Nvidia has just agreed to a preliminary settlement in its false advertising class action lawsuit over allegations of misleading consumers with false specifications of its GTX 970 line of cards. The initial claim, which was filed in Feb 2015, accused Nvidia of falsely advertising a 3.5GB video memory graphics card as a 4GB model, which violated California’s law for unfair business practices and deception. The recent settlement with Nvidia included a consolidated sum of 15 consumer class action lawsuits in Northern California with a pending action in San Diego. The amount of VRAM wasn’t the only misleading or omitted information with its GTX 970 line, consumers also accused Nvidia of falsely advertising its render output units, having 64 instead of the advertised 56, as well as having a smaller specialized memory cache. Consumers claimed Nvidia omitted these details, which are important for buyers to understand in order to make an informed purchase decision.

Nvidia denied all allegations of wrongdoing, despite this, both parties entered into settlement, believing the agreed terms to be the best course of action for all parties involved. The overall settlement amount hasn’t been disclosed publicly. Nvidia has stated that they will pay each buyer of the GTX 970 a sum of $30 USD, with no cap on the total amount to pay consumers, additionally stating they will cover the $1.3 million in attorney fees cost. Nvidia’s GTX 970 at the time cost approximately $350 USD and the anticipated $30 payout was calculated to represent a portion of the cost of the storage and performance capability discrepancy of the unit. At this time, instructions on how consumers can file a claim for Nvidia’s class action settlement are not available. One thing’s for sure, Nvidia won’t want to make a mistake like this again, hopefully from this point on they’ll be more precise and accurate with their hardware specifications.