NVIDIA accused of astroturfing against AMD Radeon in forums
updated 04:55 pm EST, Sat January 28, 2012
NVIDIA said pushing Kepler, trashing Radeon 7900
NVIDIA was accused this week of using dishonest marketing to try to skew gamers towards its next-generation Kepler graphics hardware. Posters in the ChipHell forums claiming to have details of the new graphics core were reportedly discovered to be NVIDIA marketers. They made bold claims about Kepler's prices and performance in what appeared to be an attempt to downplay AMD's Radeon HD 7900 line.
Moderators were already locking down threads and banning the offending posters. NVIDIA hasn't responded to the accusations as of Saturday afternoon.
NVIDIA has faced such accusations before, albeit without the same gravity. Focus group members in 2006 weren't required to disclose their connection to the company and were accused of promoting NVIDIA on forums. Later checks showed that they weren't being asked to endorse the graphics cards, although it still raised conflict of interest concerns.
Concerns have existed that NVIDIA might be taking advantage of less stringent monitoring in Chinese-speaking countries to do what amounts to guerilla marketing. Whether or not it's accurate, many haven't ruled out the possibility that AMD might engage in similar tactics in the fiercely competitive gaming graphics market. [via HardForums]
