Nvidia cuts out reviewers who speak the truth
Posted on Tuesday, February 24 2009 12:12 am by forum member: newzhunter
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News Around the Web
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.
