Nvidia out in Santa Carla CA is a huge Company with all sorts of connections. Remember This: http://www.nvidia.com/object/legal_info.html Every time you install a new driver you agree to give away the first born child to Nvidia for safe keeping ^^. First of all you need to explain why these legal docs you've signed don't count for nothing. That will be hard enough to do since Nvidia puts it there for a reason, it's like the firewall and only the top legal people in the world could get past that stage. I seriously doubt there's enough to make a case, Nvidia just replies with, well a mistake happened somewhere in the process and we have offered a full return on all the effected cards plus we have it in the Legal page of our website and drivers. End of i think. I've done Jury duty so i can think as one now and i can't see "enough" to make a strong case. Unless we know for a fact that Nvidia did it on purpose then there is nothing. I think it was just a cawk up but for how long did they know? The longer they knew the shi**ier it is.
This is not correct. Nvidia did do something wrong by giving out the wrong information to the public which is false advertising. Plus it is fraud.
No, it technically is correct. The misrepresentation was towards the reviewers, the actual product doesn't state the specs in question. They have screwed up but saying it's false advertising is questionable in a legal situation. For fraud you'd have to prove Nvidia purposely marketed the card with more ROPs and a greater L2 cache for financial gain, which will be hard to do considering the particular specs again aren't displayed outside of review sites for the general gamer. That would be their best bet but even then we've seen proof that the cards do use up to 4GB. The only possible way of this working out in their favour is if they can prove the L2/ROPs are a deciding factor, which majority of gamer grade graphics card consumers don't even know anything about.
By listing on the package that the graphics card has 4GB of GDDR5, NVidia's partners all lied. The card only has 3.5GB that operate within the performance specifications of GDDR5. The remaining 0.5GB operates below the performance specifications of GDDR5. NVidia provided false specifications to the media, who advertised those false specifications within their review articles. NVidia acknowledged wrong-doing after the fact, but refused to even consider appropriate corrective action. There's the class-action filing.
In the US, product reviews constitute legal advertisements when product manufacturers provide technical data to be used as part of the review. Therefore, every GTX970 review, can be used as evidence of false advertising. Nope. Read the laws. There's no requirement to prove intent. All that has to be proven, is that NVidia provided inaccurate specifications and failed to correct the data in a reasonable amount of time. The specifications were provided to review sites in September. NVidia didn't formally acknowledge the incorrect specifications until January. That's roughly 4 months for NVidia to learn of and correct the false specifications.
By US law it is not correct. as sykozis stated the reviews of the cards can be used to prove false advertising because reviews can be used as advertisements for the product or products. Nope wrong again because gamers bought the cards based off of the reviewers and Nvidia's information which turned up to be wrong which is fraud and it has been proven. Very well said man.
Nvidia should learn there lesson by losing there business and others will do there best for future products or else we will receive crappy hardware like this.
I'm not quite certain you're correct in calling a review an advertizement. The FTC couches their regulations regarding product claims under endorsement, and a review is not endorsing a particular product.
That's why there's a lawsuit in the first place... This sounds very likely, I could imagine this to be true. Hmm, never thought about it that way, that the speed actually brings it out of GDDR5 specifications. This might prove to be the catch in this whole case.
NVidia provides all technical data used in the reviews. That classifies it as an advertisement. A positive review, is a product endorsement. No, "destroying" NVidia would be harmful to consumers....
I wish Nvidia would "Evolve" from their petty games! With their unconstitutional corporate lying, they deserve to get sued to hell and back!
You should think only this: yes, a lawsuit may and did take place and will go all the way to the finish line, however Nvidia (and Gigabyte) will win of this due to the only fact that it has 4GB of Vram regardless of it's practical usability. It really has what is advertised to has and that's it,at that point the court will end. Move on people, or stay and waste your time.
You're entirely correct, but it is also completely true that companies do not like getting sued especially when it comes to such matters. Bad impressions don't have budgets (well maybe they do: PR), and a few heads will inevitably (and hopefully) roll at NVIDIA over this. Corporations can't falsely advertise their products to later brush it off as miscommunication.
I agree Nvidia should be punished and I agree that customers shouldn't have to suffer due to Nvidia's miscommunication, but I do think it was a miscommunication. Nvidia's own tools report the correct specs, you would think if they were intentionally trying to deceive customers their own tools would have been reported false numbers. Not to mention that they were pretty up front about it after users started reporting issues. It's not like anyone could have taken a microscope and examined the chip.
Seagate was sued for falsifying storage capacity....and Seagate lost. Currently there's a class-action suit pending against MS for falsifying storage capacity of the Surface and Surface Pro tablets. Doesn't really make sense though. MS wasn't the first to list the storage capacity incorrectly. Every PC, tablet and smartphone has the storage capacity falsified based on the claims made in the pending suit against MS. Every PC, tablet and smartphone lists the maximum storage capacity and not the storage capacity available to the user. My Asus laptop was advertised as having a 320GB harddrive yet it's available storage was only around 240GB. That's an 80GB discrepancy.