Nvidia has settled a series of lawsuits relating to the issues around the GTX 970's specifications.
It has agreed to settle $30 for each buyer of the card, although the courts still have the final say and, as of yet, there's no information on how US owners of GTX 970s can go about making the claim, detailed on Top Class Actions.
The launch of the GeForce GTX 970 in 2014 was marred by complaints about the amount of available memory.
Nvidia specified the GTX 970 was equipped with 4GB of memory, which it was, but only 3.5GB was available at maximum bandwidth. The memory was essentially split into two partitions, with the further 0.5GB of GDDR5 seeing bandwidth cut for that section by up to 80 percent.
In addition, the card was reported to have 64 ROPs - it only had 56 - and the L2 cache was actually 1,792KB and not the advertised 2,048KB. Much of these issues wouldn't affect gamers using low to mid-range resolutions, or at least the performance drop would be marginal, but where the extra memory did come into play at higher resolutions, the slower portion of the memory would be accessed and would perform much slower than expected.
Details of the original claim brought in 2015 show plaintiff Andrew Ostrowski stated he 'noticed that when using a high resolution monitor, the devices caused applications to slow, sputter, and cease working.'
'He also noticed that video games requiring higher levels of performance would not work properly'.
'Subsequently, Plaintiff learned that this was due to the material misrepresented or undisclosed fact that the alleged 4GB GDDR5 (Graphic Double Data Rate x 5 Memory) capability of the GPU, in actuality, only uses 3.5GB at the GDDR5 operating speed, while the remaining 500MB operates 80 percent slower, therefore not qualifying as actual GDDR5 memory capability device'.
'Moreover, the device had less ROPs and L2 cache than advertised, further lessening the capabilities, uses and benefits of the GTX 970'.
Despite these issues, the GTX 970 was regarded as a capable graphics card with good efficiency and performance for the price and remains very popular as a result.
It has agreed to settle $30 for each buyer of the card, although the courts still have the final say and, as of yet, there's no information on how US owners of GTX 970s can go about making the claim, detailed on Top Class Actions.
The launch of the GeForce GTX 970 in 2014 was marred by complaints about the amount of available memory.
Nvidia specified the GTX 970 was equipped with 4GB of memory, which it was, but only 3.5GB was available at maximum bandwidth. The memory was essentially split into two partitions, with the further 0.5GB of GDDR5 seeing bandwidth cut for that section by up to 80 percent.
In addition, the card was reported to have 64 ROPs - it only had 56 - and the L2 cache was actually 1,792KB and not the advertised 2,048KB. Much of these issues wouldn't affect gamers using low to mid-range resolutions, or at least the performance drop would be marginal, but where the extra memory did come into play at higher resolutions, the slower portion of the memory would be accessed and would perform much slower than expected.
Details of the original claim brought in 2015 show plaintiff Andrew Ostrowski stated he 'noticed that when using a high resolution monitor, the devices caused applications to slow, sputter, and cease working.'
'He also noticed that video games requiring higher levels of performance would not work properly'.
'Subsequently, Plaintiff learned that this was due to the material misrepresented or undisclosed fact that the alleged 4GB GDDR5 (Graphic Double Data Rate x 5 Memory) capability of the GPU, in actuality, only uses 3.5GB at the GDDR5 operating speed, while the remaining 500MB operates 80 percent slower, therefore not qualifying as actual GDDR5 memory capability device'.
'Moreover, the device had less ROPs and L2 cache than advertised, further lessening the capabilities, uses and benefits of the GTX 970'.
Despite these issues, the GTX 970 was regarded as a capable graphics card with good efficiency and performance for the price and remains very popular as a result.
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