Nvidia attempting to appease customers.

[Victorious Secret]

I'm very confused. Did something happen to the 970? I haven't bothered with GPU news for a while because of all the flame wars. Last time I checked it was one of the best price:performance cards on the market and everyone was praising it.

 

You're right. The 970 before was heralded as the 2nd coming of Jesus despite not being as powerful as a 980. Everyone was okay with it being not as powerful as the 980 and everyone was okay with how it performance dropped off after 1440p. These were in the benchmarks of before, even SLI ones, of how the 970 just wasn't enough raw grunt for 4K. 

Then we found out the VRAM and ROP and L2 issue. It was understood that the 970 performed less than a 980 BECAUSE of what was cut out. It performed the way it did in the benchmarks because of what was cut. But now it was a problem. 

I think a lot of people who are upset (irrationally so) aren't understanding these two things, as @mr moose described them:

1. We do not condone how Nvidia lied to use about what the card actually had in specs. Not at all. That was a poor move by them through and through and we don't agree with lying to your customers about these things. 

 

2. Despite them mistating the specs of the card, the card itself didn't change from 2 months ago to now. Its still the same card that everyone fawned over during benchmarks. The card still performs the same it did before. Nothing about the physical performance of the card has changed because of this. 

So we say if you own a 970, its still the same card you bought based off those benchmarks. Nvidia didn't release a ninja patch to gimp it further. If anything, they'll release firmwares and drivers that bring the performance up, not down. 

[sof006]

cliffs - nvidia messed up a review sheet, cocked up the ram a little, the card is still the same card they sent out for review. mem problems only really effect 4k, now bitches be like "nvidia you lied about something that i dont even know the purpose of so give me my free card bitch".

 

 

are your really compare .5gb of vram to the fucking BP disaster! dude reality check yourself

 

 nope i have one and could t give 2 fucks i care more that i cant get my g1 to overclock

Really? That sucks, I have the G1 but never tried to overclock it.

[bogus]

 

are your really compare .5gb of vram to the fucking BP disaster! dude reality check yourself

 

No, I'm comparing the hypocrisy, futility and ridiculousness of multibillion dollars companys saying "We're sorry..." when they fucked up, while profiting.

 

[asim1999]

A shame it is a whole either live with it or recall it... But I'm not giving up my 1558MHz overclock... And I've had enough issues with GPUs for the past few months... I had a 290 for 24 hours and one of the mosfets made a little poof IDLING AT THE DESKTOP.... GG Then I got this 970, it overclocks like hell, but I have major driver issues with Nvidia cards... Running on like my 5th or 6th clean reinstall of drivers since I've gotten it.

It must be insufficient voltage or bad OC causing the driver crash

[Syntaxvgm]

Nvidia handling this like a boss, nice to see.

they started by removing all of the files from mega with the program to test this via dmca requests. 

[Palfi]

Hopefuly the prices are going to drop now, then i might get one of these for myself

[zappian]

I wish they would make a post on their website or something.

 

A random comment in the forums inst the best way for people to access information.

 

But its good they are trying to make things right.

I hope they can fix the memory allocation issue with firmware although i highly doubt it.

[zappian]

The problem is that such statement is bullshit. If it was something only related with reviewers then why is the same information present in the packaging of the 970?

 

People on tech syndicate are saying they even faked the specs on the bios.

 

If you go to cpu Z you will see the faked 64 ROPS i think.

 

Not sure , just something i read.

If anybody has a 970 try to use cpu z and see if the 56 or 64 rops pop up.

[mr moose]

No, I'm comparing the hypocrisy, futility and ridiculousness of multibillion dollars companys saying "We're sorry..." when they fucked up, while profiting.

 

 

So any company that misleads for personal gain is being  filled with "hypocrisy, futility and ridiculousness"?

 

That makes AMD a hypocrite, futile and ridiculous company too.

 

http://technogog.com/press-releases/amd-mislead-investors-misstating-demand-for-its-llano-apus/

 

And Asus:

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/asus-eeepc-battery,5216.html

 

And apple:

 

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=Gigabyte+mislead&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=LUzJVPvsOIif8QXD54KgCA#q=Apple+mislead

 

 

It would be helpful to those who purchased the 970 to actually hear some good news as well,  rather than constantly harping on the unethical side of it all the time.  We all know Nvidia are shits for this, but we also know the 970 is not a dud, was and is still worth the price, still performs like it did before and current owners should be reassured of these realities.  Because if they aren't, then we as a community are no better ethically than Nvidia,  by capitalizing on on their poor behaviour resulting in forum members thinking that they have been royally ripped off.  Especially when you consider no company is immune from this behaviour and so to be honest with each other to follow the above train of thought would mean we should sue them all and stop recommending everything.

[Kazuki]

Interesting article. The ROP and L2 specs seems like a honest mistake of the marketing department. They fucked up with that slow 512MB of VRAM part though. Maybe it would have been best to just make it a 3.5GB card.

I have to give them credit for correcting everything, speaking with customers on forums and in general try to fix this mess.

 

 

Fallacy of relative privation. Nvidia making a big mistake, and people starving in Africa are completely unrelated.

If we are going to be pedantic, there is not even 1 billion starving people (let along children) in Africa. The population of Africa is just above 1 billion, and not all countries there are filled with starving people (see Ghana, Kenya and Tunisia).

I should have used the sarcasm tag.

[bogus]

So any company that misleads for personal gain is being  filled with "hypocrisy, futility and ridiculousness"?

 

That makes AMD a hypocrite, futile and ridiculous company too.

 

http://technogog.com/press-releases/amd-mislead-investors-misstating-demand-for-its-llano-apus/

 

And Asus:

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/asus-eeepc-battery,5216.html

 

And apple:

 

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=Gigabyte+mislead&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=LUzJVPvsOIif8QXD54KgCA#q=Apple+mislead

 

 

It would be helpful to those who purchased the 970 to actually hear some good news as well,  rather than constantly harping on the unethical side of it all the time.  We all know Nvidia are shits for this, but we also know the 970 is not a dud, was and is still worth the price, still performs like it did before and current owners should be reassured of these realities.  Because if they aren't, then we as a community are no better ethically than Nvidia,  by capitalizing on on their poor behaviour resulting in forum members thinking that they have been royally ripped off.  Especially when you consider no company is immune from this behaviour and so to be honest with each other to follow the above train of thought would mean we should sue them all and stop recommending everything.

Yup.

You are getting mixed feelings about this : quote me where I said the 970 is a bad card. I never said it, and I would be stupid to say it. 

I liked your last sentence. Really. Well said mate, you schooled me on that one

But still NVIDIA had it coming for a long time, and this is what happens when companys feel they have their customers in their hands. Much like Apple, mobile carriers, etc. Most of what I said was in reply to fanboys who put a brand in a pedestal. The actual owners of the 970 reading it, it's a colateral damage from this.

[Blake]

When was the first class action? They are offering to help people get a refund if wanted. Cant sue them when they offer to make things right! lmao

The first class action was regarding the 8x00 series cards for laptops, where they new there was an issue with the manufacturing process and their design causing the card to fail early in most cases.

 

Also, you can sue. They sold the cards stating that they had the full ROP count, which is not the case. The last class action was to force nVidia to pay for the replacement GPUs when they failed. It is only logical that another could happen to force nVidia to provide replacements/full refunds. What you are seeing on the forums is called damage control, they would never have done this or told the public about this limitation if we consumers didn't discover the issue.

[Razzaa]

The first class action was regarding the 8x00 series cards for laptops, where they new there was an issue with the manufacturing process and their design causing the card to fail early in most cases.

Also, you can sue. They sold the cards stating that they had the full ROP count, which is not the case. The last class action was to force nVidia to pay for the replacement GPUs when they failed. It is only logical that another could happen to force nVidia to provide replacements/full refunds. What you are seeing on the forums is called damage control, they would never have done this or told the public about this limitation if we consumers didn't discover the issue.

I would be willing to bet a 970 that we wont see a class action lawsuit because of this. The cache, rop's and bandwidth was advertised by reviewers because they were the only ones given the tech specs. Those things are not advertised on packaging or online retail sites.

[spartaman64]

I would be willing to bet a 970 that we wont see a class action lawsuit because of this. The cache, rop's and bandwidth was advertised by reviewers because they were the only ones given the tech specs. Those things are not advertised on packaging or online retail sites.

nvidia is the one giving out the specs

[Yog]

Dude, at this point I doubt nvidia could right themselves in the eyes of certain people even if they said they recalled the cards, alchemically turned them into gold, gave the buyers half, gave the other half to blind Malaysian kitty cats, and another magical half to elon musk's space internet. You'd get people saying "AMD made four halves out of a whole instead of nvidia's three and gave the fourth half to cure cancer and diabetes simultaneously" or "nvidia is just covering themselves because if they only turned the card into two halves they'd get sued and they lied anyway so it doesn't matter." I like how it's either nvidia lied purposefully, maliciously and with absolutely full knowledge of what they were doing or...well, or nothing because nobody is even suggesting that maybe it was just an honest mistake and they're honestly trying to make it right but don't really know what to do because the card is what it is and can't be changed. It's almost as if Nvidia has to take a loss and be hurt BIG for anyone to even consider things square. Even if everyone who wanted a refund got a refund it still wouldn't matter. Isn't humanity great.

[Syntaxvgm]

Dude, at this point I doubt nvidia could right themselves in the eyes of certain people even if they said they recalled the cards, alchemically turned them into gold, gave the buyers half, gave the other half to blind Malaysian kitty cats, and another magical half to elon musk's space internet. You'd get people saying "AMD made four halves out of a whole instead of nvidia's three and gave the fourth half to cure cancer and diabetes simultaneously" or "nvidia is just covering themselves because if they only turned the card into two halves they'd get sued and they lied anyway so it doesn't matter." I like how it's either nvidia lied purposefully, maliciously and with absolutely full knowledge of what they were doing or...well, or nothing because nobody is even suggesting that maybe it was just an honest mistake and they're honestly trying to make it right but don't really know what to do because the card is what it is and can't be changed. It's almost as if Nvidia has to take a loss and be hurt BIG for anyone to even consider things square. Even if everyone who wanted a refund got a refund it still wouldn't matter. Isn't humanity great.

that might just be the best thing I've ever read.

[Blake]

I would be willing to bet a 970 that we wont see a class action lawsuit because of this. The cache, rop's and bandwidth was advertised by reviewers because they were the only ones given the tech specs. Those things are not advertised on packaging or online retail sites.

 

Look at the webiste, the nvidia one, run by nvidia. they have a list of all the specs of released products, much like intel and AMD do.

[Blake]

Dude, at this point I doubt nvidia could right themselves in the eyes of certain people even if they said they recalled the cards, alchemically turned them into gold, gave the buyers half, gave the other half to blind Malaysian kitty cats, and another magical half to elon musk's space internet. You'd get people saying "AMD made four halves out of a whole instead of nvidia's three and gave the fourth half to cure cancer and diabetes simultaneously" or "nvidia is just covering themselves because if they only turned the card into two halves they'd get sued and they lied anyway so it doesn't matter." I like how it's either nvidia lied purposefully, maliciously and with absolutely full knowledge of what they were doing or...well, or nothing because nobody is even suggesting that maybe it was just an honest mistake and they're honestly trying to make it right but don't really know what to do because the card is what it is and can't be changed. It's almost as if Nvidia has to take a loss and be hurt BIG for anyone to even consider things square. Even if everyone who wanted a refund got a refund it still wouldn't matter. Isn't humanity great.

When you have a billion dollar company, this shouldn't happen. Billion dollar companies hire people so that this does not happen without them knowing, and as with most laws in the world, ignorance does not make you innocent ("I killed this guy, but i didn't know it was illegal, k thx boi"<-doesn't work). "oh, the email/memo with the revised specs wasn't sent to the marketing guys, sorry guys" is not a valid excuse, if it was a small organisation or an individual, then yes, no-one would care. In Australia, they would be required to give full refunds (plus any shipping and handling) to anyone who requests it, also there could be a fines.

 

 

They are good cards, don't get me wrong, great cards, but you shouldn't be so casual about a billion dollar company lying to the consumer.

[Razzaa]

Look at the webiste, the nvidia one, run by nvidia. they have a list of all the specs of released products, much like intel and AMD do.

I didnt realize you bought your card from Nvidia.......

[alicskysareblue]

Dude, at this point I doubt nvidia could right themselves in the eyes of certain people even if they said they recalled the cards, alchemically turned them into gold, gave the buyers half, gave the other half to blind Malaysian kitty cats, and another magical half to elon musk's space internet. You'd get people saying "AMD made four halves out of a whole instead of nvidia's three and gave the fourth half to cure cancer and diabetes simultaneously" or "nvidia is just covering themselves because if they only turned the card into two halves they'd get sued and they lied anyway so it doesn't matter." I like how it's either nvidia lied purposefully, maliciously and with absolutely full knowledge of what they were doing or...well, or nothing because nobody is even suggesting that maybe it was just an honest mistake and they're honestly trying to make it right but don't really know what to do because the card is what it is and can't be changed. It's almost as if Nvidia has to take a loss and be hurt BIG for anyone to even consider things square. Even if everyone who wanted a refund got a refund it still wouldn't matter. Isn't humanity great.

most reasonable response I have seen in awhile. as someone has said in the past the marketing department tends to be isolated from, the other departments so we can get unrealistic advertisments like "super computing performance" on something that actually only runs an outdated form of pixal shader, it is in my opinion that the marketing departmend had unrealistic goals or did not understand the technical side of the GTX 970 since it "technically" does have 4 gb of vram and therefore marketed it as such.

 

[Pomfinator]

most reasonable response I have seen in awhile. as someone has said in the past the marketing department tends to be isolated from, the other departments so we can get unrealistic advertisments like "super computing performance" on something that actually only runs an outdated form of pixal shader, it is in my opinion that the marketing departmend had unrealistic goals or did not understand the technical side of the GTX 970 since it "technically" does have 4 gb of vram and therefore marketed it as such.

Maybe it'll teach them a lesson, hire people who actually care and know about tech to some degree.  Best example is probably JJ.

 

You don't have to be some ultra smart EECS/CS major to know the basics of what GPUs do.

[alicskysareblue]

Maybe it'll teach them a lesson, hire people who actually care and know about tech to some degree.  Best example is probably JJ.

 

You don't have to be some ultra smart EECS/CS major to know the basics of what GPUs do.

true I'm not defending them, if what actually happened was true there needs to be better communications between the department

[Shaqo_Wyn]

When you have a billion dollar company, this shouldn't happen. Billion dollar companies hire people so that this does not happen without them knowing, and as with most laws in the world, ignorance does not make you innocent ("I killed this guy, but i didn't know it was illegal, k thx boi"<-doesn't work). "oh, the email/memo with the revised specs wasn't sent to the marketing guys, sorry guys" is not a valid excuse, if it was a small organisation or an individual, then yes, no-one would care. In Australia, they would be required to give full refunds (plus any shipping and handling) to anyone who requests it, also there could be a fines.

 

 

They are good cards, don't get me wrong, great cards, but you shouldn't be so casual about a billion dollar company lying to the consumer.

 

At this point I don't feel it matters whether we believe if it was purposeful or an honest mistake, but saying that it can't happen because it's a big company is pretty weak.

 

Even the largest of companies are run by humans. Meaning there is always the potential for human error. Miss-communication within company departments is actually quite common.

 

It's one of the biggest risks/disadvantages of having large companies with an organizational structure consisting of self-operating departments. If anything, with large companies, the individuals working there carry more responsibility because when errors are made the affect is on a much larger scale.

 

Will we ever know whether it was intentional or just human error? Probably not. Saying that it's impossible for it to be an honest mistake or claiming that it was intentional with no real proof, doesn't make it so. 

[LAwLz]

Maybe it'll teach them a lesson, hire people who actually care and know about tech to some degree.  Best example is probably JJ.

 

You don't have to be some ultra smart EECS/CS major to know the basics of what GPUs do.

Don't be too quick with telling others what they don't know.

This whole situation happened because their technical marketing department have a very good understanding of how GPUs work (far better than you and me). This mistake was made by people similar to JJ (which is also on a marketing team).

 

All of this happened because of an assumption (a reasonable assumption) the technical marketing department made. The marketing department were not aware that the Maxwell architecture supports partially disabled a ROP/memory controller subsystem so when they counted how much cache and how many ROPs the GPU had, they assumed all 4 controllers were fully functioning.

I think that's a very acceptable mistake to make, since Nvidia's previous architectures have not supported this.

 

 

 

Also, it makes me sad that people in this thread are so hateful. It's not like the card is any worse than it was at launch, and benchmarks have always been the best way to see how well a card performs.

The part about the memory is a big fuck up but come on... People are saying that even if they gave everyone a refund, which would nullify any possible damage that was made (if you can call this damage to begin with, since everyone know the performance when they bought it and that hasn't changed) they wouldn't be happy? Are you serious? You are essentially saying "I don't care about the customers, the people affected by this. I just want Nvidia to suffer.". That's a terrible attitude to have. The customers are what's important. Having Nvidia suffer more will only hurt customers in the long run because it won't benefit anyone, and Nvidia will have less resources to improve their future products with.

 

Stop with all the stupid fanboy comments already. (Not directed at you specifically Pomfinator. I am talking to everyone in this thread).

[bogus]

Don't be too quick with telling others what they don't know.

This whole situation happened because their technical marketing department have a very good understanding of how GPUs work (far better than you and me). This mistake was made by people similar to JJ (which is also on a marketing team).

 

All of this happened because of an assumption (a reasonable assumption) the technical marketing department made. The marketing department were not aware that the Maxwell architecture supports partially disabled a ROP/memory controller subsystem so when they counted how much cache and how many ROPs the GPU had, they assumed all 4 controllers were fully functioning.

I think that's a very acceptable mistake to make, since Nvidia's previous architectures have not supported this.

 

 

 

Also, it makes me sad that people in this thread are so hateful. It's not like the card is any worse than it was at launch, and benchmarks have always been the best way to see how well a card performs.

The part about the memory is a big fuck up but come on... People are saying that even if they gave everyone a refund, which would nullify any possible damage that was made (if you can call this damage to begin with, since everyone know the performance when they bought it and that hasn't changed) they wouldn't be happy? Are you serious? You are essentially saying "I don't care about the customers, the people affected by this. I just want Nvidia to suffer.". That's a terrible attitude to have. The customers are what's important. Having Nvidia suffer more will only hurt customers in the long run because it won't benefit anyone, and Nvidia will have less resources to improve their future products with.

 

Stop with all the stupid fanboy comments already. (Not directed at you specifically Pomfinator. I am talking to everyone in this thread).

I really, but really doubt there was no formal technical presentation of both the architecture and the card itself, from the engineering team to the technical marketing team. This is not a "small detail"... this completely changes the product advertised. And this is not a small product, it's probably the best selling high end card.

In my opinion they just tried to keep it simple to communicate, because that's on of the things marketing is supposed to do. Probably in their minds they thought:

"Why should we waste time to complicate a simple product, by adding layers of technical details that 99% of the people wont understand, and all they care is performance... plus no one will find out. If the reviewers didn't, then surely the consumer wont. We will be getting the benefit of the perception of a cut-down 980 and the current trend of the 4GB of VRAM remains there."

This is not a honest mistake - it's a honest strategy to try to make something complicated way more simple for the consumer perception. But what isn't honest is the bullshit and silence around this.

 

They were caught doing illegal stuff - it happens. Admit it, suck it up and deal with it.

 

What is NVIDIA doing? Lying, hiding and waiting this to blow over. Typical NVIDIA.

People are hateful not only because they were lied to, but because of the reaction of NVIDIA - like usually they are being greedy pigs who are thinking about their stock holders and fucking their clients up over it.

 

It is NVIDIA who is blowing this out of proportion, not their customers who were fooled.

 

​This is the big difference you NVIDIA advocates aren't getting.

The reaction of each one is up to them. You can't blame who is unpleased and wants a refund as much as those who were fooled and are fine with it.