Another prototype GTX 2080 Ti appears, allegedly found in a $500 FB marketplace
It should be “RTX” obviously.
Another piece of NVIDIA’s pre-RTX history appears online, perhaps one of the last GTX cards. A Reddit user claims to have discovered a prototype GeForce GTX 2080 Ti while buying a secondhand PC for just $500 on Facebook Marketplace.
According to the post, the card was labeled as “GTX,” not “RTX,” yet matched the known specifications of an early Turing prototype. However, unlike the retail version with 11GB memory, this one features 12 GB of memory , along with a wider memory bus and higher bandwidth. Judging from the GPU-Z validation, the system reportedly ran as expected, confirming it was a genuine pre-production model with drivers.
Source: RunRepulsive9867/Reddit
This is not the first time an early “GTX 20 Series” has surfaced. NVIDIA reportedly decided to rename its upcoming Turing line from GTX 11 to RTX 20 shortly before launch to emphasize ray tracing support. Over the years, several GTX-branded 2070 and 2080 samples have appeared online, but sightings of a Ti variant were extremely rare. The last prototype appeared only last month , but unlike the unit above, it did not work given the lack of GPU driver support.
Given that the RTX 2080 Ti launched weeks after the rest of the lineup, this suggests NVIDIA had Ti-class hardware in testing long before the official RTX branding shift.
Source: RunRepulsive9867/Reddit
It’s also surprising to see such a prototype turn up in the wild, and sold so casually. Hardware marked as engineering, prototype, or qualification samples are (technically) property of the company and they are not not meant for resale. While review units often circulate and sometimes end up on secondary markets, prototypes like this one are not supposed to leave the lab.
It is true that rare prototypes can be sold for hundreds or even thousands of dollars, but in reality it is very hard to find a buyer. I’m no legal expert, but it is probably not a good idea to brag about such cards on social media, but in reality companies rarely care about such hardware being sold.
Source: Reddit