It seems that when there's a large shortage of chips, nVidia prefers to keep its large OEM-customers happy, rather than its retail partners. Dell's website still shows the XPS 730x game-PC, which is equipped with a GeForce GTX 285. Contacting Dell told us that the system can still be ordered without any issues. While in the retail market, no sign of a GeForce GTX 285 is to be found, Dell appears to have them in stock.

A press release of HP also reached us today, reporting on its new Pavilion Elite High Performance Edition. HP claims that this system will exclusively feature the GeForce GTX 260 Special Edition up to January 2010. Contacting the manufacturer revealed that the GTX 260 card is a model with 1792 MB of memory, a version that can not be ordered by nVidia partners. While several brands have trouble acquiring thecards, HP sees it as an opportunity to claim exclusivity.

http://www.hardware.info/en-US/news/...bing_partners/