Curious MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 20 GB Card pops up on FB Marketplace

[T0@st]

An unusual MSI RTX 3080 Ti SUPRIM X graphics card is up for sale, second hand, on Facebook Marketplace—the Sydney, Australia-based seller is advertising this component as a truly custom model with a non-standard allocation of VRAM: "Yes this is 20 GB not 12 GB." The used item is said to be in "good condition" with its product description elaborating on a bit of history: "There are some scuff marks from the previous owner, but the card works fine. It is an extremely rare collector's item, due to NVIDIA cancelling these variants a month before release. This is not an engineering sample card—this was a finished OEM product that got cancelled, unfortunately." The seller is seeking AU$1100 (~$740 USD), after a reduction from the original asking price of AU$1,300 (~$870 USD).

MSI and Gigabyte were reportedly on the verge of launching GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 20 GB variants two years ago, but NVIDIA had a change of heart (probably due to concerns about costs and production volumes) and decided to stick with a public release of the standard 12 GB GPU. Affected AIBs chose to not destroy their stock of 20 GB cards—these were instead sold to crypto miners and shady retailers. Wccftech points out that mining-oriented units have identifying marks on their I/O ports.




The seller included a higher-res screengrab of their desktop—showing a score of 21.9K points in TimeSpy (3D Mark) benchmarks, various details exhibited by TechPowerUp GPU-Z v2.53.0, and some tweaks made through MSI Afterburner:



The up-for-sale card (based on Ampere GA102) has 10,496 CUDA cores and 20 GB of GDDR6 memory with a 320-bit bus, clocked at 1188 MHz. NVIDIA does not offer official drivers for this variant—some custom software modding is in play here. In theory this MSI RTX 3080 Ti SUPRIM X 20 GB model could perform at a higher level with proper first party support.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[Assimilator]

I smell shenanigans, GPU-Z is reporting 328 TMUs which is very obviously wrong.

 

[bonehead123]

Sorry but my skepticism meter is flashing loudly....$740 seems awfully cheap for such a "rare" card....

A few possibilities come to mind:

A) It is a heavily modded 12 or 8GB card, by someone with both hardware & BIOS skills
B) Somebody's photoshoppin skills were workin overtime
C) It is/was stolen

 

[RandomWan]

I recall reading about this card previously, but remember it being something that they didn't have gaming drivers for.

 

[StefanM]

More infos here:

RTX 3080Ti 20GB

Possible to add the RTX 3080 Ti 20 GB to GPU-Z?

www.techpowerup.com

 

[Aretak]

I smell shenanigans, GPU-Z is reporting 328 TMUs which is very obviously wrong.

Look closer at the other specs. This variant also has 256 more CUDA cores than the released 12GB version, so 328 TMUs is correct. It's still quite not a fully-enabled GA102, which has 336 TMUs. GPU-Z reads those numbers directly from the GPU as far as I know, so there's no way to fake them. Even those dodgy Chinese cards with fake BIOSes show their real CUDA core/ROP/TMU count in GPU-Z.

The TPU database page for the 20GB version shows it with the same specs as the 12GB model, but the database is also manually maintained and fallable. I've found mistakes in it before. In fact, I own a card which is listed as having completely the wrong GPU in the TPU database. I'll submit a correction one of these days...

 

[Fouquin]

In fact, I own a card which is listed as having completely the wrong GPU in the TPU database. I'll submit a correction one of these days...

Please do.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Slow news day I reckon?

Anyway this is a prototype RTX 3080 Ti. Originally it was intended to have the same core configuration of the RTX 3090 but with 20 GB over 320-bit, this was later changed to retain the full 384-bit interface but with 12 GB installed (this increased bandwidth but reduced capacity), with the enabled SM count being reduced from 82 to 80, amounting to 10,240 CUDA cores over the 10496 present in the 3090. Thus, 328 TMUs is correct as it's essentially the same GA102 cut, but with less memory channels installed.

MSI had made a lot of Suprim X 3080 Ti 20 GBs and had actually distributed them primarily in Russia to resellers before Nvidia canceled it and decided to do a last minute spec change. This GPU likely originates from that lot.

 

[Tek-Check]

Sorry but my skepticism meter is flashing loudly....$740 seems awfully cheap for such a "rare" card....

A few possibilities come to mind:

A) It is a heavily modded 12 or 8GB card, by someone with both hardware & BIOS skills
B) Somebody's photoshoppin skills were workin overtime
C) It is/was stolen

It was heavily exploited in a crypto farm. Look at damages at rear I/O. It's not worth more. It's worth much less than this. I wouldn't touch it.

 

[Darthgrey]

This is strange, I mean that it can somehow work in 3D applications. Many times I've seen 3080 Ti 20Gb selling on local aftermarket, made by Gigabyte, they all were from mining farms and all sellers mentioned that they are not able to run 3D games, only mining of crypto garbage. Also not long ago one seller on ebay sold abt. 20 pcs of Founders Edition 3080Ti 20Gb new in boxes and they also were not able to run any games. And now this guy from out of nowhere can run games on the same 20Gb card.

 

[Dr. Dro]

This is strange, I mean that it can somehow work in 3D applications. Many times I've seen 3080 Ti 20Gb selling on local aftermarket, made by Gigabyte, they all were from mining farms and all sellers mentioned that they are not able to run 3D games, only mining of crypto garbage. Also not long ago one seller on ebay sold abt. 20 pcs of Founders Edition 3080Ti 20Gb new in boxes and they also were not able to run any games. And now this guy from out of nowhere can run games on the same 20Gb card.

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The mistake is treating it as an RTX 3080 Ti, which, despite initial intentions and the branding that these prototype units carry, it is not. This is a GA102 processor first and foremost, and it comes with a different configuration from the other GA102 processor configuration that materialized as the product that was actually sold as RTX 3080 Ti. This means that it has a different hardware ID which the GeForce driver package doesn't recognize. They can't run games because you can't install the driver on them.

NVCleanstall can modify the setup files and force the driver to install, which should work because end of the day there is no difference between the chip that this graphics card possesses and that of the GA102 configuration that is sold as RTX 3090 - with that out of the way, it should perform and behave just about the same as a real 3090, just with less memory bandwidth and capacity.

 

[Darthgrey]

The mistake is treating it as an RTX 3080 Ti, which, despite initial intentions and the branding that these prototype units carry, it is not. This is a GA102 processor first and foremost, and it comes with a different configuration from the other GA102 processor configuration that materialized as the product that was actually sold as RTX 3080 Ti. This means that it has a different hardware ID which the GeForce driver package doesn't recognize. They can't run games because you can't install the driver on them.

But usual RTX3080 Ti also uses GA102 as well as usual RTX 3080 also has GA102 both 10 and 12Gb and 3090 is also GA102, all with different ID's))) I think those miner guys who sold this cards before try many times to use method you suggested, they sold them below market price, but if it was able to run games price would be higher, they were interested in it, but still had to sell for less as useless gaming brick.

 

[Dr. Dro]

But usual RTX3080 Ti also uses GA102 as well as usual RTX 3080 also has GA102 both 10 and 12Gb and 3090 is also GA102, all with different ID's))) I think those miner guys who sold this cards before try many times to use method you suggested, they sold them below market price, but if it was able to run games price would be higher, they were interested in it, but still had to sell for less as useless gaming brick.

Yes, the 3080, 3080-12G, 3080 Ti, 3090 and 3090 Ti are all GA102... but they are different types of GA102. Each of these configurations have their own set of hardware fuses, their own PCI ID, etc. - in general, since the card just won't work normally unless the buyer has a very specific knowledge of what they're doing, it's as good as "it can't be used for gaming" anyway

Remember, cryptocurrency miners are generally not gamers and they do not see these things as anything other than money making tools to be spent, and they are definitely interested in making one last buck out of their tools that weren't completely spent by the operation while it was still viable.

 

[Dreadzone14]

This is strange, I mean that it can somehow work in 3D applications. Many times I've seen 3080 Ti 20Gb selling on local aftermarket, made by Gigabyte, they all were from mining farms and all sellers mentioned that they are not able to run 3D games, only mining of crypto garbage. Also not long ago one seller on ebay sold abt. 20 pcs of Founders Edition 3080Ti 20Gb new in boxes and they also were not able to run any games. And now this guy from out of nowhere can run games on the same 20Gb card.

View attachment 306604View attachment 306605View attachment 306606

Because I don't have skill issue.

The mistake is treating it as an RTX 3080 Ti, which, despite initial intentions and the branding that these prototype units carry, it is not. This is a GA102 processor first and foremost, and it comes with a different configuration from the other GA102 processor configuration that materialized as the product that was actually sold as RTX 3080 Ti. This means that it has a different hardware ID which the GeForce driver package doesn't recognize. They can't run games because you can't install the driver on them.

NVCleanstall can modify the setup files and force the driver to install, which should work because end of the day there is no difference between the chip that this graphics card possesses and that of the GA102 configuration that is sold as RTX 3090 - with that out of the way, it should perform and behave just about the same as a real 3090, just with less memory bandwidth and capacity.

Doesn't work I have tried, basically need the Nvidia Test driver which I have to get this card to work in 3d applications.