A pre-production sample of the Turing based RTX 2080 appeared on eBay on February 17th with some peculiar physical characteristics; namely the GeForce GTX branding of its predecessors.
GeForce "GTX" 2080 Engineering Sample. Click to see full image.
Seen above, the card’s other physical characteristics are generally unaltered from the Founder’s Edition cards that ship today. The card is clad in the same silver shroud with the redesigned dual-fan cooler underneath, and has the powdered black I/O bracket with the NVIDIA logo and name etched into it. There is no way to tell when the card was manufactured, so it’s difficult to ascertain what time frame the naming and marketing shift would have occurred, but the inclusion of a tiny white “RTX 2080” label on the I/O bracket does suggest that the card is fully featured and not some possible reduced function ASIC like the recently announced TU116.
The overall package appears complete and ready to ship lacking the RTX branding that the final product wears. This could lend some credence to the rumors surrounding RTX being a rushed launch, bolstered by the initial lack of any supporting software utilizing the technology. It’s not hard to theorize that RTX could have initially been a slow-burn feature for all RT and Tensor Core equipped Turing cards to take advantage of as software materialized, rather than being the central identity of the entire lineup.
What do you think? Discuss below.
GeForce "GTX" 2080 Engineering Sample. Click to see full image.
Seen above, the card’s other physical characteristics are generally unaltered from the Founder’s Edition cards that ship today. The card is clad in the same silver shroud with the redesigned dual-fan cooler underneath, and has the powdered black I/O bracket with the NVIDIA logo and name etched into it. There is no way to tell when the card was manufactured, so it’s difficult to ascertain what time frame the naming and marketing shift would have occurred, but the inclusion of a tiny white “RTX 2080” label on the I/O bracket does suggest that the card is fully featured and not some possible reduced function ASIC like the recently announced TU116.
The overall package appears complete and ready to ship lacking the RTX branding that the final product wears. This could lend some credence to the rumors surrounding RTX being a rushed launch, bolstered by the initial lack of any supporting software utilizing the technology. It’s not hard to theorize that RTX could have initially been a slow-burn feature for all RT and Tensor Core equipped Turing cards to take advantage of as software materialized, rather than being the central identity of the entire lineup.
What do you think? Discuss below.