Back in 2022, someone leaked images of an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 2080 via Reddit. Fast forward to today, and someone has actually found and purchased another relic from the Turing era, this time in the form of a GTX 2080 Ti.
Redditor RunRepulsive9867 claims that they found the prototype GTX 2080 Ti being sold on Facebook Marketplace, and for close to US$500 (~RM2,114). By their account, they thought they were being scammed. Turns out, the PC component turned out to be the real deal.
Upon purchasing the card, RunRepulsive9867 confirmed the specs of the GTX 2080 Ti. Internally, it had 12GB GDDR6 graphics memory, versus the 11GB of the original card. It’s still based on the generation’s 12nm die lithography, but it also has a larger memory bus and bandwidth.
More importantly, the GTX 2080 Ti sports the same reference cooler shroud that NVIDIA settled on when they launched the RTX 20 Series back in 2018. That more or less serves as a form of confirmation of GTX 2080 Ti’s prototype pedigree. As these things usually go, it is also a little surprising that such hardware are being sold so openly; prototypes and engineering samples rarely make an appearance in public, let alone get sold so openly, outside of the lab.
It’s prototypes like these that also tend to fetch a handsome sum, primarily from collectors looking for unique pieces of technology to add to their collection.
(Source: Reddit)
