Is there really an RTX 2080 behind certain RTX 2070 Super models?
Less than a year after release, Nvidia has given the RTX graphics cards 2060, 2070 and 2080 a refresh. What is good for consumers is annoying for the board partners: they are still sitting on old chips. Nvidia is apparently now allowing them to rebrand the old chips.
Neither the custom designs nor the PCBs on the super cards are new. The super chips are merely variants of existing chips. For example, the RTX 2060 Super is based on the PCB of the non-super RTX 2070, while the RTX 2070 Super is based on a trimmed TU104 chip from the RTX 2080.
Multiple device IDs
As W1zzard, the creator of the graphics card tool GPU-Z, writes, he noticed when updating the software that the RTX 2060 Super and the RTX 2070 Super are each listed with three device IDs in the driver. The RTX 2080 Super, on the other hand, only has one Device ID. The device ID identifies the graphics card model so that the operating system knows which model it is and which driver is required. A graphics card usually only has one device ID, as is the case with the RTX 2080 Super.
What can this mean
? With the original release of the RTX series, Nvidia ditched the single device ID model and produced so-called A and non-A variants of the chips. The A chips came with a factory overclock, meaning they were overclocked right from the start. The non-A chips, on the other hand, were not. With more recent releases, Nvidia has abandoned this two-tier treatment and only A chips have been sold.
Why are there now three device IDs for the 2060 Super and the 2070 Super? W1zzard suspects that Nvidia allows board partners to convert existing non-super RTX 2070s to RTX 2060 Super and existing non-super RTX 2080s to RTX 2070 Super. This would explain why there are three device IDs for the RTX 2060 and 2070: One Device ID for the new variant of the chip and the other two for the A and non-A variants of the downgraded "old" chips.
According to W1zzard, the effort involved in downgrading chips should be minimised so that it is financially viable for the board partners. He is also not sure how such a modification would work. Perhaps only the BIOS would have to be reflashed or something else soldered. It might even be possible to raise the RTX 2060 Super and RTX 2070 Super to the next non-Super level through reverse engineering. Whether rebranded RTX 2060 Super and 2070 Super cards are actually in circulation has not yet been confirmed. W1zzard has not yet received a response from Nvidia.
What do you think? Is there any truth to W1zzard's assumption? Let us know in the comment column. You can find W1zzard's article here.
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