Sometimes, you just want to know how it works for real. In fact, one Reddit user managed to get his hands on a prototype NVIDIA card simply by buying it on Facebook Marketplace, all mounted in a PC selling for $500. In short, the guy walks away with an engineering copy from before the “RTX” era. What’s more, he seems to have ended up with a working card, since he seems to have managed to submit a GPU-Z validation.
GTX 2080 Ti: a working card surfaces!
Right now, copies of the GTX 2000 are pouring in online. Last month, this card was already visible, but it didn’t work for lack of a driver. Before that, it was a GTX 2070, and so on. In short, a number of cards exist, suggesting that NVIDIA was initially planning to launch a GTX series rather than change the name. However, the switch to “RTX” was made in such a way as to highlight hardware ray tracing support.
In any case, the user in question thought it was initially a scam. It’s true that, apart from a certain number of insiders, this series simply doesn’t exist. But after checking, it was confirmed that the card was indeed an engineered copy. What’s more, unlike the original, official RTX 2080 Ti, the card arrives with 12 GB of VRAM and a 384-bit memory bus instead of 11 GB of memory and a 352-bit bus. But the most important thing here is that we’re dealing with a card that is apparently functional, otherwise the GPU-Z validation would not have been possible.
In any case, it’s a pleasant surprise for this Reddit user to come across a treasure like this. On the other hand, it’s pretty reckless to sell an engineering copy like this on Facebook Marketplace.