Nvidia's GTX275 actually available

Palit gets its GTX275 to market very fast. Perhaps... too fast...

We were sure April Fool's Day jokes were limited to April 1st. So imagine our surprise when, just yesterday, we discovered Nvidia's ‘mythical' GTX275 card - paper launched today - was actually being made physically available by Palit.

Earlier this week, the INQ had heard channel whispers that Nvidia would bring forward the launch of its 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 we were 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, making it the only vendor with any actual stock.

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 - for 199 quid.

Other Nvidia partners were fuming, however, as rumours and speculation about how Palit had managed to get its fingers 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".

Meanwhile, however, credit where credit is due. After we postulated GTX275 cards would not be available on the 2nd, Nvidia spokesman, Luciano Alibrandi wrote to us and said "I am betting that on day of launch you will find it on the shelves and hopefully you give us credit." Fair's fair Luciano.

Naturally we'd be interested to hear from any readers who manage to get their sweaty mitts on the hardware. Initial results are edging the 275 in front of ATI's 4890 (which we reviewed yesterday), and Atomic should have samples (thanks to Galaxy) to confirm this very soon.

Keep an eye on this space.