News Fermi card on stage wasn't real

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2009/10/03/fermi-card-on-stage-wasn-t-real/1

GTC 2009: Nvidia has confirmed that the Fermi card held up by Jen-Hsun on stage wasn't real, but was adamant that the demos were.

 

Nvidia is the New England Patriots of the computer world. Always sneaky sneaky... makes me nervous.

 

Excellent investigation work there. NVidia deserves a bit of flak for this one. They did misrepresent the product.

So NVidia expects people to believe the demo was genuine if the card doesn't really exist yet in its final, complete state?

Even better... them telling you, oh no, we cant show the ones used in the demo because we already sent them away. Regardless, of whether they are being truthful or not, it does raise suspicion.

 

Why are they on a bed of tripe?

 

Yep, it does, which is why I tried really hard to get them to let me see the bring up board. The PR team seemed very willing to show me when I asked - they said they wanted to show me it although they said if I did, I wouldn't have been allowed to take pictures. A couple of hours later, they came back to me to tell me that they couldn't show me the board because they'd already been rushed back to the lab. That's when I started doing a bit more digging around.

I'm not 100 per cent convinced, but then I don't think anyone is - the proof is going to be in the pudding when the product comes out. They were demoing a 6x speed up in double precision performance over the previous generation single GPU on early silicon at clocks much lower than what they expect to ship at (the claim in all the whitepapers is an 8x speed up clock for clock), so if it's not able to manage that kind of speed up, they'll be taken to town when we do have real hardware. It would be a very risky move for Nvidia in that respect if the demos were fake.

 

Indeed, if their claims are false, then well..

Let the pants drop and the hammer fall.

 

Hold on, this seems like this article has almost been copied (if slightly reshuffled) from here;
http://www.semiaccurate.com/2009/10/01/nvidia-fakes-fermi-boards-gtc/
published on 1st October...

 

I didn't think they used the real hardware for those previews anyway, if it was a game that was being previewed everyone would know that some tweeking still had to be done. I don't think hardware should be treated any differently. In the end it's just a preview of what everyone can expect in the not too distant future.

 

Shenanigans!

 

With all those smokes and mirrors from Nvidia, adding up the games that happened recently not supporting AA on ATI, it really makes me think. Think that NV doesn't want people buy 58xx cards, waiting until they come out with their own product in the future, buying time.

Going back to 2006-7 when NV came out with the G80, while ATI was 6 months behind reminds me that history repeats.
If ATI had hold similar strategy, G80 couldn't be such success from the moment that came out. The significant majority of the cards sold for 6 months were Nvidia because of compentition lack supporting DX10 no matter if they were any DX10 games out.

When the first MAJOR DX10 game (Crysis) came out almost a year later after the initial release of G80, they had new cards out (8800GT, 8800GTS512) to be able to play that game properly because most of the initial ones (8800GTS640/320) couldn't.

After that I'm getting an ATI in November, (have to pay the £300 fee for the divorce filling this month) not because it's bad/good but because I want it. Plain and simple.

 

You should have stuck a knife to the throat of the guy with the mobile phone picture!

 

So what it was a dummy card, it isnt the first time a hardware company has shown a mockup of their hardware. Console makers do it all the time and no one is really bothered.
What really will count is if they can get the hardware in to our hands ( even if in small amounts ) before christmas, how fast or not it is and its final price.

 

Charlie's article was about 300% more anti nVidia and 500% more paranoid.

 

Charlie is not at the show and has a big chip on his shoulder.

 

has nvidia ever done anything that wasnt well shady or underhanded lol oh well I guess it makes for good media overall and something entertaining to read.

 

wonder if the card was a working card that was cut down to get the cover to fit?

If that is case, then it is kind of stupid since given one days time, any one with reasonable skills could have rebuilt the cover to fit the full card.

 

Since it's not going to be available for some time, real or not becomes pretty irrelevant The presentation was probably simply about trying to put a dampner on Ati's recent launch, as mentioned already. I don't know many who buy graphics cards on the basis of what they look like.

The revelation does undoubtably put added pressure on Nvidia over the presentation's use of performance information using a "working version". On Fermi itself, this thing could be huge for Nvidia in the compute field - ECC at all levels might be the the final hurdle cleared.

 

maybe the mock-up is the size they are aiming for? doesnt seem like a bad design or size if its what they are aiming for.

 

NVidia marketing 101:

1, Get a totally crappy mock up card (maybe they contracted Apple to build this one)
2, Get people around shooting photos of the card
3, Create the "Buzz" around the mock up (just check all the tech sites, every one of them has a few articles about it)
4, Isn't it funny that this "NVidia-cock-up-with-the-mock-up" coincides with the ATI Launch?

They are good at this. I just wished they're products were as good as they're marketing...

 

Who cares whether Nvidia lied or not?
The Custom PC/Bit-Tech benchmarks will sort the wheat from the chaff when the final cards are available.