Was just posting the same Warchild, but you beat me to it. It has 4gb regardless of how it performs, it's the ROP count that was factually inaccurate in the advertised specs - that's where NV will get in trouble.
It's funny really, the Computer Press and GTX 970 owners have been praising these GPU's since launch. Indeed, many wondered at the incredibly aggressive price point vs. the GTX 980 considering the minimal performance difference. I wonder if a driver screw up actually contributed to highlighting this technical weakness in the 970?
Saying that, I do recall a friend and myself discussing the 970 having the full 4gb, considering it's cut down nature vs. the 980. The (incorrect) specs backed up the card having the full number of memory controllers, so we thought no more of it.
Personally, if they'd released the 970 as a 3.5gb card at the same price point I doubt anyone would have been disappointed, considering how the card they actually released performs when NOT hitting that final half gigabyte.
I can see why people would be royally pissed off at this, it's the same as AMD's frame pacing issues from a while back where the FPS reported by the likes of FRAPS was far in excess of the actual FPS due to the card (effectively) saying it'd done a frame when it simply hadn't. This explained all the "I get 60fps, but it still looks juddery" posts. Thankfully, that was a software fix & I believe AMD cards are as good as NV in this respect now.
You know, if my 570's hadn't become problematic when they did, obliging me to buy a pair of 680's, in all probability I'd have snagged myself a couple of 970's at launch. I'd have blocked them up of course to get the best out of them, which may indeed have made me even more annoyed with NV after putting so much personal effort (and extra money) in to building a system.
Oh, regarding Gigabytes responsibilities in this - of course they knew the EXACT spec of the GTX 970, they're not stupid, but they chose to publish the same inaccurate specs as NV themselves. Sure, they can argue that they're just using the specs NV supplied, however I'd be stunned if they (or rather someone in their organisation) wasn't fully aware of the exact specs of the GPU's they were using.
Sorta of a black mark against NV this, however, we can be assured they'll be a darn sight more careful when releasing the specs on their next GPU's!
Scoob.