Nvidia's excuse for not showing GT300, Fermi based board is that they want to hide some things from the red green competition.

Since the latest GPU technology conference was all about how to make money on GPU computing, Nvidia didn't want to cloud this with a DirectX 11 demo, which would actually prove that Fermi GT300 board is real.

The second reason is that the board has a lot of wires sticking out, as well as test modules, and looks like a character from Terminator. Judging from we've learned in the last few days we are talking about a handful of boards if not even less than that.

Production is not that far away but Nvidia still works heavily to make the November launch possible. We believe that the decision to show a mock up card is definitely a bad idea as now, it looks like Nvidia wanted to deceive journalists and the rest of the world, with a mock up, claiming that this is the real deal.

NDA journalists might see the Geforce GT300 Fermi version in November unless something drastically changes and the availability should be later that month. We do expect big shortage of chips at launch due to high demand. Just remember what happened when G80 and G92 got out.