Brandon said:
To clear up some of the confusion:
1) NVIDIA has supplied some with NV38 cards already, however, we were all under NDA until later this month. Apparently Anand was granted permission to post his numbers along with the specs, I bet you can guess why (although it apparently backfired).
Yes, this is not surprising to me in the least. It's the same sort of tactic nVidia's doing with the 50.xx Dets--while sending them out to sites and urging they be used for benchmarking in product comparisons, they are simultaneously telling end users who get them not to use them because they aren't ready for public distribution. It's a total non-surprise that they'd send him a "special" card, too, with strict instructions to honor the terms of the NDA in talking about the product, but with "permission" to use it in a comparative review with ATi's shipping products.
Going forward, I'd really like to see some FTC intervention here with respect to truth-in-advertising law enforcement. I'll make a complaint myself, but won't expect anything to be done about it--as they are swamped with this kind of thing from every industry and have way too few people to enforce much of anything.
My feeling is that any web site providing a publicity opportunity for an upcoming IHV's product which is covered under an NDA should have to publicly disclose the terms of that NDA along with the publicity for the product (as well as any and all separate verbal or written agreements with the IHV concerning the use of the NDA product in a comparative review prior to NDA expiration)--such publicity amounting to advertising. In other words, if the manufacturer's NDA is forcing a reviewer to restrict coverage of the product in such a fashion that it cannot be critically examined, those NDA restrictions need to be disclosed along with the advertising publicity being given the NDA product in the comparative review.
It seems to me that companies engaging in run of the mill NDA's for an upcoming product they anticipate shipping in the future should have little problem with this, unless of course, the price of allowing the reviewer to use the product for publicity purposes before NDA expiration is that the reviewer allows himself to be constrained by the NDA (or any other pertinent agreement or contract with the IHV) as to how he may review the product in a comparative context with competing products not under NDA. It just seems to me that the possiblity exists that NDAs are being abused and being used as publicity control mechanisms in the same way that larger companies have been using the DMCA to control the speech of smaller companies. NDAs are not meant to give a company the legal strength to manipulate publicity--their purpose is rather to forbid publicity until expiration, IMO.
The easy out--of course--for companies is that they simply do not allow their products to be used in a comparative review until the NDA has expired. Then, nothing need be publicized as to the terms of their NDAs.
What's your opinion here?
2) I was never told that the 9600XT will outperform the 9700 (much less a PRO card) from anyone at ATI. I don't see how it could either, considering it has half the pipelines and a 128-bit memory interface at 600MHz. Anand probably misunderstood them.
Well, even if he misunderstood them, apparently he did not question the information or seek to verify it with ATi (or maybe he did and they verified it.) At any rate, I agree with you that it seems an odd pronouncement, and it's too bad Anand didn't find the question of more interest such that he'd have elaborated on his statement so that people might understand whatever rational basis he had for making it. (such as, "ATi isn't making the 9700P any more," or something like that--at the very least.)
