Nvidia hoodwinks reviewers again with mythical GT275s

Was waiting to see when Charlie would surface again. So what it boild down to is; If you can grab one of these cards, theres a good chance its a rebranded 280 selling for a lot less. Slimey PR move...Yes, but bad for the lucky consumer who can get one...no.

Right, like THAT's going to happen. The 280 based parts will be sent to reviewers for "OMFGBBQ!!!!111one" factor and customers will get shafted with lower end parts (aka 260) rebranded as better -/

4play you've got some shiiiiit reading skills there mate. If i were buying a new card to find it was a rebranded decades old card i'd be pretty pissed off. These days unless you are going for absolute top end with no regards for the cost involved then you'll stick to ATI.

4850 is such a sweet spot atm.

Uh, isn't nVidia a privately owned company that can market and sell their products as they see fit? And isn't this part going to actually benefit the lucky consumer that buys one by being a best in class product? I don't get the negativity.

Check the specs before you buy!

I want benchmarks!!

That's it. I'm done with this site. I got pissed a few years back when the Inquirer started to become in part a personal vendetta blog against nVidia sponsored by AMD, but I must admit that I still continued to visit here.

But enough is enough. This is getting so silly and as a person that has followed nVidia and the Inquirer for many years, I know by now that Charlies "news" are 90% wrong, missleading or just heavily biased. So how can I trust the rest of the inquirer where I don't have the knowledge on my own? Is the rest also just sponsored crap?

So for all of you gullable kids who still believes in Charlie, you'll be happy to hear that you won't be seing me here again.

Figures....

And no, nVidia is a PUBLIC company who has responsibilities to it's shareholders.. apparently more so than to it's customers...

@Jack Wrestler

Not an ATI publicity stunt.. nVidia has been falling down and playing dirty..

besides, I just saw ads to buy nVidia products at the top of this very article.. refresh the page a few times..

If you read this, first liar, if you're reading this you obviously didn't make true on your statement.
Second, pity is on you if it took you this long to figure out Charlie has a 'slight' bias. The INQ is in general to be read as a tech TABLOID, so take a barrel of salt with it. Truth is, I like reading the INQ and due to my graphical alignment I'm not bothered with Charlie but even so, if one were to have half a brain they should just think to themselves "Gosh Carlie, you're incorrigible" and move on read all the other wonderful articles. Or just stop reading the article if Charlies name is on the top.

i dont get the part that talks about GDDR3 like its a bad thing. last time i checked the bandwidth for the GTX2 series maul the bandwidth of the GDDR5 radeons, because they have monster buses. who the heck needs a 512 bit card with GDDR5 right now, the bandwidth would literally be wasted on current games. i havent been reading this site long, but the whole article reads like its leaning towards something like a trolling post on a tech forum. the memory thing is of course misleading, exactly what you would expect to set the tone from that kind of post

Read some thoughts here... Where on Earth have you been sticking your head !? Remember boys, you are not an ostrich.

Tell me one Nvidia card who acctually made good besides doing the toaster bit in a fashionably good performance...

My laptop with a 9600 could boil an egg.

Always had Nvidia from Post 3FDX G-force god knows waht to PCX 5750, 8800GT and 9800GT...

No difference... For the first time EVER I bought an ATI, cheaper and at least they do what they say.

Charlie May be a bit like me... If Nvidia was a guy I'd kick his ass 7 ways to Sunday ... TWICE !!!!

Fat Lying Lard Ars$#"s

Bye then Jack wester, we won't miss you at all, and wouldn't have noticed you were leaving if you hadn't told us so publicly.

The truth often hurts, and if you can't stand the heat stay out of the kitchen...

Finally the Nvidia posting plants are so easy to spot these days, lets hope that Jack Wester doesn't have to clear his desk in the next wave of Nvidia redundancies...

LMFAO...

/wave goodbye/

BHNBXU

Wherein it was claimed reviewers would get higher clocked GTS 250's than would actually go on retail, which turned out was not factual at all?

Please don't go... (sarcasm).
Who are you in the first place? If all fanbois morons like you leave, maybe we will have a more productive discussion in the comments section. We probably aren't that lucky.

So, the GTX 275, if it actually exists, is just a rebranded 260/280 where in some instances you may get the better card, and in others you get the lower performing one.

At least they aren't using an older generation card.

As far as being a "public" company is concerned, it isn't. Public includes everyone, not the select investors and shareholders who have something at stake.

Just like they only made token amounts of the 295.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/398/1051398/nvidia-gtx260s-losing-money

except they're still in stock.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010380048%20106792634%201067946192&name=GeForce%20GTX%20295
Limit 99 per customer.

Why is reacting sleazy? Is it sleazy when ATI makes an unplanned price drop in reaction to an Nvidia part?

The GeForce GTX 280 and 260 are based on the same processor core. I thought Nvidia was the one who 'blew the fuses' If not why would anyone sell the 260. Before they "blow the fuses" they are neither a 260 or 280? How about this, what's the die size of the 260, 275 and 280? 240 SP's are 240 SP's right? Or are you saying reviewers will get clock X and retailers will get clock Y? If that's the case then you should just say that. Anyways, I thought the 275 was actually a neutered 285.

Anyways, thanks for the entertainment and occasional news. ;

From your own link .. Qty limit 4. How did you get 99 again? Thats right, lying. Bye bye!

That ATI are just better. why do you think the inq chose a red color scheme???

@koen ur so right. its a tabloid, wtf do the idiots who read this expect. opinions make this site.

@Bounty
If you find me a single GTX295 in the whole of Norway, plz give me a call.. There hasnt been more than a few coming into stores since the launch.

http://prisguide.hardware.no/product.php?productId=105918&cat_id=30

@4Play
The problem is not you getting a 280-based 275. Problem are you getting a 260 based 275 when all the reviewers get 280 ones...

@vulcanproject A wide bus paired with Gddr3 and narrow bus paired with Gddr5 gives the same performance, but the Gddr5 option equals a thinner(fewer layers) board, which is cheaper to manufacture.

NVidia doing this is really no shock, they have been really desperate lately. They've fucked up with the Gt200/b and have fallen out with every player in the chip m arket. Good they have enogh money to survive to next generation chips.

The GTX275 is pretty much pointless anyway. If you look at the numbers, it's just a GTX285 with a ~3% slower core and ~5% slower shaders, a bit less RAM and a slightly lower bandwidth.

In practice, it's almost as fast as a GTX285, almost as expensive to make, but it will have to sell for a lot less to actually attract customers.

For that to happen, either NVIDIA or its partners (or both) will have to cut margins, and I doubt they want to, especially since they can't be very high as they are now.

So either this will remain vaporware, or I fail to see the logic in the launch of this product.

As always, I enjoyed this article - thank you Charlie. I read the Inq precisely for this brand of humour from you and your fellows. Rest assured that I'll be back (together with all the other Ing readers around the world) periodically to catch up on whatever joy you are spreading.

I have a XFX GTX 285 and love it, fast and quiet, smokes any single chip ATI card out there in actual FPS in games, check Toms Hardware if you don't believe me. These could be a bunch of 285 chips that didn't make the grade for a full fledged 285 card. As I recall AMD had quad core chips that were sold as tri cores, Charlie never slammed his beloved AMD for that.

Dont take crap from companies like they own you. Please stand up for yourselves and also the consumers.

Dont let companies no matter who ever they are Nvidia, ATI, Intel, AMD, Microsoft, Apple .. let them pull a fast one over you.

Dont fall for Nvidia's guerilla marketing strategies, tell us the truth.

As far as being a "public" company is concerned, it isn't. Public includes everyone, not the select investors and shareholders who have something at stake.

HAAAAAAAA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA with rofl's on the side.

Huh? NV is blamed again for being the bad guy while AMD is seeding overclocked reference cards clocked at 900MHz while all slides say 850MHz to editors without letting them know?

Same thing all over again.
I've skipped on GTX260 xos it was slower, a while ago I've sold my HD4870 to buy better card (though I'm still waiting) and I often see GTX260+ beating 1GB Radeon HD4870.

But when I go online to find a shop where to buy one, I just give up.

How should I know which one is "+" and which one is ordinary? Those that ARE labeled correctly are way more expensive than ATi cards, so I've again skipped them.

Even if GTX275 cards get to shops in larger quantities I?ll probably skip it again because once again I won't know which ones are "good" and which are just cheap-worthless variants.

nVidia won't get my money, or money of people which ask me for advice, as long as they keep playing these tricks and hiding real specifications under renames, obscure branding, and just not showing the right numbers on the cards and specificaly on the boxes themselves.

When I buy HD4870 I know what I?m getting. Card can have 512 or 1GB memory, and shops always state it, and you can check that easily. They can have reference or non-reference coolers, and again that's stated in 95% of shops, and you can clearly see it if you ask for a box or for a card.

But how can you know if nVidia cards are based on 260, 260+, "275", 280-, 280 and so on? You can just hope you're right, and that nVidia had not rebranded something lately without you knowing it.

Thanks, but no thanks. My next card will be either HD4870 1GB or HD4890, dependingo on price and performance of a newer card. nVidia? No way.

"Public company" means they are listed on the stock exchange, I think you'll find NV is listed in the NYSE, and is therefore most definitely a Public Company. Please people, check you know what you are talking about before posting remarks.
Now James, you can rofl, with a red face me thinks.

Well, when will ATI make something that catches up with 2 year old NVidia tech ?
We've got the top ati core 4870 whacked into a 4850 or really the 4850 made a red rooster "dream" by maxxing out a special mem but the CORE is still just a 4830...competing with 9 flavors of refined G80 - G92, G92b, gt gts gtx, gs....
So WHEN it ATI gonna break out of it's SLUMMIN SLUMP ?
If you put DDR5 on a 9800 it would MATCH and BEAT ati's top card !
Let's see, I haven't even mentioned the GT200 yet, that LOWEND is the GTX260 that SMACKS DOWN the top ati 4870 more often than not.
I just saw the battle of overlcoks too, Nvidia wins that. Wins Cuda, wins PhysX, wins FOLDING, wins game profiles, wins forced dual (sli) - wins on power consumption, wins on core heat lowest....
Jiminy Crickets I know I'm s'posed to hate but I just DON'T.
Tell me why a top core 4830 (neuter) is PATHETIC compared to GTX285 yet a top core GTX260/192 almost exactly matches the 4870 1G ?
Hello world !
Time to FACE THE MUSIC... grab some chickseed red roosters and start crowing like heck before the big green tractor runs you over for the last billion dollared loss time...chickens comin home to roost !

@SiliconDoc:

Uhmm, the diesizes of the NVidia chips are much much larger than the ATI chips.

It's not a very good strategy to just make your chips bigger to be able to compete while the competition makes them smaller. The problem NVidia has is that their chips compete with chips that cost half as much to produce.

So yes, NVidia has a problem.

Journalists don't come out of it well either if this game is happening and they go along with it. Never mind that the company apparently is pranking the media, we expect writers to be able to probe deeper and to see through that.

It's like over at the "Bad Science" web site - half of the news coverage that they object to is just someone's press release slightly edited and pasted on the page. Press releases are for lying on!

We all know Charlie's urge to rant but why on Earth spending so much time on futile reports?

I couldn't care less about size, memory type and other things some of you do care about.
What matters to me is the performance and right now the latest version of nVidia GeForce 260 is beating ATi Radeon 4870 1GB in almost all benchmarks. Do I need to mention how well the GeForce 295 GTX stacks against ATi 4870x2.
If performance isn't your concern then it's your loss only.
For me I don't care what brand my graphic card has as long as it's the fastest shit I can get for the money.

About nVidia handing out higher specced 260 cards to reviewers, how come reviews done by Tom's hardware, Anandtech, Guru3d etc. with a certain brand, perform better than the reference card? Do companies such as ASUS, XFX, Gainward, EVGA etc. cheat as well?

Right now I'm more of a pro nVidiot than ATi but that only stays until ATi bring something faster.

I pity Charlie and you consumers who don't care about performance.

I agree with you that for a consumer all that matters is performance and/or powerconsumption for a given price.

Your conclusion is wrong however. ATI/AMD has a better solution in almost every price category. See the latest article at www.anandtech.com

Grrr...

If Charlie were actually telling porkies, then don't you think Nvidia would have their lawyers after him? Just think of the publicity that would bring!

There is only one problem, Charlie does his research, and no, it's not from the local pub, and what he is saying is correct.

And Jack? "I know by now that Charlies "news" are 90% wrong, missleading or just heavily biased."

And just how do you KNOW that? Are you privy to facts that are not available to the rest of us? If so, please do let us know, I for one am always working to uncover the truth so I can make intelligent decisions, so if you have real factual information, it would be helpful to read it. Oh, btw, your personal opinion doesn't count. So unless you are employed by Nvidia in their product development labs and HAVE REAL FACTS, then STFU!

@SiliconDoc:
You fail to realize that ati's chips are meant to be middle range, the high end will be pleased with 2 combined chips. This way you can make small dies and have a high yield.
Nvidia went the other way and made a big "powerful" chip. Ideally that one should compete with the X2 cards of ati, but they already have to compete with ati's mid range ones. It's an utter failure for nvidia, low yield, big die, no power. Ati owns this generation, everything else is just delusional.

If you can send a reviewer a 280 and say that it is a 275, then get the public to buy off the back of that review, but actually shaft them with a 260... and they don't notice... Ho Ho Ho... Who cares ! Anyone that dumb deserves to be taken to the cleaners :~)

It wasn't until I re read my post and seen James' comment that I realized I was wrong in that respect, but thanks for pointing it out.

Mark, I hope you know the diffence between a quantity limit and # of available models. Nevermind... you obviuosly don't.

@ Norway
My Norwegian isn't so great, but http://prisguide.hardware.no/product.php?productId=105918&cat_id=30 looks like it's showing stock, scroll down.

Yawn... will everyone just shut up and wait for the goddamned reviews to pop up. And to counter the numb nuts that say that ATI small die size makes it better, get real, performance wise the G200 series (the real ones, not the fake GTS 250) take the market lead- are you really saying ATI dont want the high ground? If that was the case they wouldn't have crammed 2 GPU's on one card for the 4870x2). It's not always about profits, it's also about performance dominance. Can't believe i'm saying this, but i hope Larabee works wonders, then i can leave this red/green pissing contest and eat blue.

Lets see...

1- Fewer and fewer technological differentiators:

They all use the same APIs and provide 99.5% of the same functionalities. 99.999% of the time, it would impossible for anyone to differentiate an ATI rig from an NVidia one under an A/B blind test condition with results never over the statistical random factor . We could do the test, but the expected results are very obvious to me.

2- Integration:

Once upon a time, everything was optional on a PC. You had to buy add-on cards for serial, parallel, modem, IDE controller, L2 cache (on the motherboard), math co-processors etc... Today, the NIC market is long gone (3Com), the sound card market has nearly completely vanished compared to what is was (Crative lab) and now even the chipset itself, where all those external add-on have been integrated over the years, is robbed of the memory comptroller function now part of the CPU resulting in many players leaving the chipset market (Including the death of Intel business for Nvidia). The inevitable conclusion is that in the near future, all and every function of a PC will be integrated to 2-3 chips and then, ultimately, 1 chip will do it all. AMD fusion, Intel Larabee leads the way... Give me only 1 (I don’t need 10) solid argument against that logic that would make it impossible from happening: 1 chip to rule them all... I asked Agent Smith about this and he replied –quote- : ’’It’s inevitable’’.

3- Economic turmoil

The very nature of the current economic situation is a first in the human history. The way the whole ‘’global village’’ is affected is unprecedented. No one has a clear view of the next 36 months, economically speaking, so forget about the next 5 to 10 years. The one thing we know is that it’s worse than we thought, and will take a lot longer to heal than we thought. Who knows where it will lead? If is there one thing that Nature tells us, It’s that chaos and necessity put together unleashes tons of opportunities for faster, unforeseen evolution. Now combine point 1, 2 and point 3 and you will understand that the current situation in the hardware industry will undergo some fundamental and dramatic changes in the years ahead.

Most are afraid of changes. Especially if there is any risks to their power and money status-quo. In the end, when they get their back to wall, they will do anything and everything to avoid going instinct. That explains the current Nvidia behaviour and it will only get worse until the end. Nvidia is a dying dinosaur. Like all the others. Its fate is either to die, eat or be eaten, just like ATI. So you see, in the grand scheme of things, you must have all realized by now, those little daily news have no consequences whatsoever on the inherent and unavoidable conclusion.

Still, I enjoy reading INQ. It’s a formidable on-line human behaviour laboratory. Just like rats in my HTTP maze under my Firefox microscope...

Ramon

i know all about die size. i also know nvidia are sticking with what they know best, and ATI what they know best. that would be larger bus width (88GTX,GTS etc), and faster high tech memory (X19 series used GDDR4 over 2 years ago!) respectively. i dont see why nvidia should be criticised for their choice of path, even with an increased die size. you could blame them, but they just designed what they knew.

Maybe Nvidia did produce the 275 to spoil ATi's 4890 launch but Novatech in the UK are showing these cards as "in stock" now

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/products/a1083x1y0z1p0s0n0m0

Well I guess thier not fake.:)

http://www.evga.com/articles/00469/

Well, well. It seems that the GTX 275 is faster than the 4890 in most games, at most settings, but definately a close race. Nvidia isnt as studid as a lot of you originally thought it seems.

Not according to this review. Best case scenario for RV790: HD4890OC beats GTX285 in 11 out of 16 tests. 1 Draw.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/radeon-hd4890.html

I will smile extra for you people who haven't read or refuse to accept the fact that nVidia have another winning card with their "mythical" GeForce 275.
Head over to http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-275,2266.html.

You do what you do best Charlie, keep on ranting and act like a child while the big boys get the fun.
Has to suck to be on your clothes now.

www.guru3d.com/news/nvidia-geforce-gtx-275-review/

www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/nvidia_gtx_275

www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-275,2266.html

Charlie, why dont you rather apply yourself in a positive way? :)

Basically Nvidia re-launched the 280 as 275, since they have almost the same specs and performance.

Overclockers.co.uk are shipping "mythical" 275's today. So if you want to be the proud owner of a "mythical" card you know where to go.

If i wasnt happy with my 4870 I would have been tempted just so i can take a picture to mail Charlie.

As far as the mindless drivel of your going to get a slower than review card is concerned....Charlie you could at least have waited until April 1st before writing up that nonsense.

And company's sell products at a loss sometimes? OMG how dare they? What was microsoft thinking when they came up with XBOX and lost millions year after year? Clearly a bunch of muppets. Thinking long-term are for losers only hey Charlie?

What are you complaining about Charlie? The GTX 275 is a downclocked GTX 285 for less. The HD 4890 is a upclocked HD 4870 for more.

For all intents and purposed that's all they are. Why don't you paint ATI with the same brush. Oh, sorry, your obvious bias won't let you (and all your little sycophants here will have your back).

You guys don't seem to be able to read...
The problem here wasn't that the 275 doesn't physically exist. He's saying it's mythical because the performance that the normal user will receive is not going to be the same as the performance put forth by reviewers. nVidia sent reviewers the 280 based cards and almost every company will use the 260 reference cards to make their 275s because it's cheaper.

what the heck are you talking about ? 275's can't be made from 260's , the chips are totally different you idiots , don't believe everything that retard Charlie says , you have to search first before you believe even one letter of his biased bullshit .

how can a chip with 216 cores be updated to 240 cores ? does that make sense to anybody ? my god you people are truly empty headed if you do believe that !

From reading from other more credible sites on the web, It "seems" like the new card is just an underclocked card while the ati card is just a overclocked card.

I wonder if some of them would overclock well?

Charlie... I thought you got something new but it seems like you are just throwing shit at a moving target and hoping it sticks.

Like someone already said.. nvidia not using ddr5 is not a big deal.

buzz off AMD fanboy ...cough cough employee...

Geez people...

There is no such thing as a "260 based" or "280 based" 275. The 275 is literally one of the GPUs from the GTX 295. That's it. It was not, is not, and never will be "based on" any other chip. Charlie, as usual, is full of it.

@ten9 who said in reply;" @SiliconDoc:

Uhmm, the diesizes of the NVidia chips are much much larger than the ATI chips.

It's not a very good strategy to just make your chips bigger to be able to compete while the competition makes them smaller. The problem NVidia has is that their chips compete with chips that cost half as much to produce.
So yes, NVidia has a problem.
"
UNFORTUNATELY ten9, it is indeed ATI that has the MONEY PROBLEM - as in they have lost a BILLION A YEAR for the last couple years for amd, who also lost a billion, and combined they barely have 6 billion in sales.
THEY'RE LOSING $$$$$ - bleeding bigtime.
Now, the idiot red roosters scream about the die size of their competition, who HOLDS MARKET SHARE and obviously MAKES MONEY INSTEAD OF LOSING A BILLION A YEAR.
But, you ten9, live in your red rooster fantasy world, son, and I'm so far ahead of you - your head is spinning - just face the FACTS - red roosterville is BLEEDING and almost bankrupt.
Maybe Obumma can bail your red rooster for idiots company, the one with gigantic money problems.
In other words, you're just PLAIN ABSOLUTELY 100% INCORRECT.
Now, instead of repeating what you hear like an idiotic parrot - go check out the FACTS. Both companies issue financial info on the common stock websites like yahoo finance or whatever. Take a gander there mr uninformed pravda misinformation repeater.