It is the weirdest thing, NVIDIA can sometimes move in mysterious ways, and well .. in the past has stepped on the toes of many of it's AIB/AIC partners. A while ago after the demise of BFG there already was a rumor that NVIDIA themselves might be addressing a chunk of the (r)etails market. It seems that this concern now is validated. Best Buy USA the GTS 450 as produced and sold by NVIDIA popped up.

In fact best Buy stores started selling nVidia-branded GeForce GTS 450 and GTX 460 boards. Here's Bryan Del Rizzo, PR manager at nVidia on the products:



"NVIDIA and Best Buy are working together to offer PC customers the opportunity to experience firsthand the latest in PC technologies right inside Best Buy stores. As part of this broad initiative, NVIDIA is supplying to Best Buy specific GeForce models built and supported by NVIDIA. These products will only be available at Best Buy and will complement GeForce products from our partners. We will provide more details on this later."

By doing this, NVIDIA is bypassing some major board partners like eVGA and many other players in the USA market. And not just that, they will compete with the board partners ... and we all know who the winner there will be.

Here's some proof of the cards in stores from a guy named zshift, which posted these photo's taken using his Apple iPhone.





