nVidia enters the world of candy… or is it vitamins?

nVidia, the big green machine, maker of the (as of the moment) fastest consumer GPU on the planet, also not a big fan of Planetx64. I know you are thinking to yourself “What? That can’t be!” but sadly it is true. The story goes something like this… (Cue the wavy video and harp music as we slip back in time…)

Around the time the 590 SLI chipset arrived on the scene I was just beginning to build a relationship with nVidia. Then I received the reference board for the 590 SLI. This was manufactured by Foxconn (normally a pretty good company). However this time the sample was riddled with issues and failed to pass stability testing. I wanted to work with nVidia on this but by that time all of the “8-hour” evaluations had been published and the slavish masses had proclaimed that the 590 SLI was a winner, topped only by the second coming or maybe free beer and pizza.

Author: Sean Kalinich
Manufacturer: Jelly Belly/nVidia
Released By: nVidia (PR TEAM)

Well, I still had a dead board (and a dead 7900GTX that was killed by the board). Eventually nVidia agreed to send me a new board (and I RMA’d the 7900GTX) to make a long story short. Both boards are still here, and neither were reviewed (as they never came close to approaching stability). I have several others with the same sad chipset also sitting collecting dust. (The only bright star being the CrossHair from Asus that I am using for a SubZero cooling review.) Nothing from the Great Green One about a fix to any of the issues I had.

Now let’s fast-forward a few months to the release of the 680i SLI, I was contacted, included on the briefings, and sent a sample board. This time the clunker was from eVGA (many of you know of the issues with the early eVGA and other manufacturers’ 680i SLI boards). Again this newest board from nVidia was plagued with stability problems. Again I tried to work with nVidia. They started by telling me that no one had encountered the issue I had. Then mysteriously I receive an e-mail (again after the market has been awed by the mass of reviews gushing about this newest chipsets’ greatness) telling me they (nVidia) have been able to reproduce the issue I had, and that they would let me know about a fix.

Next were contacted by nVidia for the 8800 launch but saw no sample (we were not surprised), but after this began a long and sullen silence from nVidia broken only by the occasional “spam” from nVidia telling us how much their products cost in comparison to ATi.

Jump back to Monday July 2^nd 2007. I receive an e-mail informing me there was a package coming from nVidia!  There was no indication of who at nV had sent it and I had not heard of anything new coming out. I checked and it was a 6 pound package, what could it be!?

Well the day arrived for the package to be delivered; I was excited I was getting something from nVidia! What type of part would it be? I grabbed the box out of the FedEx person’s hands and wasted no time in opening it.

… Upon opening the box I was not sure I had been given the right package. I checked the label and sure enough it was addressed to me. What I found inside was a large jar (broken) of green Jellybeans.  I was floored, but since I had not received anything from nVidia for so long and being in fear of missing an unknown deadline, I began a review of the product. So without further ado let’s take a look at this newest offering from nVidia and see how tasty it is…

Packaging: 1.5 out of 5
The box that arrived at my door was plain and brown, nothing flashy, no specifications or features listed anywhere.  It also provided almost no protection as the jar of Jellybeans inside was broken (like many other products I have received direct from nVidia). Another item annoyingly absent was a manual.

There was no indication of how to use this product! While many other items are self explanatory these were not. The label on the Jar simply read “Overclocking Vitamins” with a footnote about taking 2 for Ultimate SLI performance and a small “Nutritional Information” label that I know never passed the FDA.

The serving size alone would put most people off their lunch, it reads 1,333 of these green little monsters!

Appearance: 2.0 out of 5
There is nothing attractive about a smashed jar of green candies and I am not even sure how to point out the major features of this bizarre entry into the enthusiast market from nVidia. I will point this out as it may be important to those of you that put your faith in nVidia. It would appear they completely outsourced this product. The individual beans were from Jelly Belly and the jar from another 3^rd party company. The only part that I could not determine the manufacturer for was the label.

As you can see this is certainly not designed by nVidia.
Performance: 0.5 out of 5
I could not get these to power on. When I connected them to the PSU they simply sizzled and melted. That was only after I jumpered the PSU as there was no power switch that I could find.Overclocking was a complete failure. No matter how much voltage I put into them they only smoked, even with 1,333 in a pile (No I did not count them) and at one point they even caught fire. Perhaps nVidia should provide better cooling for these in the next generation.

Cost and Warranty: 0.2 out of 5
I have been unable to find this product for sale anywhere on the net. Warranty I imagine would be provided by Jelly Belly but I could not find an RMA link on their site.

Conclusions and Comments:
To be honest I think that nVidia has bitten off more than it can chew with this release. Perhaps with better part to performance ratio this would be a viable product but the need for 1333 pieces with each use is a little much. Overclocking needs some serious attention as this release still melts and smokes when voltage is applied. We attempted to contact nVidia and get a comment on this but they would not make an official statement. There are unconfirmed rumors that Mr. Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO, NVIDIA Corporation was heard to say “I wish people would stop smoking our beans”.

In the end this product left me with a bad taste… not to mention shards of glass in my mouth. I can certainly say this is not “The Way It’s Meant To Be Played” or should I say Eaten. But with nothing else to review from the Big Green PR machine, it is what it is…

Pros:
None that I can think of

Cons:
Glass in my gums.
Weight Gain
Potential Diabetic coma.

Scores:
Packaging: 1.5 out of 5
Appearance: 2.0 out of 5
Performance: 0.5 out of 5
Cost and Warranty: 0.2 out of 5
Total: 4.2 out of 20

Acknowledgements:
I would like to thank the nVidia PR Team for sending me a box full of glass shards and candy.

P.S. if you cannot take a joke…. perhaps you should change your line of work.