Refunds on Nvidia’s GTX 970

[Yskonyn]

The whole gtx970 thing seems like such a tempest in a teapot to me.

+1

[Asid]

I still think the 970 is a great card.

[Nefaro]

I still think the 970 is a great card.

I'm sure it is.  The Nvidia xx70 cards have usually been in the sweet spot for price-to-performance for upper mid-range cards. 

The whole gtx970 thing seems like such a tempest in a teapot to me.

+1

How much does it cost, however?  It may not be the priciest offering in the series, but they still aren't cheap.  If I spent such a chunk of cash on a piece of hardware, I'd like to know whether part of it was intentionally hamstrung beforehand.

I think the consumers had every right to complain.  At least Nvidia admitted to it , after being called out, and offered refunds. 

If it were some $10 piece of disposable knick-knack, I doubt there would be much "tempest in a teapot".  One area of computer gaming hardware that has been steadily increasing in recent years is the amount of Video RAM required for gaming.  While CPU speeds have become static, there are still other areas advancing and VRAM is one.  Many people will use their new video card for years so it's quite possible that this manufactured limitation will eventually make itself felt for them.  I suppose it probably won't matter for those who upgrade their video card or build a new gaming rig regularly. 

If it were a natural limitation, then so be it, but the company intentionally lowered part of the RAM's performance.  Which just tells me that they're intentionally price gouging the higher priced models it threatened in performance.  This is probably what got people up in arms the most.  Especially after past price gouging & fixing issues with them, the biggest settled out of court with cash payouts.  Gotta keep your thumb on them, huh?

[JasonPratt]

EDIT -- Jason you have 690 sli??  Isn't the 690 already a dual-gpu card?  Are you powering a NORAD array of 4K monitors with that?   :o

Yeah, I just designated "SLI" for the benefit of people who (like myself) might not recognize which cards are dual-gpu.

(I did think about quadding up, but checking with the Falcon techs they advised there would be no performance boost; only good for a second monitor, like you said.)

I do wish the card had an HDMI signal-in, so I could pipe audio-video in from my PS3. I have an old Happauge that was already out of date when I bought it (because at the time I only had XPSP2) and it never ran correctly even then; with NVIDIA's shadowplay I could record footage from my console. I'll probably end up buying a current model Haup someday (or an equivalent competitor).

[sandman2575]

If it were a natural limitation, then so be it, but the company intentionally lowered part of the RAM's performance.  Which just tells me that they're intentionally price gouging the higher priced models it threatened in performance.  This is probably what got people up in arms the most.  Especially after past price gouging & fixing issues with them, the biggest settled out of court with cash payouts.  Gotta keep your thumb on them, huh?

I thought this was kind of par for the course?  Doesn't Nvidia regularly 'gimp' its architectures (Kepler, Maxwell, etc.) in order to make a range of cards?  My understanding (possibly misunderstanding) was that the x80 line represented the 'fully unlocked' architecture, and then x70, x60 etc. were deliberate downgrades.