It is not too often that a release catches review sites by surprise, in the nature of good publicity resellers and manufacturers try to give the reviewers enough time to thoroughly test the new hardware so that the review is ready to go when the NDA expires.  The reviewers get to see the new kit early, but the trade is that they have to get all their testing done in a limited amount of time.  Sometimes, kit arrives late, Murphy shows up, an NDA gets moved (or any of a number of other reasons) and the reviews come out scattered over a few days as opposed to all appearing within hours of each other.  It is very uncommon for review sites to hear about a product at the same time it goes to sale, with no promotional kit or engineering samples set from the manufacturer.  The Inquirer speculates on why nVIDIA did exactly that with the GTS250.

“IT IS ALWAYS funny when an unethical company turns on its own supporters as Nvidia did with the latest ‘all new’ GT250 cards. This time however, their PR stunts cross the line from unethical to purposely false, and hilarity ensues.

What are we talking about? The rebranding of the venerable G92, aka the 8800GT, 9800GT, 9800GTX, 9800GTX+, and several other variants as the GTS250. The NDA goes up on the third of March, and we have complete scores already, but there is no difference between these cards and the older G92 cards. We will save you from having to pour over spreadsheets scratching your head wondering how it is different… it isn’t at all.”

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