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Nvidia cuts out reviewers who speak the truth

Final8y

Final8y

Final8y

Soldato
Joined
7 May 2006
Posts
12,183
Location
London, Ealing
IT IS ALWAYS funny when an unethical company turns on its own supporters as Nvidia did with the latest 'all new' GT250 cards. This time however, their PR stunts cross the line from unethical to purposely false, and hilarity ensues.

What are we talking about? The rebranding of the venerable G92, aka the 8800GT, 9800GT, 9800GTX, 9800GTX+, and several other variants as the GTS250. The NDA goes up on the third of March, and we have complete scores already, but there is no difference between these cards and the older G92 cards. We will save you from having to pour over spreadsheets scratching your head wondering how it is different... it isn't at all.

This time however, they crossed the line from plausible deniability to flat out deception. In the middle of last week we heard what Nvidia was up to this time around, but just couldn't believe they would be THAT sleazy. A day or so later, HardOCP published a story about Nvidia stock 'plummeting', basically an indignant backhand for being cut out of the GTS250's launch. Point one confirmed. The rest soon followed.

Kyle at HardOPC made the deal-breaking mistake of being honest, so it is doghouse time for him, and the site. Welcome to the club, we even have a fort. I assume Kyle got the list of who got cut too, so will know we will have quite big-name company soon joining us soon. Punch and pie.

So, short story, Nvidia is playing with the press once again. And since it has no new product, it is desperately afraid of the truth getting out. And if you didn't drool over PhysX and CUDA enough, you are cut out. This is exactly what Apple does to keep the press in line, but Apple has something Nvidia doesn't: competence.

If that wasn't bad enough, the next part is. Normally, when a vendor cuts you out, if you really care, you can go to one of their partners and get boards/chips/whatever. Sometimes this is even a better idea because one or two tend to have a special card, overclocked, shiny metal cooler, or box with bigger breasts on the model. This time Nvidia specifically forbade partners from giving sites parts if they were on honesty hiatus.

Not only that, but the flat-out dishonesty is that Nvidia gave its board partners 'special' boards to send to reviewers. They are not allowed to give out their own vanilla cards, they MUST use the special set supplied by Nvidia.
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vr-zone
 
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I see this as no different to when a company claims e.g. "New & Improved flavour Cornflakes".

It's not deception, it's Marketing. Most companies are guilty of it.
 
I read about the stock plummeting last week.I think it was on the back of decembers figures being 80% down year on year or so i recall
 
spitzoid said:
I see this as no different to when a company claims e.g. "New & Improved flavour Cornflakes".

It's not deception, it's Marketing. Most companies are guilty of it.
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It doesn't make it right tho does it. It's Nvidia trying to cover their chuffs till they make a decent GPU breakthrough. It's nothing to panic about and many sites are going to (or have) go sensationalist on this. The sensible consumer waits for early adopters to purchase and test the general release models and then make an informed decision as to whether they go ATI or Nvidia.

The market goes in roundabouts. Admittedly this is a pretty lacklustre attempt at selling more pieces of hardware and it is very dishonest. Dupe the customer and you run the risk of losing them to your competitor.

IMO the market needs a decent 3rd player.
 
SteveOBHave said:
Isn't intel supposed to be coming in as a major player for GPUs sometime soon?
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That's my reasoning for them not wanting to do it now. I don't know much about what Intel are planning with Larrabbee (is that how it's spelt?) but I imagine that they don't have discrete NV/ATI style cards planned.

If the market was healthier I wonder if Samsung or IBM would be interested. I kind of hoped one of them would go for AMD.
 
Sounds about right, review sites should buy a retal copy of cards and not relay on handouts in extange good reviews. There is no trust in engeneering samples anymore.
 
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spitzoid said:
I see this as no different to when a company claims e.g. "New & Improved flavour Cornflakes".

It's not deception, it's Marketing. Most companies are guilty of it.
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However in that case, the marketing has specifically stated that it is the same, but improved.

In Nvidia's case they are making it look like a brand new card, hence the difference name.
If it were "8800GT MkIV" I think it would be the same as branding it "new and improved".
 
Well old charlie is of course biased we all know that but doesn't alter a truth and this is true they are taking old tech and yet again rebranding it and looking to dupe people. Anyway you cut this it is wrong and they know it and they also don't care it is about time they were exposed fully to the public and people didn't trot along to their local pcworld and buy this crud because it has a nice new number and people think it is someting new.
 
RizlaKing said:
Well old charlie is of course biased we all know that but doesn't alter a truth and this is true they are taking old tech and yet again rebranding it and looking to dupe people. Anyway you cut this it is wrong and they know it and they also don't care it is about time they were exposed fully to the public and people didn't trot along to their local pcworld and buy this crud because it has a nice new number and people think it is someting new.
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totally agreed
 
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