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

[tential]

There is no issue with the card, that is how it was made by design.

The issue is that nvidia knowingly lied about the specs, hoping nobody would notice.
The "reviewers" bought everything nvidia's PR team gave them, hook, line, and sinker, without questioning anything.

It took the community to break this wide open, not the "reviewers".
Funny thing though is that the "reviewers" are now doing spin control for nvidia saying there is, most likely, nothing to worry about.
We all know why they are doing that, all because they don't want nvidia to stop giving them free stuff, so they can do "reviews".
(You know that if they actually bought the card in question, and then the real facts came out about the lower specs, they would also be PO'ed)

Trust has been lost here on both nvidia, and the "reviewers".

There were clues that something wasn't right. Reviewers just chose to ignore those clues.

 

[guskline]

Does the issue of whether the spec snafu was by intent or by mistake really matter to the consumer?

 

[NomanA]

Did anyone hear back from the nVidia representative who posted in this thread with an offer to help those who want to return their 970s?

 

[AnandThenMan]

It looks like Nvidia is reneging and are now saying the hardware is working exactly as intended so no help getting refunds. And no optimized driver to try and correct the memory issue, because there is no issue.

 

[superxero044]

It looks like Nvidia is reneging and are now saying the hardware is working exactly as intended so no help getting refunds. And no optimized driver to try and correct the memory issue, because there is no issue.

Link?

 

[5150Joker]

There is no issue with the card, that is how it was made by design.

The issue is that nvidia knowingly lied about the specs, hoping nobody would notice.
The "reviewers" bought everything nvidia's PR team gave them, hook, line, and sinker, without questioning anything.

It took the community to break this wide open, not the "reviewers".
Funny thing though is that the "reviewers" are now doing spin control for nvidia saying there is, most likely, nothing to worry about.
We all know why they are doing that, all because they don't want nvidia to stop giving them free stuff, so they can do "reviews".
(You know that if they actually bought the card in question, and then the real facts came out about the lower specs, they would also be PO'ed)

Trust has been lost here on both nvidia, and the "reviewers".

Or maybe the reviewers are using hard evidence and showing that overall it's not anything to cry about? Yes the issue is there at extreme settings but for the vast majority of people who bought a 970, it will never be a problem.

That said, carry on with the conspiracy theories and faux outrage.

 

[AnandThenMan]

geforce.com forum
hardforum

 

[SlowSpyder]

Or maybe the reviewers are using hard evidence and showing that overall it's not anything to cry about? Yes the issue is there at extreme settings but for the vast majority of people who bought a 970, it will never be a problem.

That said, carry on with the conspiracy theories and faux outrage.

I've had my 7970 for three years. There is a really good chance anyone looking to keep their GTX 970 for a few years will run into this issue that was never disclosed by Nvidia. There are people who own the card would like to return it, that doesn't sound like 'faux outrage' to me.

 

[guskline]

I have no knowledge that NVidia "knowingly lied" about the GTX970 specs on the date I purchased my video card, January 4, 2015.

What I know now and since this past weekend, including Nvidia's admissions is that the originals specs for the Nvidia (ROPs) was incorrect and the Vram 4Gb was not accessed the same way.

Unfortunately for Nvidia, their marketing department got it wrong.

My being "disturbed about it" is not faux.

 

[Eymar]

Looks like the lawyers got involved as technically there is physically 4GB of ram and all 4GB ram is usable (just not at full speed). The ROPS and L2 specs, don't know how they're getting around that one legally. I was hoping for a better showing from Nvidia so hopefully the status changes again until final resolution which I believe should be allowing any 970 owner return their card.

 

[Termie]

There is no issue with the card, that is how it was made by design.

The issue is that nvidia knowingly lied about the specs, hoping nobody would notice.
The "reviewers" bought everything nvidia's PR team gave them, hook, line, and sinker, without questioning anything.

It took the community to break this wide open, not the "reviewers".
Funny thing though is that the "reviewers" are now doing spin control for nvidia saying there is, most likely, nothing to worry about.
We all know why they are doing that, all because they don't want nvidia to stop giving them free stuff, so they can do "reviews".
(You know that if they actually bought the card in question, and then the real facts came out about the lower specs, they would also be PO'ed)

Trust has been lost here on both nvidia, and the "reviewers".

Or maybe the reviewers are using hard evidence and showing that overall it's not anything to cry about? Yes the issue is there at extreme settings but for the vast majority of people who bought a 970, it will never be a problem.

That said, carry on with the conspiracy theories and faux outrage.

FYI, Tech Report has posted a podcast that actually gets to the heart of the issue: http://techreport.com/review/27748/we-discuss-the-geforce-gtx-970-memory-controversy

Unlike in their initial coverage of the Nvidia press release, TR actually picks apart the issue and highlights what it means for consumers.

This is about facts, not a conspiracy theory. Skip to the 10-minute mark to see Scott discuss the 970's weaknesses.

 

[Grooveriding]

FYI, Tech Report has posted a podcast that actually gets to the heart of the issue: http://techreport.com/review/27748/we-discuss-the-geforce-gtx-970-memory-controversy

Unlike in their initial coverage of the Nvidia press release, TR actually picks apart the issue and highlights what it means for consumers.

This is about facts, not a conspiracy theory. Skip to the 10-minute mark to see Scott discuss the 970's weaknesses.

Thanks for the link. He hits the one salient point on why what nvidia did was wrong and why they would of done it. The 970 isn't a true 4GB card in the sense that all 4GB run at the full 226GB/s bus speed as you expect memory to run on a video card's given memory speed/bus calculation. That last .5GB operates at 1/8th of the speed and it isn't operating as advertised.

The reason nvidia would of done this and concealed it is the salient point he made; that the 970 was being positioned against AMD's 4GB cards; the 290X and 290, the 970 markets much better as having as much VRAM as those two cards do. It would not have been as popular if it shipped as a 3.5GB card and this is likely why nvidia used the wonky configuration they used. I think this is why nvidia lied and deceived on the specs, not fully disclosing the crippled nature of a portion of the VRAM; because it was a strong marketing point for the 970 to have that 4GB VRAM like the competition did.

Nvidia pulled a bait and switch, they must of known it would come out, but with these video cards their strongest sales occur after launch when you see the most demand for these as new products. It's why you always see new GPUs sold out for that first month or so, because demand is highest then and then it tapers off. So they slipped it past everyone and capitalized on their sales and now that rush is over, they've been caught, and they'll weather out the storm having already made bank on the 970.

Really distasteful, but not surprising from nvidia with their history of predatory and anti-consumer behaviour.

 

[guskline]

Looks like the lawyers got involved as technically there is physically 4GB of ram and all 4GB ram is usable (just not at full speed). The ROPS and L2 specs, don't know how they're getting around that one legally. I was hoping for a better showing from Nvidia so hopefully the status changes again until final resolution which I believe should be allowing any 970 owner return their card.

"If" the lawyers got involved, they surely know the Lanham act and the potential pitfalls of "false or deceptive" advertising.

 

[Eymar]

Total conjecture, but it does seem possible the issue was discussed in length internally as the engineering and performance teams obviously spent time analyzing the design choices for the memory controller. Again, using my past experience and may not reflect how things are done in Nvidia there are usually representatives from each team at various points of R&D (dreaded "cross functional" meetings) as it is important on every project to make sure everybody is on the same page (especially for big projects). I have to believe marketing was asking "it's still 4GB right?" all through those design discussions. It does seems the engineers picked the right design as the 970 will perform optimally under 3.5GB where as overall performance would be less if they just physically remove 512MB ram chip and disabling one more memory controller.

 

[Eymar]

"If" the lawyers got involved, they surely know the Lanham act and the potential pitfalls of "false or deceptive" advertising.

I agree and that's why I'm thinking the lawyers had a discussion on the 4GB specs (as there is physically and logically 4GB of usable memory) and whether not it was false or deceptive. I'm guessing the lawyers agree it is not so reason for change in Nvidia's stance(again total conjecture on my part). The ROPS and L2, well they were definitely incorrect at release.

 

[xthetenth]

It's also the sort of thing that's most likely to become a problem later on when RAM becomes more important and driver support wanes, so I'm not really sold on the common line of it being the same card in the benchmarks because the card in the reviews wouldn't have the same longevity concerns. Between this and Kepler longevity problems I'm probably going to spot AMD cards a decent amount in benchmarks to account for an expectation of the NV cards' performance falling off.

 

[TeknoBug]

That's why I don't read/watch reviews anymore, after reviews on games like Watch Dogs and FIFA 15 and even NHL 15, I basically just stopped and prefer to read actual user feedback. Reviewers are usually paid these days by whoever sends them the content, The Crew was being spun like a mofo on IGN for 3 months solid and even had "presented by Ubisoft" in their videos and hyping it, and it is a forgotten game now.

 

[Grooveriding]

It's also the sort of thing that's most likely to become a problem later on when RAM becomes more important and driver support wanes, so I'm not really sold on the common line of it being the same card in the benchmarks because the card in the reviews wouldn't have the same longevity concerns. Between this and Kepler longevity problems I'm probably going to spot AMD cards a decent amount in benchmarks to account for an expectation of the NV cards' performance falling off.

Nvidia in the past has supported the prior generation quite well driver wise. Support for Kepler has been extremely poor since Maxwell has released. Multiple reasons why this could be so, maybe they are strapped for resources on their driver team trying to contend with the weird memory of the 970 or... maybe the 970/980 performing at about the level of the Kepler cards they replaced is incentive for abandoning Kepler optimizations to push upgrades.. :sneaky: Both believable scenarios.

 

[Pneumothorax]

It looks like Nvidia is reneging and are now saying the hardware is working exactly as intended so no help getting refunds. And no optimized driver to try and correct the memory issue, because there is no issue.

This is sad and it makes me angry. Even 'PeterS' who helped a number of us early on in geforce.com, did a 180, went back and changed his replies that mention anything about return/exchange. I would guess they severely underestimated the number of us wanting to get rid of our cards and their board manufacturers balking at swallowing the costs of taking in thousands of now 'refurb cards'. Luckily I pressed my issue early on and was given the opportunity to get me cards returned for store credit. Now it looks like that well is going to dry up real fast.

 

[garagisti]

Or maybe the reviewers are using hard evidence and showing that overall it's not anything to cry about? Yes the issue is there at extreme settings but for the vast majority of people who bought a 970, it will never be a problem.

That said, carry on with the conspiracy theories and faux outrage.

Not many people are fortunate enough to be able to buy graphic cards every year, leave alone upgrade whenever new games come. Most people do have their cards for upwards of 2 years, and that's in developed countries. How can you be so sure that it will 'never' be a problem for most owners?

 

[WelshBloke]

It looks like Nvidia is reneging and are now saying the hardware is working exactly as intended so no help getting refunds. And no optimized driver to try and correct the memory issue, because there is no issue.

Ask Keys if he knows anything?
He has a line into Nvidia still doesn't he?

He's reading the thread, maybe he can clear things up?

 

[superxero044]

Yeah this has pushed me past the point of being moderately unhappy to being extremely unhappy. I have SLI 970s for 4k. It works fine the benchmarks look fine but I am not happy about the microstutter. I am not made of money.

I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that it was a marketing / engineer miscommunication on the spec sheet. But now that they're acting like there's no issue at all is ridiculous. I understand that the 970 is a great card for the price, but that doesn't make up for the way they are acting.

I have owned TNT2, 7800, 260, 570, SLI 670s, SLI 970s. I am an extremely loyal NVIDIA customer who has ALWAYS recommended NVIDIA to friends. I honestly am so unhappy with them now.

 

[Jhatfie]

This whole fiasco and how Nvidia is handling it has made it very easy for me to pick my next graphics card. I guess I should be saying thanks?

 

[Headfoot]

faux outrage.

Faux outrage, like for example, over 15% power consumption differences between enthuisiast GPUs?

 

[kagui]

Nividia could solve this so easily
make 970 cheaper and let 970 owners get 2 AAA free games