Nvidia fakes Fermi boards at GPU Technology Conference

[KrossX]

WHAT DO YOU DO when you have a major conference planned to introduce a card, but you don't have a card? You fake it, and Nvidia did just that.

In a really pathetic display, Nvidia actually faked the introduction of its latest video card, because it simply doesn't have boards to show. Why? Because it didn't get enough parts to properly bring them up, much less make demo boards. Why do we say they are faked? If you look at the pictures, it is painfully obvious that Fermi cards don't exist. Well, painful if you happen to be Dear Leader who waved fakes around and hopes to get away with it, but hilarious if you are anyone not working at Nvidia.

Lets go through this in pictures, shall we? Please note, none of the pictures are ours, and since you can find them on many other sites, they are likely Nvidia PR material. Since the company seems to have forgotten to mail us a copy, we will point to the ones at PC Watch.

[...]

Read more...

Nvidia confirms

Fermi that was running PhysX at Jensen's GTC keynote was real but the one that we all took pictures of was a mock-up.

The real engineering sample card is full of dangling wires. Basically, it looks like an octopus of modules and wires and the top brass at Nvidia didn't want to give that thing to Jensen. This was confirmed today by a top Nvidia VP president class chap, but the same person did confirm that the card is real and that it does exist.

Charlie was surely right about this one here. The card that Jensen showed and we all pictured is not a working sample. Some key people at Nvidia have promised to show us the picture of the real one. Stay tuned.

Source...

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[Squall-Leonhart]

Yeah?
and?

you think they are gunna let him walk about with a real sample card?

you make me lol.

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[Cheesus]

Nvidia made me lol.

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Originally Posted by TheCloudOfSmoke

"Save the balls, save the world."

[Squall-Leonhart]

so did ATI when they complained because they were lazy and didn't work with batman devs to make aa work so batman devs were all like :RE****: and disabled the aa option on their ***** asses.

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[KrossX]

It is a mock and an insult to all those that were present. They should've made it clear since the beginning of the conference.

It's very different to a post that it's not officially the word of a company.

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[Cheesus]

Originally Posted by Squall-Leonhart

so did ATI when they complained because they were lazy and didn't work with batman devs to make aa work so batman devs were all like :RE****: and disabled the aa option on their ***** asses.

Agreed.

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Originally Posted by TheCloudOfSmoke

"Save the balls, save the world."

[Spyhop]

Companies do **** like this all the time. So the card's not ready yet, so what?

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[nanaya]

So it seems ATi price cut will be delayed too.

[runawayprisoner]

Originally Posted by KrossX

It is a mock and an insult to all those that were present. They should've made it clear since the beginning of the conference.

It's very different to a post that it's not officially the word of a company.

Nah, people show "prototypes" that don't work all the type. If you'd been to CES this year, you'd see a sea of cool-looking laptops that don't actually have anything but the case, the keyboard, the screen and a touchpad... possibly. And they'd usually stuff some random components in to estimate the weight of the final product.

I think something else happened at the PR event and they had to come up with that card to replace an actual demo unit. Maybe initially, they had 2 units, one for the demo and one to show to the press. At the last minute, one unit got broken due to a certain clumsy secretary... or someone like that, and they can't just glue together that thing, nor can they show it to the press in that state, so they pushed the other unit into the demo computer, grabbed a blank board, savaged whatever they could from the broken unit, and shoved it all onto that board. End result is what we're discussing now.

Edit: or alternative theory: a rabid nVidia fan, while trying to steal one of the demo units, broke it, and... duh

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[KrossX]

Indeed, and there should be a disclaimer about it. All they had to do was make it known from the beginning. I wouldn't have minded if it was some El-Cheapo company, but coming from nVIDIA is quite a disappointment.

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[runawayprisoner]

Telling people that one of their employees "clumsily" broke a high-end prototype in half (or more) right before a big PR event, or alternatively, that the guards at the press place were so incompetent that a rabid fan got in, snatched a card, and broke it...

Yeah, if it was me, I'd sooooo come out and say it.

But really, if a prototype was broken for any silly reason at all (and I bet it was), then they are better off concealing it.

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[SCHUMI_4EVER]

Originally Posted by nanaya

So it seems ATi price cut will be delayed too.

Everybody here in South Africa is scrambling for 5870s and 5850s specially imported for rAge the biggest LAN event we have here (and also a bit of an expo like E3) in SA at a likely to never be repeated (or at least not for a long long time) introductory $400 for the 5870 and $320 for the 5850 XD One guy at a local forum I frequent bought 3 to replace 3 4890s, there are going to be some rather annoyed people seeing as he took 3 cards out of such a special import.

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[StriderVM]

More likely than not, the real hardware is somewhere in that place. Except it don't really work yet? >_>

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[Cid Highwind]

Originally Posted by runawayprisoner

Nah, people show "prototypes" that don't work all the type. If you'd been to CES this year, you'd see a sea of cool-looking laptops that don't actually have anything but the case, the keyboard, the screen and a touchpad... possibly. And they'd usually stuff some random components in to estimate the weight of the final product.

I think something else happened at the PR event and they had to come up with that card to replace an actual demo unit. Maybe initially, they had 2 units, one for the demo and one to show to the press. At the last minute, one unit got broken due to a certain clumsy secretary... or someone like that, and they can't just glue together that thing, nor can they show it to the press in that state, so they pushed the other unit into the demo computer, grabbed a blank board, savaged whatever they could from the broken unit, and shoved it all onto that board. End result is what we're discussing now.

Edit: or alternative theory: a rabid nVidia fan, while trying to steal one of the demo units, broke it, and... duh

There's one difference: Those laptops are shown for their designs, they're not meant for benchmarks at that point and it's fine if the hardware is just listed on paper.

Anyway, a prototype is supposed to be representative of the final product, even if not fully functional. This is as unprofessional is it can get, remember, they're the underdog this generation and need to come up with something good or they'd better lube up on the stockmarket. Making mistakes like this really isn't good PR, not after having recently had the laptop chip fiasco and when they needed to lower the prices on their top model by €150,- during the last generation's competition.

Also, this clearly shows that Charlie, as hated as he is by nVidia fans and as biased as he is that even ATi fanboys have to admit it, he was closer to the truth than Fudo when it comes to nVidia's yields. After all, if the yields would've been good they'd have had a working prototype, this clearly shows you can safely buy an ATi card, nVidia won't come with anything anytime soon.

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[nanaya]

Nvidia's excuse for not showing GT300, Fermi based board is that they want to hide some things from the red green competition.

Fudzilla - Fermi board is real, but

Yeah right, what is there to hide when ATi already had their cards out for weeks.

[Cid Highwind]

Yeah right, what is there to hide when ATi already had their cards out for weeks.

They secretly bought 5870 chips, put two of them on a PCB and added a Cuda chip

On a more serious note, remember that ATi still has to release the x2 version and they can probably still decide the clockspeeds. If nVidia is putting them on a wrong footing now by playing the underdog with bad yields, they might have a trick. Who knows, both companies can put up some decent smokescreens.

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[nanaya]

Originally Posted by Cid Highwind

They secretly bought 5870 chips, put two of them on a PCB and added a Cuda chip

On a more serious note, remember that ATi still has to release the x2 version and they can probably still decide the clockspeeds. If nVidia is putting them on a wrong footing now by playing the underdog with bad yields, they might have a trick. Who knows, both companies can put up some decent smokescreens.

You make me suspect that the DX11 Demo they shown us was using ATi cards...

Nah, even if they're not upping the clockspeed they still can counter it with higher version of X2, e.g. 5890X2. but yeah, who knows what they may have (or have not) in sleeves.