>How soon do you guys think Nforce 2 boards will start showing up?
Two months, provided the chip is in finalized form and production geared up
the day it is announced. Its been a long while since manufacturers have
announced a product and you can buy it in that short amount of time, saying
you are that reckless.
Then the product shows up, and there are a few months more before
the bugs get swatted, and the drivers actually implement the features
announced, and the game makers put out patches so their games can
work. By then the reviewers are bored to death with it and will be saying
such "old technology" is uncompetitive and needs "refreshing". By the time
the product is 95% working, it is being replaced by yet more advanced
and elusive vaporware.
Let's say the reviewers only have the manufacturers "reference" board
to review next week, or worse, they are product "previews". Then it can't
be shorter than six months before you see real circuit boards for sale.
People who keep up better than I do can fine tune these these estimates
better than me.
Anand sometimes mentions he's seen three or four revisions of a mobo
come through before one is stable enough to do benchmarks he feels are
worth publishing. If nForce2 is ready to go, no doubt Anand has already had
this experience. You see, manufacturers only let reviewers have mobos
on the earliest possible date provided they legally bind themselves to say
nothing before they are permitted. Every reviewer learns to be cautious in what
he says about the big guys, or else there could be a "slight mistake" which
results in him not having a review the first day. Therefore, the naive
reader may not recognize when the reviewer is trying to convey the
message that the new product is a worthless piece of garbage. Unfortunately
the little guys don't get as much consideration. Tom of Tomshardware, when
he did review years ago, used to like to reverse this and step on the big
guys toes constantly. Uncountable Intel and 3dFX enthusiast are hopping mad
to this day, and never miss an opportunity to say what an idiot Tom is, even
though Tom himself seldom has written a word in years, having lost interest, and
his site is a vague ghost of what it once was.
Anand is remnant from the good old days. I'm pretty sure he has lost interest
too, although he keeps on chugging. Too bad, but that's life.
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