Yeah.. 3.5GB is still a good spec, makes great job.. I think.. but... If I pay for 4GB (working 100%), I won't get a 3.5GB...
Remember me ads about smartphone with "8GB"... "what?! I have only 5.1GB.. my phone is defective..."
Sure, as long as all the other smartphones have that 8GB memory completely empty, then yeah, this is a good comparison.
No different to buying a computer with a 500Gb hard drive and only 450Gb is usable....
Of course it is, as long as all the other 500GB hard drives out there offer 500GB of usable space. With the GTX 970, the full amount of memory IS there (as in, on the card). It's just that the last 512MB of it are accessed differently to the rest of the card's memory, which leads to lower (or drastically lower) performance, depending on the game's requirements.
This isn't the real problem, though. As it has been said before, suddenly finding out that the card's memory configuration isn't what nVidia stated it was doesn't change the performance numbers, not in the slightest. The real problem is that nVidia LIED about it. There's NO WAY the decision-makers at nVidia didn't know about all this since before the card was launched. It's not like they let TSMC figure out the specs for the batches of chips that would end up in GTX 970 cards.
Let's face it, if the marketing department would have gotten the wrong spec-sheet from the engineering teams about the GTX 970 specs, considering that the whole of the internet has reported those numbers, they would have sent out a press release the next day (absolutely worst case scenario, the reviews are closely monitored to a level that would make the NSA jealous), saying that there had been a mix-up, along with a PDF with the real specs. That didn't happen. This means that nVidia's marketing department were either knowingly lying through their teeth, or someone in charge had ordered the engineering teams to feed them false information.
There is absolutely NO WAY the engineers didn't know the correct specs for the GTX 970 and even if there was a mix-up somewhere down the line, somebody would have noticed it before launch day. Launch day press events held for both AMD and nVidia graphics cards usually contain all the technical specs the reviewers would ever be interested in knowing. That's just about all the technical details you would normally read in one of W1zzard's reviews. Then there's a Q&A session, where the press gets to ask whatever they want to ask about the product. Now, unless the marketing staff has a technical background (they changed from the engineering teams to the marketing department somewhere down the line, usually), they are pretty much technically illiterate. In such a case, they wouldn't be able to properly mount a graphics card inside a PC and all they're ever able to do is quote from the presentation they've just gone through. In such a case, though, they ALWAYS have an engineer with them. Said engineer handles the technical part of the briefing and, of course, the technically-oriented questions from the press. Whichever the case, two things stand out clearly: 1) the engineering and marketing teams do more than just exchange a single botched-up PDF and 2) there's absolutely NO WAY this was an honest mistake, one of those things that routinely get overlooked, like, say, the plastic shroud isn't black, but a very dark shade of grey.
Personally, I only care about this because they most clearly lied about this willingly. I don't buy or recommend graphics cards because they're from nVidia or AMD, the only thing that actually matters to me is what said card offers for the money (performance, noise, overclocking, reliability, good drivers, etc.). I've had cards from both companies over the years and I've tested hundreds more. I don't care who's caught lying, I can always buy from the other guy after all. But I do care when both the press and (implicitly) the consumers are being lied to so blatantly. Such an event should never be treated as casual by either side because it sets the worst kind of precedent possible: it sends the liar a signal that it's ok to continue lying and that they can easily get away with it.
The sub-group of humanity known as "gamers" have traditionally had only one sure way to be heard - voting with their wallets. But we love any chance to get vocal about "the enemy", even over petty lies by admen (like that's a real shock - who knew that our trusted advertisers could sink so low? People who rage about this have obviously never told any lies in their entire lives). So if this crap has your panties in a wad, go buy an AMD card, I'm sure they never lied about any of their crappy cards. Otherwise you should just keep running your 970 and be glad that it beats a 780 for $100 less. (and that they both blow away any Radeon card). Who can blame AMD for taking a cheap shot, they are rapidly losing market share and heading for bankruptcy. I recently bought a brand-new EVGA Classified GTX 780 Ti for $400, how is AMD going to beat that?
So, in your opinion, the fact that you got to buy nVidia's third best card (for its generation) for a price that used to get you a high-end flagship not so long ago is reason enough to overlook the fact that your favorite company intentionally lied to its customers? Fanboys never, ever cease to amaze...
