Despite earlier reports that Intel visited board vendors in China to discuss Larrabee, the firm’s PR claims that no such meetings took place.

Heading off inquiries from the press, Intel’s Nick Knupffer said via Twitter that Intel CEO Paul Otellini “did not talk LRB to AIB’s in China.”

Knupffer’s statements come in response to a Digitimes report that Otellini made rounds with Chinese board makers to promote the company’s upcoming Larrabee GPU. Digitimes further alleged that Intel was preparing to offer preferential pricing and bundling to allay fears that the GPU would not effectively compete against incumbent GPU firms AMD and NVIDIA.

Larrabee is Intel’s first foray into discrete, or standalone, GPUs in about ten years. The new design is said to use an array of x86-compatible execution engines which are harnessed to crunch data in parallel. Intel hopes to leverage this architecture to compete directly with AMD and NVIDIA in gaming, and later in other markets.

Intel maintains that Larrabee-based products are scheduled for early 2010, which means the February/March launch window. If that is the case, we find it dubious that Intel isn’t talking with board partners to produce rebranded parts.