Petitioning for 970 Refund

[B2BigAl]

So I bought Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. I have been meaning to pick up this game up for a while. The game really is a blast and it it looks amazing. I also wanted to see if I could stress out my single GTX 970 to the point where these issues are supposed to happen. I'm running a single GTX 970 at 1440p. I downloaded the Ultra HD texture pack as well. In a nutshell I had zero issues. The game ran butter smooth at maxed out settings when I was running over 3.5 gb. Here is a bit of my GPU-Z log to show that I was running over 3.5 gb (or more than 3,584 mb):

...

I bought this card earlier in the week and I have to say I'm impressed. Everything I run on it runs great. It also is super quiet, it does not get too hot, and it does not use a lot of power. I have seen no issues with stuttering etc. though I'm "only" running at 1440p with a single card.

This is the reality of the situation. The cards perform fantastic, nothing has changed since the cards were originally reviewed with heaps of praise. People just love to find something to get up in arms about. You can see how long I've been around this place, 12 years, and this is just another in a long line of fabricated scandals that gets everyone riled up over essentially nothing. Ive seen it so many times over the years. The 970's are amazing cards, and it makes me laugh to see all the people buying into this faux outrage and going out and buying a 290(x). I had 290x's in CF, and there is absolutely no way you could get me to go back to those flaky, power hungry, space heaters. I can't even count how many times I've seen these silly little protests over the years, and they never amount to anything.

Bottom line is, people are freaking out over nothing, and had someone not convinced them there was an "issue", they would have never noticed any difference. It reminds me of all the people who didn't even know what the hell gluten was a year ago, but now they refuse to eat anything but gluten free.

 

[n=1]

As had been repeated ad nauseam in this thread and the other two threads, the vram issue is one thing, nVidia giving out incorrect specs (possibly intentionally), and not disclosing the memory segmentation in the 970 until 4 months later is another. Alongside the related but separate issue of nVidia offering to help with refunds for those who want to return the card, then completely backpedaling and giving out canned responses to people who actually took up their "offer of help".

Or are you saying that because the issues supposedly don't impact performance, nVidia gets a pass?

 

[captainzombie]

Newegg is really playing a game with their customers and not being honest about any kind of return/exchange. I reported this to them last Friday for an RMA based on what we have found out with the 970, been speaking with one of their managers since Monday. He first promised me that Wednesday he'd have an answer from their internal team on what they can do, then tells me Thursday it'll be by noon Friday with possibly end of day. The guy even tells me if their internal team doesn't do anything by end of day Friday, he will over ride their system for my RMA. I receive an email from him later in the afternoon that they still have no decision on what they are going to do with the 970's and that they are still getting quite a bit of calls on the card.

This has really soured my experience with Newegg and I fully understand that they have no obligation to take these 970's back after the 30 day return window. They did sell a product that doesn't meet the specifications that Nvidia touted and even he agreed with me that they should take these cards back. Considering that Amazon has been giving full refunds since last week, it's pretty weak that they helping out their customers.

 

[5150Joker]

As had been repeated ad nauseam in this thread and the other two threads, the vram issue is one thing, nVidia giving out incorrect specs (possibly intentionally), and not disclosing the memory segmentation in the 970 until 4 months later is another. Alongside the related but separate issue of nVidia offering to help with refunds for those who want to return the card, then completely backpedaling and giving out canned responses to people who actually took up their "offer of help".

Or are you saying that because the issues supposedly don't impact performance, nVidia gets a pass?

What they are saying is that the card kicks ass and doesn't affect them and have posted their own internal usage data to back it up. Yet you're still harping on and on about nvidia not being honest. Do you own a 970? If not, why do you care so much? And don't even give me the tired, "because i care about ethics" spiel. You can go to AT forums for that kind of bs circle jerk and the mods there love it.

 

[FlipCody]

As had been repeated ad nauseam in this thread and the other two threads, the vram issue is one thing, nVidia giving out incorrect specs (possibly intentionally), and not disclosing the memory segmentation in the 970 until 4 months later is another. Alongside the related but separate issue of nVidia offering to help with refunds for those who want to return the card, then completely backpedaling and giving out canned responses to people who actually took up their "offer of help".

Or are you saying that because the issues supposedly don't impact performance, nVidia gets a pass?

Are you talking to me? I don't care about specs, I care about performance. I bought my card after this whole thing came out. I don't believe it was intentional by Nvidia. I'm not a fan boy and I have bought 3dfx/Nvidia/ATI-AMD over the years, I was not aware that Nvidia was offering to help with refunds. Can you point me to a link or screenshot?

 

[n=1]

What they are saying is that the card kicks ass and doesn't affect them and have posted their own internal usage data to back it up. Yet you're still harping on and on about nvidia not being honest. Do you own a 970? If not, why do you care so much? And don't even give me the tired, "because i care about ethics" spiel. You can go to AT forums for that kind of bs circle jerk and the mods there love it.

For all that you wrote, you could've just said "it doesn't affect performance so nVidia gets a pass even though they lied, because the card still performs the same so who cares".

But thanks for answering anyway. And yes I have 2 Gigabyte 970s.

Are you talking to me? I don't care about specs, I care about performance. I bought my card after this whole thing came out. I don't believe it was intentional by Nvidia. I'm not a fan boy and I have bought 3dfx/Nvidia/ATI-AMD over the years, I was not aware that Nvidia was offering to help with refunds. Can you point me to a link or screenshot?

See this post.

 

[5150Joker]

For all that you wrote, you could've just said "it doesn't affect performance so nVidia gets a pass even though they lied, because the card still performs the same so who cares".

But thanks for answering anyway. And yes I have 2 Gigabyte 970s.



See this post.

My stance is no different than the position HardOCP has adapted: The performance speaks for itself and their review clearly showed 970 was always the weaker card compared to 980, especially at 4K. If you wanted the better video card, you should've bought 2 x 980s like some of us did.

 

[n=1]

So you agree that it's ok for nVidia to lie as long as it doesn't affect performance.

Well, this might be news to you but some of us dislike being lied to. What's more upsetting is how badly nVidia handled this whole situation. First they offered to help (likely as a PR stunt), then quickly retracted their offer and all we've gotten since then is complete silence.

Do you honestly think I'd be bitching about this if nVidia offered an official apology and allowed unconditional returns for those who wished to return their 970s? There's a reason the return rate is 5%, because people are getting stonewalled everywhere, and there only so many emails you can write and phone calls you can make before you just say fuck it. Or are those people guilty of not trying hard enough?

EDIT: I can't believe I'm using Intel of all companies as a positive example here, but perhaps this will be illustrative. Remember the Cougar Point chipset recall a few years back? One could make the (ridiculous) arguments "it's only 5% over 3 years, and only affects SATA2 ports. Plus your data isn't even at risk so who cares. And even if you do get affected after 3 years you're likely to upgrade anyway". But Intel still did the right thing and issued a recall. Before I get lynched yes I know the flaw actually affected reliability so it's apples and oranges, and I'm certainly not saying nVidia needs to issue a recall. What I am saying is that given the precedent set by Intel, the least nVidia could do is offer unconditional returns for the 970, instead of sweeping this under the rug. Hell had Intel not disclosed this flaw, would people have found out at some point, or would they have just chalked this down to "hardware fails just my luck"?

 

[FlipCody]

See this post.

Is this all there is from Nvidia on refunds? Some low level employee on a forum offering to help with refunds is hardly the corporate position. No wonder he edited it.

 

[n=1]

Apart from that, not a pip squeak from nVidia.

Btw PeterS is Peter Sierant, and he's no low level employee, he's actually the Senior Director of Customer Care at nVidia. Almost all of his original posts got deleted, but you can still see his post history here. In the 3rd post from the bottom he clearly identifies himself as such.

 

[new2019]

Is this same for GTX 970M ? Cause I'm thinking of buying one for my alienware.

 

[n=1]

No the 970M is fine.

You know what the real kicker for me was? Finding out that even laptop GPUs didn't have this segmented memory BS. LAPTOP GPUs of everything. Yeah wrap your head around that.

 

[5150Joker]

Laptop 980M also costs about $700+. Were you willing to pay a premium for that 970? Say $450+? Can't have your cake and eat it too, sacrifices have to be made when producing lower priced lower tier cards.

 

[n=1]

Laptop MXM cards cost more because of the engineering involved. The MXM form factor is 3.2"x4.1", and on top of that you have a TDP cap of 100W. They are expensively solely due to the difficulties in engineering such a device. That and mobility always carries a premium anyway.

Both the 980 and 970 as well as their M version are derived from GM204, cut down to varying degrees. So why is it that only the desktop 970 has segmented memory?

 

[Flogger23m]

Laptop 980M also costs about $700+. Were you willing to pay a premium for that 970? Say $450+? Can't have your cake and eat it too, sacrifices have to be made when producing lower priced lower tier cards.

A whole GTX 980 probably costs $100 to make. Hell, it might even be less.

 

[evilsofa]

Nvidia's net income for 2014 was $440 million. That was easy to find on Wikipedia.

The number of video cards they ship was a bit more difficult (and I really hadn't even the slightest idea), but I eventually found this chart which states that Nvidia shipped 9.1 million AIBs (those are video cards, Add-In-Boards) in Q1 2014 and 7.13 million AIBs in Q2 2014. So, okay, we're talking somewhere in the ballpark of 32 million video cards in 2014. I could be off by a few million either way but good enough.

If I completely ignore the fact that Nvidia sells a bunch of other things and services besides AIBs, I could divide $440 million net income by 32 million AIBs and get an average $13.75 profit for each video card Nvidia makes. Since we're not going to ignore those other things and services, we know Nvidia is earning an amount of less than $13.75 per video card; how much less is impossible for us to calculate, but there's your upper bound.

 

[LordEC911]

A whole GTX 980 probably costs $100 to make. Hell, it might even be less.

BOM for a highend desktop card like the GM204 is quite a bit higher than that.
The GPU takes up about half, probably a bit less. Obviously depends on wafer cost in the fab contract and yield.
The rest is the memory ICs, cooler, controllers, PWMs, PCB and other misc components, pretty much in that order.

The main issue that is hard to quantify without true inside knowledge is the R&D expenses for the planning and designing of a specific ASIC. Not to mention the upfront costs to a fab to actually manufacture it. Then you need QA/QC/testing.

Remember Nvidia only sells the actual GPU, or MXM module for mobile(to the OEM), to the AIB.

 

[Starrbuck]

Btw PeterS is Peter Sierant, and he's no low level employee, he's actually the Senior Director of Customer Care at nVidia. Almost all of his original posts got deleted, but you can still see his post history here. In the 3rd post from the bottom he clearly identifies himself as such.

This is very true... PeterS is Peter Sierant, Senior Director of Customer Care at NVIDIA. He has posted barely anything in a week since the original post with a promise to help, which turned out to be totally bogus. They never intended to help. They apparently wanted to just drag it out until it was swept under the proverbial rug. And this is what got me to sell my 970s and leave. They could be the best cards ever but I don't care. When the company lies and bungles the situation this badly, my money won't be supporting them. I don't care how the cards perform.

 

[jwcalla]

EDIT: I can't believe I'm using Intel of all companies as a positive example here, but perhaps this will be illustrative. Remember the Cougar Point chipset recall a few years back? One could make the (ridiculous) arguments "it's only 5% over 3 years, and only affects SATA2 ports. Plus your data isn't even at risk so who cares. And even if you do get affected after 3 years you're likely to upgrade anyway". But Intel still did the right thing and issued a recall. Before I get lynched yes I know the flaw actually affected reliability so it's apples and oranges, and I'm certainly not saying nVidia needs to issue a recall. What I am saying is that given the precedent set by Intel, the least nVidia could do is offer unconditional returns for the 970, instead of sweeping this under the rug. Hell had Intel not disclosed this flaw, would people have found out at some point, or would they have just chalked this down to "hardware fails just my luck"?

There is another example that didn't go over so well. Remember when Intel came out and said that TSX in Haswell was fundamentally broken at the hardware level and had to be disabled with a microcode update? Now TSX was one of the major features they were pushing with Haswell.

I guess you could get a refund or whatever but who would go through all that after purchasing a new mobo, etc.?

I'm not saying the situations are comparable in terms of how the companies dealt with the issues (and nvidia is clearly on the side that this was a design feature), but in both circumstances the customer is, in all practical sense, stuck with accepting the limitation.

You know what the real kicker for me was? Finding out that even laptop GPUs didn't have this segmented memory BS. LAPTOP GPUs of everything. Yeah wrap your head around that.

Meh, it's not really surprising. They just turned off more stuff on the mobile parts. The 970 performs better than the 970M / 980M, even with the memory segmentation.

 

[jwcalla]

Newegg is really playing a game with their customers and not being honest about any kind of return/exchange. I reported this to them last Friday for an RMA based on what we have found out with the 970, been speaking with one of their managers since Monday. He first promised me that Wednesday he'd have an answer from their internal team on what they can do, then tells me Thursday it'll be by noon Friday with possibly end of day. The guy even tells me if their internal team doesn't do anything by end of day Friday, he will over ride their system for my RMA. I receive an email from him later in the afternoon that they still have no decision on what they are going to do with the 970's and that they are still getting quite a bit of calls on the card.

This has really soured my experience with Newegg and I fully understand that they have no obligation to take these 970's back after the 30 day return window. They did sell a product that doesn't meet the specifications that Nvidia touted and even he agreed with me that they should take these cards back. Considering that Amazon has been giving full refunds since last week, it's pretty weak that they helping out their customers.

Newegg is probably waiting to get some kind of firm plan from their partners (nvidia, AIBs, etc.). When you hear stuff like, "We'll know by x time tomorrow" -- to me that indicates they're waiting on external communication, rather than an internal decision.

In fairness to Newegg, they have a completely different business model than Amazon. Amazon is a company that for a variety of reasons cares not a twit about making profit. Part of this is because of the massive investment machine behind it. But suffice to say, they have no problem losing money. They seem to even revel in the idea and they sure do excel at it. Newegg is not quite in such a luxurious position. They are in the more traditional business position of either swimming or sinking.

Unfortunately these 970 returns will probably be hurting retailers and AIBs more than nvidia. I can understand how some retailers may be forced to offer store credit in exchange for returns outside of the return window.

 

[new2019]

Thanks for clearing it out for me, I will go ahead and buy the card.

 

[Hotar9978]

The Newegg reps doesn't have the power to give refunds, the most they can do is offer store credit with the supervisors permission.

If you're dead serious about getting a refund from Newegg you'll need to inform them that you're going to file a chargeback. Merchants don't like chargeback because simply filing them will cost $20 in fees and if they go over a certain threshold bad things happen. In a case like this they have a very slim chance of winning and it isn't worth the man hours to fight it.

Unless things have changed Newegg will offer you store credit but if you push harder they'll offer you a refund.

 

[FlipCody]

Apart from that, not a pip squeak from nVidia.

Btw PeterS is Peter Sierant, and he's no low level employee, he's actually the Senior Director of Customer Care at nVidia. Almost all of his original posts got deleted, but you can still see his post history here. In the 3rd post from the bottom he clearly identifies himself as such.

That is pretty significant. I bet there was some serious repercussions for his comment about helping the person with a return. Peter helping an individual with a return still does not amount to someone or the corporation saying they were going to offer refunds in general and then rescinding the offer. nVidia did not offer to help with refunds for those who want to return the card. Peter offered to help the one individual.

That being said I personally think they should offer to help with refunds for those that are legitimately having issues. I imagine this would be problematic for at least the following reasons:
1. Some people are not really having issues with their cards. They would return them just because they are pissed they were "lied" to.
2. The issues people are having with their games may not be related to the card memory issue. The issues may be related to running in SLI, running at too high a resolution, specific game issues, etc. It would be very difficult to qualify cards being returned for a legitimate reason.
3. A competitor is now offering a card (R9 290X) with similar (or some instances better) performance at the same price point. This was not the case when many people bought their GTX 970 cards. Some people might take advantage of this even though they are having no issues with their cards.
4. Ultimately whether the card can be refunded is not up to nvidia. The manufacturer and retailer need to cooperate. I imagine this in itself is problematic.
5. For the most part cards are not in a true sense defective. They run as they were intended. Also in most situations the listed specifications where the cards were sold were (are) correct. There is 4 gb of memory on the cards. I have yet to see specifications on web sites where cards are sold which lists number of ROPs and L2 cache for the video card. These are the only corrected specs.

 

[MavericK]

At this point, what pisses me off more than anything is that not only did nVidia misrepresent the specs in the first place, they then offered to help with returns and then backpedalled on the whole thing days later.

970 performance or not, what they did there is undeniably shady.

 

[Meaker]

Laptop MXM cards cost more because of the engineering involved. The MXM form factor is 3.2"x4.1", and on top of that you have a TDP cap of 100W. They are expensively solely due to the difficulties in engineering such a device. That and mobility always carries a premium anyway.

Both the 980 and 970 as well as their M version are derived from GM204, cut down to varying degrees. So why is it that only the desktop 970 has segmented memory?

The chip configurations they are selling allow them to harvest the larger majority of the chips they produce keeping overall yield higher.

 

[doz]

At this point, what pisses me off more than anything is that not only did nVidia misrepresent the specs in the first place, they then offered to help with returns and then backpedalled on the whole thing days later.

970 performance or not, what they did there is undeniably shady.

Woah woah woah... Listen here... Shady business practices are allowed as long as the user is not pushing the card to its limits. Just ask the majority of the users here, along with the editing staff.

Why the hell should we hold a half a billion dollar company liable for selling a gimped product, lying about it, then admitting fault and offering help, and then backpedaling after that.

 

[n=1]

That is pretty significant. I bet there was some serious repercussions for his comment about helping the person with a return. Peter helping an individual with a return still does not amount to someone or the corporation saying they were going to offer refunds in general and then rescinding the offer. nVidia did not offer to help with refunds for those who want to return the card. Peter offered to help the one individual.

That being said I personally think they should offer to help with refunds for those that are legitimately having issues. I imagine this would be problematic for at least the following reasons:
1. Some people are not really having issues with their cards. They would return them just because they are pissed they were "lied" to.
2. The issues people are having with their games may not be related to the card memory issue. The issues may be related to running in SLI, running at too high a resolution, specific game issues, etc. It would be very difficult to qualify cards being returned for a legitimate reason.
3. A competitor is now offering a card (R9 290X) with similar (or some instances better) performance at the same price point. This was not the case when many people bought their GTX 970 cards. Some people might take advantage of this even though they are having no issues with their cards.
4. Ultimately whether the card can be refunded is not up to nvidia. The manufacturer and retailer need to cooperate. I imagine this in itself is problematic.
5. For the most part cards are not in a true sense defective. They run as they were intended. Also in most situations the listed specifications where the cards were sold were (are) correct. There is 4 gb of memory on the cards. I have yet to see specifications on web sites where cards are sold which lists number of ROPs and L2 cache for the video card. These are the only corrected specs.

The offer was actually extended to all 970 owners. There's circumstantial evidence suggesting Peter got bombarded with PMs, and it just became too much work for him, so he rescinded the offer.

All the concerns you listed are fine except for point 4, apparently the manufacturers are simply telling customers they "need to hear back from nVidia" so unless that's just a PR line, nVidia seems to have the say in this. Also, had the 970 been correctly advertised as a 3.5GB card (or if you want to be really technical, a 224+32 bit 3.5+0.5GB card), we wouldn't be discussing any of this right now.

 

[MorgothPl]

I think that it's now getting bad for the consumer. In earlier days we had both amd and nvidia lie to us by making special drivers for benchmarks or for totally messing up names - remember pro/xtx/xt/xl that were really confusing? But if you dig deep enough, you could pick good card.

Now we have Intel disabling important function in cpu. Then we had Kingston sending the other drives to review and other to shops, we had amd throttling issue on 290 series and now Nvidia lies.

There is noone though to bitchslap companies for those actions. Regulators in US are non existent and in EU they were not notified. Also consumers don't give shit about behaviour of those companies. But, I understand that - if you have two players in market and none have good track record, you have no other option.

Guess it's like pre-order shit with games or companies releasing unfinished games or Colonial Marines case. We will see more of that behaviour. My guess? Some people will wait for some time with new hardware purchase, others will stick to AC:GTX and CoD: Radeon

 

[XxDaRkReAp3rxXdOtCoM]

Now we have Intel disabling important function in cpu. Then we had Kingston sending the other drives to review and other to shops, we had amd throttling issue on 290 series and now Nvidia lies.

I can think of a few more...

Samsung's 226BW monitor (Samsung panel) which was rated very highly by all of the reviewers. When it started shipping, Samsung had two more manufacturers making panels for it, Chi Mei and AU Optronics. Both were awful in comparison so you had to go through the panel lottery for a chance at getting a good one (S panel) rather than a crappy one (A or C panel).

Corsair's TX650 was originally OEM'd by Seasonic and later was switched to CWT. Luckily the model number was updated from "CMPSU-650TX" to "CMPSU-650TX-C" but many retailers didn't update their websites to reflect the change. As a result, some buyers weren't pleased when they received the CWT model since it didn't indicate anywhere on the pages that it was the "-C" version.

How about the GTX 970s too? Sending out ones with Samsung VRAM to reviewers and then also manufacturing them with Hynix (maybe Elpida also). One of my 970s has Samsung VRAM and that card OCs like a beast. The other one has Hynix VRAM and OCs like crap. On air, the Sammy was able to do 8000 while the Hynix could only do 7700

Those are three I can think of off the top of my head and I know there are plenty of other cases. Either way, there should be some law where manufacturers can't pull switcheroos like that.

 

[DeadSkull]

I remember a few years ago when nVidia released borked drivers which led to hundreds if not thousands of cards overheating and burning up. Something about drivers completely disabling the cooling fan

nVidia has a worse track record then ATI in terms of hardware quality ( think laptop gpus or gtx 590s ), incendiary drivers and out right specs fraud.


Since nVidia has been so casual and nonchalant about being caught in an outright lie I am thinking this is not the first time nVidia flat out lied about their cards specs or performance capabilities.

 

[GameHard6]

This will never happen.

 

[FlipCody]

The offer was actually extended to all 970 owners. There's circumstantial evidence suggesting Peter got bombarded with PMs, and it just became too much work for him, so he rescinded the offer.

I cannot find any posts or screenshots related to him extending the offer to all 970 owners. I spent some time going through that thread you pointed out. Can you provide a post# and/or link for this? Thanks!

 

[n=1]

That's because most of his posts somehow disappeared from that thread.

The best I can do is tell you go through his post history by the link I posted previously. From the snippets you can see he is (was?) willing to help anyone who wanted to return their 970, and even talks about being inundated with PMs and why his responses are slow.

EDIT: Actually it seems maybe ALL of his posts in that particular thread got cleaned out. Damn!

 

[FlipCody]

That's because most of his posts somehow disappeared from that thread.

The best I can do is tell you go through his post history by the link I posted previously. From the snippets you can see he is (was?) willing to help anyone who wanted to return their 970, and even talks about being inundated with PMs and why his responses are slow.

EDIT: Actually it seems maybe ALL of his posts in that particular thread got cleaned out. Damn!

It's not a big deal. I believe you. Too bad someone did not take some screen shots. It is shame but I truly believe they would have a hell of time trying to do refunds for people that are having legitimate issues.

 

[FrgMstr]

It's not a big deal. I believe you. Too bad someone did not take some screen shots. It is shame but I truly believe they would have a hell of time trying to do refunds for people that are having legitimate issues.

I saw it. His verbiage changed a lot on edit....but these guys are 100% right in what they are reporting from NV.

 

[GoldenTiger]

It's not a big deal. I believe you. Too bad someone did not take some screen shots. It is shame but I truly believe they would have a hell of time trying to do refunds for people that are having legitimate issues.

I did .

 

[MelonSplitter]

I would love to at the least get a Driver update to sort some of this out, as quickly as possible. Is there is actually something Nvidia could do?

 

[FlipCody]

I did

As I said earlier Peter offered to help one individual with a refund. That is not nearly the same thing as nVidia offering refunds for the general public. Just because someone that works at nVidia offers to help an individual doesn't imply that offer stands for everyone.

 

[Damar]

As I said earlier Peter offered to help one individual with a refund. That is not nearly the same thing as nVidia offering refunds for the general public. Just because someone that works at nVidia offers to help an individual doesn't imply that offer stands for everyone.

If its on a public forum and not in a PM, its for "everyone" imho.

If it was in PM's, different story.

 

[Ocellaris]

I would love to at the least get a Driver update to sort some of this out, as quickly as possible. Is there is actually something Nvidia could do?

No.