Charlie express the cynical

source: theinquirer.net
My favorite writer, Charlie Demerjian once again shoot the Green Goblin aka Graphzilla (he named it) aka nVidia with their latest unplanned (sound like incidental) product. And some of many his article that burnt Nvidia PR office. Open your dictionar for his Brit verb. All for you.

Part I: Nvidia hoodwinks reviewers again with mythical GT275s
Tame hacks don't tell tales
Tuesday, 31 March 2009, 17:07

IF YOU THOUGHT Nvidia's spectacularly successful strategy in renaming the G92 to the GTS250, then seeding reviewers with ringers was low, you will love what it is doing with the 275. Yes, the company can go lower.

The official specs are 240 'cores', and clocks are at 633/1404/1134MHz for GPU, processor and memory respectively. Yawn. GDDR3 of course, no GDDR5 now or until the GT300 cores, the GT200 can't do it, but that is old news. Things are going to suck for NV on a die area board layers, and therefore cost for the rest of the year.

So, what is the sleazy part? Where to begin, where to begin. The first one is that there is no GT275 card or ASIC, in fact, as of CeBIT, the Nvidia partners didn't know it existed, mainly because it didn't. This 'planned' card wasn't planned, and is what you call a reaction. Take a sticker, slap it on an existing card, and blow different fuses.

We hear there will be only 5,000 or so made, just enough to seed the tame press and put a few on Newegg. Cards in this price range normally have initial shipments more than 10 times that, and go on from there. When you don't have something to counter a competitor, make something up, lose money on each, and claim the high ground, just not in the ethical sense of the word.

Can it get worse? Sure it can, since there is no 275 ASIC, NV is telling OEMs that they can make it from either a 280 or 260 board. One costs much more, and one performs better, so guess what everyone is going to use? That isn't necessarily bad, but how NV is seeding reviewers is. They are only going to be giving out a very special run of ONLY 280 based parts.

Quite special 280 based parts at that. Reviewers beware, what you are getting is not what you can buy, if you consider the 275 to be a real part to begin with. In any case, NV is seeding ringers, and claiming they are what the OEMs are going to make. Again. This is clearly not the case, but multiple reviewers told me they were specifically told by NV that the cards are not going to be 260 based. AIBs say otherwise, and documentation we have seen backs up the AIBs.

That brings us to the launch strategy. Nvidia will be allowing reviewers to write about the 275 on April 2, but there will be no cards. Etailers can 'sell' them from that date, but they are warned that cards won't be available until the 14th... maybe. This is because they don't really exist... yet.

So what you end up with is sadly typical: fake parts, ringers given to reviewers, and implied threats that if they write any of this, they will get cut out.

If you think the hardware review industry is cynical and gamed, you are right.µ

Part II: Nvidia cuts out reviewers for the GTS250
Sends 'special' boards to OEMs
Monday, 23 February 2009, 15:48

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.

The new parts are 55nm, just like the old. The clocks aren't different, nothing from a user perspective is different, other than the card losing 9550, an X and a +. Oh yeah, they are jacking up the price for the stupid as well.

Nvidia, however, is desperate to make this seem like something new. Sales are in the toilet, chips cancelled, and 40nm parts are looking unhealthy. Turd polishing time. Enter the marketeers, but they have a problem, some sites are, *GASP*, honest, and will print the truth.

Nvidia has this allergic reaction to the truth, and tries to change how it is presented at every opportunity.

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.

Just what are the green fumblers doing this time? Two things: one bad, the other downright deceptive. The bad one is simple, if you don't review Nvidia cards and say that PhysX is the greatest thing since sliced bread and CUDA makes sex better, you aren't doing a good enough job. They will gently nudge you to change your tune, basically praise PhysX and CUDA until you wear the letters off your keyboard.

The carrot and stick approach might help here, but Nvidia doesn't like carrots. They just threaten. 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.

Why is this dishonest? Want to bet that those boards have cherry-picked chips and RAM that clocks to the moon? That they will do everything better than any card you will ever be able to buy? Basically, Nvidia supplied ringers to the press that are not representative of what you can buy, and forced OEMs to give them to review sites without telling them. The technical term is 'mushrooming', feed them [scatological reference deleted] and keep them in the dark.

Remember now, this is the same 55nm G92 that you have been able to buy for six months or more, there is NO difference between that and the 9800GTX+. Nvidia has to show a difference to avoid their new hare-brained branding/stupid fanboi-fleecing scheme from tanking, so they are stacking the reviews.

They cut out anyone they thought would be critical and gave the rest cards that are nothing like what anyone can buy. They shut up OEMs, and forced them to give out cards that were flat out fantasy parts in the hopes that it would generate some good press. If they don't, well, you can always cut them out of the next round.

This behaviour on Nvidia's part is not only unethical, but it is purposefully dishonest. They are knowingly giving out parts that are not representative of retail pieces, and doing so without telling the reviewers. Readers won't know, sites may or may not know, and in general, it hurts everyone but Nvidia. Unless the word gets out, then hilarity ensues.

Spread the word guys, and don't trust any of the upcoming reviews where the part was not purchased at a retail outlet using real money. µ

Part III:Nvidia tapes out three GPUs
GT212 is still dead
Tuesday, 10 February 2009, 20:48

IN A MOVE sure to disappoint fanbois in basements all across the world, the Nvidia GT212 has still not taped out, but three others have. The 212 is dead, the other three will trickle out in April, May and June.

The reason is pretty obvious, the TSMC 40nm process is leaky as hell, and the bigger the chip, the more transistors that leak. Top this off with a totally botched design that couldn't be shrunk from 65nm to 55nm sanely, so 40 was very iffy.

That said, the three that have taped out are the GT218, GT216, GT215, the value, mainstream and performance parts respectively. They also taped out in that order. Yawn. The 216 and 218 come out around May 1 give or take a couple of weeks, the 215 a month later.

It looks like Nvidia knifing the GT212 has allowed them to put more resources into the 40nm parts, pulling them back in. Add in TSMC's utilisation dropping well below 50 per cent, and suddenly you have enough wafers at 40 to do a volume launch early. That explains the roadmap rearrangement.

Prepare to be underwhelmed unless you are really into smaller dies. µ