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

[Attic]

The issue is not that they quote 4GB VRAM. It's that they quote this ALONGSIDE a single memory bandwidth spec, as if all 4GB benefited from this same bandwidth.

This.

The word we are looking for when describing nVidia on how they handled the 970 specifications and the time following the 970 release is, Deceptive.

Just because something isn't a lie, doesn't mean it isn't deceptive. nVidia technically could make a case they weren't lying, they have no grounds to stand on that they were not being deceptive here. This is standard for nVidia for anyone who has been a GPU enthusiast for awhile.

If the 970 can't utilize the 4gb at once, which it can't, which the other 4gb cards can.... something tells me nVidia knew this would be seen as a negative for the 970, so nVidia simply omitted bringing to light the particulars of the memory configuration and allocation/access characteristics for the GTX 970 when it was being reviewed and nVidia also let reviewers go out with incorrect information.

 

[Elixer]

Sorry, this don't pass the smell test.
Nvidia is a public company, and if they are passing incorrect specs/documentation to review sites in order to hide the short comings of their card, then, this was blatantly, and knowingly done.

You very well know that Nvidia has multiple people reading, and fact checking EVERYTHING in the "review" in order to correct the information ASAP. This has been seen numerous times in the past when Nvidia points out some correction, that they feel should be changed.

In this case, you did not hear one word from them, and this only came to light because some users of the card found the issue.

This means that these "reviews" these days are nothing more than PR for the company in question, all so they can continue to receive their free review samples.

What Nvidia needs to do is fully own up to all the 970 owners, and offer then either refunds for those that feel they were not given all the facts, and free games to the others that feel they had been wronged, but, aren't that upset about it.

Review sites need to stop believing what the companies PR departments put out, there is no excuse for not checking the facts yourself, and calling them out on it.
This isn't a one time thing for this site (and others) either, there have been other companies that have played with the facts, and sometimes, there is a update when the outcry from the community is too high to ignore any longer.

Heck, if Nvidia wanted to, they could just advertise the card as 3.5GB and leave it at that, I doubt they would have lost sales because of the "missing" .5GB, even though it is there, but severely crippled.

 

[Pneumothorax]

There must be quite a few disgruntled customers already hitting up newegg for returns as they already have this canned page up.
Already wasted a hour arguing with newegg trying to return $750 in 970's I bought from them less than 2 weeks ago. Never again am I buying from newegg for video cards... Unlike the 1080p gamers, I game at 1600p and I'm going to hit the 3.5gb much sooner as I run SLI.

 

[Teizo]

Exactly, the performance hasn't changed. People don't need or deserve $50 compensation and if they were to get some, maybe a $10-$15 coupon for Steam is all that should be given. If this significantly altered performance in most games then yes, an option to return it or get larger compensation might be warranted but not the way it is right now.

The 970 has 4gb of memory. It is just stacked/partitioned. It can fully utilize all of it....and according to the report Ryan Smith did...it does not suffer relative performance loss in comparison to the 980 when more than 3.5gb of memory is required.

This is just manufactured FUD from 'people' doing all they can to tarnish the image of the 970 because of the good sales.

I was at first concerned, but after Nvidia released their statement, and Ryan did the investigative report...there really is nothing to this story whatsoever.

 

[Kenmitch]

There must be quite a few disgruntled customers already hitting up newegg for returns as they already have this canned page up.
Already wasted a hour arguing with newegg trying to return $750 in 970's I bought from them less than 2 weeks ago. Never again am I buying from newegg for video cards... Unlike the 1080p gamers, I game at 1600p and I'm going to hit the 3.5gb much sooner as I run SLI.

Oops....Clicked the is this answer helpful NO button by mistake

 

[lehtv]

As if 970 didn't support SLI...There are people who even buy 3 cards. I could change my cards for 970s but I decided it wasn't worth the hassle but if I did I would feel cheated right now. 6GB to 3.5GB would be a big downgrade. I'm glad I stayed with the titans

I'm not considering ever going SLI, so that doesn't apply. I'm only speaking for myself when I say that having 3.5GB almost certainly isn't a problem because it won't be using that much VRAM at settings the card can handle smoothly. I've yet to see evidence to the contrary

 

[exar333]

The 970 has 4gb of memory. It is just stacked/partitioned. It can fully utilize all of it....and according to the report Ryan Smith did...it does not suffer relative performance loss in comparison to the 980 when more than 3.5gb of memory is required.

This is just manufactured FUD from 'people' doing all they can to tarnish the image of the 970 because of the good sales.

I was at first concerned, but after Nvidia released their statement, and Ryan did the investigative report...there really is nothing to this story whatsoever.

Uh, no?

The memory bandwidth is inflated, the ROP count is inaccurate and the card will not really use the 4GB as it would if it wasn't partitioned as 3.5 + .5.

There is a lot going on here....

 

[realjetavenger]

I voted "yes" even though I don't know what they could do to satisfy me.

I spent countless hours troubleshooting my system trying to find out why it would top out at 3.5GB on my 970. I repaired installed windows, fresh installed it, installed on new ssd's. Did firmware updates on every component in my system, checked system memory, did everything except replace the motherboard.

ALL FOR NOTHING, as there was nothing wrong with any of my hardware or software. The only time I saw usage above 3.5GB was during a run of firestrike ultra. And that was a slideshow in the single digit fps.

So, yeah, I'm a little pissed about this whole thing.

At the time of purchase, the 290X was more expensive, so I was cross shopping the 290. And the 970 was performing better. So, I went with it. Today it is a different story with the prices of the 290X. If I was shopping today, in light of this new info, I'd probably go for the 290X.

 

[tential]

There must be quite a few disgruntled customers already hitting up newegg for returns as they already have this canned page up.
Already wasted a hour arguing with newegg trying to return $750 in 970's I bought from them less than 2 weeks ago. Never again am I buying from newegg for video cards... Unlike the 1080p gamers, I game at 1600p and I'm going to hit the 3.5gb much sooner as I run SLI.

This is why I purchase from Amazon a lot and will pay the premium to do so.
If I have to return something to Amazon there is ZERO fuss.

Newegg is nice for purchasing stuff but not as great for returns.

 

[exar333]

This is why I purchase from Amazon a lot and will pay the premium to do so.
If I have to return something to Amazon there is ZERO fuss.

Newegg is nice for purchasing stuff but not as great for returns.

I got mine directly from EVGA. I wonder if they will offer to extend the step-up for buyers where that 90-days already expired? I might bite on that...

 

[Grooveriding]

I got mine directly from EVGA. I wonder if they will offer to extend the step-up for buyers where that 90-days already expired? I might bite on that...

Anecdotally they are doing exactly that. A few posters in the thread about the 970 issue on nvidia's forum said EVGA offered them stepups to 980s and they were already out of the window.

Not exactly the perfect solution, spend more money to get a card that is obviously better, but it is one way to dump the 970 if you want to go that route.

I'm not surprised to hear newegg already has a specific page up to thwart attempts at returns/exchanges/refunds for this issue. As such a large vendor of PC parts, nvidia would of contacted them and given them that information to use as a reply. A situation like this nvidia is going to hunker down and wait it out. The reality will be that shareholders>customers in this situation. Compensation or offering refunds would cost a large chunk of change and would be the resolution they would least want to go with, better to offer nothing and PR the situation to death.

 

[tential]

I got mine directly from EVGA. I wonder if they will offer to extend the step-up for buyers where that 90-days already expired? I might bite on that...

My strategy has always worked for me.

Call customer support
Call again if I don't get what I want.
Attempt to escalate call.
Still don't get what I want, call corporate headquarters...

 

[Teizo]

Uh, no?

The memory bandwidth is inflated, the ROP count is inaccurate and the card will not really use the 4GB as it would if it wasn't partitioned as 3.5 + .5.

There is a lot going on here....

Performance is all that matters. The drop off in performance, relative to the 980, is not much different when >3.5gb of memory is used. To the end user...that is all that matters.

I agree Nvidia should have been more clear about this with reviewers perhaps, but overall this is just a bunch of FUD imho. The card performs as well today as it did at launch.

Like all things in the information age, sensationalism is the name of the game. I've been around long enough to see it for what it is.

 

[Pneumothorax]

Anecdotally they are doing exactly that. A few posters in the thread about the 970 issue on nvidia's forum said EVGA offered them stepups to 980s and they were already out of the window.

Not exactly the perfect solution, spend more money to get a card that is obviously better, but it is one way to dump the 970 if you want to go that route.

I'm not surprised to hear newegg already has a specific page up to thwart attempts at returns/exchanges/refunds for this issue. As such a large vendor of PC parts, nvidia would of contacted them and given them that information to use as a reply. A situation like this nvidia is going to hunker down and wait it out. The reality will be that shareholders>customers in this situation. Compensation or offering refunds would cost a large chunk of change and would be the resolution they would least want to go with, better to offer nothing and PR the situation to death.

I was thinking the same thing...
Sayonara Nvidia.
I've spent thousands over the years on these guys...
Riva 128---Riva TNT---Geforce2 Ti--Geforce 4 Ti4400--6800GT--8800 GTS 512--460 1gb SLI--670--780Ti--970 SLI

I have a 290 on the way for my son's rig and looking forward to the 390x release...

 

[PhIlLy ChEeSe]

I voted no, as the spec's barely changed from the original. Everyone here knows Nvidia is a COMPANY, as such they want to make money(its the bottom line). Now if you purchased your card Based off the spec's sheet(the spec's that changed not all spec's) then yeah your entitled to compensation, 99.999999% did not.
I was involved in an issue with Gigabyte before on there failed 680 motherboards, we changed some stuff on the internet. One of them being the posting at a certain site(RMA TALK BANNED). We all got brand new X48 boards...............
Also if you search these forums you'll find our postings. Found it here(im Jaggerwild) lost my old account http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=160113&highlight=gigabyte+680+board

http://forums.tweaktown.com/asus/

 

[Teizo]

I was thinking the same thing...
Sayonara Nvidia.
I've spent thousands over the years on these guys...

This is precisely the motive behind all of this. Business is business, so I don't blame 'people' for trying to exploit it....but the bottom line is...this is just FUD to try to get people to switch brands because the 970 has been whooping butt in sales.

 

[DigDog]

I do not own the card; can i express my reaction to NV falsifying the specs of the card?

this is really bad. the 290 being ridiculously hot at first launch? this is worse.
one is incompetence, the other is blatant cheating.

 

[R0H1T]

This is precisely the motive behind all of this. Business is business, so I don't blame 'people' for trying to exploit it....but the bottom line is...this is just FUD to try to get people to switch brands because the 970 has been whooping butt in sales.

Really, so selling products based on fake specs is legit now? Funny how people are defending their purchase by citing benchmarks, what if there were no benchmarks (like in the olden days) would that silly reason still stand in a court of law? OR say you were buying a v8 & got a v7 would you still be happy, even though it still gets to 0-60 in 4.9 sec, & to top it off you now have 8 less gallons of capacity in your fuel tank, but hey it still flies right?

 

[WelshBloke]

...this is just FUD

How is this FUD?

It's a difference in hardware between what was advertised and what was sold.

Its not made up or exaggerated, it's been stated by third parties and confirmed by Nvidia.

Its pretty much the opposite of FUD.

 

[SlowSpyder]

This is precisely the motive behind all of this. Business is business, so I don't blame 'people' for trying to exploit it....but the bottom line is...this is just FUD to try to get people to switch brands because the 970 has been whooping butt in sales.

I don't see it as FUD. The GTX970 has some limitations that Nvidia was aware of but weren't known otherwise. This may not affect a good number of users, even a majority of them possibly, but we can't know how it'll be in the future, if these cards will age faster than expected. Also, separate from the performance is the fact that these cards were misrepresented as far as their specifications go. I agree that this may get trumped up by some people, but that doesn't mean this isn't a very real issue for others who have bought these cards. If I had a 1440P/1600P/4K monitor and got a couple of these for SLI, I'd be pretty unhappy right now.

 

[tential]

I don't see it as FUD. The GTX970 has some limitations that Nvidia was aware of but weren't known otherwise. This may not affect a good number of users, even a majority of them possibly, but we can't know how it'll be in the future, if these cards will age faster than expected. Also, separate from the performance is the fact that these cards were misrepresented as far as their specifications go. I agree that this may get trumped up by some people, but that doesn't mean this isn't a very real issue for others who have bought these cards. If I had a 1440P/1600P/4K monitor and got a couple of these for SLI, I'd be pretty unhappy right now.

The thing I don't understand is, if this is a COMPLETE no issue, how was it discovered in the first place?

People were having issues with a 3.5 GB "Wall" that they had to struggle to surpass.

From there, the testing/benchmarks/repeated testing of the issue are a direct result of people finding an issue with the card.

Now people want to brush it off as a "non-issue" because their feelings are hurt and people are "Trash talking" their beloved card rather than demanding some more indepth testing from more reputable sites to actually get a full picture of this.

 

[.vodka]

I do not own the card; can i express my reaction to NV falsifying the specs of the card?

this is really bad. the 290 being ridiculously hot at first launch? this is worse.
one is incompetence, the other is blatant cheating.

I don't own the 970 either, but this is exactly my reaction over this matter. I know I have recommended it to people who were torn between it and the 290 if they couldn't get an aftermarket cooled 290 for less. This certainly equalizes things towards the proper 290s out there.


I know I'd be quite pissed if I bought something that turned out to be something different MONTHS later. If only NV had rectified the marketing/specs of the 970 much sooner after the launch it'd be an entirely opposite situation.

It's not about these 512MB of memory being an afterthought, it's the reliance on driver optimizations (if I got AT's article right) to make the 970 use its 3.5GB primary partition as intented and then spill over to the slow 512MB that worries me. If Kepler's recent performance is an indication of what happens when NV's next architecture hits the market, we all know what will happen to Maxwell once Pascal arrives, and especially to the 970 and its unusual memory configuration.

I only hope the 970 doesn't age faster than usual because of this, because its performance is going to be relevant for a while and it'd be a shame to see it fall off a cliff because of those 512MBs... Going forward, games aren't going to get less vram hungry either...

That guy telling his experience on reddit with SLI 970s and 1440p on memory hungry games isn't encouraging. Yeah, for 1080p the 970 will be fine as it is, but for how long?

 

[showb1z]

This is precisely the motive behind all of this. Business is business, so I don't blame 'people' for trying to exploit it....but the bottom line is...this is just FUD to try to get people to switch brands because the 970 has been whooping butt in sales.

No it's not FUD. Why are you defending this blatant deception?
As someone who actually owns a 970 I feel pretty ripped off, sooner or later I'm going to run into a VRAM wall. A 3.5GB card makes it sooner rather than later. I wouldn't have bought this card if I had known it wasn't a 4GB card, I would've gotten a 290(X).
People saying the card isn't powerful enough to run at settings that require >3.5GB RAM are delusional.

 

[xthetenth]

Increasing resolution isn't that great a way of increasing memory use. What's going to be a problem isn't that, it's going to be games that need progressively more assets. Console memory requirements get brought up and they fall a bit short of problematic, but do we expect a later card that cost nearly as much as a whole console not to use fancier assets? When that memory wall really gets hit by things that need more than that memory or the drivers aren't there to deal with things that want that much memory smoothly, that could cause real problems for the 970.

 

[Stuka87]

I just cannot understand why people are defending nVidia on this. Why would an individual defend a company that was caught lying?

Some saying "its a tiny change with no impact". But if this was true, NOBODY would have noticed it. Instead end users found the problem, and complained. Only then did nVidia come forward and fess up to giving out wrong numbers.