There's a new GeForce RTX 4090 scam: repair shops finds relabeled RTX 3080 Ti GPU inside

Sigh... there's another graphics card scam going around, this time with the flagship NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 which was found with a relabeled RTX 3080 Ti GPU inside. Check it out:

Northwestrepair revealed the scam in a new video, with what should've been a brand new ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card, with the protective foil on it and all, but it was all a sc am. Once the TUF Gaming RTX 4090 was pulled apart, the GPU was labeled "AD102" but it was not the AD102 GPU, it was the GA102 GPU which powers the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti.

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The real RTX 4090 (left) with the fake RTX 4090 (right) (source: Northwestrepair)

The two GPUs are nearly the same size: 628mm2 versus 608mm2, so it wasn't obvious at first, but it seems someone has polished the die to remove the label, and then laser-etched brand new ones... quite elaborate. Northwestrepair also noticed that at least one of the memory modules was not 2GB, but 256MB... and they weren't GDDR6X memory at all.

The scammers used the GA102 GPU because the chip is pin-compatible with AD102, which is the same GPU used by the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti, which was really just a test run for the new flagship GeForce RTX 4090.

• Read more: RTX 4090s are still melting: GPU repairer is fixing 200 faulty RTX 4090s per month
• Read more: 19 damaged GeForce RTX 4090s with cracked PCIe slots fixed by professional repairer
• Read more: Beware: scammers are selling RTX 4090 cards without GPUs, counterfeit RTX 4090s on the loose

This isn't the first huge graphics card-related scam, and I'm sure it's not the last... I'm just glad we've got the likes of Northwestrepair exposing this crap.

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