A Reddit user named tommyjones91 purchased what he believed were two standard GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics cards. However, he soon discovered that he had something far more valuable in his hands — an engineering sample of a 20 GB model that Nvidia never officially released to the market.
The Hidden RTX 3080 Ti That Never Reached Stores
During the RTX 30 “Ampere” generation, rumors of a 20 GB version of the RTX 3080 (or 3080 Ti) were widespread. Nvidia reportedly produced several test units to compete with AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 series, which offered 16 GB of VRAM. However, due to supply chain issues and changes in the company’s strategy, the 20 GB version was never launched. Instead, the familiar 12 GB model hit the shelves.
The cards purchased by the Reddit user feature 20 GB of GDDR6X memory and have a few notable differences from the retail versions. These engineering samples lack any brand logos on their chassis and use a 320-bit memory bus, placing their performance between the standard RTX 3080 and the RTX 3090.
Although the cards are fully functional, using them is not straightforward. As prototypes, they require specific engineering drivers to be recognized properly by the system, since Nvidia’s public drivers do not usually support unreleased hardware. Today, this model is considered a highly valuable collector’s item among hardware enthusiasts.
