Just for our general amusement, I've been collecting quotes from the nvidia camp. These have all proven to be outright lies from them (most comments are responses to the TNT2 175/200 demo board that 3dfx said, correctly, would never make product). But, of course, most of them are so carefully worded that they wouldn't hold up in a shareholder lawsuit:
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"The ultimate frequency achieved in end user systems depends on the chip cooling strategy, board design and the system environment that the board runs in. Each board vendor will make design and cooling decisions, and environmental assumptions and spec the part according to these choices.
The RIVA TNT2 chips were designed to operate at extremely high frequencies. The Diamond V770 that you reviewed demonstrated that. With the right combination of advanced board design, intelligent cooling strategies and high quality manufacturing, I fully expect to see end users running TNT2 based cards at frequencies that meet or exceed the ones you saw in your testing."
Derek Perez
Public Relations Manager
NVIDIA Corporation
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Here is the comment we got from Diamond Multimedia, attributed to Todd Reddick, Director of Product Marketing:
"As seen in products like the Monster 3D II and Viper V550, Diamond's engineering excellence has brought to market graphics accelerators that lead the industry in performance, reliability and compatibility. While the Viper V770 board previewed by Sharky Extreme was a pre-production sample, it is indicative of the outstanding performance and reliability that the shipping version will provide."
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Kirk, Chief Scientist of NVIDIA.
From an article found on Hot Hardware.
"TNT2 has approximately twice the fill rate of any other product out there..."
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"The boards should be hitting retail shelves as early as mid-April." said nVIDIA's Derek Perez
[end of quotes]
Diamond says they'll ship their V770 Ultra about the 15th. This coincides quite nicely with the date that 3dfx is rumored to make a big announcement (Rampage maybe?). Perhaps this is a chance to rain on their TNT2 parade the same way they did on the Voodoo3 launch? What do you guys think about this? Is it better to hurt TNT2 sales with Rampage news now, or be quiet for a while and not harm the seemingly excellent Voodoo3 sales?
Plaz |
