NVIDIA Toyed With A 20GB GeForce RTX 3080 Ti And This Listing Proves It
We may never truly know just how close NVIDIA came to actually releasing a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti with 20GB of GDDR6X memory (versus the actual configuration that we reviewed), but there is new evidence to suggest it was at least a consideration. Over on eBay, a seller sold an alleged GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition card in engineering sample form and with 20GB of VRAM for $1,999.99, plus another $13.77 for shipping.
The seller has over 400 reviews and a 100% positive rating, so we're inclined to believe it's a legitimate listing (unless the seller was hacked). According to the description, the engineering sample is a "normal 3080 Ti," save for the 67% increase in VRAM to 20GB (NVIDIA ended up releasing the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti with 12GB of GDDR6X).
It's also described as being "fully functional and in mint condition," though not without a caveat. Since NVIDIA never actually released a version of the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti with 20GB of VRAM, it's not actually supported by NVIDIA's GeForce drivers.
"Please note, in order to use the card for gaming/3D workloads you must use a third party driver like NVIDIA-patcher as the official NVIDIA driver does not support this card," the listing states.
That's a pretty important disclaimer for a card that fetched over $2,000 (with shipping). Perhaps the buyer viewed it as a collector's item. To put the winning bid price into perspective, functioning GeForce RTX 3080 Ti cards have recently sold for around $450 to $600, as can be seen when looking up listings on eBay that ended with a winning bid. When the card came out, its MSRP was set at $1,199.
This is not the first time that a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti with 20GB of VRAM has broken cover. Back in 2023, we wrote about an MSI Suprim X variant with a factory overclock that was listed on Facebook Marketplace. And in 2021, we also wrote about a Gigabyte Aorus model that was spotted for sale in Russia.
Taken as a whole, these collective real-life appearances suggest that NVIDIA had at least considered releasing a 20GB version of the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, including both a Founders Edition model and through its add-in board (AIB) partners.
