 |
| ASUS ROG Strix RTX 3080 |
A rare find on a Chinese marketplace offers a glimpse into Nvidia's discarded plans: A working prototype of an Asus ROG Strix RTX 3080 with 20 GiB VRAM shows what could have been.
A graphics card that should not actually exist: a prototype of the Geforce RTX 3080 has appeared on a Chinese marketplace - but not with the usual 10 GiB or 12 GiB, but with a whopping 20 GiB of video memory. The find again indicates that Nvidia had concrete plans for this model shortly before the launch of the Ampere generation, but rejected them at the last second.
The Chinese content creator Seninno discovered the card and secured it from a small retailer for about $ 430, as the portal Shero King explains. Interestingly, the GPU comes from the manufacturer Asus, who probably wanted to launch such a video card on the market under the premium brand "ROG Strix".
ASUS ROG Strix RTX 3080 Specs
However, the condition of the card raises questions. According to Seninno, there are no screws on the radiator, and the board has strong signs of wear, as well as features of a physical revision. It is therefore reasonable to assume that this specific model was already misused for mining purposes before it found its way to the dealer. The tester expressed concerns about the long-term durability and plans to return the model.
At first on the Chinese video platform Bilibili, later also on Youtube, Seninno uploaded at least some impressions and benchmarks of the RTX 3080 20 GiB. This is where the advantage of the increased memory, which allowed the sessions to run stably and smoothly, is particularly evident in AI workloads. In games like Indiana Jones and the Big Circle - a notorious VRAM devourer - the plus of video memory is also welcome; on maximum graphics settings, the game allowed itself about 16 to 17 GiB of VRAM.
Would you have considered such an RTX 3080?
Use the comment function and let us know what you think. You would have to be logged in to comment. If you do not have an account yet,