Nvidia slammed with class-action lawsuit over GeForce GTX 970 specifications While only a small fraction of GeForce GTX 970 owners plan to return their graphics cards to stores following a scandal with the product’s specs, there are still quite a lot of people, who got upset not only because the company originally published incorrect specifications, but because it decided to remain silent even after the mistake was uncovered. Apparently, those people have decided to take Nvidia Corp. to court because of it. Andrew Ostrowski, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, this week filled a class-action suit against Nvidia in the U.S. district court for the northern district of California. The complaint accuses Nvidia and Gigabyte Technology of misleading advertising, unfair business practices, unlawful business practices, and deceptive business practices. The lawsuit seeks a jury trial as well as disgorgement, restitution, injunctive relief and all the other damages and reliefs permitted under California law. http://www.kitguru.net/components/g...-lawsuit-over-geforce-gtx-970-specifications/
California is one of those states where if you fart in public, you can be sued for emotional distress. So I fully expect this lawsuit to go all the way.
I'm OK with it. It won't hurt their pocket at much at it will, and has, hurt their reputation. Even if NVidia wins the law suite. Doubt we will have incorrect reported specs in the future. This slap on the wrist is better then simply rolling over and excepting it. You let them get away with something like this once and it easily turns into a slippery slope. The white lies get more and more bold.
Lawsuits like this are factored into business for companies as large as Nvidia. It's a non-issue for them, they'll have a budget in place for this sort of thing and I'm pretty damn sure it'll more than cover any costs, even if they lose.
lol, more inaccurate reporting. You can NOT, just walk into a court house and file a class-action lawsuit. You file a lawsuit and request "class-action status". Then you have to prove, beyond any reasonable doubt, that what you're accusing the defendant of impacts a large number of people (not that it would be hard in this particular case) as well as preliminary evidence to support your claim of wrong-doing on the part of the defendant. Then the judge decides whether or not you've met the burden of proof and either approves or disapproves "class-action status". California has some pretty strict laws....and they allow insanely high $ figure judgments. Doubt any of us will ever see any of it since the lawyers typically end up with most of the money.
Win or lose, financial repercussions will be tiny. The biggest thing Nvidia stands to lose, they have already lost - reputation. From the best product in years, to one that leaves bitter taste in the mouth - who the hell does that? Answer: Nvidia's marketing
It has to be filed in a US District Court because California state courts don't have any authority outside of California.
Doesn't Nvidia reside in California? also the lawyer is a GTX 970 owner if I recall correctly so hopefully he doesn't take a huge chuck.
NVidia does, yes. Gigabyte, however, does not. Class-action suits affect people outside of California. For people like me, NVidia couldn't be forced to abide by an order from a California judge because I'm on the other side of the country where a California judge has no authority.
nVidia can walk in, take GTX 980 & GTX 970, plug them into normal PC, and prove beyond doubt, that both cards can access data in memory at same peak speed 224GB/s. Well, it is not technically possible. Filling and then reading entire 4GB of vRAM on GTX 970 takes at least twice as much time as on GTX 980.
This law suit won't go anywhere. You can access 4GB of VRAM and the only specs that have changed are the ROPs and L2 cache size, both of which aren't actually advertised outside of review sites.
They wont lose any money over it, they are making more, as everyones sending their 970s back, plus more cash, for their 980s.
I like my 970 so i will keep it but I believe NVidia should show they are sorry for the mix up in information. Maybe offer a free game from NVidia as an apology for the wrong specs and the wrong memory information (a form of compensation) It would be a good way to show GTX970 gamers they are sorry for the misleading specs and get back to the way its meant to be played.
In the end NVIDIA has done nothing wrong marketing wise. It has 4GB and a 256-Bit Bus. The only difference is that 3,5GB can push 196 GB/s and the other 500MB up to 26 GB/s The specifications on the Box are all right, as it doesn't mention things like ROPs, L2 Cache, Memory Transfer Speeds etc. So NVIDIA didn't do any falls advertising towards the consumer at all. (here in Holland we say "Storm in een glas water")
This is not going anywhere. They can sue them all they want... Slow or fast card does have 4GB after all.
