x800xt. dosen't exist!.. questionable ethics.

[mlmcasual]

.. Will, surely Nvidia is no "saint" with some of the stuff they have pulled in the past with benchmarking.. however I think ATI now takes the cake in lack of ethics.. or at least in planning..

I have had the x800xt on "backorder" for 2 1/2 months through gateway computer.. in that time the ONLY places selling the x800xt would either be sold out or on a secondary "black" market for 800$..

Today, 2 1/2 months later after having placed an order for an x800xt (with a credit card) I get an email from Gateway saying they have canceled my order and cannot and will not be fulfilling any orders for the x800xt. but that I can purchase an x800pro..

the X800xt never DID exist in the market other then a very small handful of reference boards and a few boards early on..

Basically the x800 does not exist, never did exist and never will exist in any real consumer forum.. meanwhile they took "preorders" with credit cards and many sites published x800xt benchmark results when doing comparisons.. as this card never did and never WILL exist, this is all unethical and simply not fair. Ati has taken the term vaporware to new heights and made suckers out of us all. Certainly we can put to bed who has the fastest card on market NVIDIA 6800ultra or x800xt.. THE 6800 wins by a now show! Sites should stop comparing it to acard that doesn?t exist! who or what to blame is besides the point. the fact it was allowed to go on is..

It is about time both the consumers that held off a purchase and technical websites that wasted their time to publish x800xt benchmarks be given a public apology from ATI to save face.. As it is.. I will certainly never "preorder" anything ATI promises to bring to market..


Now, in the meantime I have purchased an 6800gt.. but it was 3 months waited time I could have been enjoying it having waited for the x800xt vaporware which doesn?t exist. the fact gateway now is offering a "reduced price" on the x800pro.. leads me to further question these ethics..

Of course the moral is to never count on pre-orders.. and here is a perfect expample of why..

 

[Schadenfroh]

its gateway screwing you, not ati

 

[Keysplayr]

X800XT's, of course, exist. It's just that Ebay resellers have joined forces with every retail distributor's worker drones.

"Pssst... Hey you, Best Buy/CompUSA etc.etc. employee. Here's a C-note, so you call me first when you know your getting a shipment in for X800XT's and call me even before they hit the floor. I will come and buy them all up at retail prices and re-sell them on Ebay and make a killing. Theres another C-note for you when I pick them up. And we will keep doing this forever."

The chances of this happening are extremely good. I went to CompUSA last Saturday to purchase my 6800GT. The only reason I knew they were there was from an automated phone call with me entering the part number. Said as of the the Wednesday before the actual Saturday I picked up my card, there were 8 6800GT's in stock. When I got to the store, they said they were out of stock. I actually looked the salesperson in the eyes and said, "You have 8 in your back room". He went back there and came out with it. They were there for 3 days and still not on the shelves out in the open. So theres a lot of sneaky sh!t going on with video cards lately.

 

[nitromullet]

the fact gateway now is offering a "reduced price" on the x800pro

The X800 Pro looks like it's $399 (and out of stock) on Gateway's site... Is this reduced price you refer to only available to individuals who pre-ordered an X800 XT?

 

[gururu]

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003
X800XT's, of course, exist. It's just that Ebay resellers have joined forces with every retail distributor's worker drones.

"Pssst... Hey you, Best Buy/CompUSA etc.etc. employee. Here's a C-note, so you call me first when you know your getting a shipment in for X800XT's and call me even before they hit the floor. I will come and buy them all up at retail prices and re-sell them on Ebay and make a killing. Theres another C-note for you when I pick them up. And we will keep doing this forever."

The chances of this happening are extremely good. I went to CompUSA last Saturday to purchase my 6800GT. The only reason I knew they were there was from an automated phone call with me entering the part number. Said as of the the Wednesday before the actual Saturday I picked up my card, there were 8 6800GT's in stock. When I got to the store, they said they were out of stock. I actually looked the salesperson in the eyes and said, "You have 8 in your back room". He went back there and came out with it. They were there for 3 days and still not on the shelves out in the open. So theres a lot of sneaky sh!t going on with video cards lately.

that is sooooo bad. it wouldn't be so bad however if there was enough supply to meet the demand.
Would be nice if the card companies themselves would take pre-orders and ship direct.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003
X800XT's, of course, exist. It's just that Ebay resellers have joined forces with every retail distributor's worker drones.

"Pssst... Hey you, Best Buy/CompUSA etc.etc. employee. Here's a C-note, so you call me first when you know your getting a shipment in for X800XT's and call me even before they hit the floor. I will come and buy them all up at retail prices and re-sell them on Ebay and make a killing. Theres another C-note for you when I pick them up. And we will keep doing this forever."

The chances of this happening are extremely good. I went to CompUSA last Saturday to purchase my 6800GT. The only reason I knew they were there was from an automated phone call with me entering the part number. Said as of the the Wednesday before the actual Saturday I picked up my card, there were 8 6800GT's in stock. When I got to the store, they said they were out of stock. I actually looked the salesperson in the eyes and said, "You have 8 in your back room". He went back there and came out with it. They were there for 3 days and still not on the shelves out in the open. So theres a lot of sneaky sh!t going on with video cards lately.

interesting... If you go to ebay right now and search for "x800 xt", you get 38 hits, 8 of those are not actually video cards, and about 1/4 of those are PCIe, which leaves you with about 23 AGP X800 Xt's. If the ebay sellers are the largest worldwide distributors of these cards as you claim, then that still indicates that these cards are not very obtainable.

 

[Insomniak]

Well, I think it's fair to say that neither the 6800 Ultra or X800XT are available in quantity. However, Nvidia is winning the availability wars this go round - 6800NUs are available everywhere, and 6800GTs are becoming more and more common every day. The X800XT is still non-existent, and the X800Pro is still struggling to make it to market. Apparently, for whatever reason, Nvidia is having less manufacturing trouble than ATi. My bet is that just like .13 micron 2 years ago, low-k isn't ready to go yet.

 

[nitromullet]

The BFG 6800 Ultra OC is in stock as we speak on Newegg (probably not for long though).

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: nitromullet

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003
X800XT's, of course, exist. It's just that Ebay resellers have joined forces with every retail distributor's worker drones.

"Pssst... Hey you, Best Buy/CompUSA etc.etc. employee. Here's a C-note, so you call me first when you know your getting a shipment in for X800XT's and call me even before they hit the floor. I will come and buy them all up at retail prices and re-sell them on Ebay and make a killing. Theres another C-note for you when I pick them up. And we will keep doing this forever."

The chances of this happening are extremely good. I went to CompUSA last Saturday to purchase my 6800GT. The only reason I knew they were there was from an automated phone call with me entering the part number. Said as of the the Wednesday before the actual Saturday I picked up my card, there were 8 6800GT's in stock. When I got to the store, they said they were out of stock. I actually looked the salesperson in the eyes and said, "You have 8 in your back room". He went back there and came out with it. They were there for 3 days and still not on the shelves out in the open. So theres a lot of sneaky sh!t going on with video cards lately.

interesting... If you go to ebay right now and search for "x800 xt", you get 38 hits, 8 of those are not actually video cards, and about 1/4 of those are PCIe, which leaves you with about 23 AGP X800 Xt's. If the ebay sellers are the largest worldwide distributors of these cards as you claim, then that still indicates that these cards are not very obtainable.

Yes, but those 38 are current. It does not list ended auctions over the past few months. I'm sure that number would be quite higher. Keep in mind that I only used the X800XT for an example. This goes for most of the high end new gen cards. X800XT, 6800Ultra/GT. Even the X800pro. Its quite nuts.

The only 2 other explaination for this "shortage" are: Samsung withholding GDDR3 memory to drive prices up, or there are just too many damn transistors in the current GPU/VPU designs to get a full 16 pipes working on a regular basis on the current manufacturing process. Maybe a "brick wall" has been hit. And they are pushing the technology faster that is actually a doable thing.

 

[imported_Helios]

I thought the X800 XT was PCI-E only?

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: Helios
I thought the X800 XT was PCI-E only?

Semantics.

X800XTPE = AGP
X800XT = PCI -E.

Neither of which are available in any reasonable quantities.

 

[ronnn]

The asus version of the xtpe is available locally in Vancouver at inflated prices. Close to $800.00 Canadian. Still people are buying and enjoying it - at least according to their posts. Looks like we may actually begin to see xtpe in numbers and with any luck the the 6800 ultra will be in numbers also. Should be, was released first. These paper launches are weird and I have a hard time seeing how it has benefited the industry.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: ronnn
The asus version of the xtpe is available locally in Vancouver at inflated prices. Close to $800.00 Canadian. Still people are buying and enjoying it - at least according to their posts. Looks like we may actually begin to see xtpe in numbers and with any luck the the 6800 ultra will be in numbers also. Should be, was released first. These paper launches are weird and I have a hard time seeing how it has benefited the industry.

Road Trip anyone?!?

 

[Rebel7254]

ATI shouldn't be drilled because they haven't been able to get their X800 cards out in mass quantities. The should be drilled, however, for telling retailers that they were ready to start shipping the cards when they didn't have them to ship in the first place. Gateway isn't the only seller who said the X800 XT was on the way. A bunch of places, including Buyxg.com, CompUSA, and BestBuy all had the X800XT for pre-order with ETA dates from ATI. Well ATI just kept moving the ETA dates farther and farther back, and most of the e-tailers have either pulled the X800 XT from their sites altogether or are still playing the ETA game. I had a X800XT on pre-order from Buyxg.com which had an ETA of 06/27/04 when I ordered it. Just for laughs I kept tabs on it and the ETA date was 08/26 before they finally pulled it from their site last week.

It has taken a long time as well for Nvidia to get their 6800 cards out since the launch in mid-May. But you didn't see a slew of e-tailers claiming they were on their way and taking pre-orders for them because Nvidia didn't tell them they were going to ship video cards they simply did not have. That is what ATI did, and that's what is gay about it all.

 

[ronnn]

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003


Road Trip anyone?!?

Nice city Vancouver, well worth a trip of some sort.
:music:

 

[mlmcasual]

Regardless of who is at fault this type of sales/marketing is utter BS, cheesy and unethical..

Did I mention when i placed my order through Gateway 2 1/2 months ago, every copule of weeks they would email me saying "we are sorry but the x800xt is delayed, we expect shipment to you next month" .. I got this twice with each time having a new expected to shipe to you date.. right up untill today with the notice they are canceling my order and will NEVER be shipping the x800xt. ..

the fact I was strung along like this and then finally being told the card dosen't exist is Re-Fin-diculous.. somone in this market should have some answering to do for this.

And yes Nvidia is in stock has been for some time and will continue to be for the 6800ultra..

 

[Jeff7181]

Regardless of who is at fault this type of sales/marketing is utter BS, cheesy and unethical..

I agree... I don't give a flying cow turd what a company will be selling in the future... don't announce it until you've got stockpiles ready to ship to retailers. This releasing the card 2 months before anyone but Bill Gates and John Carmack can get their hands on it is crap. If you want to make some sort of announcement to hype a product, give us specs, features, crap like that... but don't make an official announcement saying it's going on sale now, but you probably won't even see a pre-order arrive for another 2-3 months, and won't see it on store shelves for another 1-2 months after that.

*EDIT* Here's more craziness associated with this type of sales/marketing.

 

[Corporate Thug]

yes, cuz the 6800 ultra extreme is soo easily found :roll:

 

[ronnn]

Yes, I just looked at ;NCIX , one of the biggest Canadian sellers. No GT's or ultras in stock. They now claim they can get the Asus 800xt pe in 2 to 5 days, but who knows. A couple of pro's in stock, and a saffire pro vivo in stock (but someone complaining he hasn't received his yet). Lots of vanilla 6800's in stock. These cards when available remain way over priced. In Canada at least - the sales of high end cards must have plummeted with the paper release of all these cards. Canada has never been this far behind in receiving new hardware - to my knowledge. Seems odd that the only way to get an xt pe is to flash a pro vivo. This is major bad news, as I was hoping for a price war and to be able to cash in. :frown:

 

[klah]

There must have had a big shipment of GT's to U.S. retailers this week because both ZZF and NE show 4 models in stock, while last week neither had any.

 

[Abzstrak]

yep, I just got my GT in yesterday, after going around and around with with my works CDW rep about the x800xt. He called ATI for me and they said that they have no plans to ever fulfill the backordered stock (about 1600 pieces) due to technical concerns. Thats all they'd say and I have no idea what it means or if the person saying it even knew what they were talking about. So I cancelled the order and got a XFX GT from newegg overnighted (had been waiting 13 weeks on the XT PE) and I've flashed this sucker with a leadtek ultra bios and am rocking...

 

[kylebisme]

the problem is a shortage of 1.6ns ram, and ati doesn't wan't to ship cards with overclocked 2.0s ram like a lot of the nvidia card makers are doing with the 6800ultra; the later sounds more like questionable ethics to me.

 

[Insomniak]

Originally posted by: TheSnowman
the problem is a shortage of 1.6ns ram, and ati doesn't wan't to ship cards with overclocked 2.0s ram like a lot of the nvidia card makers are doing with the 6800ultra; the later sounds more like questionable ethics to me.

Evidence?

 

[jim1976]

Originally posted by: TheSnowman
the problem is a shortage of 1.6ns ram, and ati doesn't wan't to ship cards with overclocked 2.0s ram like a lot of the nvidia card makers are doing with the 6800ultra; the later sounds more like questionable ethics to me.

Never heard of this before.Interesting...Where did you hear that ?

Anyway it's rediculous. Here we are 4-5 months after the paper launch and look at the situation from both companies.
And you know what's the best part? The autumn/fall refresh versions of these. LOL

 

[Rage187]

Originally posted by: TheSnowman
the problem is a shortage of 1.6ns ram, and ati doesn't wan't to ship cards with overclocked 2.0s ram like a lot of the nvidia card makers are doing with the 6800ultra; the later sounds more like questionable ethics to me.

and you know this how?