because you can clock a 980 to make the gap the same, making that point pretty moot.[/QUOTE] i specifically said stock 980 in clear letters. my point was that for the money the 970 is very powerful. the 980 falls behind in price:performance.
[QUOTE=.Lain;47187526]i specifically said stock 980 in clear letters. my point was that for the money the 970 is very powerful. the 980 falls behind in price:performance.[/QUOTE] But the point that you can overclock the 970 is not valid in comparing it's performance over buying a 980.
[QUOTE=Atlascore;47187493]What if he doesn't want to overclock? What if he wants a fully functional 4GB of RAM? .[/QUOTE] a. he shouldn't spend so much money on a GPU. especially when overclocking is so absolutely easy and encouraged by OEMs in 2015 b. that might be a valid point if anyone could really provide any situations where having 3.5GB of full speed GDDR5 versus 4 would bottleneck them. if they want to make that a decider for whatever reason then so be it but it's pointless.
[QUOTE=.Lain;47187285] asking for a partial refund for mis-advertising to consumers is total bs because for one no product pages for this card listed ROPS and cache. the only people potentially suing should be the reviewers; you still got the exact same benchmark results for viewing regardless of the information supplied to reviewers.[/QUOTE] An omission of information that is likely to mislead a customer still counts as "false advertising", even if nothing false is literally stated. With the 970 being advertised with 4.0gb of vram, it's reasonable that consumers would assume it would all be equally functional. Given that we're starting to see games using 3.5gb+ of vram on higher settings, it's also reasonable to assume that customers may have bought it hoping for a degree of future proofing.
[QUOTE=Levelog;47187533]But the point that you can overclock the 970 is not valid in comparing it's performance over buying a 980.[/QUOTE] it still has better price to performance than the 980 at stock.
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