While it is true that it's easier to get really excited about the 'bigger, better, faster' of the high end market, the budget segment is one of the absolute most important. NVIDIA attributed the fact that they opted not to seed reviewers with cards to the common lack luster reviews for extreme budget hardware. Usually, even if a part is launching elsewhere, we will have something to test, but budget parts like this can often slide under the radar. These two factors contribute to the reason why we are bringing out this brief overview article rather than an in-depth investigation. At the same time, with the US having enjoyed the benefit of NVIDIA hard launches for so long, this move leaves us scratching our heads.ДЄt the same time, we were just notified of this launch yesterday and we don't yet have parts to test. If NVIDIA really thinks that this part will sell amazingly well in Asia, then maybe launching there first is the right thing to do. Generally, with a US hard launch, we get availability where the largest demand is centered. The logical end to the push for hard launches will eventually build to the point where we will want to see global availability at launch, but managing logistics on that level is out of reach for now. While on this side of the world, we essentially have a paper launch, yet we are at least thankful that parts will be available somewhere (China, Korea, Hong Kong, Japan).

The 'hard' launch is something that we don't want to let slip into oblivion.

Parts aren't slated to start showing up state-side for a couple of weeks, and while we aren't getting the same style of hard launch that we are used to seeing, we will certainly be checking to make sure that we can find parts in Asian markets. We recently saw an Asia first launch from ATI as well, and NVIDIA cites the Chinese New Year as their reason for shifting things around.

It is well worth noting that the 7300 GS will not launch first in the USA. There are a couple of interesting developments in this launch that we would like to take the time to point out first.

256mb nvidia geforce go 7300