If you have bought a GTX 970 between when it launched and August 26th of 2016 you're entitled to $30 from Nvidia. Aseries of legal claims filed against Nvidia by GTX 970 customers over the past year and a half over false advertising claims led to the company agreeing to a preliminary settlement a couple of months back.

The whole controversy started after users discovered that the GeForce GTX 970 which was advertised and sold as a 4GB graphics card actually only had 3.5GB of effectively usable memory and a 0.5GB segment 7 times slower than the rest of the pool. In addition to the memory issue Nvidia later admitted to several other inaccurately states specs for the card at launch. Including having less L2 cache and fewer Render Output Units than initially advertised.

Despite initial reviews and information from NVIDIA, the GTX 970 actually has fewer ROPs and less L2 cache than the GTX 980. NVIDIA says this was an error in the reviewer’s guide and a misunderstanding between the engineering team and the technical PR team on how the architecture itself functioned. That means the GTX 970 has 56 ROPs and 1792 KB of L2 cache compared to 64 ROPs and 2048 KB of L2 cache for the GTX 980. – Nvidia via PCPer

Nvidia GTX 970 False Advertising Settlement Site Now Live - Accepting Claims Submissions

Nvidia and its co-defendents who have been implicated in the legistlation have attempted to dismiss the case on several occasion without success. In late July of this year Nvidia agreed to settle. Themechanism by which GTX 970 owners can submit a claim is through the gtx970settelment.com website which just launched yesterday by the settlement administrator.

Only those residing in the US and who have purchased a GTX 970 card in the US between September 1 2014 and August 24 are eligible for a $30 payment for each card purchased. Those who have purchased retail desktop systems equipped with a GTX 970 graphics card are also eligible. However, those who have purchased notebooks equipped with the mobility version of the GTX 970 i.e. GTX 970M are not part of this settlement.

Proof Of Purchase

You will need to upload a Proof of Purchase with your completed claim form. This can include a sales receipt, a credit card receipt or statement, a shipping manifest, a purchase order, an email confirmation of purchase or shipping, or other similar documentation reflecting a qualifying purchase, and who you purchased the GPU from. Alternatively, you may submit a Product Identification Number, which is the product identification number, serial number, stock keeping unit (“SKU”), device identification number, part number, or other letters and/or digits embedded on the box, back, or bottom of each GTX 970 GPU you purchased that comprises its identification number, or that can be located by checking the settings for the GPU via software.

If youmeet the eligibility criteriaoutlined above you can submit a claim online directly or use the website to file one via mail.

A Minor Financial StrainOn Nvidia But A More Arduous One On Its Image

The GeForce GTX 970 is one of the most popular graphics cards with over 5% of all Steam users reportedly being owners of the card. It's one of Nvidia's best selling everwith an estimate of over one million cardssold. Whileit's quite difficult to predict the extent at which this gaffe will hurtthecompany's reputation and standing in the long term among its customers in the growing gaming market.The settlement won't endup as more thanblip on the company's financial sheet whichclocked over 5 billion in revenue last year.