Unreleased NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti 20GB GPU Engineering Sample Surfaces

Photo credit: Tommy Jones
All these years after NVIDIA originally debuted the RTX 3080 Ti in 2021, a few prototype samples of unreleased variants have begun to appear in used listings online. These are essentially engineering samples, or pre-production hardware, that were created to test designs before deciding what to mass produce. One of them has piqued people’s interest because it features 20GB of GDDR6X RAM instead of the usual 12GB.

It appears that NVIDIA contemplated this higher memory configuration at some point, as evidenced by leaks from 2020-21 pointing to a memory version that could have been designed for compute activities or mining that required more VRAM.

The standard retail RTX 3080 Ti has a 384-bit memory bus, however this sample version is lowered to 320-bit to accommodate the additional memory. That means you’ll have less overall bandwidth than with the ordinary card, and overall performance will be somewhere between the standard 3080 Ti and the 3090. But, according to customers, if you have this card up and running, it yields good results, and the 20GB of memory provides some more leeway when you push your workloads past that 12GB.

At first glance, these samples appear to be identical to a standard RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition, but with the correct tools, such as GPU-Z, you can tell it’s a 20GB model with a different device ID. Some ads even include a green ‘development only’ sticker on the card, indicating that these cards were intended for NVIDIA’s internal testing and would be returned to the factory once certified.

So, if you plug one of these cards in, it will output video without any difficulties. The problem is that standard NVIDIA drivers won’t install since they don’t recognize the device. As a result, users have to rely on third-party fixes to add the missing device ID, after which they can run drivers such as 581.94.

The downside is that you are on your own for support, and if NVIDIA releases a new driver, it may break the fixer, leaving you with a card that will not operate until the community fixes the issue. Of course, reselling one of these cards without being very specific about what you’re selling risks irritating the person who buys it and expects it to work right away, thus prompting a return.

The eBay sales provide some clues as to how much these items are genuinely worth. One of these prototype cards sold for approximately $2,000 in 2025. Right now, you can acquire one for anywhere between $900 and $2,000, depending on the condition and who is selling it.
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