NVIDIA Hit With Class Action Lawsuit Following GeForce GTX 970 Design Discoveries

Well… I’m sure that this will come as a surprise to no one. Following the discovery last month that NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 970 doesn’t sport the design we were led to believe it did, Michigan-based Andrew Ostrowski, ‘on behalf of himself and all others similarly situated’, filed a suit against NVIDIA for misleading customers. Our friends at PC Perspective were fortunate enough to be listed as a source in the official complaint.

Based on the semantics of the complaint, I’d wager that there’s little chance NVIDIA will suffer a blow here. Here’s a key excerpt:

This is a nationwide class action brought on behalf of all consumers who purchased graphics or video card devices incorporating the Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 graphics processing units (“GPU”) (hereinafter “GTX 970” or “GTX 970 devices”), which were sold based on the misleading representation that the GTX 970 operates with a full 4GB of VRAM at GDDR5 (not a less performant 3.5 GB with a less performant and decoupled .5 GB spillover), 64 ROPs (as opposed to 56 ROPs), and an L2 cache capacity of 2048KB (as opposed to 1792 KB), or omitted material facts to the contrary.

The biggest issue with this complaint is that the simple fact that the final 500MB of the framebuffer runs slower than the rest isn’t likely to matter to the courts; it’s still a 4GB card, after all. If the entire framebuffer operated at less-than-quoted speeds, it would be an issue – but this isn’t the case.

The other half of the equation is that NVIDIA never advertised the GTX 970 ROP count or the amount of L2 cache it has. While it could be argued that NVIDIA supplied reviewers with that information, which in turn means they’ll probably reach the consumer, that’s not the same thing as NVIDIA advertising the specs. NVIDIA has quite simply never listed ROPs or cache on its official product pages. As I’ve said before, no one purchases a graphics card based on things like ROPs and caches – they buy them based on the performance they’re promised, and in the case of the GTX 970, that performance is delivered.

There are of course some exceptions to that rule, though. Some using 4K displays or lower-resolution displays with super-high graphical settings could hit a roadblock with the slowed final 500MB. Most examples I’ve seen of this have involved games running at unreasonable settings (eg: resulting in low framerates), so I’m of the mind that the people who will be most affected by this will be those who use more than one GTX 970 and again use super-high detail settings. That’s an incredibly small percentage of GTX 970 owners, but it’s not like they don’t exist.

Interestingly, it’s not only NVIDIA listed in this suit, but GIGABYTE as well. Why GIGABYTE, specifically? I am not sure it matters. While I don’t think this case is going to see much success, it’ll be an interesting one to monitor nonetheless.