Pop Quiz - Retail Or Reference Card?
As we pointed out in the prior articles, a strange phenomenon occurred during our SLI system reviews : The graphics cards used in most of the systems we reviewed were NVIDIA reference cards. We since stipulated that vendors send us something a customer would be able to purchase. We then checked to see if Cyberpower followed our instructions.
Okay, there is one thing you can see from this picture, but let’s zoom in to clarify.
Graphics reviewers love this feature so we can pull cards out without having to mess around with the retention device. It makes swapping out cards a easy process, especially when you have a lot of cards to review. However, that does not prove it is a reference card.
There is one tell tail sign that it is a reference card : the sticker covering the FCC and CE approval status. "FCC & CE Pending" and the "Not For Resale" give this one away.
Again, we understand that there are costs associated with sending out retail parts in review system. However, why didn’t they ask BFG, XFX or some other card maker for shipping samples for this review ? We don’t know but we thought you should understand that these cards are not what you would receive in your system when you buy it. It just makes it hard for us to be objective for you, the THG reader.
