Update: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 Settlement Claims Website Now Open
by Ryan Smith on September 12, 2016 9:30 AM EST
Update 09/12: Bringing this back up, over the weekend the website to submit settlement claims went up. Owners of GTX 970s who purchased the card between its launch and August 24th of this year can participate in the settlement in order to receive $30 per card. The settlement itself has not yet been approved by the courts, but is expected to be approved in December.
Interestingly, there is no damage cap in the settlement, so all participants will receive a fixed $30 per card regardless of the price paid or the number of claimants. Meanwhile the proposed attorney fees total $1.3 million.
Original: 07/29
Word comes from Top Class Actions (via The Tech Report) that NVIDIA will soon be settling a series of proposed class action lawsuits brought against the company regarding the GeForce GTX 970. Under the preliminary settlement, United States residents who purchased GeForce GTX 970 cards would be able to claim a $30 settlement in return for dropping further litigation against the company. With the GTX 970 having launched at $329, this amounts to a de facto 9% rebate on the card.
The class action suits in question were brought against the company almost immediately after NVIDIA made the important (and more than a bit painful) disclosure that the initially published specifications for the GTX 970 were wrong. Specifically, that the card had an unusual memory crossbar organization where one ROP/L2 partition was disabled, giving the card only 56 ROPs instead of 64. Furthermore, this meant that the last 512MB of the standard 4GB of VRAM could not be accessed in a contiguous manner, impacting how it could be used. To that end, as the Top Class Actions article notes, the $30 settlement “was calculated to represent a portion of the cost of the storage and performance capabilities the consumers thought they were obtaining in the purchase of the product.”
With that said, at this point the settlement itself has yet to be approved by the court, and signups are not yet available. Assuming it is approved, I’d expect that signups will be made available shortly thereafter.
Source: Top Class Actions (via The Tech Report)
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Drumsticks - Sunday, July 31, 2016 - link
They also chopped off and did not advertise the L2/ROPs. I'm not sure if the lawsuit was only focused on the RAM, but as far as I'm concerned, selling 56 ROPs and 1.75MB of L2 while advertising 64/2 isn't cool.Doesn't change the fact that the 970 is a great card, but I think there was some shady "I hope they don't notice" going on.
Kvaern1 - Tuesday, August 2, 2016 - link
"Doesn't change the fact that the 970 is a great card, but I think there was some shady "I hope they don't notice" going on."Well, that's when you end up with shit like this on your hands. They must know that.
I think someone made an honest mistake and I think it's a reasonable reimbursement.
Kvaern1 - Tuesday, August 2, 2016 - link
I don't care if it only applies in certain situations. I want to know about possible limitations like this before making a buying decision. Not after. Ever.xenol - Monday, August 1, 2016 - link
Drive manufacturers claimed their drives would give me X TB of space, but I ended up with less than that according to Windows.AMD was telling me 8 cores is better with Bulldozer, but I never really saw that.
Intel and AMD both tell me I can get up to X GHz speed on their processors, but I never seemed to get there.
The RAM I bought was advertised as DDR4-2666 and the motherboard I bought said it would support it, but every time I enable it, the system doesn't boot and I have to live with DDR4-2166 speeds.
I don't seem to be getting the 1.3Gbps on my 802.11ac router even if I'm right next to it.
My ISP claimed I can get 24Mbps down, but I never seem to get more than 16.
There are plenty of half-truths and claims that tech companies make. Maybe I should take on the tech world.
tamalero - Thursday, August 4, 2016 - link
Your comparison is stupid.The drives are actually X TB space, the format mode changes it according to the specifications of said format. That is not the problem of the manufacturers.
And almost every drive I've bought in the past 10 years, had both of them on display (capacities in their bags, formatted and unformated.)
AMD and INTEL always said a specified speed for their processors, if it didnt have it.. then the chip was to be replaced or damaged. unless you're really dumb trying to bring overclocking OR turbo modes.
The ram stuff is motherboard issue, not ram issue. again, stupid comparison.
Your ISP pretty much hides behind the "up to" clause. Which means your line will max at 24mbps. Not that it will offer you 24mbps all the time 24/7 and under all circumstances/connections. NEXT?
I suppose Hypertreading was false advertisement considering your dumb comparison.
r3loaded - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link
The $30 settlement “was calculated to represent a portion of the cost of the storage and performance capabilities the consumers thought they were obtaining in the purchase of the product.”GTX 970 owners are basically getting a discount based on the reduction in available high-bandwidth memory and ROP count. Not shabby at all.
Eidigean - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link
I know I'm in the minority here, but the 970 is really a defective 980 being resold partially disabled. I know it's priced lower for those on a budget, but it's hard for me to empathize with those that are annoyed that their crippled product underperforms. For me, it's a fully enabled product or bust. Upgrading my 580 to a 1080 this year. Would never touch a 970 or a 1070.Icehawk - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link
I will happily buy an x80 model if you pay the difference otherwise I will stick with my x70 series that cost much less and have performance within 10-20%. Best value is rarely the top model but often the one right below it.Lonyo - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link
People know that it was a slightly disabled 980. The issue is that the impact of the disabling was not clearly illustrated by the specifications NV claimed it had. They claimed a specific memory bandwidth which was not actually available to all of the RAM. Therefore performance was not necessarily going to be as expected and the card was mis-sold.People knew that ROPs and SMs were disabled, and there is no issue with any of that.
Also you are an idiot. If you can't empathise with people who were sold a partially disabled product which was actually more disabled than claimed because it has a level of disablement anyway, then... yeah...
BrokenCrayons - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link
I like how you wove your comment about this article into a reason to brag about how much you're willing to spend on a graphics card. However, if you were truly among the social elite, you'd not be grubbing around with only a single 1080 like all the other peons. Instead, you'd wave your noble e-peen flag under the shadow of a pair of Titans. By failing to do so, you clearly show us all that you're as un-fully enabled as all the 1070 owners out there. Now get thee back into your parents' basement and work harder at developing a RSI before your 12th birthday.