NVIDIA blacklisting - Bit-Tech got it too

This is just getting silly now...

We posted a story yesterday on how the big tech site Anandtech was given no information or samples of the GTS250 card by NVIDIA until well after other sites got their reviews up and guess what?

Now Bit-Tech has been given the exact same treatment.

NVIDIA refused to tell them anything about the card, refused to give them samples and even pressured the vendors into preventing samples getting to them!

One partner, who wished to remain nameless said "[we are] absolutely strictly forbidden to send samples out until the launch date.... it's rubbish!" Another said it was instructed by Nvidia to send samples to specific websites which, the partner admitted, it had never even heard of.

We've certainly noticed this too - smaller sites have got their reviews up already, but the large ones are only just getting them up now. Even Hardtecs4u have a sample - where Bit-Tech didn't. Surely NVIDIA would have wanted as much exposure for the new card as possible?

It seems that unless sites are willing to sing unending praise for what is essentially the 9800GTX+, (right down to core clocks, memory clocks and even PCB length for the 512MB version) that they aren't going to be getting a sample straight away, and that's downright wrong.

NVIDIA have said that the relationship with those sites is as strong as ever, but this quote shows that Bit-Tech believe otherwise:

We asked the same question when speaking to partners all week and they said exactly the same thing, which means that someone, somewhere, is getting in the way of the sampling process. The question is: why would the partners lie to us? They have no reason to because our relationship has always been tight and they've been up front when they have sample allocation issues.

We're getting pretty unhappy with this issue. It's not just that NVIDIA renamed a card in the hopes of increasing sales (misleading people into thinking it had a GT200 core, not the G92 that it actually has), it's that they've purposefully kept the big players from getting their own say out there.

Head over to Bit-Tech to read their blog post on this, and they've an amusing picture of a 9800GTX+ with a white-outed "GTS 250" drawn on it there too.