um... why does the card have... wood screws on the heat exhaust? i thought the heat shroud should be hollow on that end... that kinda implies the entire shroud is made out of a single block of plastic.
no, this is almost definitely a fake.
EDIT: in case you still don't trust charlie, here's techpowerup's take:
http://www.techpowerup.com/105052/NV..._Unveiled.html
kinda goes against what you said about "many functioning samples" available, doesn't it? if this were the case, why would nvidia show a dummy board? and a badly made dummy to boot.
Sigh... the board he held up isn't a "fake". Because showcased samples are mostly likely destroyed due to EMD, SD, etc etc, they are rarely working boards, and are altered at times for press release to prevent damage. GPU boards are not meant to be man handled by hundreds of people, and expected to survive. They are made to be installed of a stationary case (carefully I might add), and stay there until they are removed to be cleaned or die. The demo board isn't a fully functional board, but it is an accurate mockup of the release boards. Taking first series production boards away from the debugging and testing units would be foolish just so you could have 100% real "eye candy". The demo shown is on working GT300 silicon, and this entire "it's fake" business is getting rather silly.
We are still several months away from a retail launch, and people are complaining that we aren't passing them out as party favors or in nicely organized celeb gift sacks. Sorry, this isn't the Emmy's... get over it. In reality, GT300 is alive and well, not fake, and 100% working. nVidia doesn't have many of the final release boards floating around (I certainly won't be getting one) at this point in time, since they have only received about 3 bins worth. Suffice to say, just stop. It's real, the performance is real, and trying to debunk reality is rather dumb.
I get it, you like ATi, but enough already. This nVidia bashing is absolutely out of hand. ATi has the upper hand with a launch months ahead of ours. It's fine and dandy they got out ahead of us, and they will reap early adopter benefits this time around. However, that doesn't mean that GT300 isn't going to outperform ATi, and isn't going to really shake up the concept of what a GPU can do.
If I could choose a card for Windows 7, I'd choose GT300 over RV870 any day of the week, and that is said without bias. More PC centric features are found on GT300, and Eyefinity, while very cool, isn't practical. So, that's the bottom line. Which one will make your PC run faster, cooler, and more stable??? GT300, hands down.