PALIT caught not playing the game

[mactronix]

It seems that Palit have been caught out giving tweaked cards out to reviewers. I found this over at Guru3d while looking up some details on the cards for another member.
http://www.guru3d.com/news/palit-geforce-gtx-460-sonic-could-have-issues-/
I would love to hear from our resident robot frog on this slight of hand/trickery. Hardly the sort of behaviour we want from a supposed top tier maker of GPU's.

Mactronix

 

[Griffolion]

Is that a new avatar mactronix? Its cool.

I've just ordered a Palit GTX 460, and you know what, i'll sleep like a rock tonight knowing i don't really give a damn what they're doing with reviewers.

 

[mactronix]

Yea new Avatar, thought it was about time. Its inspired by the Grandson
Just stumbled upon it and thought people might like to be aware before they buy. To my mind it twists the reviews in their favour as the cards must perform better than the model joe public is getting.

Mactronix

 

[Griffolion]

I'm getting the Palit card because it had that really fun looking fan on it.

Also because it was one of the cheapest at the time of buying, to my chagrin, EVGA have just released a 1GB model that is cheaper than some of the higher end 768's!

What a loser i am.

 

[jerreece]

Early adopters sometimes lose out.

As for Palit submitting a GTX 460 with a heatsink on the VRM vs the retail units not having one, it is indeed interesting. Why they'd test with better cooling, and then sell with lesser cooling, is what intrigues me. Now, obviously it must be a cost saving venture. And perhaps they decided that they did not HAVE to put the heatsink on it, and thereby decided to save some cash.

Better cooling could certainly make this card perform better under an OverClocking situation, which many review sites these days are known to do. So there's an undue advantage there. But I can't imagine simply changing out that VRM heatsink has a large affect on stock game play. Unless of course the VRM was actually overheating under normal use conditions.

 

[mactronix]

Well you will notice down the bottom of the article that Palit felt it necessary to send out a new Bios to lower the heat and fan noise. kinda speaks volumes to me.
If the Frog doesn't show up soon i may well post this in the Palit Forum unless a Mod wants to transfer a link over for me ?

Mactronix

 

[notty22]

Its common for bios's to be tweaked , sometimes cards are sent to reviewers with request to bios flash, so thats not inordinate. To me it shows that the engineers changed something up, while the card was in the mail.

 

[mactronix]

Did you read the article notty ? The Bios update was in response to people complaining about the cards running louader and hotter than they were expecting from the reviews.

Mactronix

 

[wolfram23]

It's a bit of a cheap move as it will limit OC potential somewhat, but I don't think it's going to affect regular performance.

Plus, VRM Heatsinks are pretty cheap.

 

[notty22]

Imo its a non issue that people want to make drama about. So they are dammed if they release a bios and dammed it they offered no solution. Many other test cards don't have the vrm heat sink, is it a issue ? IMO no. The only thing they tripped up on was sending the ES out with that heat sink. It put a seed in some peoples minds.