Nvidia Slapped with Lawsuit Over Misleading GTX 970 Performance Claims

[[Coi] Mr.CLuBBeR]

Gigabyte also tagged in proposed class-action lawsuit

The furor over GTX 970’s specs refuses to die down. What was until recently a public relations debacle is now threatening to snowball into a costly lawsuit, with a class-action complaint being filed Thursday by Cass County, Michigan-resident Andrew Ostrowski against Nvidia and Gigabyte for engaging “in a scheme to mislead consumers nationwide about the characteristics, qualities and benefits of the GTX 970.”
Before we go any further, here’s a quick recap: In late January, many people began complaining about seeing performance issues in games once VRAM usage hit the 3.5GB mark. This prompted Nvidia to clarify that the 970’s total memory is divided into a 3.5GB segment and a 0.5GB segment, with the comparatively slower second partition being only used when the game needs more than 3.5GB memory. To make matter’s worse, the company also admitted that the card actually has fewer ROPs (Raster Operating Pipelines) and L2 cache than advertised, a gaffe it attributes to internal miscommunication that lead to an error in the reviewer’s guide. It bears mentioning, however, that the impact on real-world performance appears to be minimal — at least for now.
The proposed lawsuit alleges that its Nvidia may have deliberately held off making the above clarification, lest it have an adverse impact on sales and ruin what eventually turned out be an annus mirabilis of sorts for the company.
“In other words, Nvidia’s record profits were driven in part by the sale of the company’s flagship GTX 970 GPUs, which is likely why it did not want to disclose the material limitations at issue herein until after it had made millions of dollars in sales of such products,” reads the complaint, adding that the two defendants continue to persist in making some of the misleading claims to this day in their advertising and marketing literature.
First and foremost, Ostrowski wants the court to issue an order granting the case official class-action status, and appointing him and his counsel to represent the class. Once that is out of the way, he would like to see the court award, among other thing, disgorgement, restitution and “an order that defendants engage in a corrective advertising or full refund campaign.”
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