Alleged ‘only GeForce GTX with ray-tracing cores’ prototype surfaced on eBay

A Reddit user managed to get hold of an alleged engineering sample of the unreleased Nvidia GeForce GTX 2080 from eBay. The graphics card is technically the only GeForce series GPU with ray tracing hardware.

It is probably an engineer sample of the GTX 2080, which would later be renamed the RTX 2080. The Reddit User would have bought the video card through eBay. Benchmarks from the source show that the performance is practically identical to that of the official RTX 2080, although he also reported problems; the card would have temporarily stopped working due to lack of driver compatibility. It is not clear how he got the GPU working again.

Due to the unknown origin of the GPU, it could of course be a production error or a possible hoax. VideoCardz, on the other hand, does notice that the serial number on the sticker refers to the PG180 board, identical to that of the RTX 2080. Also uploaded the fans, the TU104 die and the firmware to TechPowerUp all point out that it is an early version of the RTX 2080.

Nvidia released a new family of graphics cards under the name GeForce RTX in the fall of 2018. The RTX 20 series, including the 2080, was the brand’s first series of GPUs with dedicated RT cores for ray tracing. As far as is known, this makes the GPU that has surfaced on eBay the first and only GeForce family graphics card with ray tracing cores. Nvidia later made ray tracing possible on GTX cards by means of drivers, without the need for specific hardware.

Alleged GeForce GTX 2080, images via ascendance22 / Reddit