NVIDIA Settles GTX 970 Class-Action Lawsuits

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It looks as though NVIDIA reached a preliminary agreement to settle a number of class action lawsuits over the GTX 970 3.5GB memory debacle. Card owners will get $30 each, lawyers will get $1.3 million.

Graphics card manufacturer Nvidia agreed to a preliminary settlement that will resolve claims in a group of proposed class action lawsuits that center around allegations that the company misled consumers about the performance and storage capabilities of its product. Nvidia says it will pay each buyer of the graphics card $30 and will pay an additional $1.3 million in attorneys’ fees, according to settlement documents.
 
Glad there's a wrist slap for the false advertising. (Of course, that could be debated, but in a court of law, it seems that Nvidia lost.)

Gotta love lawyers and the way class action suits end up lining their pockets. Sigh.

Now, how am I gonna get my $30? That'll be fun. (If it's like half the rebate cards out there, I'll have the option of donating 1/3 of it so I can get my money immediately...LOL.) See my sig: I've been very happy with my MSI GTX970. I'll be happier with some extra cash. :)
 
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.

They didn't lose or admit they did anything wrong. They just paid to make it go away. Granted if enough people in the class claim their $30 it could add up to enough money for them to take it some what seriously but it probably wont hurt their financials enough to event show..

Especially not with the amount of FE cards they are moving.
 
At least it appears the class members are getting something like cash. In a lot of these, the lawyers get cases full of cash, the clients get a coupon good for small amount of $ off the next purchase, good for 90 days.
 
30$ for 512 megs of ram? That sounds fair from that point of view. Or if you look at it from the price difference between like cards (using the 480x as its the latest to come out) its only 30$ between skis. If nvidia had a 3.5gb version or a 4gb version for 30$ more how many people would have spent the extra 30$?

So in the end I think, for once, it's a fair settlement.
 
Damn newegg refunded both of my 970's for store credit and I am still using the 980ti hybrid I purchase with that credit. Awesome Job Newegg!!!!!
 
They didn't lose or admit they did anything wrong. They just paid to make it go away. Granted if enough people in the class claim their $30 it could add up to enough money for them to take it some what seriously but it probably wont hurt their financials enough to event show..

Especially not with the amount of FE cards they are moving.

Honest to god, I could see this happening in a board room...as the timing is VERY convenient! Hey, let's just accept the hit and pay whoever is smart enough to send in "this" (some convoluted form 30 pages long), people will forget about it in 30 seconds anyway, and even that is a small minority. But! Here's what we do, we change the dynamic of FE vs AIB cards. Our cards will be above MSRP, even they are technologically inferior. That way, the MSRP looks GREAT! And then? We don't release enough stock for any of it! They have to buy ours! Unfortunately, the AIB's aren't stupid, so they just priced everything close to or above the MSRP of 449, 699, 249. So, we got hosed.

But, I can't find an RX 480 ANYWHERE. Or pretty much anything else. So meh, whatever, I'm just waiting until it all goes down down down.
 
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As a happy owner of a GTX 970.... yeah I'll take $30 free if Nvidia is giving it out. I wonder if they will try to spin it as $30 worth of in game coupons or some BS.

Give me $50 off a GTX 1070 and I'm cool.
 
Damn newegg refunded both of my 970's for store credit and I am still using the 980ti hybrid I purchase with that credit. Awesome Job Newegg!!!!!

Wondering if I will get 60 bucks that would be crazy!
 
"Card owners will get $30 each, lawyers will get $1.3 million."

Standard American justice.

Do you know how many 970s were sold? Do you know this was a class action lawsuit?

If 1M 970s were sold, that means 30 million was awarded to the people who joined the suit.
1.3M is a fair amount to pay lawyers that won you 30M.
 
Do you know how many 970s were sold?

It's a good question but it seems difficult to find an answer. Best I could find so far is:

"NVIDIA has sold over 1 million GeForce GTX 970 and GTX 980 video cards since their release..." (source, January 29, 2015)

“Let’s assume Nvidia sold 2.5 million of [GeForce GTX 970 cards], and 5 per cent are returned, that is 125 thousand add-in-boards (AIBs),” said Mr. Peddie. “Is that a lot when the total AIB market is going to be about 53 million in 2015? […] I suppose if 125 thousand GTX 970 turn up at half price then that is going to have some impact on AMD and Nvidia’s sales, but only for a short time, one quarter max.” (source, February 6, 2015)

Quoted that last because if you had asked me before how many video cards get sold in a year total, I wouldn't have even been able to guess. Note: they didn't say 2.5 million 970s got sold, they were just guessing, in February, how many might sell over the course of the year. I'd be happy to hear better sourced estimates.
 
Do you know how many 970s were sold? Do you know this was a class action lawsuit?

If 1M 970s were sold, that means 30 million was awarded to the people who joined the suit.
1.3M is a fair amount to pay lawyers that won you 30M.
Except the 30 million gets divided by 1 million people and the 1.3 million will get divided by 10 partners and the junior lawyers and staff will get peanuts.
 
"Card owners will get $30 each, lawyers will get $1.3 million."

Standard American justice.

It's simple capitalism, has nothing to do with "Standard American Justice" or whatever that means. :sneaky:
 
Gee, sense I own two.. does that mean I only get $30 back for both cards?

It does not make any sense that they would give you only $30 if you bought more than 1 GTX 970.

FTA: "The overall settlement amount was not publicly disclosed within court papers, however Nvidia agreed to pay all consumers who purchased the GTX 970 graphics card and indicated there would not be a cap on the total amount it would pay consumers."

Also, "Instructions on how to file a claim for the Nvidia class action settlement were not immediately available." So it's a bit early to criticize the method of payment.
 
Glad there's a wrist slap for the false advertising. (Of course, that could be debated, but in a court of law, it seems that Nvidia lost.)
It's only debatable by people who didn't understand the situation. The 4GB of memory performed like 3.5GB, but technically, the card did have 4GB. If that's all it was, sure, you could debate this. The ROPs and L2 cache specs WERE falsely advertised however. There's simply no ifs, ands, or buts about that part.
 
The whole debacle welled up after I already had the card in hand and installed. I've not had issues with performance, for the most part, but, sometimes with the more intensive titles I do wonder if performance took a hit. I could use $30 toward an upgrade.
 
Been happy with my GTX970 since I got it at launch in 2014, got no complaints about the performance. I'm not sure if the lower number of ROPs and the segmented vRAM would have caused me to think twice about buying it if I had known about those issues before the purchase, cuz I was basing my purchase off of the performance that sites like this one had already observed and reported on. Still, even if it was a mistake, nVidia shouldn't get away with giving out false info. They may not have admitted any wrongdoing, but I bet they won't make a mistake like this again. nVidia is gonna be paying card owners $30? Amazon already gave me much more than that when they gave me a 30% partial refund (back in early 2015). They gave one of my friends 20% and another 35%. Amazon, Newegg, and others already took steps to take care of customers that were affected by all this. 30 bucks is better than nothing though, for those who didn't get partial refunds. I think the public awareness is worth more. Doesn't mean that nVidia won't ever fuck up like this again, but they'll be less likely to do it again.
 
I'll take a free $30. I'm also very happy with my GTX 970

It's not "free" money per se , nVidia got caught advertising incorrect specifications. Simple as that.

Buy me a 6-pack with that $30 :cigar:
 
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Except the 30 million gets divided by 1 million people and the 1.3 million will get divided by 10 partners and the junior lawyers and staff will get peanuts.

So you don't like people/businesses being paid the value they place on themselves?
Those lawyers know their value, and by winning the 30M from conversations that started in the forums, they do have great value and will be used by other people with big lawsuits.
 
Just an FYI you have to be a member of the class to get the refund. It will be interesting to see how they restrict class eligibility. I'd expect at least the following:
  • Purchased between date of original announcement and date they disclosed the discrepancy in specifications or some other cutoff date (definitely not if you buy one tomorrow)
  • Purchased in the US by a US resident
  • Purchased from an authorized retailer and you must have proof of purchase
There could be more
 
Even though countless 970's were sold -- the amount of people that are in the loop enough to take advantage of it are far far less than numbers sold. For those that do take advantage of it, 30 bucks for 512MB of ram differential? Sounds pretty fair to me.
 
The whole debacle welled up after I already had the card in hand and installed. I've not had issues with performance, for the most part, but, sometimes with the more intensive titles I do wonder if performance took a hit. I could use $30 toward an upgrade.
that's not how it works. you either have enough VRAM or you don't, and if you don't you would know instantly because your game would be a stuttering mess.
 
Amazon is still paying out 20% refunds, Newegg is 10%.
Both sites are offering 100% refunds if you return the card.

Success rate depends on which CS rep you talk to.

Take down your card info (serial# etc) before returning and you might still be able to file a claim on the class action. With a full refund and $30 payout, Nvidia could end up paying you for having owned a 970. (y)
 
they deserve more then a slap on the writs for all the shit they have pulled over the years. lesser quality components, charge a premium cause of the name, poorly thought out and known would not pass TDP type limits, still sell and charge premium for the name, folsk that buy PhysX that should still eb able to use it, nope they get it removed and in many cases worse performance then could be had if they were concerned with showing off the "benefits"

Nv is a vertically integrated corrupt company, they have been for a long time, Jen Huang has a bug up his ass and wants to be the only "game in town" the more folks that take to drinking his type of kool-aid, the closer they get to actually being able to do so, chop chop chop charge more for less "the way we play you(tm)
 
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Amazon is still paying out 20% refunds, Newegg is 10%.
Both sites are offering 100% refunds if you return the card.

Success rate depends on which CS rep you talk to.

Take down your card info (serial# etc) before returning and you might still be able to file a claim on the class action. With a full refund and $30 payout, Nvidia could end up paying you for having owned a 970. (y)
I spoke to a newegg CS rep and he didn't offer any refund? How do you know newegg is refunding? He said they haven't offered a refund since November of last year.
 
that's not how it works. you either have enough VRAM or you don't, and if you don't you would know instantly because your game would be a stuttering mess.

The PC environment is way more dynamic than what you portray. You might be using (storing) 4GB of ram but using (accessing) the 3.2GB 99% of the scenes renderings and only the full 4GB in 1% of the scenes.
the effect is minimal
Another game might only use (storring) 3.6GB of ram but use all of them for every scenes and the effect is catastrophic.
The examples here are clearly exaggerated but it does tell you that it is not a B/W case as you defined it, because data in you ram does not have an equal amount of I/O usage.


Same reason why you can have a program that uses op 6GB of memory but still not feel a big difference upgrading from 4GB to 6 GB RAM, because only 2GB of the programs data is actual "important"
 
The GTX 970 was such an awesome card from a price/performance stand point. I also have never experienced any issues due to the fragmented memory, at least not that I could pinpoint. I'll gladly accept $30 though, not gonna give up free $$
 
Great

So when are they going to make good for all those chips they sold with the bad solder joints that fail over time?
 
Come on people, those who keep mentioning the refunds (10%/20%/100% [return]), are you simply re-typing what other have said or is there some concrete info/proof out there?
 
Come on people, those who keep mentioning the refunds (10%/20%/100% [return]), are you simply re-typing what other have said or is there some concrete info/proof out there?
A few dozen reports from Reddit.
Screencaps from CS chats are enough proof for me.
 
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