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Nvidia Begins Cracking Down on Fake Ampere GPUs

The cards are typically rebadged mining GPUs, and Nvidia is now offering tips on how to avoid them.
By Josh Norem
Nvidia Ampere GPUs
Credit: Nvidia

It's no secret that many people were burned by the collapse of cryptocurrency last year. Numerous mining factories suddenly had thousands of worthless GPUs, with no way to offload them quickly once the gravy train stopped. Now they've figured out a solution: Rebadge and sell them for a song on e-commerce sites. Nvidia has noticed and advises the public to avoid them for obvious reasons. A report from the Chinese site MyDrivers lists some tips Nvidia offers and a breakdown of the situation. The TL;DR version is a tale as old as time: If it seems too good to be true, it usually is. Also, if you don't recognize the company's name, there's a reason; it's not an official Nvidia partner.

The site's report states that previously, many GPU sellers popped up out of the ether to try and sell older GPUs with brand names such as Kanoki, Reso, Publisher, Jieshuo, Ice Shadow, 51RISC, Corn, and Mllse. These "brands" were restricted to Chinese e-commerce sites like Alibaba, but now they've moved their operations to the US. In most cases, they are refurbished mining GPUs, but there have also been cases of laptop GPUs being sold as desktop models.

51RISC RTX GPU
According to MyDrivers, this is a laptop GPU masquerading as a desktop card. Credit: MyDrivers

GPUs from these companies are now appearing on sites like Amazon and Newegg even as we type this. MyDrivers reports that Nvidia isn't sure how these companies came to sell Nvidia GPUs in the first place, as they're not Nvidia partners. The company says it also doesn't know how they make the cards they sell, which indicates they're mostly rebadged mining cards from other vendors.

51RISC GPU
If you see a card that's shipping from China, that's a red flag. Credit: Newegg

With that in mind, the company is offering three tips to help people avoid buying a GPU from one of these companies. The first is kind of humorous: "just buy a 40-series GPU!." The logic is that its 40-series GPUs were all made after the crypto bust, so nobody uses those for mining. Plus, they're all new enough that they couldn't have been used for mining for long.

The second tip is to ensure it's an official Nvidia partner, such as Asus, Gigabyte, Zotac, and so on. The third tip is just to buy a GPU that was modified after the mining boom ended. As Tom's Hardware notes, that includes cards that received late-cycle upgrades, which launched after the mining era had ended. One example is the GDDR6X version of the RTX 3060 Ti. Nvidia says it's working with e-commerce patterns in China to remove them from virtual store shelves, but it doesn't appear to be taking action in the US yet. Hopefully, that changes soon, as you can easily find numerous shady-looking GPUs on Amazon and Newegg.

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