Earlier this week, we heard channel whispers that Nvidia would bring forward the launch of it from April 9th to April 2nd to coincide with today's AMD's 4890 launch.
The channel, however, didn't seem to have any samples of the mysterious 275 and the INQ was told by various industry sources, that partners probably wouldn't have stock until at least April 14th. Another Nvidia gimmick, we told ourselves.
So, imagine our shock when, this morning, we discovered graphics card manufacturer, Palit Microsystems, advertising availability of the cards in a number of local online dealers including Mtech Computing and Megaware.
Advertising the cards as the "first non-reference design GeForce GTX275" and boasting "DUAL FAN cooling" with a "4-phase PWM GPU power circuit", Palit gushed that it was the first to bring the cards to market.
Other Nvidia partners were fuming, however, as rumours and speculation about how Palit had managed to get its fngers in the sticky green pie ran the gamut.
"Palit shocked the industry," an anonymous source told us, adding that Gainward was close behind, because it happens to be owned by Palit. "It's fishy anyway," our source told us.
Fishy indeed, because samples were only made available yesterday, meaning (it would appear) that Palit would have had to have rushed the product through without the normal qualification procedures. If this in indeed the case, and rival AIBs are convinced it must be so, the firm is playing a risky game.
Usually, partners test about 100 cards, see how many fail, report back so Nvidia can release a design, the PCBs are then qualified through a certain procedure, and only after all that do the cards go on sale. But Palit seems to have done this (or not as the case may be), in under a day, and faster than any other partner out there. Other firms such as Sparkle, Zotac and MSI announced card today, but these declined to cite a "when" and "where" on availability.
"It's not unusual for them [Palit] to do it," our source told us, adding however "it'll hurt them long term".
Naturally we'd be interested to hear from any readers who manage to get their sweaty mitts on the hardware.