Nvidia May Owe US Residents $30 If They Purchased a GTX 970

Those in the US who purchased a GTX 970 may be eligible for a $30 reimbursement from Nvidia due to a proposed settlement in a class-action lawsuit.

A series of lawsuits were filed last year against Nvidia and Nvidia card manufacturers over claims of false advertising. (These lawsuits were all consolidated into one in March 2015).

The issue at hand that brought about the lawsuit is that the GTX 970 was advertised as having 4 GB of VRAM, but… it does not exactly.

Owners of the GTX 970 quickly realized within the first few months of its launch that games that used more than 3.5 GB of memory ran into performance issues. These issues were not happening on the GTX 980.

As it turns out, the 970’s memory was split into 3.5 GB and 0.5 GB sections. It claimed this didn’t result in a meaningful impact on performance, but as PC Gamer reported at the time, numerous users reported issues when playing games that used more than 3.5 GB of VRAM.

PC Perspective also discovered that the 970 had a smaller L2 cache and fewer render output processors than Nvidia had originally claimed.

These three errors were the main bulk of the lawsuit’s allegations of false advertising. More specificially that the 970 was sold “based on misleading representations” and “does not operate as represented”.

The two sides have reached a settlement. Nvidia will not admit liability, but will pay $30 for each 970 purchased in the US for anyone who submits a valid claim. The settlement is pending approval until the hearing on August 24th.

If approved, the owners will be notified of the settlement by October 23rd and claims will nee to be filed by December 21st.

In addition, anyone who bought a 970 and does not want the payout can pursue their own litigation.